The Story of a Home Birth – Part 2: Release

“If you go into labor in the middle of the night, go back to bed;” our midwife Diane kept reminding us in our weekly ‘birth team meetings.

Wait until you meet Diane. I mean you’ve met Diane. Of course. She was there every step of the way during your pregnancy. She also welcomed you into the world.

I guess I mean, wait until you meet Diane and can be conscious of the exchange.

Diane was an exceptional find. She was recommended to us because she also works at the clinic your mom has been going to since she was a little girl.

She is an amazing person. A blonde woman who learned Midwifery in Dallas. She speaks Spanish because once a year she goes to the Amazon to help indigenous women with their natural deliveries.

Honestly, I have never met a better listener. She just looks at you, asks questions, and then really kicks back and listens. She listens so much that you get uncomfortable and you keep babbling on after you think you are done and that’s when discovery happens. It’s almost as she is a great therapist trained in the psychodynamic approach.

Sometimes I think of just having more babies just so I can keep talking to Diane. Your mom, of course, plainly tells me to just go get therapy.

If Diane would’ve asked me more personal questions about my fears, my upbringing, and my traumas, I would’ve totally spilled who I am (or who I think my pains have defined me to be.) Luckily, for all of those involved, she didn’t ask me about that. She seemed to be obsessed with your mom’s pregnancy. I’m on the sidelines ready to tell her more but whatever. I guess we will stick to the plan.

Diane has really seen it all. She has the charismatic swagger that ‘all experiences grant you.

She knew the rules for first births and according to Diane, all mothers think they will be the one birth that is fast, the ones that will beat their due date, the ones that will beat the average pregnancy duration, the one that will be the shortest.

So she had a list of suggestions of things to do if we went into labor in the middle of the night.

“Very likely you won’t have the baby soon and you are going to need the rest because you will spend a good part of the day in labor.”

“Also, don’t call me. I’ll spend that entire day with you and it will be good for me to also be rested for that, too.”

It made sense.

Everything we read said the same thing. It is the norm. First births take a long time and we were ready. Ahem, your mom was ready to go through it all.

I was ready to hold your mom’s hand through it all, although, that is less impressive as all it takes is for me to stretch my hand, squeeze your mom’s, and the incredible stiffness and cramps that come from holding my hand out for that period of time. Your mom will never understand the struggle.

Your mom was experiencing your birthing surges and we decided to wait for a decent hour to call Diane and we thought four in the morning wasn’t it. But we knew two people that were really excited to meet you. So I texted Grammie at 4:13 AM and she said she would call Auntie B and pick her up.

In the meantime, your mom’s surges were getting stronger. It was obvious that this was happening and while your mom rested in between surges, I’d move like a Tasmanian devil around the house organizing it to welcome light and make the house bright to welcome you. This is something we referred to as tasmanianing.

Tasmanianing is what we call running around like crazy tightening up the house. It comes from a character in a cartoon your mom and I use to watch as children. Although, the cartoon destroys everything in its path which only do sometimes when I’m moving very fast and carelessly.

I’ll explain more about that later. I’m not sure if you will be interested in it since it will be really outdated by the time you start watching cartoons. It won’t be in a holograph or in artificial reality. And very likely the Tasmanian devil is not woke or why else would he still live in the back countries of Australia? I’m sure is also insensitive to someone’s struggles and it will soon be canceled if he hasn’t been already. He doesn’t care because he just eats things and moves in a vortex — a true agent of chaos.

Then your mom’s water broke and everything looked good in the birth show.

We were so ready to welcome you!

At one point, your mom and I decided that with the influx of people coming it was going to be important to move up in our real estate. So before the first person arrived, we move from our smaller bathroom to the bigger bathroom by the living room.

Your mom slowly shuffled her feet to the bathroom until we made it and she was able to sit down in the not so comfortable but comfortable at the time porcelain toilet. Just in time for another surge.

By that time, your mom and I had fallen into a rhythm.

I don’t know what made me do this but whenever your mom would pull on me, I would pull back. Later, a day or two after the birth, she told me that she needed that but at the moment she wouldn’t say whether or not she enjoyed me trying to pull her arms out of her sockets at exact same time she was also having surges.

That was a fascinating part of the experience of what they call instinctual birthing. Where the woman dives deep within herself to find the movements and sounds that make the experience more grounded and comfortable.

On the birthing videos we watch, I have seen other partners do similar things where they know what to do for their wives as if subconscious mind waves between the two lovers communicate and they tell each other what to do.

Sometimes that is massaging the hips, walking while holding hands through surges, or in my case, pulling on your mom’s arms so hard that any external observer would think that I was a petty man trying to pull your mom off from the toilet so I could go.

This is the story of my first daughter’s home birth. If you are interested in reading the beginning of it, click below. And make sure to check back for the next installments.

Contracting the Womb’s Real Estate
The story of a home birth.medium.com