I crouched on all fours in my bedroom like a feral cat. The sounds emanating from my body and into the 2am silence of my home were horrible and primal. My husband wrapped a supportive arm under me, just above my huge and taught pregnant belly, to keep me from collapsing under the weight of my exhaustion and strain. My midwife sat close by, eyes and instincts cluing her into the fact that things weren’t going quite right, that my labor was not unfolding in the ways that indicated a normal progression. An assistant midwife looked on, gently reassuring my seven year old daughter, who stared wide-eyed at her screeching mother, that everything was fine, everything was fine. Blood and fluid pooled on the floor as sweat and tears poured out of my body. Pushing, screaming, pushing, screaming, begging God to bring it all to an end, and then, finally, an urgent emergency maneuver. My baby, shoulder locked onto my pubic bone and unable to be delivered, finally released her stuck when the hands of the midwife reached in to find her shoulder, dislodge it, and bring the hot, wet baby into my arms. The baby pinked and then cried. I looked down at her and around the room and down again with post-delivery shock. My husband breathed the heaviest, and I’m sure most glorious, sigh of relief. The midwife, no older than myself, sat back on her heels, nodding and smiling. Her hands, the hands that had just moments earlier swiftly and expertly saved the life of the baby lodged within my own body, clasped in her lap, her most important work here completed. She saved my baby’s life in about 3 minutes, and in that space of time the four women in the room had become five. What a service, what a gift she gave me, from one woman to another: to come to my home in the middle of the night, hold calm in the face of difficulty, and watch diligently over the process of my bringing a daughter into the world.
I wish I could say the birth of this second daughter was lovely, and dainty, and quiet. That it was clean, feminine, and beautiful. But this birth, like the two I accomplished before it, was anything but Instagram-reel charming. It wasn’t a fairy lights kind of birth, a peaceful acoustic music playlist kind of birth, an essential oil diffuser to fill the room with spa-like smells kind of birth. It was gory, loud, and primal. It was scary. It was agony. It was all instinct, all hormonal cascade, all the grace and hands of God. Within the portal of birth, I was more animal than human, but at the same time the most human I’ll ever be. And yet, these characteristics of an undisturbed, natural birth are things of remarkable beauty. The process of birth, more bestial than we would often like to admit, is, at its very essence, the most quintessentially feminine. Pregnancy and birth are the one grand thing our bodies were uniquely and wonderfully crafted to do differently than our male counterparts. Pregnancy and birth are woman. They are, in all of their brutishness, the most completely feminine thing we do. At a time in the world where society is attempting to redefine what a woman is and what her obligations to the title are, the ability to build and birth a child are the ultimate woman-only experience. The womanly art of giving birth is as ancient to our bodies as life itself.
In recent decades, the cultivated craft of delivering babies and giving birth has been outsourced to the medical community rather than occurring under the watch of a community midwife or wise woman. It’s no surprise that the medicalization of the birth process has corresponded simultaneously with society’s unrelenting quest to call into question and define what the feminine is. Our most female capability too often becomes outsourced to a male doctor in a white coat in a hospital setting. What used to occur in our homes and under the care of a skilled woman now happens under the bright lights of hospital rooms, with many interruptions, many fear-based practices, and with very little of the process controlled by or belonging to the woman giving birth. Certainly and undoubtedly, births in the hospital have saved many, many lives. For lots of women, it’s the very best place for them to have their babies. For lots of women, they may not have a baby to hold, or their own lives, for that matter, were it not for advanced hospital obstetric care. Emergency medicine and Cesarean sections have improved maternal and fetal outcomes across the globe, and they are frequently necessary. This is an indisputable fact. But for women whose pregnancies are low risk and therefore don’t require the heavy oversight of a hospital setting, home birth is having a resurgence. Women like myself are seeking out midwives within their own communities who can provide prenatal care, attend births, and offer emotional and breastfeeding support postpartum. These women are able to reclaim what was once an experience attended to only by women and for women, then evolved to become overseen primarily by male doctors. Home birthing moms are reestablishing birth as the naturally unfolding and uniquely female process that it is, sparking a new wave of out-of-hospital obstetric care that puts control back into the hands of women and mothers.
Many of our own mothers have birth stories that sound something like, “I went to the hospital, they induced my labor, I had an epidural, and then I had a baby.” Something seems missing from their experiences. There’s a certain lack of gravity in these stories. You’re likely to find the phrase, “because that’s just how they did it back then” pop up in reference to some boarder-line barbaric intervention or bizarre protocol commanded down from on high by a male doctor. Our moms had babies – it went fine, or maybe it went not so fine, and that’s the gist of it. The following generation of women, my generation, seem to have a habit of stepping away from the clinical and culturally acceptable norms in lots of areas of life and pushing back against our mothers’ lack-luster experiences. Birth is no different. It’s evidenced in the way many of us are choosing to stay home with our babies rather than take jobs that require our children to be in childcare, look for healing outside of the big pharma system, or educating our kids from home. There’s a desire to return to the analogue, to seek out a home-centric model of living that extinguishes the rat race and emphasizes community and connection. Homebirths fit right into the “home for home’s sake” way of life we’re chomping at the bit for, and finding. We’re looking for ways to inject more nurturing into our lives and families, and this includes not only ways to nurture our own babies more sufficiently, but also finding areas of life where we as mothers can be nurtured as well. The homebirth model gives women the opportunity to experience both. Homebirth midwives are often able to spend significantly more time with pregnant mothers during prenatal visits, getting a thorough understanding of her, her life, and her expectations for her birth. Rather than being a means for controlling or clinicalizing a woman’s pregnancy and birth, prenatal midwifery care is mother-led. The birth can occur in a mom’s own private space and on her own body’s individual timeline. Her baby can emerge into the first home they’ll know, often with the father as an active participant in their arrival. After the birth, midwives are able to debrief the birth with mom to ensure she understands how her labor unfolded, which gives her an emotional foothold with which to begin processing her birth, and her new role as a mom. Midwives are well-versed in breastfeeding needs, and can facilitate a better mother-baby breastfeeding experience, which is often one of the main struggles for mom in the immediate postpartum period. The mother is nurtured by her midwife so that she is better able to nurture her baby; woman to woman, just like decades of women have done before us.
I’ve had 3 home births now, attended by 3 different and equally uniquely capable midwives. The first was a gray haired wise woman with renowned homebirth experience treating the Amish community. My next birth attendant was my sister-in-law, a trained midwife who stepped in to deliver my baby during a snow storm. My last birth was attended by a young midwife who I’ll forever be unfathomably grateful to for her quick thinking and effective hands. Each birth showed me parts of myself I would never have seen otherwise. Each birth had moments where I found God. Each birth produced a miracle out of my own body, a completely brand new human. To have a home birth, you have to hold a high degree of trust in both your own body and the instincts of the midwife watching over you. You have to take on and hold a high degree of sovereignty over your own choices, and the outcome of those choices. You have to surrender to the power of life and circumstance, and allow yourself to walk the suddenly obvious fragile line between life and death. These are your rights as a woman. Birth is a right of passage, from matron to mother. All who pass through that portal, no matter how it looks or how it unfolds, have earned and are deserving of the title. Home birth allows women to be the facilitators of their own passage and witness to one another’s journey. It’s an emotional, physical, and spiritual experience that too often is extinguished by too much unnecessary but “normal” intervention. In the age of rejecting what is normal in favor of what might be better, or at least being unafraid to rethink or reconsider alternatives to the status quo, homebirths are making their way to the mainstream. Society pushes us to question what a woman is. Homebirth pushes directly back. It says, “I know exactly what a woman is, and I know where to find her.” Deep in the throes of labor, when the pain asks you to dig so far into yourself that you feel your past self torn apart, there she is. Primal and loud, powerful and strong. In her home, in her space, under the watchful eye of another capable woman, she becomes the woman she was always crafted to be.
Jordan Musser 