The story of my birth

...and one of my birth stories

I became a writer, in part, because writing has always been how I made sense of things. It’s how I figure out not just what I think, but how I feel. Yet I have never written a full version of any of my three birth stories.

I’ve written lots of vignettes and partial stories. I’ve shared my experiences orally with friends, family, and the children whom I labored to deliver. But I’ve never set down a definitive, full version.

Each time you tell a story, you have to choose where to start and where to stop; what to include and what to leave out. You get to interpret what happened and decide what it all meant. There are just so many different ways to tell the same story. It can be hard to decide which is the most true.

On the shelf by my bed sits a little teal journal. It contains only two entries, both addressed to my oldest daughter. The first one was written on my last day of maternity leave, when she was twelve weeks old. I wrote:

The first few days after you were born, I kept replaying labor and your birth in my brain. As I processed and internalized the whole experience, I mentally wrote and rewrote your birth story so many times. I kept meaning to actually write it down, but it took me a while to make it to the store to buy this journal, and by the time I did, somehow it felt less urgent—I think because I had made sense of the experience in my head.

My mom told me that a big part of the time immediately postpartum consists of processing the birth and integrating the experience into your understanding of yourself as a mother. For me, that was definitely true.

My mom has been such a support and source of strength in the last few months. I hope that I can be the same to you if/when you ever become a mother.

---

At The Institute for Family Studies today, I share a story that my own mother and father handed down to me—the story of how I was born. I also tell part of the story of my first time giving birth.

My parents love to tell the story. 

How, while in active labor, my mom—a medical doctor, giving birth at home for the fourth time—told her midwife not to hurry.

How, in between contractions, my mom turned to my dad and said, “Wayne, I think you’d better go wash your hands.”

How my dad gripped the bathroom sink and swayed dangerously, trying not to pass out at the thought of this unexpected duty.

How he was the one who caught me. How he gazed into my eyes in the quiet, otherworldly moment of calm after my head had emerged but while my body was still inside my mother’s womb. 

This was the vision of birth that I grew up with: beautiful, intimate, natural, and sacred. I still believe that birth can and should be all those things. But after having three children of my own, I know that our medical system makes this almost impossible. 

---

In the essay, I talk about anthropologist Robbie Davis-Floyd and her framework of the technocratic, holistic, and humanistic models of childbirth. These concepts have been so helpful to me in making sense of our maternal medical system—and the philosophical anthropology it takes for granted. Too often, we accept that we have to choose between two different visions of what it means to be a human being, which are both deeply lacking. This comes to the fore in the clash between the standard operating procedures for in-hospital birth and the soothing mysticism of free-birth advocates.

Are our bodies machines that operate according to predictable laws? Or are we shimmeringly powerful spiritual beings who can do anything, if only we free ourselves from the evil medical-industrial complex?

Obviously, neither of these capture the depth and complexity of what it means to be a human being—and, more specifically, what it means to be a woman, a body-soul composite with the capacity to bear children. In particular, I think that mainstream maternal medical care deeply underestimates the impact of a woman’s emotional state on the progression of her labor.

If you’d like to share in the comments, I’d love to hear if reading this essay brought up any memories of your own experiences with birth. How did your encounters with your doctors, nurses, or midwives affect your labor? Do you find yourself revisiting or revising your birth story (or stories) over time? How have the birth stories you’ve told yourself shaped your sense of self as a mother?