Homebirth at 38 - A Personal Journey into Allowance

After Sky was born my midwives sat on our couch and wrote my birthing records together while my husband made everyone porridge. My daughter watched a movie while I slipped between stages of labour and she met Sky within minutes of his arrival onto a towel on my bed. It was honestly the most beautiful moment in my life. I felt empowered, in awe of my body and what it had done, what I had allowed it to do. 

On the 14th of April 2022 I gave birth in my bed, 9 hours after my waters broke and 8 hours after the first suggestion of a contraction. I loved this birth experience. With the exception of the transition stage which I found thoroughly overwhelming.  My daughter's birth, 5 years earlier, was not traumatic, but it was very different. I had an episiotomy and an epidural, after struggling to acclimatise to the experience of birthing. I had excellent care, but I was in a hospital and there were certain things that needed to be done a certain way (or so I understood it at the time) as a consequence. Risk was measured in a certain way. 

There are many people for whom this birthing experience is immensely fulfilling and feels safe. I did not feel unsafe once during my hospital birth and I felt heard. However, this time around, 5 years later, I made different choices. 

There are many reasons why I made different choices. I lived in a different state by this stage, where the only public hospital, for half of the state, was 45 minutes away. It was in a phase of the covid-19 pandemic where many people in our state had covid and all of the people with life threatening cases were at that hospital. 

I also had a very different life, I lived largely on the land and I felt safe and like I knew who I was on that land. And I wanted to give birth on that land. I wanted to be held by that land at my most vulnerable. I wanted my child to be born in the home we had built. I wanted my daughter to be able to stay with us during the birth if she chose. I wanted my husband to be able to be nearby over night. I knew that all of these things would allow me to fully relax into birthing and to feel safe during and after labour. I wanted to be able to easily use my toilet, to know where my favourite foods were and to avoid the dreaded drive to the hospital in labour (such a hard undertaking).

I also knew that I would be 38 when I gave birth. A "geriatric mother" - a term used until VERY recently in the medical world. And yet, somehow I knew that I could do this thing, climb this mountain at 38, beyond what I had been capable of at 33.

So much language around labour and pregnancy is about what could be wrong. Risk is measured in a very specific way in the medical world. I don't perceive this as wrong, I understand where it comes from, a fear of the things that can happen during birth, that time between worlds. However, it also can create a tendency towards things being more stressful for birthing parents, it increases people's blood pressure, it creates a higher likelihood of interventions, that too often are unnecessary and cause far more lasting harm than other options would have. And so little focus is on what's going well, what our bodies are capable of and the unbelievable power of birth and people who birth.

Homebirthing is not for everyone, but really, it should be for more people. There is nothing medically wrong about giving birth. There is nothing wrong with our bodies as they birth, and entering into a space that is trained to deal with people as if something is wrong means that this is the filter through which everything is analysed. The fact that people feel so afraid of birth, the fact that birth is treated as something medical, the fact that our studies of "risk" all focus on what hospitals deem to be risky, rather than any other measure, is a problem. 

I believe that all people who birth deserve to feel pride and empowerment. I believe that everyone who gives birth deserves to feel like I did that morning, staring at our beautiful son, filled with oxytocin and surrounded by my family on our bed, which I rested in for days afterwards, without having to go anywhere or do anything. To feel secure as my midwife made regular visits after Sky's birth. 

So much of this was possible because I had to let go of so much of the fear that surrounds birthing, much of which is played into by the medicalisation of birth and a fixation on what could go wrong. I had to just let go, trust and allow, knowing my midwives would hold space for me.

 May birth be the portal to the allowance that each individual seeks. May it hold us all in love and connect us to our power. 

Blessed be.