I attended two contrasting births last weekend.
One was a home birth, one was a planned hospital birth.
One was with a nonbinary parent, the other with a self-identifying woman.
The first ended up with a precautionary transfer to a hospital, but the birth kept the same energy as at home despite the culture shock, and ended in victory.
The second started with a pre-precautionary admittance due to the water already having broken, and ended in surgery.
I learned more about how to give birth from the nonbinary birthing person than I have from all of my doula and midwifery training, birth attendance, years-long obsession with birth videos, and dozens of books.
There is nothing like being in presence with someone who is willingly going THROUGH IT.
When I arrived, they were in a trance (active labor). I sat on the floor with them. They opened their mouth WIDE and yelled with contractions. (This was the first visceral learning—opening the JAW.)
They commanded their partner to fill the tub by gesturing and saying, “You. That.”
Between waves, they stood up, went to their office area, grabbed a bag of markers and a sketchpad. They stared at the page and then asked me to be their scribe. I wrote for them, “CONTROL VS. ASKING FOR WHAT YOU NEED.” They took it from there, adding more phrases that were arising in their tripping consciousness.
They got in the tub and out of the tub several times. (We had made it rather warm, so it may have felt more like a hot tub than a bathing pool.) They asked their partner to join them, in the tub, on the bed, back and forth.
They expressed that they were angry at how it felt. They vocalized their anger repeatedly, beautifully, simply: “I’m MAD!” “I want it to STOP.” “I can do it but I DON’T WANT TO.”
They asked their partner to light palo santo. They needed to “clear some shit.”
They declared, “I want the epidural!” even though we were still at home.
They asked the midwife to come. They had a good relationship with her—much more contact than they’d had with me.
They asked the midwife: “Let me ask you something! Recovering from a c-section will take longer than this.” It was a statement, but they were working through their escape options.
The midwife took blood pressures and encouraged emptying the bladder. The bladder was not emptying. After several hours, the birther asked for a catheter. It helped a little bit.
There was a high blood pressure reading. The midwife suggested going in for extra monitoring.
We went to the hospital. We stood at the nurse’s station awkwardly, waiting for a room, bags full of relics from home piled around us.
The birther vocalized with contractions. This was clearly not the norm on this floor.
We got a room. The birther amazingly, coherently, announced, “My name is […]. I use they/them pronouns, and I’m not going to be a mother.”
The staff raised eyebrows but got the message. Or did they?
There was a wide range of pronoun fluency among the staff. We had a favorite.
The birther observed with clarity: “Communication is hard here.”
They noted their culture shock.
They asked for the drugs immediately.
The drugs came, but they weren’t effective. Surges continued to bring beautiful, long, loud, open-mouthed sounds. This was so clearly not the norm.
When the first drug hit, fentanyl, the birther got cheerful. They started joking with the nurses. The mood lightened. They still wanted the epidural.
When the epidural didn’t work, they tried again. When it still didn’t work, they experienced the Fetal Ejection Reflex and quickly pushed the baby out with minimal time and tearing.
Afterward, they walked themself to the postpartum room.
I was so proud.
I don’t even want to write about the second birth. It’s the same story as usual in the hospital.
I arrived too late: they (the couple) had gone in already, because they wanted to know if the leaking was amniotic fluid. There’s no rush if it is! I said. But they were already going, and it was, and they were told to stay. They listened.
Because there was amniotic fluid coming out, and contractions hadn’t intensified yet, she was given misoprostol to induce real labor. It hit hard, and contractions were back-to-back without breaks. She requested fentanyl, then morphine.
Contractions slowed. A doctor came in to push pitocin. She said no for now. I massaged her hips and back while she rested, for the first time in over a day.
Contractions increased in intensity. I kept massaging. She wanted the epidural. Her partner and I made other suggestions. She had her IV taped up so she could shower. But the nurse kept offering to start the process of the epidural, so the IV was untaped and fluids began.
I stayed with her as she sat in pain, the position that hurt worst of all, to get the ultimate painkiller. Then she napped, and I napped.
They added pitocin. Soon she was fully dilated. We celebrated. It was time to push.
Unfeeling, she began to push as she had rehearsed with her pelvic floor therapist. Not holding her breath, despite the nurse’s instructions.
The doctor came to inform her that pushing could not last much longer, due to the baby’s elevated heart rate. I talked this over with the couple, about the conservative approach of the hospital and the holistic approach on our end.
We bargained for another break, to turn the epidural down and then off, to try to regain some sensation to help with the final phase.
After four hours, it was surgery. There are so many ways to phrase how the decision was made. She cried, and then the nurses did the “birthday hats” routine that they always do when a c-section is ordered. The tone turns cheerful. “We’re going to have a birthday party!”
I said my farewells. As usual, the path to reuniting with the family afterward was vague, and the stated plans changed, so I didn’t see them immediately afterward but would wait until our post-birth visit. Time for the postpartum routine to thoroughly haze them, to process them in their most vulnerable state and spit them out feeling grateful to have been saved and cared for, never mind the constant sleep interruptions and relegation of baby to the plastic bassinet.
I saw the nonbinary parent the day after the birth, when they had come home from the hospital. They were correctly obsessed with the child. Nursing, an uncertain act, turned out to be cute and natural and good.
My role was subservient, and I didn’t express how much they’d taught me. That wasn’t the point. The point was everything that happened for them during the process. So much was cleared, and now they were delighted and in love.
Maybe the second person cleared some things. I don’t know. But it seemed like there was more stuckness than movement. More glaring stasis than dredging-up and banishing.
So what did I learn, so much from the first birth and in contrast with all my other education?
Everything they did I had heard about, mostly in midwifery study. Opening the jaw, vocalizing, emotional release, short phrases, contending with the bigness of labor, processing old traumas, asking for help, moving instinctively.
In the second birth, there was a lot of politeness. I got a lot of thank-yous. She breathed earnestly but quietly. She was trying to keep her cool.
In the first birth, they moved in a way I recognized from being on hallucinogens. Either in a trance or totally overtaken by a feeling. Verbalizing with utter clarity, but contextualized only within their own mind. Knowing exactly what needed to be done, right then.
I wouldn’t want to be tripping balls in a hospital.
But the momentum of the energy they brought to the birth—they continued that in the hospital.
Doulas will talk about making yourself at home in the birth room: moving in, bringing your own pillows and gown and food and lighting and music. But this person brought their fierceness with them, a fierceness I always see squashed in a hospital before it has a chance to come out or establish itself.
From this person I learned how to begin to approach being in labor: with animalistic energy. This is no place for “yes please” or “no thank you.” This is not the time for following protocols, and certainly not for politeness.
I wanted every birthing person to have this ferocity in birth. But to have it, you have to be in a trance. To be in a trance, you have to let go of politeness.
There is a reason I specifically note the nonbinariness of this person, aside from the simple fact of their identity. It’s also relevant because, in the birth world, there is some extra commotion associated with gender, and there is a very common assertion that “only women give birth.”
I get it. I sympathize. I identify strongly with womanhood (once again, after a stint of androgyny), and I have questioned my liberal upbringing enough to feel like I’m not really all that one-sided anymore.
However: the importance, I believe, of this person’s utter victory in birth corresponding with their utter victory in genderless self-identification lies in the careful examination and self-awareness that had to come with that reckoning of identity.
One thing about queerness, maybe the central thing, is its necessitation of deep analysis. Nothing goes without question. The premise of queerness is the destroying of assumptions, of building understanding from the ground up.
What better preparation for birth? To work with the soul, the mind, the body, with other people’s perceptions, and with what is most true for oneself? To conclude and to declare who one is, completely separate from but in conversation with society’s expectations?
This speaks to the readiness for a rite of passage. It speaks to past experiences with the Dark Night of the Soul. It speaks to familiarity with portals, with self-death, with emergence.
I understand the importance of upholding women’s inherent power. I understand that the insidious war on birth is a war on women. But I also know that women’s power is related to queer power, to minority power. They need not be separate. They intersect.
I would much rather learn about birth from the queers than from the obstetrics and gynecology industry. Sure, the queers may use obstetrics to help them have families outside of what is naturally available—but plenty of hets are doing that anyway. My objection is to the unnecessary control of birth, psychologically and physically, imposed by the violent practice of obstetrics.
When I finally got home, before crashing to sleep, I writhed around in bed. I opened my jaw WIDE, made low-toned sounds, thrashed my legs. I had been keeping my own shit together for 36 hours in a row, and I had learned something about letting it out.
I hope that’s the last hospital birth I attend, I said. Even if there’s a transfer, I want the intent to be staying home. The intent, the expectation, makes such a difference.
The preparation to face it alone, to not be saved, to go through the suffering—that’s what brings the wildness. That’s the kind of birth I want to be around.
That’s the kind of birth that teaches me something about life, about how to be. Intentional, intuitive, connected, intimate, full of sensation. Experiencing the depths and highs of intensity. That’s what I’m here for.
It was such an honor to be in that space, and it was exactly what I’d pictured—what I’d assumed was normal—when I first imagined being a doula.
I intend to make that the normal vibe of my birth work from now on.
Hospitals are welcoming doulas increasingly: Kaiser just announced its medical plans will cover doula support. It sickens me, partly because I could probably make easy money doing that, and partly because I know it’s yet another layer of pacification to ensure that trust remains with the hospitals for births, so that no one will know their power and will likely be forever indebted to the medical system.
Meanwhile, there is free birth and sovereign birth and home birth. There is DIY. The internet allows it all. Hope is not lost.
For individual coaching and birth support, book a free consult with me. I’d love to connect.
Birth.DIY 