Birth Rite: Synopsis

2009 by Roanna Rosewood

Having grown up under my father’s care, I’m unfamiliar with womanly ways. Most of my friends are guys. I’ve been groomed to prefer action over feelings. Girly things, from high heels to lipstick, fail to entice me. But conditioning is no match for nature. Despite my masculine tendencies, I am all woman: primal hormones pump through my body, demanding motherhood.

I focus all of my attention on the goal: my baby. In the background, I hear people say that birth is painful. I dismiss them, rationalizing that women have been doing it since the beginning of time, how hard can it be? To me, birth is no more than the means to a baby.

Besides, I’m pretty tough. At least, that’s what I think. Then labor pains reduce me to a moaning, unintelligible statistic. Like one in three pregnancies, mine ends by Cesarean, a painful, violent, and degrading experience.

Though grateful to have a healthy baby boy, I dissolve into a puddle of tears daily. Replaying the birth again and again, “If only” becomes the skipping CD in my mind. If only I had tried harder, if only I had gone to a different hospital, if only I had made a birth plan. . . I detest this voice in my head but cannot stop it. It will not be ignored, rationalized, or ranted away. Long after my physical scars heal, I am still emotionally broken. Logically, I conclude that if a Cesarean has done this to me, a real birth will fix me.

The doctor says my hips are too small to birth a baby. Refusing to submit, I turn to alternative healers, who offer an abundance of snake oils, each holding out the promise of hope. Without reserve, I try every one: from drinking frog extract (sweet and thick), to enduring the manual relocation of my liver (ouch) and the psychic removal of a knife from my side (?!), to—horror of horrors—giving up chocolate, and more. If someone is selling, I buy. I commit myself to the battle of birth.

When my second labor begins, I know that I will prevail. I give my all, believing that my unyielding willpower will ensure success. But in the end, after a day and a half of labor, it is not my resolve that fails; it’s my uterus, which has torn a hole in itself—a physical demonstration of my inadequacy as a woman.

People bring gifts: balloons, flowers, and congratulations. I lift the corners of my mouth into a smile. I will not complain. I am thankful for what I have. The violation of my body is an acceptable price to pay for a healthy baby. If the doctors hadn’t intervened, I would be dead. Now I know that I am not strong enough to bring life into this world, not good enough. I am unworthy of procreation. I am an actor playing the role of a woman.

I want this to be the end of it. I am happy with my two boys. There is no reason to hope that I could birth naturally. But, when I find myself pregnant for a third time, I’m tempted to try. Even though the doctors want to cut me, even though the odds against me are outrageous, my spirit insists that birth is something I must do, a rite of passage. I do not want to be tied down and cut open without a fight. For the sake of my self-worth, regardless of how it ends, I need to be able to look myself in the mirror and know that I tried.

Even believing it to be futile, I ask midwife Laura Roe to help me birth my baby. I tell her that I am determined and strong. Laura, bearer of ancient women’s wisdom, can see through my bravado. Reflected in her eyes, for the first time I glimpse the mangled mass of fear cowering inside my tough-guy armor. While I would prefer to ignore it, Laura insists that fear, by its very nature, only grows larger when abandoned. She knows that I do not need to give birth in order to prove myself, but rather that I need to become a woman in order to give birth. As my belly grows, Laura asks me to do something I have never done: to listen to my heart’s voice and welcome vulnerability.

That is how I arrive here, inside a tub of blood-tinged water in my own home. I am begging for drugs. Laura brings ice chips. If I could remember how to talk, I would explain that ice chips are no substitute for drugs, but consonants have left me. Only vowels scream from my body: Ooooooeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaa! As, deep inside, my flesh rips, I face my own irrelevance. Birth is happening through me, in spite of me, and with complete disregard for my being. I see Death in the corner, grinning gleefully, waiting to see what will become of what was once my body, and is now nothing more than Creation’s obstacle. When I cannot bear it any longer, when control leaves me, muddying the birth tub with shit, I know all is lost. I cannot do it. I am not enough. I surrender, a crazed, screaming madwoman.

Only then does the Divine come, taking my body for her own. As strong as the pain was before, now there is pleasure. Infinity becomes tangible as generations of children, their dreams, defeat, and glory, all pass through me. I experience completeness. I find religion. The future is here, between my thighs, a beautiful, shining ball covered in thick, black hair. She whooshes out. Bobbing face down in the water is a shiny, blue-and -purple merbaby.
First contact is mine by right. I reach for my baby and, instinctively, do what every uninterrupted mother since the beginning of time has done; I cradle her to my left side, to my heart, where the first sound she hears is the steady and familiar beat of home. She is, slippery like a dolphin, and oh so soft.

This is how I learn that true power comes not from overcoming, but through surrendering to what is greater than one’s self. Though I understand the inclination of the fearful to plan birth, to pick the exact time and day, to hide their vagina and make labor a sterile and planned event, to drug the violence away, I know that doing so denies us our greatest moment, our partnership with creation. I share my story in the hope that it inspires others to reach towards their pain, to walk through the unknown and join me in taking back our birthright.