Tonight I had dinner with my very pregnant friend Krista and then we watched about an hour of Bella’s birth – one hour of the some 36 hours I was in labor almost thirteen years ago. For Bella’s first birthday (she didn’t mind) I invited over a handful of girlfriends, made a lasagna and threw on the birth tape. It was going to be the first time I had watched the tape and I imagined that we would eat and talk with the 4-hour tape playing in the background. All I remember now, is that we all got drawn into the fascinating separate world of labor and ended up watching the entire thing, pretty avidly I might add.
The average first labor is seventeen hours. But normally in the hospital, you are given about twelve hours maximum to pop the baby out, since one, they won’t give you food or juice, in case of an emergancy c-section so you run out of steam, and two, once you’ve entered the hospital instruments and hands start entering you and the risk for infection begins to increase.
For this reason and others, I chose to have Bella at home with two amazing midwives, Karen Baker and Sherry Johnson. We ate lots of delicious pesto, played scrabble during the day when the contractions subsided, and walked around the property. I saw a wild tarantula for the first time. I later learned that late October and early November is tarantula mating season and when male tarantulas go out searching for dates. The females stay at home at the entrance of their burrows and drum a rhythm on the ground with their front legs to point the fellows in the right direction.
I had forgotten how protracted and otherwordly the labor had been. My friend Lisa was so patient in the videotaping – even when my progress was minuscule and sporadic. I remembered how talking and my voice even, hadn’t seemed appropriate for the subject of birthing – it was as if I needed another method of communication to suit the situation. There is so much “being” during labor; you just ride your body and tune into every spasmodic contraction and release. It was strange to look at my 25-year old self with Bella still inside me – and the people in the room all guessing that she was girl. And to hear her dad whispering that he was thinking of naming her Taylor.
Krista sat next to me on the sofa and I kept touching her belly and talked to Lilly Ann. I could feel her kicking and responding to my voice. It is so incredible that we can grow human beings inside of us.