What are the sounds of a home birth? In July I birthed my daughter right here in my study. Normally this room has the tapping of keys on my computer, the fortunately silent but reproachful stare of the clean washing piling up and the murmuring of cats nesting in it.
I laboured mostly upright, always standing for contractions as they powered through my body and making a lot of releasing noises which increased in intensity over the several days of my labour. In this room I inarticulately called my baby earthside. Touchingly, sounds I made are still being heard in the house when my son plays and relives his experience of his sister’s birth.
Some of the best sounds were the silences in which my supporters watched me work through each contraction. In early labour we ate lunch in the kitchen, large bowls of pasta balanced on our knees next to the wonderful island bench, friend of the home birthing woman. When a contraction arrived I’d hand my bowl over or put it on the bench and lightly sing through it while moving my hips in the universal dance of birth. Sometimes people stopped talking, sometimes they murmured a little. I’d finish the contraction and keep eating.
In strong labour I shouted “WHOOOOOAAAAAA” and stepped from foot to foot, trying to stay anchored to the world. The sounds I most needed then were loving voices around me, my son floating through now and then, his dvds going in the background.
Even better was the sweet sound of meeting my newborn baby for the first time, hearing her birth story as she slowly blinked awake. I heard birds chatting in the dawn as my bleary eyed support people leaned on chairs and couches and tried to stay present. I heard one of my cats who followed me from room to room, just being with me. I relished the soft splat of placenta dropping into a salad bowl before I climbed out of the pool and the creaking of springs on the futon that showed I was at last lying down to rest.
Sometimes I heard in my head the voices which had told me I couldn’t birth, my baby was too big, my body is defective, how dare I pit my arrogant feminine self against the giant birthing industry machinery and birth without any of their technology?
I heard a faint echo of my mother on whose body the herstory of western medicine was marked saying “Birth is dangerous.” I heard the cries of recovering from my son’s birth, remembering how it feels to live with the sound of your baby crying in the hands of a stranger who takes them away despite your pleas.
I also heard the universe spinning and felt colourless light bursting into the pain in my body and filling me with a connection to birthing women through the aeons. I heard the voices of my beloved wise friends and the many many women who offered me their love and support generously through a stressful pregnancy. Thank you, you all know who you are. You are the sound of love.
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Isobel born at home - freebirth after caesarean
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