AMRITO’S BIRTH

Some things you can only learn through experiencing them yourself. Such is birth. The birth of my first child was a revelation for me. I realised all that I didn’t know. It was humbling and awe-inspiring, to say the least. And it set me on the path of my vocation. Here is that story…

22 years ago I was living in Berlin and was pregnant with my first child. I was booked in to a birth house, of which there are many in Berlin. The system was a rotational roster of midwives, and you met with as many of them as possible during your pregnancy. Sometimes at these meetings I would cry because I felt pretty alone. I'd had 8 months of learning German from scratch so far, so my German was very basic. I somehow thought “Well, I think I've got a pretty good pain threshold. How bad could it be?” and I didn't really inform myself too much. We went to a birth preparation course but my husband had to translate everything and I found it hard to connect.

The due date came and went and Amrito was very content to hang around in my womb. The midwives began suggesting ways to bring the birth on and I tried them. Eventually they suggested castor oil in orange juice, which brought on cramps and diarrhea.. but not the contractions! My memory is a little hazy, but eventually labour did begin, 10 days after his due date, and off we went. 

I got into the bath at home and focussed on my breath but in retrospect the surges were still irregular and mild and I would have been better off going for a walk, chatting, watching a movie, and conserving my energy and focus for later. But I was pretty serious about it and didn't have the benefit of hindsight and so I knuckled down.. 

After some hours we called up the birth house and the midwife on duty said she would meet us there. As luck would have it of the midwives I'd met she was the one with whom I felt least connection and her English was not great. When she arrived she seemed irritated and was having some kind of issue with the manager of the birth house, it seemed to me at least.

So my husband and I went into a room on our own while she did stuff in the office and I continued with the surges. I think I was only a couple of centimetres dilated when I first arrived so she left us to it. In hindsight, I didn't realise how important it is for a woman in labour to feel connected with those around her, and actively encouraged and supported. So in spite of my husband's caring presence, I felt quite alone. I isolated myself in my own mind and tried to cope.

After some hours there was a bigger surge and the waters broke. We called the midwife to come in and she saw that the water was brown, which meant the baby had pooed in the water. This is a sign of stress, though it's not clear when the baby pooed ie. how recently. Policy dictated that either the baby was born within an hour from then or we had to go to the hospital.

The midwife gave me some kind of injection (I don't know what that was) and I began to panic. In my memory she was rough, the way she spoke to me, and impatient. I didn't understand her properly, nor she me probably and my husband himself was in stress. I was then given air from a mask, and the whole thing began to take on a scary turn. 

Of course, the baby was no way going to come out like this within the hour, so it was off to hospital. We drove there, the midwife was not allowed up with us. When I got there I just remember the coldness and clinicalness of the place, which was a shock. We found our way to the right place in the hospital and then the talks began. I got angry and refused to try to speak German with anyone. I demanded they speak English or get someone who could. They examined me and where I had been 7 centimetres or something dilated at the birth house, I had gone back to 4. By this stage, as far as I was concerned I had been in labour for more than 12 hours. They started talking caesarian. 

The hospital staff told me I would need to have a sintocinon drip to reactivate the labour. I didn't know much about this and it felt strange and wrong that the experience had taken this turn where I was discussing things, very intellectually it seemed, with staff. I felt I had to seize control at this point, but I also didn't know in which direction I should or could steer it.

The rushes from the sintocinon drip were very painful, and at one stage almost continuous and I wasn't dilating again. They told me my baby's head was coming down at an angle and was not going to come into the pelvis or press on and open the cervix further. The pain was so intense that they offered me an epidural. At this point the thought of not being in pain was very attractive and I was still holding out some hope that I could still give birth vaginally.

They wanted to wait for a break between contractions to get the needle in to give me the epidural, but one never came, so they did it anyway. Perhaps the pain went down then, I don't remember, but eventually it became clear that it was going to have to be a caesarian.

Surreally, I found myself getting prepped for the caesar. The screen went up. They cut me open and tugged out my baby. They brought him up and tried to put him on my chest but I was shaking so hard from shock and from the drugs that I couldn't hold him really and I felt numb, physically and emotionally. My husband went with him and sang to him while they did the tests and then insisted they bring him back to me faster than they wanted to. 

Then I was in a room with him and an angel of a midwife was there, who directed me to put him on my naked chest and I will never forget how he wriggled his way up my chest, nuzzling and bumping, found my nipple and began to suckle. He was like a little animal and I remember being surprised and impressed that after all that had happened his instincts were still so strong and healthy and everything felt so natural. My husband and I had had the feeling through the whole labour, in spite of worries voiced by staff that he might be in trouble, that he was strong and he was ok. We talked a little to the midwife about what had happened, began to come down and normalise and rehumanise somewhat.. and that was good.

Over the next days I kept my baby in my bed with me, refusing to put him even in the cot next to bed except very rarely. I held him as close as I could. I refused all pain killers, not wanting his system to have to cope with anything more, and I got up and walked around with him as much as I could. To the dissatisfaction of the hospital staff, we checked out as soon as we could.

Back at home I struggled to come to terms with things. My baby was healthy but I felt still somewhat numb. I couldn't carry him around to settle him and so I felt doubly useless. He seemed to cry a lot and I didn't know what to do. For the first few weeks I felt disconnected and strangely detached. Only much later did I identify this as postnatal depression. My mother came from Australia to help, and that was good. I took a homeopathic remedy, Sepia, that worked wonders in lifting my mood and slowly I began to feel lighter and more present and to reconnect with myself and come alive to my baby. From then on things got better and better and as I healed physically I was able to revel in him and love him and feel part of the world again, where I had felt I had been missing in action for some time. In Berlin it had turned from winter to spring while I had been out of the world. 

It was on my first true outing into the world, when Amrito was about 6 months, that I first noticed a certain delightful, familiar feeling. A kind of Eve in the garden of Eden, everything has a soft glow and feels so delicious feeling. The last time I felt that I had been pregnant….. It dawned on me. First slow then fast. The soft glow vanished too soon after it had come as reality hit. I was pregnant again.

READ ON to find out what. happened next ….!