Is Labor a Blessing or a Curse?
Photo by R O on Unsplash
I’m not sure where my preconceptions about the birthing process came from, perhaps the movies have poisoned my mind. Though I cognitively knew it couldn’t be like this, somewhere deep inside I still pictured the scenes of old timey births.
Men sitting around in suits and ties, and those little hats with feathers on the side. They chain smoke cigarettes in the hospital lobby and sweat profusely. Their wives are pregnant, even though husband and wife sleep in single beds, separated by a dresser, Fred and Wilma Flintstone style.
Just now they were out somewhere, the grocery store or the bowling alley, and the woman’s water broke. There was an explosion of water that gushed out onto lane 14 or aisle 12. She shouts, “MY WATER JUST BROKE!” and then the whole crowd of people around her is shouting “HER WATER BROKE, HER WATER BROKE, GOOD GOD IT’S COMINGGGG!!”
They rush her to the hospital like a stoke victim.
When they arrive, a crowd of doctors and nurses run through some double doors, looking like they’ve just come from a Civil War field clinic. The man is ordered to wait in the lobby and his hysterical wife is whisked away screaming and straining, into the mysterious medical realm of doctors.
The whole ordeal takes about two hours. Finally, the lead doctor saunters back out through the double doors to make the big announcement. His medical gown and gloves are covered in blood, he is heavily panting and looks like he just got out of the octagon with a grizzly bear. This is the moment all the men have been waiting for. They look expectantly at the doctor to tell them something. Either it’s twins or his wife is dead.
“It’s a boy!” declares the doctor. And the crowd of men goes wild. They shake hands with the father and someone breaks out a baby blue colored box of cigars. They light up in the lobby and there’s a general commotion of backslapping and glad handing.
The wife is sort of hanging around somewhere, kind of in the periphery. When she is wheeled through the double doors, her face is serene and her words are few. She looks slightly drowsy and her hair might need to have a brush run through it, but she’ll be fine. Give her a little nap and this afternoon she can get back to making those tiny triangle sandwiches for dad and his buddies while they celebrate this joyous occasion.
***
In my misogynistic worldview, God and the Universe were very mad at women for sinning, so they decided to make a small cantaloupe sized object slowly come out their vaginas. Truly sadistic.
Birth was a curse and by extension being a woman was a curse.
When Apple first came out with a thin version of the MacBook, a friend of mine said their young child mistook it for a plate. One day they came out into the living room and their son was eating a piece of pizza off the MacBook.
Though a MacBook can be used as a plate, or a paperweight, or a typewriter, or a clock, or a television – it can also do so much more.
Just as that child used a computer as a plate, or your Uncle Bob only uses his iPhone 12 for dialing the barber shop, so do we treat women’s bodies.
Young, thin, boobs, butt: there is a very narrow range of a woman’s body that we worship. We celebrate the vagina and things going into it – a evidenced by the ubiquity of porn. But we disparage things coming out of it. Birth is at best, gross, at worst a fiendishly designed torture from Mother Nature herself.
Perhaps those men in their suits were better off waiting in the lobby and nervously smoking a few cigarettes until the storm passed? After all, there was no sense in letting the inevitable carnage drag them down as well.
***
In reality, those men got gipped. By remaining out in the lobby they missed out on one of the most awe-filled experiences available in this world.
Laboring and birth are a profound spiritual experience that cause a seismic shift in one’s theology and understanding of life. The process is saturated with mystery and meaning.
Labor is highly meditative – the frequency and intensity of surges increasing throughout, drawing the attention of both body and soul to this challenging yet beautiful moment.
Thinking about when the baby will or won’t come is too overwhelming. The only way to get through it is to focus on the present and try to get through the next few minutes. The present moment may be difficult, but who’s to say the next won’t be better? There is a rapid cycling between profound hope and despair throughout.
The birthing partner is there to comfort, encourage, and ground. Whereas the birther’s job is to relax as much as possible and get out of nature’s way. Though you can eat pizza off a woman’s body, it truly is a Macbook Pro. It is built for creation, connection, nurturing, and communicating. The body guides the process and instincts formerly undiscovered rise to the surface in labor.
Labor is extremely long. Perhaps it is difficult lest we be flippant with life. God forbid a new soul entering this world feel routine.
Near the end, neither of us had slept for two days. Thoughts came to resemble hallucinations: every time I closed my eyes the mind would conjure random images and memories like an improv master.
From onset of labor, to intensification of surges, water breaking, pushing and birthing – every step of the process took five times longer than I originally imagined. There was no water breaking in the grocery store moment, no frantic drive to arrive at the hospital on time. Like climbing a tall mountain, there were many false summits and progress was step by step.
It seems the universe is on a vastly different timetable than ours, and it is far slower.
If there was an abruptness in the process at all, it was the exact moment baby came out. After being awake for several days, the actual moment of birth was both surreal and surprising. It seemed to happen all at once – hours and hours of laborious work came to fruition in an instant when we saw the unmistakable face of our daughter before us. A few adrenaline filled moments later, I cut the umbilical cord.
Perhaps there is a curse of birth and a curse of being a woman. But the curse comes from us and our fearfulness, not God.
Theologically, I’ve been eating pizza off a MacBook. This experience has shown me the femininity of God and how they speak to us through the body.
Afterwards, the midwife took time to show us the placenta and pointed out how the design atop of it resembles the Tree of Life. God put a watermark on the final piece of this delivery process, a stamp of approval that both women and birth are blessed.