My Mom's Homebirth Experience-1973

“But as for me, the nearness of God is my good.” Psalm 73:28a

HOMEBIRTH??? That was Daddy’s requirement of my mother. He “didn’t care if they had children together, but if they did, she would home birth”. My mom, a city girl who liked the chloroform she was given on her first three births, was chagrined. Her life was over. She wanted babies with this man, but she had no idea how to have a baby on her own.

Whenever a dilemma struck my mother, she headed to the library. There must be an answer there. And so her first visit to the downtown Nacogdoches library was in search of “how to have a baby.” Sure, she’d had three, but she had zero recollection of the births. Completely knocked out, she awoke to her new bundles of joy. 

Homebirthing seemed so primitive and outlandish, she wanted to be as prepared as possible. In her search for help, she found a record on the Bradley method of birthing. With the help of our record player, she listened to the nylon self-help recording over and over again. As the record spun round and round on our record player, Mom breathed, she stretched, she imagined, she embraced, she relinquished. 

She also found a book called “Natural Childbirth and the Family” by Helen Wessel. The book adheres to Dr. Grantly Dick-Read, the great pioneer of the natural childbirth philosophy, teacher of women and families, helping the woman to get in harmony with a natural and wonderful process, and to connect with God and with the baby in a supernatural process we call birth. He desired that women actively “give birth” instead of being passively “delivered.”

My mom’s book, copyright 1969, is now one of my most treasured possessions. All of her underlines draw me in to her soul, connecting me with her on a deep level. She underlines all the way until the last page. Sometimes its’ a green highlighter, sometimes it’s yellow, and then there are those times when she’s in the bath and the only highlighter she can find is that darn pen that hangs out by the bathtub, and she can’t help but underline yet another part: “The first chapter of Exodus reveals that the women in Moses day gave birth easily and often with out assistance. Moses himself was born to his mother without her receiving assistance, or his presence would have been known (exodus 2:2). The Hebrew midwives explained to Pharaoh that the Hebrew women were not like the indolent women of the Egyptian court and were often delivered of the children before the midwife could get to them…(and another underline),”In societies where women attempt to identify themselves with the men, childbirth and motherhood are not well regarded….” and on and on the underlines go, highlighting everything from theological considerations, to breathing, to coping with depression after the birth. 

She actually happened on a single “handbook” that has “outlived” all of the birthing books I have read since that one. The record she listened to, well, we don’t have record players anymore, but we have classes and support groups now that she did not have.

When I had my babies, I could see her, in my minds’ eye, listening to the records, breathing, and doing her exercises with every fiber of her being. Those black vinyls going round and round, her shiny black friends from the library, giving her the strength and confidence she would need to take on the task of birthing at home.

My parents moved into the hotel across the street when they arrived in Nacogdoches. Daddy knocked on the door of the Nacogdoches house, and after prying his way in, our family moved up to the two bedroom apartment within the house.

The Jones family had not yet moved out when it was time for the baby to come, so homebirth, was really apartment birth. Workers hammering, shouting, and pulling down old wallpaper, listening to mom groan and moan, preparing a home for the ten pound bundle, mom positioned herself so she could see the clock with the second hand. She focused on the road map she had mentally laid out before herself, once the contractions came, she breathed, lay on her side, and then breathed more deeply.

I came. I came faster than she expected. All of the preparation, all of the time invested into “being ready”, I almost came before she could think too much about the process. And with my arrival, power rushed in. A power she had never known, came into her soul, and she realized she could do anything she set her mind to do. 

Birthing, pretty much on her own, gave her something. Endowing her with she-woman status, not to the world, not to anyone else, to herself, it was one of the most empowering and defining moments of her life. she metamorphosed from a caterpillar to a butterfly in the span of two hours.

Dad may have seemed like a tyrant for the request, and the fallout from BOTH of their families was so intense, that she followed that birth with two humiliating hospital births, but she tasted something she realized was supposed to be for all women, for all time. It was something God created, that had been stolen and replaced with the fear of birth and although obligated to walk through the unknown “fire”, she came out another woman. She had discovered and happened upon a lifelong “gift” of empowerment that most women would never get to experience.

Trying to express what a life changing moment this was is difficult. Probably contributing to the life changing part was the fact that my mother was so spoiled as a child. She cried to get her way. She never had to endure very much, thus adulthood was a continual shock to her spoiled little girl system. And doing something that was “impossible” was a game changer.

Although I chose to homebirth, I felt it was not because my mom did it. Always independent, always looking to do things differently than my mother did them, I made up my mind at eight years old to home birth based on a distinctive realization coined in my memory. When I was eight, my father told me where babies came from. He also explained that that came out in a bed in the hospital. 

I was at the hospital all the time. It was my home away from home. I wandered the halls, I investigated the little drawers, I sat in waiting room, I knew that place like the back of my hand, and the groans coming from the rooms, the pallid fluorescent lighting, the occasional mean nurse and arrogant doctor, set my teeth on edge, even as a child.

When Daddy explained the whole thing, I made up my mind that no matter what, I would not be exposing my junk to the hospital crowd. No way. The whole thing sounded so gross, and then to think that I would be naked and groaning in front of others, “forget about it”. Maybe I was afraid. I can still smell Memorial Hospital in Nacogdoches, Texas. Bright lights and chemical smells and groans.

My mind was like concrete when it finally came time to talk about babies with my husband. It was final. I had decided things twenty years before this moment, but did not share this with him all at once. I slowly began brainwashing Mark about birth and how dangerous it was in the hospital versus the home. I gave him statistics and I interviewed midwives even before I was pregnant.

In the midst of my wife to husband real time propaganda, I had a dream. In my dream, it was time to birth the baby. We went to the hospital and I “played along” like this was going to go like everyone wanted it to go. In the dream, I knew that the bathroom in one’s room did not lock, but the one down the hall locked. I pretended to “go on a walk”, and locked myself in the hall bathroom when it was time to push, having the baby on the toilet.

When I shared the dream with Mark, it was a moment of unveiling my black box secret. He initially was a bit upset-“it sounds like you just are going to do what YOU want to do, not considering me at all!” But I think the dream relayed an undeniable element of truth-and we ended up home birthing.

My first birth was tough. It was long. I wasn’t dilated AT ALL and my midwives said-go on a really long walk-outside, and then they split-Midwives seem to know “this thing is going to take forever, it’s your first birth sweet pie”, a little piece of information they don’t dare share until later. To Starbucks they trot while I am feeling like someone has a noose on my insides. Mark and I to walk a couple of miles. They were so stoked when they returned and I was dilated to “1”. “Go on another walk the same distance as that first one”, they said. Meanwhile, I had been having hard contractions that whole walk, stopping to breathe on Mark while the traffic on Basse road zipped by us and concerned drivers stopped to ask us if we needed “a lift.”

I got in the tub and started moaning. I did not stop moaning for twelve hours until the baby came out, but it did come out. Holly (my midwife), did her first episiotomy, both of us thinking I did not need a local, the baby’s head on my perineum, and both of us being wrong as she made three decisive cuts right through very alive and very “I can feel this” skin.

But the 9.5 pound baby did finally arrive. 

After this moment, I actually wasn’t so intense about home birth, and thought, the insurance could just pay for the birth next time. Maybe I was just being melodramatic about the hospital, how bad could it be? I would probably just have it naturally and just as fast in the hospital next time.

Mark though, was hooked. He loved it. He loved being so involved and in control. He liked being in our own environment. He loved the midwife. He enjoyed the intimacy with whomever we wanted to invite or not invite. He relished that I could eat, drink, sleep, and get in the bath. He sort of had a Margi  Peace experience. It was one of the most empowering days of his life, and he still revels in that first night with his first born child.

Holly whisked me off to the hospital, as I had torn down to the rectum. She encouraged Mark to stay with the baby as hospitals feel they should keep “homebirth babies” for observation should they show up. I was not able to walk very well, so my father in law got an office chair and rolled me to the car-we silently drove into the darkness as Mark held Mackenzie. He said she just stared up into his eyes for hours while the midwife who had stayed behind cleaned sheets, kitchen, and got the house back into order. 

It was a rite of passage my husband had passed through, and he discovered a place of empowerment and joy-a gate swung open to fatherhood and independence that he did not know existed. The feeling was addictive, euphoric. He would get to experience this four more times, but the first birth would forever be etched into his memory, and unlatch something wonderful in his soul.