Giving Birth at Home

By Janet Hubbard

Detail, Gari Melchers, Mother and Child, 1906, Art Institute Chicago, Chicago, USA.

I awoke on that spring morning in March, nearly forty years ago, in a state of knowing. The mild cramping had started so I crept out of the bed I shared with my husband and went downstairs to run a warm bath. I wanted to bask in the early morning solitude before sharing the news that our baby would arrive today.

All my senses were on high alert.  I heard the rushing brook water outside the window, containing a winter’s worth of melting snow as I settled into the antique clawfoot tub beneath the window.  A slice of morning sunlight warmed my face. I smelled the wood burning in the stove and the scent of my French rose soap.  Then I looked up at the blue sky through the bare branches of the apple tree. As my husband Frank came down the stairs I waved and said, “It’s today.”

“I’ll  call the midwives.”

He explained which of the long dirt roads they should take. During Mud Season in Vermont, one or the other was impassable.  After reporting to  Kit and Katra, he put the kettle on for coffee.

As I felt a rumble in my protruding belly, I said, “Here we go, beloved.”  then offered a quick prayer for a safe birth and a healthy baby. 

As I stepped out of the tub I turned to look at my body in the mirror. I had enjoyed being pregnant two years earlier with our son. What I had not liked was the hospital experience, with ten male babies arriving all at once in the small birthing center an hour away, that cold night in February. I had thought then, “Next time—if there is a next—I will give birth at home.”

I preferred the simplicity of our small cabin with large beams crossing the ceilings in the main rooms, and the rough wooden walls and floors that Frank had built with his friends. Frank and I had had a serendipitous meeting, and two weeks later I moved in, to the astonishment of my family and friends. We married a few months later when I learned that I was pregnant with Luke. This place had been a refuge—an escape from my harried days in New York publishing and nights of constant partying.

After slipping a fresh gown over my head I walked around the house—looking at  the shelves filled with books and at my favorite painting— a seascape by a friend who told me that a little boy had come by as he was finishing it, asking, “Is that god?”  I regarded our massive stone fireplace, the stones lifted by hand from the brook in our backyard, and a large, somewhat intimidating mobile Frank had made from African spears. I thought about my southern grandmothers who had each given birth to four children in their homes.

By Pierre-Auguste Renoir - 7gG3c_qlC7rc7A at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21865590

I

 went up to check on my sister who had come for the birth. A former nurse, she talked about all the babies she had delivered during her career,  all in hospitals. She had never witnessed a home birth and said our mother would kill me if she knew what I was up to. I was going against the grain and risking my mother’s disapproval yet again. But what could anyone say once the baby had arrived and was thriving?

My sister popped awake and asked, “It’s happening?”  I nodded. 

As the contractions picked up,  Frank readied the pullout sofa in front of a blazing fire. I went to the tape player and inserted the Gregorian Chants.  The sonority of the men’s voices filled the house but I was restless, so I put on a coat and went outside.  Frank had rigged a maple syrup stove in the driveway in front of the house. From there I saw a car coming down our long driveway. My friend Annie parked and rushed over to me. “Everything OK?” She put a cassette tape in my hand, The Missa Gaia, a hymn to the earth by The Paul Winter Consort.  My sister took it into the house and put it on. We listened from the porch, then Annie and I headed out to walk. 

As I stopped for a contraction to pass, Annie reached for my hand. She had a son about the same age as ours and had given birth in a renovated school bus, with no hot running water.  Our  Vermont valley teemed with couples who were escaping middle and upper-class conformity, throwing themselves into the adventure of the hippie movement.  But Annie stood out with her long blond hair and Mona Lisa smile—and her gentle kindness.  

The temperature was climbing to a bearable 40 degrees.  Sunlight bounced off the snow, and it seemed the land was unleashing all that had ben pent up through the winter.  it was fecund with new growth, the skunk cabbage popping up near the book, an early harbinger of spring. 

“It’s like the earth is giving birth, too,” I said,  as we stopped and waited for another contraction to pass. 

We arrived at the far end of the driveway to discover my midwives’ car stuck in the mud. They were climbing out, bags in hand, ready to hike up to the house. “I never dreamed the roads were this bad,” Katra said. “You’re at the end of the world.”

 The four of us headed back to the cabin. “You look great,” Kit said. As the cabin came into view, Kit and Katra said, “Now let’s go in and check you out.” These seasoned midwives. felt my chances of having a good birth were excellent—I was healthy and had already given birth to one child naturally, and with no medical complications.

The glorious music of the Paul Winter Consort filled the house and its nature mysticism seeped into my heart.  I felt embraced by the life around me and awed by the life that was about to burst from me. My thirty-five-year-old body had grown strong living the life of a homesteader, and here, mountains of city stress had fallen off my shoulders. And it felt right to give birth in a house that my husband and I had made together.

The weather had just shifted–drops of water dripping from the trees now shimmered in the sunlight. I felt as if every cell of every living thing was vibrating to the rhythm of my body. I had never taken LSD, but it occurred to me that I was tripping in the same way my friends did after taking drugs. My awakened senses introduced me to the god I had sought all my life.  I felt ecstatic, merging with nature, feeling connected to every living thing.  I had imagined none of this when deciding to have a home birth. 

Sunlight after rain, Robert Julian Onderdonk, 1921

For a while, Frank stood in front of his tin homemade contraption, poking the fire that kept the maple syrup boiling. And all was well. The contractions were picking up as noon approached. Katia and Kit looked around and went into the kitchen to organize their gear. My sister had made raspberry leaf tea for us all.

As the labor grew intense, the midwives held me and I held onto a rope that Frank had tossed over the beam, and breathed in and out, as  I’d been taught. I  began the journey back to my southern roots, saying “Mercy!” over and over until Kit and Katra started laughing. I reminded myself that I was only doing what women had done for centuries.

The contractions were intense now, relentless, and I worked hard to breathe properly, to be fully present.  I wanted to remember every detail—the sun slanting across the sofa and floor. The flames dancing in the fireplace. At 2:00 in the afternoon, I lay down on the sofa bed and fifteen minutes later the baby’s head crowned.   Then zip, her body slipped out and the midwife held her up as Frank cut the cord. “Her name is Ramsey Katharine,” I said.  We’d named her after my grandmother and Frank’s mother. 

Someone gave me a glass of champagne, and I lay there sipping while we waited for the placenta to release.  I was aware of someone quietly sniffling and realized it was my sister, who said, “I never imagined a birth could be like this.”  Katra stitched me up and helped me sit as Frank put my baby girl in my arms. He cuddled with us as the midwives began packing up their gear. “A perfect birth,” Katra said, smiling. 

Moments later, my mother-in-law arrived with our toddler son. Luke yelled, “I have a sister!  I have a sister!”  then bounded up onto the bed with us.  I felt enshrouded in a veil of mystery that night—the miracle of my child descending from my womb, still part angel; the certainty that, like the boy on the beach, I  had seen God’s face and had been touched by grace.

A few weeks ago, Annie came for a visit, and we sat sipping hard Kombucha and reminiscing. Annie pointed to the fireplace and said in her quiet voice, “Isn’t that where you had Ramsey almost forty years ago?”  We sat in silence, remembering. 

The house has changed a bit since then. We added a floor when the children were little, and years later Frank and I divorced. I had remained in the home I couldn’t bear to leave. Later I modernized the kitchen and updated the furniture, but the essence of the place was the same. The seascape painting still hangs on the same wall, and floor to ceiling bookcases hug both ends of the room. Photos of my son’s seven children now occupy one entire shelf. 

“Oh, Annie,” I said, “Let’s listen to Paul Winter.” I played the album through the fancy speakers my son recently set up to broadcast music throughout the house. Then I told her the news.

 “It’s possible that another baby will be born here next summer,” I said. “It’s Ramsey. She just called to tell me she’s pregnant and wants to come home to have the baby.”   

Annie reached for my hand and smiled. How I loved her still.

 

Janet Hubbard is author of the Vengeance in the Vineyard novels Champagne: The Farewell and Bordeaux: The Bitter Finish and Burgundy: Twisted Roots.  She has also written twenty-five non-fiction books for young adults, and is a writing coach and editor.  Watch for her new novel,  The Eloquence of Grief. 

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