There is something about birth, about being privileged, honored to participate in one of the most intense and intimate experiences in life that humbles me like nothing else. Why me? Why am I the chosen one? What have I done to deserve this honor? It brings tears to my eyes…what have I done to deserve the trust that women give me, that allows me to assist in the most transformative of life events? After births, while I’m coming down from the so-called “birth high” (which, to me isn’t a high at all. I associate “high” with being in another world, dissociated with reality. When I participate in birth, I feel as if I am so much in this world that the intensity of life in the moment is almost too much, it crushes me, it washes over me, it consumes me. Afterward, I don’t feel high at all but acutely mindful, so aware of everything in the world.) I crave water. I want it to rain so heavily that I’m soaked to the bone. I want to swim, have my head under water so that I hear nothing at all. I want to shower and feel the cool water wash over me. I put my fingers in my ears and hear the water wash over my head. It is cold, but quiet…all I hear, feel, sense is water. The harshness with which I perceive all other stimuli is silenced by water. The day begins with water splashing on the floor (or today with my fingers scratching away at a bag of waters) and ends with me in water, allowing it to consume me as my body, mind, and hands were consumed by the splash on the floor.
So one day in the public hospital = 4 births, 2 of them which I did. One was a direct OP. 2 repairs. Lots of practices that made me want to jump up and down and scream in horror (slapping of the belly, fundal massage during second stage, literally pushing the baby out by applying pressure on the fundus, delivery on a 12in wide delivery table with feet in stirrups), but there were a lot of things that weren’t done that pleased me equally (no medications on board = nicely reactive babies, no bulb syringe suctioning, no insistence that the baby cry it’s head off, no epidurals, no sections, no inductions, no episiotomies, intermittent/no auscultation). In fact, by the end of the day, women wanted to deliver with us, the three “comadronas americanas”. Tomorrow we’ll go back and I’ll be humbled once again by the honor bestowed upon me for reasons I don’t understand.
Excerpts from 6/25/08 blog - Jessica Pettigrew
