I once read that women who have hospital births talk about the experience in the context of something that happened to them, where as women who home birthed with a midwife talked about it like something they did.

That really struck me. I read it years before having a baby. At the time, I knew there was something important about that, even though I didn’t have a full understanding of its significance.

All the birth stories I heard growing up were all hospital births. As I sift though my memories and recall them, they were all stories of martyrdom. It was story after story of births riddled with procedures that sounded more like torture & humiliation, than birthing a baby. It’s a wonder that I ever wanted to have kids after hearing them. It explains why women fear birth so much.

The women I heard tell their stories coped with the things they were subjected to with the belief that it was for the good of the baby. There are cases which that is true and those in which it is not. Women cling to that belief, because to believe otherwise would make them feel violated and lied to. Some cling to it so tightly, that to even suggest that birth could be something different is extremely offensive. The wounds run deep and who wants to reopen them with a different perspective.

I don’t remember hearing empowering birth stories. Hearing their stories, made something in my gut wrench. When they talked, they laid bear the open wounds that still festered in their spirit.

When I got pregnant and told one of my older co-work and friends that I was going to use a midwife, she proceeded to tell me the story of her birth. Her eyes filled with tears and her voice with anger when she told me how the nurses had strapped her down to the bed during labor, because she wasn’t cooperating with them. She told me that she was so proud of me and that she hoped for something better for my generation. Birth happened to her.

I am now on the other side. It will be two years now since I gave birth. It was a long labor. Two doses of castor oil, a heck of a lot of walking, a hot tub and 21 hours later, my sister (with the help of the midwife) caught our 7lb 12oz little girl in a birth center in Old Town Alexandria, VA. There where no complications. There was about 20-25 minutes during transition that were very hard to bear, but I got through them fine. (My husband seemed most impressed that, though I said “I didn’t think I could do this” a whole lot, I never swore or said a cross word to anyone during the labor.) As long and hard as it was, I wouldn’t have done it any other way.

It was like climbing a mountain, and there were many times when it seemed impossibly steep. There were times when I didn’t think I would make it, but my support was all there encouraging me. In the end I was triumphant, conquering the mountain of labor, my fears and laying claim to the little bundle that was now my prize.

Two years later, this means a whole lot more than I ever realized it would. All I wanted out of birth was to be treated with respect, have my wishes respected, not to be humiliated, put down or to be treated or harmed by unnecessary medical intervention. But what I got was so much more.

I realized I could.

Knowing that I can, has changed my life and the very way I think. I am no longer afraid to fail, nor am I willing to take failure as the end. This G-d given miracle that is birth reaches beyond the miracle of the baby itself, right into the mind and heart of a woman. I have heard that birth prepares a woman to be a mother, but that seems a woefully inadequate description.

Everyday, I take one foot and put it in front of the other, with each step one closer to my goals. I now know how to run the race. The empowerment of birth opened the gates to myself, set me free and I have burst through them and been running ever since. I am not afraid anymore.

How many women have missed out of the empowerment of birth because of America’s birth machine? How many women came out of birth feeling that they can’t? Can’t do it good enough, fast enough, can’t do it without the doctor, can’t push hard enough, their body can’t, they can’t endure, can’t handle pain, can’t stretch enough, can’t, can’t, can’t. Despite successfully having a baby via natural or cesarean, how many women are made to feel incapable because of the attitudes of their care givers? Attitudes like a woman’s body is inadequate, that birth is an illness, that science can make and do it better, that birth must be efficient , or that a woman is not qualified to make her own decisions about her body, her baby and her birth.

A woman’s body is G-d’s own marvelous creation. He did not make some sort of cruel mistake when he made woman and her body. Birth is not an illness, but is part of the plans of G-d. There are times when a woman’s body deviates from its original design, and for that, thank G-d for technology. .

What we currently lack, is the wisdom to know when to use that technology and when not to. When doctors/nurses put all their faith and trust in man’s own creation, in the name of science and the belief that we can do it better than or equal to G-d, care givers inadvertently strip women of the empowering experience that birth can be. The honor and credit for giving birth is lifted from the woman and placed on her doctor for whom she has to thank for her delivery. The honor and praise that belong to G-d for his wondrous creation is also absent, when birth is handled as an illness.

This sort of intervention makes women feel insignificant, incompetent, and inadequate. The way we handle modern labor tells women in one form or another that she can’t. She’s not good enough; her body is not good enough.

When a woman is in charge of her delivery, regardless of if the end result is necessary medical intervention or a completely natural birth, then her birth is something she has done and accomplished, not something that happened to her. After all, it is a role we were made for.

Written by: Jessica Hoisigton

9/2/2008