Unnatural Birthing

I was dying.

Fuck. I was dying. (At least that's what it felt like)

It hit me in waves. Tumultuous, agonizing, hurricane-category-five waves.

How do I explain to a man how it feels? To have your uterus squeeze a human being inside of you and smash it against your cervix, pushing until the bones of your pelvis are forced to bend?

Bending. Fucking. Bones.

To women, it’s like menstruation cramps. But times that by five thousand. Those who haven’t yet experienced childbirth can get a glimpse of the pain at level 0.2. Surviving level 10 is superhuman. I didn’t make it that far. Level 7 was all I could manage.

I reached it when the anesthesiologist walked in the room, a white-walled, white-floored, white-ceilinged space the size of my parents’ walk-in closet. I had just performed another excruciating pushing-the-finger-out-of-my-vagina series, where my partera, the hospital’s birthing nurse, tickled my baby’s hair while I “empujá para sacar mi dedo!” push to get my finger out! encouraging me with her Eightball eyes and melty voice.

I groaned. My insides shifted while the human head forced my lower body to transform into a storm drain tunnel. On the twin mattress, I moved from all-fours to child’s pose with my bloody vagina exposed as I moaned like a dying cow. I sensed a congress of observers staring in horror, mouths agape as I tried to endure it the natural way - how my online doula taught me. How the holes of my body are connected. How if I relaxed my jaw and let my throat be fluid and open, it will help the birth canal to be fluid and open. Vibrations, such as moaning like dead cows, were meant to reduce the pain.

After a final grunt, I turned and collapsed on my side, resting for the fifty seconds I was gifted between each drug-induced contraction.

With foggy vision, I made out four figures surrounding the twin bed, all dressed in medical clothes – cobalt blue hair nets and face masks, teal scrubs, and white gloves. The shape to my far left was my shaking husband with wet and worried eyes to match his oversized medical gear. To his left stood my partera, followed by my doctor, a couple nurses, and a fat, ugly man in the far back corner.

The man looked beyond me as he mumbled something to me about how getting the epidural was my decision. But how it would help. How his experience says this. But it was, in the end, my decision. But his wife did it this way. But oh yes, in the end, it was my decision. But he could only stay for ten more minutes. But that yes, it was my decision. But I only had ten minutes to make my decision. His voice strained with machismo, like the tone of an arrogant lawyer.

With all inhibitions out the door, I yelled, “Sali de aqui! Voy a hacerlo sin tus fucking drogas!” Get out of here! I’m doing this without any of your fucking drugs!

Silence rose as I glared at him. My goal was to have a natural birth. To feel how women have felt since the beginning of time as new life emerges from their bodies. I wanted a home birth, like the hippies do, one of those pool deliveries I saw on TikTok where the woman endures the pain in soothing waters, wrapped in the comforting arms of her lover. But in the conservative countryside of Argentina, the safest, most practical birthing place was the city clinic. Though I’d be in an uninviting, bleach-smelling, fluorescent-lit environment when my child was born, I still wanted to do it naturally by only using drugs if necessary. I wanted to feel this pain... right?

“Oh mierda! Mierda! Shit shit shit shit SHHHIIITTTTTTT!” Here comes another one.

This time the tsunami ripped through me. I fell to my side, nearly off the bed. My partera had to catch me so I didn’t crash on the tile floor.

………………..

Eight hours earlier, I lay in a hospital bed in a separate, larger room, waiting for the pill they shoved up my vagina to take effect. My mom sat in an aluminum chair in the left front corner playing puzzle games on her phone. My husband was out at the kiosk buying us cold drinks.

My partera entered the room, moved to my bed, and leaned her curvy body against the edge of the mattress.

“Te sentis algo diferente?” Do you feel anything different? Her hazel round eyes were stern, but also caring, lined with soft, middle-aged wrinkles on hazelnut skin. Like most Argentines, she wielded dichotomic values: stern, but caring; opinionated, yet understanding; sure of herself, but open to change.

“Todavia no.”

“Good. That’s fine. But in a little while they will come, and you will feel them,” she said in Spanish.

I nodded. At that moment, my suegra (mother-in-law), an older, feminine version of my husband, walked in the room with my husband just behind her. She took the second aluminum chair in the right corner while my husband sat on the second bed opposite me.

As the suegras attempted a chat about their experiences when they had babies (with my husband as their translator), my partera leaned down and whispered to me in Spanish, “Is it all right that your mom and mother-in-law are here in the room? If they give you problems or stress, let me know and I will throw them out.

She said this with a smile and a wink.

I glanced up at the two women, both fret with nerves as they exchanged lame jokes with fake laughs. They both tried to not be in the way of the medical staff, but their abrupt movements whenever nurses were present had thickened the atmosphere. But it was fine - they were about to be grandmas, Chino’s mom for the first time. My mom had grandsons, but this would be her first granddaughter, born in a foreign country, in an extraneous environment with outdated equipment that she said, “seems like the same stuff when I was born” specifically complaining about the heart monitor machine that looked like a microwave from the 60s.

I knew the equipment was old and the dark, paint-peeling hallways and bare waiting rooms weren’t as inviting as in the US, not to mention the faulty AC machines and unstable energy on a summer’s day of 95-degree Fahrenheit. But I was saving 10,000 dollars by choosing not to have my baby in the US. Plus, I’ve visited hundreds of birthing centers in other countries from my work with UNICEF, some in the worst conditions - muddy rooms, hay for beds, and homemade alcohol for anesthetics - and ninety-nine percent of the time, women had happy, healthy births. The city clinic in Pergamino, Argentina was at top standards compared to most of the world. But not for my mom. After a few arguments, she was accepting, though through clenched teeth.

“It’s okay. We don’t need to kick them out now, but yes, I’ll let you know,” I responded in Spanish, returning her wink.

I had been having contractions at home. Little weak things that tightened my belly for unregulated periods. For a week I’d been counting them. Timing them. Using that damn counting app to see when they became regulated. Imagining when they picked up, when the pain came in, when I’d yell to my husband, “Chino! It’s time! Five minutes apart. One minute long. Grab the bag and the white towel!” Then he’d speed down the country road, dodging slow vans and sedans with my mom’s arm out the window wailing the white towel as we screeched and honked our way to the clinic.

But none of that happened.

Instead, I waited. And waited. And counted. And stressed. And threw emotional fits. Stressed my husband and mom out by overdoing pregnancy nesting. Installing shelves. Hanging hooks. Planting plants. Painting walls. Throwing out old clothes. Organizing the workout room. Rearranging the contents of the fridge. Stocking the medicine cabinet. Labeling drawers and bins with baby stuff.

Nesting stopped when the induction date arrived. Now, we all sat and waited for the contractions that never came to finally come (with the help of induction drugs).

But first, I must pee. I wasn’t supposed to sit or stand for a full three hours after inserting the pill, and thirty minutes in, I needed to relieve myself.

“Chino, I have to pee.” I said to my husband. The suegras had left us alone for a while.

“Already?”

“Yeah. I know I should have gone before, but I really need to go.”

“Ok, I’ll get the nurse.”

A few moments later, a short girl in teal scrubs strolled into the room, set a bedpan under my naked body (save for the thin cotton gown that didn’t tie properly on the sides) and told us to empty it into the private bathroom toilet when I finished.

I didn’t wait long. I couldn’t. The need to pee was like the need to breathe after being submerged in water for too long. The moment the door closed was when my bladder opened and began its intoxicating release. There wasn’t enough time for Chino to ensure the plastic bedpan was set properly under my butt. He was next to me when I unlocked the damn. And no, this was not the breaking of my amniotic sac. Just an old-fashioned pee.

“Amanda, stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop!” His eyes doubled in size as he watched liquid shoot out of my vagina, missing the bedpan and hitting the soft white sheets below.

“I can’t.”

“Stop! Stop! Amanda! Stop!”

The liquid kept spewing. The more I tried to hold it in, the stronger the gush grew. How am I supposed to reclose a damn just opened to release an overflowing reservoir? The urine surged and shot out on the bed, off the bed, and on the floor. Chino scrambled to catch my pee with the bedpan (unsuccessfully). After three seconds of watching my husband watch my vagina spew out pee like Old Faithful, hysteria joined the guizer. While I laughed the pee out, Chino laughed himself to the ground.

I shamefully watched (and kept laughing) as the nurse returned to clean up my mess. With tears of joyful release glistening on my face, I felt relief. The time had come. After weeks, months of waiting, of monitoring that stupid app, of creating a nest, of online doula classes, of preparation for a natural birth, this baby would come.

…………………………..

Ouuuuch. My belly tightened.

Thirty minutes after peeing the bed, I rubbed my watermelon stomach with my left hand. Like a rock. This time, the glorious pain finally joined the party. The level 1 cramps I had been waiting for. I will be having this baby today!

The next time the partera entered the room, in a giddy smile I said, “Ahora si! Estan viniendo!” Now yes! They are coming!

Not much changed during the next two hours, except the glorious level 1 contractions moving to a level 2 while my cervix started its journey towards level 10 (or, ten centimeters). The pain was beautiful, a closer glimpse into motherhood.

A patient had recently checked out, which meant the corner suite had opened up. We moved there once the three hours were up. Fully decked with two mechanical beds, a private bathroom, and a street facing window, it was the best room available in the mid-sized town (though, nowhere near US standards). We arrived with smiles, hopes and excitement to soon meet the new family member. The suegras, my husband and I tossed around jokes. I threw out naïve statements like “No. it doesn’t hurt a lot yet. And yes. I know it will hurt more. Ha-ha. But it’s fine. Ha-ha. I’m ready for it. I’m a fighter. Ha… ha... ha….”

Shortly after moving to our suite, my partera returned and we started the “push my finger out” exercises. She reached in to feel my cervix and touch the bag surrounding my baby’s head.

“When you feel a contraction, push to get my finger out with all the strength you have,” she instructed in Spanish.

I pushed like I would if I was on the toilet. “Así?”

“Mas.”

I pushed like a massive turd was stuck in my colon.

“Asi asi. Si! Si!” She encouraged.

I guess it was like pooping then.

They added the second drug, this time in my forearm vein, dripping through a plastic bag that hung from a squeaky pole stand. Then it was time to break my water. No, it would not happen naturally. No, I wouldn’t experience the scene of water gushing out my legs, staring up at my husband in our living room, unsure if I peed my pants or not.

It would happen how it mostly happens these days, unnaturally, like vagina pills and liquid vein drugs.

While I lay with my legs open in sukasana, my partera used one hand to stretch the opening while inserting a needle with the other. A few moments later, hot liquid seeped through the birth canal and into the bedpan.

When the water stopped flowing, my partera spoke to me in Spanish, “Now we will go to the pre-birth room where family is not allowed – except for your husband. There you can be relaxed without the suegras.”

I laughed and nodded. The suegras didn’t bother me. My mom travelled halfway across the world to be with me, so I didn’t feel good about kicking her out. But I’d take the parteras advice. She had a commanding voice. Like she knew what to do. What to say. By the stern look in her eyes that said, “trust me,” I knew something would be changing soon. And fast.

……….

Five minutes after entering the pre-birth room, I transformed into the wailing cow. The dripping drugs and broken bag sped things up. Within 30 minutes, I went from level 2 to 7. I lay on my side in the arms of my partera, tears streaking my face, and glanced from her eyes in the foreground, to my husband’s wet and weary orbs in the back.

I want this. I want to do this naturally. But FUUUCCCCK!

After another round of dying, I lay in a pile of wet sheets. Delirium hit. I was back in Thailand inside a bungalow waking up in vomit after being poisoned by E. coli. I returned to Ethiopia, rolling on the bedroom floor as the amoeba ripped through my guts. But no, this was worse, worse than travel bugs. This was a seven-pound parasite ripping through me, bending my bones!

A milky voice in Spanish whispered into my ear, joined by soft palms caressing the skin of my back.

“Amanda. I will say something you don’t want to hear. I believe you should take the epidural. You have more than two hours of this. Of these contractions. And then when you reach 10 centimeters, you will need to push, and when you do, you won’t have enough energy to do so. If you get the epidural, your chances of C section will be less.”

Tears joined the other excrements on the sheets. All I wanted was a natural birth. All I wanted was to do it like the strong Viking mamas did it. The women of old. I was tough like them, right? But I’ve gone down the fucking hole of pharmaceuticals. Of layers. Once you get one, it takes you down the path to surgery. I read it a million times. They first start with induction drugs. Then you need the epidural because the drugs speed up contractions too fast and too strong that you can’t take it. With the epidural, you can’t feel shit, so you can’t push normally, so they gotta cut the baby out of you. Fuck.

But I trusted her.

“Dale. Dame la peridural” Okay, give me the epidural. I breathed out.

A short while later the asshole anesthesiologist returned. I moved to a sitting position with my back exposed as he set things up for the needle’s insertion into my spine. Just as another contraction arose to rip through me, he said, “Ahora no podes mover. Ni un centimetro.” Now you can’t move, not one centimeter.

“Well, fuckkkkkkkkkk. How am I going to do it!?” I screamed.

“Amanda. Amanda.” The calming voice of my partera arrived in Spanish, “Put your head here and hold me here.” She pulled my face to lay on her large breasts and placed my hands on each of her arms. “You can’t move. It’s very dangerous.”

I sustained the contraction by slamming my snotty face into her boobs. I breathed with taut muscles. And kept breathing, deeply, strongly until the tautness loosened.

Within 20 seconds, I became jelly.

And it was beautiful. So much more beautiful than pain. A surge of confidence arose in me, like life was good and great and nothing could stop me. Like when I tried magic mushrooms and felt alive. Real. Confident. From one moment to the next I was a goddess.

I turned, lay on my back, and smiled.

My giddy gaze floated across the room until reaching the anesthesiologist who’s face contorted into a revolting smirk, one that said, “I told you so.”

I lifted myself up, shifting my weight to my elbows, and stared into his umber eyes. I spoke with firmness in Spanish, “Now you’ve done your job. Thanks. Get the hell out of here.”

The doctor and nurses burst out in laughter. Yeah, I knew it looked like a reaction from a druggy, but I was saying something they all wanted to say to this idiot.

And ohh, it felt so good. To swim in painless glory. For the next while, I told stories. I made jokes. I blabbed about travelling, how I loved the Argentineans, but how they needed to learn to shut up sometimes and not always have a frickin’ opinion about everything. I talked about how outdated the facility was, mentioning the 60s microwave looking monitor machine, how ugly it all was, that they really needed to hire a decorator because it felt like an insane asylum, but that “me chupa un huevo” (literally, “an egg sucks me,” which means, “I don’t care”) because they gave me the happy drugs. Other doctors and nurses walked in and out of the room to witness the hilarious foreigner who spoke Spanish a funny way. I giggled during other push-the-finger-out sessions saying “Wait, that’s a contraction!? I don’t feel it. Amazing!”

Why the hell did I want to do this without drugs?

With all the numbing, I could still push. That’s the beauty of an epidural they say. And my partera helped me. She trained me how to push with an epidural. For the last two hours as my cervix went from 7 to 10, I practiced pushing. I don’t know how I pushed, but she said I was ready.

………………..

In Argentina, there are several rooms during the birthing process. I experienced five. Room one: A tiny monitoring room, just big enough for a twin bed and monitoring machine, where the first pill was inserted. Room two: a hospital bedroom, where I waited the three hours for contractions to pick up. Room three: My suite – the hospital bedroom, a brighter, bigger version of room two. Room four: Pre-birthing room, where I was dying like a moaning cow, and where only medical staff and husbands are allowed (a strict rule my mom had a hard time understanding). Room five: Level 10, the birthing room, also limited to medical staff and husbands.

I moved my way inside with my husband and partera guiding me like a blind man’s cane. I had made it to level 10, a fraudulent, drugged-up level 10, like my brother using cheat-codes to win at Donkey Kong.

The room was twice as big as my suite and looked like a surgery room from a sci-fi movie where they do special tests and organ transplants. You know, scary shit. One, lonely, aluminum framed, army-green upholstered chair sat in the center of the space. Metal stirrups shot out each side that reflected streaks of light from the fluorescent, beach-ball sized surgery lamp blazing above. Trolleys filled with knives, scissors, needles, wires, and other surgical equipment were dispersed about, with other equipment on shelves in the far-off walls. Masked doctors and nurses shuffled in their scrubs to occupy the dead-zone - the vast emptiness surrounding the raised chair.

As I moved to my position, my partera grabbed me and said in Spanish, “Amanda, wait. First, I want you to squat and push, just like we practiced. Stand here and do a squat and push at the end of your breath.”

I did as told while she held my arms so I wouldn’t fall over. Chino told me later that I released a few poop nuggets when I squatted, which I think was the purpose of this pre-birthing squat, to clean me out before arriving at the birthing chair.

On the angled seat, I lay with legs in the stirrups. Knees high, I waited for the doctors to assemble themselves. Chino held my right hand and the partera grasped my left. My doctor stood in front, beyond my mountain belly. The anesthesiologist waited in one corner, a pediatrician in the other corner, and nurses were positioned all around.

It’s time.

“Ok Amanda. Now push. For real this time. With all your strength. Push,” my partera voiced in Spanish. I peered into her trusting eyes and nodded.

The clock on the wall marked 7:05pm. I looked up, taking note of the time, then returned my gaze to the partera. I breathed in, exhaled slowly, and pushed. Just like she taught me. Breathe in, and as you breathe out, move the breath down and down and down to your muscles as far as those muscles go. With each contraction, I pushed. With each breath, I contracted. I pushed, and breathed, and contracted, and did it again and again and again.

With the pain dulled, I didn’t know if I was making any progress. But I must be making progress. I was pushing. So. Damn. Hard.

I looked up at the wall clock. 7:22pm.

“Muy bien Amanda. Estas haciendo muy bien.”

With each contraction I pushed more. Stronger. Harder. Deeper.

I looked up. 7:34pm

“Muy bien. Muy bien Amanda. Sigue.”

Over the lump of my gut, I watched the doctor move his elbows out wide and clench his teeth tightly, eyes focused like an animal on the hunt. Like he was yanking at something in the valley just over my mountainous belly. I couldn’t feel it, but I knew from the birthing videos I had watched earlier that he was stretching my hole. Making it bigger. Pulling me open.

“Vení por aca,” come here, he said to Chino. “Y podés ver el cabello.” And you can see the hair.

Chino moved and gasped.

“Amanda. Empujá. Más. Necesitamos más fuerza. Mas fuerza!” Push more, we need more strength. More strength!

I pushed more. The doctor took out his tools. Chino watched him. I watched Chino watch him. Then I saw him take out a knife. Fuck. Another step down the non-natural path. He’s cutting me.

I don’t fucking care. This baby is coming out of me!

7:52pm.

I pushed more.

Then I rested. Then I pushed. Then I rested.

When I rested, I collapsed. It was such an insane feeling. To be so exhausted like I just ran a marathon, but at the same time, not feel anything in my pelvic region. I could have passed out right then and there. I nearly did. But then I saw the look in my partera’s eyes when she spoke to my doctor.

The look.

It said, “Do we need to do a C-section?” They exchanged some words. I don’t know what they said, but I knew it was about doing a C-section. That I was too exhausted. That the baby was stuck. That this was too much strain on the baby. On me. That I wasn’t pushing hard enough. That all the fucking drugs numbed me, made it so I’d have to take that final, last, unnatural step I dreaded: C-section.

They checked the baby’s heart rate. Good.

My heart rate: Okay.

“NO!!” I screamed. “Voy a hacerlo. Voy a hacerlo!” I’m going to do it! I wanted to do it without yelling, with just breaths and pushes and not like a crazy woman. But it was enough. I would get this baby out the way I knew best: by fight.

With each next push, I moaned and let out whatever noise existed inside of me that needed to be released. I let the song sing, the ethereal dance of childbirth, the natural beauty of maternal, feminine power. I found her.

With the next push, I felt the biggest, natural turd release from me. And yes, I felt it. Maybe the drugs had started to wear off, or the sensation was so strong that no unnatural concoction could stop this natural sensation.

I looked down my bloody gown in a hunched position.

Black hair. A dinosaur screech. No, a baby. A baby was crying. My baby.

“I see her! I see her!”

“You need to finish pushing!”

And I did.

Then they placed her on my chest.

A human being lay on me. An alive, breathing, screaming, heart-pumping child lay on my chest. She was so real, so natural. Oh yes, drugs helped get her out. The medicines made my cervix open and the pain go away so I couldn’t experience how the Viking mamas did it. But none of that mattered.

None of that mattered.

Because it’s not about me.

A while later, back in the hospitable bedroom, while feeling my baby girl’s breath against my chest, I realized my body was part of the earth. My body just created a new life for this natural world. I wouldn’t have cared if they sliced her out of me. Tore me up. Pumped me to the brim with concoctions of drugs. The unnaturalness (whatever that really means) didn’t matter, because she was real, she was alive, and she was healthy.

Perhaps that’s motherhood. A sacrifice of the body. Of privacy. Of whatever standards or dignity you think you have. Letting your bloody vagina be exposed. Not caring if you peed the bed or if the floor is filled with your own poop nuggets. Not giving a fuck about the paint-peeled walls or grim décor. Allowing whatever drugs to be ingested, asshole medical staff to attend you, or surgery to proceed if that’s what’s best for the baby.

Because that's what was best for her.