20 Days Left and a Look Back

Here are some numbers for you:

The first day of my blog is 20 days from the due date of my second son, who will, most likely, come a wee bit earlier, based on the fact that his brother was born at 39 weeks. There will be at least two midwives and one birthtub at his birth, and the chance that I will have a medicated birth is close to zero. I am three times less likely than the average low-risk woman to need a Caesarean section and no more likely than them to lose my baby to a complication. During labor, I will have seven rooms and a backyard around which I will be able to walk, most likely while hugging and leaning on my husband, and maybe even getting an encouraging kiss from my son.

That's because I'll be giving birth at home. And while the above reasons represent part of the statistical and analytical side to why I have chosen to have my second child at home, rather than in a hospital, there are also personal reasons that went into my decision.

The first person I ever saw give birth was my best friend, Tuesday. I was 18 at the time and she was 19. At that time in my life I hadn't even considered having babies, but I was excited throughout my friend's pregnancy, and even drove her to a prenatal appointment with her midwife out in Simi Valley once. As I drove her to the appointment, stalling out her VW bug often, and watching her brace herself and the belly that no longer fit behind the steering wheel, I was glad I was just along for the ride.

Tuesday's insurance covered birth center births (cheaper for insurance companies than hospital births) and she was always out to experience every aspect of life right down to its deepest molecule -- this meant that she actually looked forward to the thing that every movie and television show I'd ever seen depicted as the most torturous experience imaginable. There would be no registration papers, hospital gowns, and monitors for her -- she planned to have her baby in the water at this freestanding birth center. For someone who loved the power and the joy that the ocean provided, it was a natural choice.

On the day that Tuesday went into labor, I waited with my boyfriend (now husband) outside of her room at the birth center. I was invited in just before it was time for her to push. Entering the softly-lit room, I said nothing, and she did not appear to know I was there, so focused and intense was she, lying in a spa-like tub of water. Her mother was at her shoulders, massaging them. Her midwife kneeled at the side of the tub, talking to her in a low, soothing voice. Tuesday's daughter was born moments later, her little purple body, like everything else about what I had just witnessed, so different from what I had expected. I decided right then, that that was the way I wanted to have a baby.

Ten years later, I became pregnant with my first child.

In comparison with everything I had expierenced in my life up until that point, getting pregnant was the realest thing I had ever done. Not that choosing a career and getting married were decisions I had taken lightly. But in addition to the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual sides of the other major life events, this one had the added dimension of biology. The biological side was huge, inescapable, sometimes overwhelming. My body was really going to do this.

I started researching hospitals with midwives as well as the only local birth center in the Boston area, the Cambridge Birth Center. After touring Mt. Auburn Hospital, which had wonderful midwives, but swinging doors and thin walls, and then the Birth Center, with rocking chairs and curtained windows, it was clear to me what I needed to do. I had to arrange to give birth in a way that would involve and integrate all of the dimensions I valued -- emotional, intellectual, and spiritual -- not just the biological, and for me this meant the privacy, respect, and encouragement to reflect on pregnancy and birth as life-defining events that was offered at the Birth Center. I wanted to have a birth experience that was transcendant.

In August 2004, I gave birth to my first son at the Cambridge Birth Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Isaiah was born in water after I labored for thirteen hours at my home and was driven through a muggy August rain to the center on the other side of the Charles River. Was it transcendant? Definitely. I have never stopped being in awe of what my body did, and how powerful (and sometimes weak) my mind was in interpreting that experience as it happened -- how I could summon endorphins to take the edge off of the pain by making a sound like I was getting into a bathtub, how visualizing the muscles in my uterus as soft ribbons working in harmony to open my cervix helped me stay focused, how deciding on a maximum amount of time I could continue to handle labor made me want to throw in the towel, and how finding out that I was near the end reactivated the flood of endorphins so that I was on top of the world and had confidence for the next stage. I treasure the birth art that I made as part of the journey to becoming a mother and the reflection that went into making that art. I continue to be fascinated when I read stories of other women giving birth.

Now, two-and-a-half years later, I am prepared to give birth to my second child, this time in my home. Earlier in the pregnancy, my intellectual side did have quite an internal debate about this, most of the issues beginning with, as you can guess, "What if ...?" But as I have come closer to my estimated due date, my anxiety has started to melt away. More and more, I feel the same delicious anticipation that I did before Isaiah's birth. This is partly because, over a combined thirty-plus years of experience, my midwives are no strangers to complications. In fact, they are sometimes better able to spot complications earlier on because of the attention they give each and every one of their clients. And the way that they deal with these complications is individualized, not based on blanket protocol, or a busy schedule. I feel that I can trust them and that I will feel safe and cared for by them.

And then, there's the other reason I am feeling more relaxed about this birth: the fact that I will be in my home.

Home, home, home.

Where my baby belongs.