HOMEBIRTH: My sister had her baby

The plan wasn’t for me to be at the birth. Either way, I was just excited to have a nephew and that my sister was going to be able to have a birth experience that didn’t leave her feeling inept, hurt, and angry at the things she was denied control of.

But, I was there for the very end–the part where all the pain, the hours of counting contractions, measuring dilation, walking, moaning, bathing, squatting and praying all pay off, I was a witness. About 10 minutes after I got there Gabriel was born, and I’ve never seen that before. Sure…I’ve done it, but how can one fully understand it without seeing it? One minute there’s a baby inside my sister, the next, well–there’s not! And I wasn’t distracted by the deliriousness that a mother feels when the process is near complete, I was attentive and aware.

My ‘method’ of birthing with Leviah (#2) called on a lot of hypno-birthing ideas. I prayed, I whispered, I envisioned artwork and the hand of my Creator. All this made it possible for me to focus. I don’t know what techniques my sister relied on, I haven’t yet asked, but birth is generally not painless or carefree but such is the nature of life. For the same reason I believe it’s important to witness, if not participate in, the butchering of an animal to grasp the coming and going of breath; birth was much the same.

Interwoven in the excitement of the baby coming out, between the screams, enveloped in the moments of brief silence there’s an anticipation. We have faith all will be well, but it isn’t all for us to decide what MUST be. The breath of life comes as a gift, it comes without our complete understanding; and the miracle–oh my.

I walk day-to-day believing that I cannot rely on my own providence, nor on any man’s. I believe this, but watching a baby being born, well, believing and knowing might not be just the same.

It is an amazing blessing to have family, to have children and to have life. It is a gift that can be painful and inconceivably difficult, but in the moments it takes a lamb to breath it’s last breath after slaughter, and in those moments it takes for a child to rely on its own lungs there is an undeniable connection that I hope everyone has a chance to know…