Christopher's birth story 


It is with great apprehension that I approach writing about the birth of my daughter, Liberty Raine Largen.  I fear that ink may corrupt the sanctified purity of blood and sweat, as words cannot embody such a transcendental experience.  I feel woefully inept, like a graffitti artist in the Sistine chapel. Nevertheless, I am compelled to make my mark.

First of all I must confess that I nurture a silent but profound dislike of hospitals. In my opinion, they are tombs masquerading as sanctuaries.  Many suffering people have spent their final hours abandoned in sterile rooms, poked and prodded by assembly-line clinicians, vivisected and taxonomized by cannibalistic technicians who plunder the coffin to fatten the coffer.

Yet it is in the antiseptic bowels of these factories that children of the modern world are born.  Laboring mothers no longer retreat to the shady womb of the forest, calling out to the swaying branches and soaring birds as their babies drop into an earthen cushion of leaves and grass.  Our collective consciousness retains little trace of this primative ritual.  Away in a manger, no cry emits from the mouths of babes.  Perhaps there is too much room at the inn.

My wife Gynni and I had hoped to perform a home bith, but this was not a viable option us.  In the final weeks of the pregnancy, her blood pressure was skyrocketing and her ankles were swelling to the size of grapefruits, rendering her barely capable of ambulating.  Gynni needed the ready availability of immediate medical attention, and the physicians chose to admit her early and induce labor to avoid further complications.

I arrived at the hospital as the blazing sun broke through the morning clouds.  I was just in time, as Gynni had been admitted the previous evening and members of the hospital staff were already preparing her for induction.  I had spent a sleepless night in a lonely bed, haunted by my hopes and fears, wrestling with a terrifying sense of being utterly powerless.  This vague notion would become sharply defined during our birth experience.

Our assigned nurse Carol had graying hair that was seized in an excruciatingly tight bun.  Her pale, powdery makeup looked like vernix, the soft cheesy substance consisting of dead skin cells, gland secretions, and temporary hair, that often adorns the chubby, wrinkled faces of newborn infants.  Her eyes emanated a contradictory sense of cynical naivety, as if she had seen so much that she could no longer see clearly.

Carol spoke little, but I could deduce much from her dreary demeanor.  She appeared to feel no joy at the prospect of bringing new life into the world.  For her it was just another day on the job, another obstetric disaster to be contained.  Her voice was dull and monotone, and she looked at my wife as if she was a specimen.  I felt a vague tinge of pity for this bitter woman who could apparantly drain the colors from a  rainbow.

Our midwife Laura, on the other hand, was a pleasant woman to work with.  Her brown hair hung over her loose fitting shirt.  She smiled frequently, and her physical prescence was comforting.  She was genuinely concerned for our welfare, and she did everything she could to preserve our autonomy throughout the process.  She was the type of professional who put people before policies, and she behaved as if she was honored to be participating in this rite of passage with us.  She seemed to have an intuitive awareness of the sanctity of her position as the gatekeeper of life.  Laura brought a sense of humanit to the experience of birth.

Following the induction of labor, my wife spent four hours pacing, rocking, heaving, and contracting.  I held her hand, or she grasped mine, crushing my fingers with the intensity of her grip.  I massaged her back with almond oil, refilled her cup of water, and played Miles Davis in the cassette player I had brought. 

Gynni's labor gradually increased to a crescendo of agony, and she expressed her desire for drugs.  Laura and I tried to distract her with the allure of a warm bath.  As the water ran, my wife waddled toward the tub.    She froze in midstep and emitted a prolonged, guttural wail of torment.

Carol opened the door and poked her head in.  "You can't have the baby here!" She may as well have been standing on a seaside cliff with regulation book in hand, shaking her rigid finger at the interminable ocean waves, shouting impotent protest while the wind blew salt-water tears into her anesthetized eyes.  The whimsical forces of nature do not bow to petty bureaucratic dictates.

Laura knelt down between Gynni's trembling, swollen legs, and did not bother looking up at the nurse .  "This is where we are having it!"

Gynni arched her back, clutching the side of the bathtub, gazing through the plaster ceiling to a blue Texas sky.  She stretched her mouth wide open, and released a primal, terrified scream which reverberated through the shiny hospital corridors.  She screamed louder than she ever did while fighting or making love.  My wife sounded like a wild animal.

The midwife struggled to catch the slippery, squirming mass of flesh as it emerged into the world, still attached to a swaying, pulsing umbilical cord.

The floor was spattered with blood, mucous, and runny fecal matter.  Gynni had previously expressed a fear of defecating while giving birth, but now that it was coming to pass, no pun intended, she was in too much pain to be embarassed.   I felt the warm body fluids squish between my toes as I stood barefoot next to my wife, stabilizing her with my arms.

Gynni looked between her legs and cried out in ecstasy and amazement, "There she is!"

Liberty grimaced, her tiny hands and feet flailing in the air.

My sense of joy and awe was abruptly interrupted by Carol, who grabbed some towels off a shelf on the wall and irreverantly tossed them on the soiled floor.  She clutched a hospital issue pen in her shaking hand. "What time was the baby born?  Was it 11:05 or 11:06am?  I have to chart it."

I don't know, lady.  I'm trying to keep my wife from falling down and breaking her hip or crushing our daughter.  Why don't you check your stupid stop watch instead of bothering me with these irrelevant questions?

The midwife attached two clamps to the umbilical cord.  "It was 11:05."  I suspect that she was blurting out the first thing that came to her mind in order to get Donna to be quiet.  The midwife handed me a pair of bloody scissors.  "Do you want to do the honor?"

Indeed I did.  It took three strokes of the blades to slice through the tough, fibrous
rope that had nourished and sustained my daughter, tethering her to my beloved wife. Lifeblood squirted from the tissue as I cut through it.

"We've got to get her out of here," Carol said.

My wife tried to lift her feet.  "I can't move."

"Yes, you can.  You have to," Carol retorted.

"I'm telling you, I can't move!"

Our midwife looked up at me and spoke gently.  "Will you grab her ankle and try
to help her step out?"

"Certainly."  I placed the scissors on the rim of the bathtub, and then dipped my hand in the water, rinsing blood from my fingers.  I took a firm hold of Gynni's leg and lifted up.  It was all that she needed to start the process.  I supported her arm as she maneuvered back to her bed, exhausted and elated.  

While nurse technicians weighed and measured our daughter, Laura crouched
between my wife's legs, weilding needle and thread to stitch her torn flesh.

Without any warning, Carol began to jab her fingers against Gynni's abdomen.

Gynni cried out.  "What are you doing?"

"We have to massage the uterus."

"Do you think you could wait until Laura is done sewing on me?"

Carol recoiled, frowning.

"Is there any way we can keep the placenta?" I asked.

Carol looked at me as if I were preparing to perform a human sacrifice.  "Keep the placenta?"

"You know?  Instead of you throwing it out or incinerating it, you give it to us."

"Well you can't keep it here!  Our policy considers it a biohazard, and we can't let you take it from room to room.  You've got to get it out of here today, and  you better keep it cold or it might start to smell!"

I confess that I felt a cruel delight in her revulsion.  Here was a birthing nurse who probably wished that sexual intercourse was not a necessary component of reproduction, who probably could not bring herself to say the words penis or vagina.  I choked back laughter.  "Is this an unusual request?"

Carol sneered.  "Most parents don't want anything to do with that stuff!"

This woman needs some color in her cheeks. 

I felt the sudden urge to grab the slimy umbilical cord like a lasso, swinging the bloody afterbirth in the air until it smacked against her smug face with a sickening sshhplaaat! 

She must have detected my delicious, wicked thoughts, because she raised her hands up as if defending herself from a forthcoming blow.  "I don't have a problem with you taking it, you understand, but I have never heard of it before.  What are you going to do with it?"

I patiently explained that in certain cultures the placenta is not perceived merely in terms of utility, but is revered as a vessel of vitality.  The afterbirth is not viewed with disgust, for it nurtured the fragile life of the fetus, pumping blood even during the first moments following birth.  Many people in these cultures choose to bury the fetus in the earth, often planting a tree at the site.  The placenta continues to nourish the earth.  This ceremony is performed in honor of the cycles of nature. 

Carol shook her head in bewilderment, and headed straight for the door.

Laura finished the stitches, and then congratulated us.  "I had never delivered a baby with the mother standing up, but I always wanted to." 

Finally, the hospital staff filed out of the room, leaving Gynni and I to cradle our baby in the warmth of our bodies.  While my wife smiled adoringly, I reflected on the messy miracle of creation.  The evident contradictions blended in harmonious distinction. Liberty was born in a fortified web of bureacracy. Joy is the incubated fruit of suffering. The morgue is just downstairs from the nursery.  Birth is an experience which demonstrates that life is not merely function and utility, but form and beauty.

My wife and I felt a relieved sense of accomplishment.  As we breathed together in quiet meditation, our daughter opened her tender mouth eagerly to accept my wife's swollen breast, and the sound of sucking mingled with the hum of florescent lights.
  
Your Iconoclast,

Christopher Largen
5729 Spring Hollow
The Colony, TX 75056
(469) 384-3723
[email protected]

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