Ina May Gaskin

When I was 15, I read your book, Spiritual Midwifery. I don't know what made me read it. I certainly didn't have any interest in having babies at that time. I was in a feminist craze back then, and I suppose your book was somewhere in the midst of those books and it looked interesting. I laughed at the hippie pictures and big pubic hair bushes. I thought the whole thing was very "out there."

Fast forward a few years and I had started having babies. I had completely forgotten everything I read in your book. No one suggested natural birth. And homebirth? The thought never crossed my mind. Wasn't that for weirdos and people in third world countries who had no other choice? My friends told me to get the epidural. My doctor told me to get the epidural. I listened to advice and I was a good patient. They stuck me to an IV pole and they pumped me full of narcotics and fluids and Pitocin. I was strapped to two belts. I was stuck in bed. Childbirth was terrible! Horrific! I curled into the fetal position and squeezed my eyes shut and cried and cried until it was over. My firstborn had fetal distress, there was meconium, the NICU was called, and although he was fine, I ended up with a whole lot of stitches, a whole lot of blood loss, and the knowledge that birth was very scary, and very painful.

After my second son was born, the hospital pissed me off. They wouldn't let me sleep with him and they wouldn't let me carry him. They required that I take an infant care class before they discharged me. I had no control over myself, my body, or my child. The post-pregnancy hormones raged and I swore I would never have another baby in a hospital.

When I decided, five years later, to have another baby, I was still bitter about my hospital experience, although consciously, I didn't know exactly why. I googled for a homebirth midwife and found one that turned out to be an angel in disguise. She was patient with me. Our appointments were in her own home and she spent an hour with me at every single one. She educated me every step of the way. I began to see how my previous birth experience had robbed me of things. I made connections that I hadn't seen before. I began to see how wrong I was treated, how unnatural, how the hospital and the doctors had dictated my motherhood and taken away every ounce of power I had. I became obsessed. I read everything the midwife offered me, and more. One of those books was your guide to childbirth. I read it and re-read it and it was so different from anything I had ever encountered before. Peaceful birth? Painfree birth? Doing something the way nature had intended? It turned me into a birth junkie.

My third son was born in a flurry of a two and a half hour labor. I ate, I walked, I rocked. I listened to my own music, in my own room, in my own home. I did not experience pain. I experienced intensity, but not pain. I had no fetal monitoring belts, no IV pole, and I was in my own pajamas in the warmth of the one place I was most comfortable with. My boys were there and my family was there and there was room enough for all of us and immediate comfort in our surroundings. My baby was born easily and peacefully and on my own terms, in mine (and his) own time. We cleaned up and the midwife tucked us all into our fresh, clean bed and we went to sleep. It was unreal and it was amazing and it was nothing like my hospital births.

A few years later, I would go on to have my fourth and last son. He was born into a pool of warm water in my bedroom. This time, I birthed him and caught him with no one else's hands but my own, all 9lbs, 10oz of him. I felt the umbillical cord as it continued to pulsate and when it had finished, I asked for it to be cut.

These births were healing and empowering, but most of all, they were transformative. I was given the opportunity to take charge of my health, my pregnancy, my birth, and my newborn. It is a fundamental right that we all deserve, and most of us are robbed of it. It is as if we are not to be trusted. Every experience leading up to my hospital birth told me that I did not know what I was doing, that millions of years of nature was wrong, that I had no mothering instincts whatsoever. All of that was very wrong, and downright criminal.

Thank you for your passion and for educating so many women who have, in turn, found power and wonder in childbirth and have spread the message far and wide. I only wish that I could thank you for this precious gift in person.

With love,

Rachael