Teo’s Birth

(Of course this is my story and my particular medicine, each finds their own along the way)

Aged 17, Hampstead, London, I had an epiphany in a pub toilet (Probably something along the lines of ‘We all die’ ‘Love is all you need’ The Power of Now’) 

In order to not to forget it, I drunkenly wrapped up a piece of broken glass in toilet paper and tucked it into the little pocket of my 501’s. 

Teo’s birth is my piece of glass wrapped in toilet paper now.

When I think back to Teo’s birth, I see myself alone and lost in that little box room in Mas d’Azil, staring at a candle, and I am blown away by my courage.

You see, I chose to birth alone, My partner and daughter were in the house, but I didn’t want them around, not until the end.

Friends said to me; ‘Well, you’re a midwife, you know what you’re doing, that makes it safer’

But I knew that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and I also knew that all I had actually learnt on my training was to ritualise and to normalise women’s submission to and dependence on the obstetric system. 

They do teach it very well.

I had obediently administered drugs, examined vaginas, weighed, measured and cut all manner of things, assisted in Caesarean sections, and recorded it all neatly in black biro.

I didn’t trust myself to be an advocate for women, not in the hospital environment.

I was both a people pleaser and a radical, not an easy combination and I kept tying myself in silly knots, yet I deeply, instinctively trusted birth and women’s bodies.

I rejoiced in the ambulance births, the lift births, the hallway births. 

I qualified as a midwife in 2005 and practiced for a short time as an independent midwife. 

More births, pool births, home births, hospital transfers.  But I couldn’t carry on. My heart really wasn’t in it, I wanted my own child, I also wanted an easy life. I wanted to go off-call, travel and meet a man.

In spring 2008, I was called to go to a friends birth in France and on a hot May afternoon the baby died, she was born dead and I couldn’t breathe her back in.

As the helicopter whirred overhead, I watched her and hoped for a miracle, but his tears dripping into her perfect little mouth didn’t bring her back to life.

The firemen found us like that; 4 semi-naked hippies in a hazel bender cradling the utter full stop of a white baby.

So I did go off call, travel and I did meet a man and our daughter was born in 2009, a summer home birth with an independent Midwife, in a stable at dawn, the birds were singing. 

In 2012 I got pregnant for the second time and I decided to that I wanted to ‘freebirth’ this child. To birth without the presence of a midwife.

Actually, it was as if I had no choice, it was an opportunity that I just could not let pass me by. 

I felt that I needed to birth alone in order to trust in and in order to fully belong to the natural world.

But what right did I have to treat my birth as an initiation process when it involved the life of another human being? 

And why would I risk so much in a collapsing world that doesn’t understand this need anymore?  

I am not a risk taker, I’m not. I have terrible vertigo and I tremble half way up smalll hills. 

I always wear my seatbelt.

I knew that nothing was ever going to go wrong and I can’t tell you how I knew that. 

I knew that the gamble I was taking was necessary for me and for my family and yet I am still only just beginning to understand why. 

I knew that the real risk lay in NOT listening to my intuition.

On the 6th of December labour started, my waters broke first and then there were 24 hours of ‘stopping and starting’, 

Hours of sitting on the toilet giving birth to excruciatingly painful poo

no sleep and my midwife mind churning ‘This is going on too long, transfer, ascending infection, antibiotics, induction, caesarean, special care, blame, guilt, shame’

Suddenly I didn’t know, I didn’t trust. Here I was taking a risk with two lives and about to monumentally fuck up. I wasn’t so concerned about the ‘something happening’ but about being seen as a fool for taking such a risk.

My partner came in and questioned me with his eyes, ‘I am lost’ I said and fear scurried into the room.

Damn! I had lost my way in the woods and now it was getting dark. I sat infront of the candle and asked for help.

I prayed a desperate prayer from the depths of my soul 

Then I decided to call the midwife at my daughters birth and I am forever grateful to her for she was very wise and very brave.

I was in the south of France and she was in England. But distance didn’t matter.

She knew that the only thing to do was to absorb my fears. 

I fed them down the phone line to her one by one and with total comprehension of the extreme sensitivity of birth hormones. she absorbed my adrenaline and let the oxytocin flow. 

Sure enough, after the phone call, labour began in earnest. 

And it really was labour, no orgasms or ecstasy for me. 

There followed hour upon hour of hard work, round and round, sheer focus and  no distractions. 

I relished it. 

There was now nowhere else for my mind to go. 

I had sung in my first labour; pure extraordinary notes but my partner and daughter were sleeping next door, behind the thin wall and I needed to be alone.

So up I stood and I counted my breaths for as long as the contraction lasted, and then I flopped back in the chair again to await the next one.

Pain was not a problem, I was locked in and fascinated.

I did this for hours, totally absorbed  and utterly content. I was in my element, Like a surfer riding waves.

Then unexpectedly at the height of one contraction, I felt my cervix open and my baby’s head move down into my vagina.

All at once my whole being was alert, lit up. The relief and joy that flooded my mind was so sweet. I knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that all was well.

With the methodical efficiency of a serial killer, I turned the heating up, put a plastic sheet on the mattress, covered that with a cotton sheet and sat down to await my next contraction.

This moment was golden. It was 4 am, the whole village was asleep and nobody in the world, except me, was aware that soon I would be meeting our child.

The next contraction came and I woke my partner up with a shout. He came in followed by our daughter. 

‘Not long now’ I said and his eyes gleamed. 

The last almighty wave came and receded.

And there we were; on the 8th of December 2012 at 4:25 am, two bedraggled creatures, washed up on the shore.

He with a cone-shaped head and me, stunned, utterly spent.

The room was so still.

We gazed at each other, Teo and I

‘He does look everso strange’ 

I thought, and I love him totally’