Danger Muse                                                      
Photo by Amy Miller

I've always considered myself a strong person - fearless, even sometimes reckless. And I'm never whiney. I rode 5 AIDS Rides (3 in California, 1 from Boston to NYC and 1 across Alaska), was the night security supervisor at Burning Man, I was an EMT at raves and concerts, I chained myself to a gas pump in Luxembourg with Greenpeace (in the pouring rain), loaded and drove 24 foot trucks for the 3 Day Breast Cancer Walks, and stage managed countless events. Plus I've done all of these things with little or no sleep. I'm a tough chick. I've never been afraid of anything - and I certainly wasn't afraid of childbirth. Trillions of women had gone through it. I could handle it.

I had been reading all the hippie literature on the subject of "natural" childbirth - books by Jeanne Parvati Baker, Joseph Chilton Pearce and the great zine "The Compleat (sic) Mother". They all tell stories of the ideal birth: painless, drugless, no doctors or interventions, no IVs, or episiotomies. I decided to try Hypnobirthing - a method of self hypnosis to relaxing the body - and from all I read, it rendered labor painless. It seemed that most new age folks had decided that pain in childbirth was a function of our screwed up psyche and was for the uninitiated. I'm spiritual - but I never found that pain was avoidable - particularly in my work at Zen Hospice. Dying hurts - and rarely have I seen anyone avoid pain without lots of morphine. People who had a firm faith or spiritual strength had pain - they just didn't suffer so much with it "Pain is inevitable, Suffering is optional." I had to examine whether I wanted a "spiritual" childbirth because I was afraid of pain. I realized that it was pretty much the opposite - I was more likely to sabotage my relaxation in order to experience the outer limits of endurance. Sho 'nuf.

I spent the last month of my pregnancy dutifully doing my self hypnosis and positive affirmations, exercising my kiegel muscles and massaging my perineum. I went over my due date by nearly two weeks - and my OB-GYN started pressuring my to get induced. I was really not interested, having read about the horrors of Pitocin (the fake hormone they give to start labor) and how the body should take it's own sweet time to get ready for birth. On Saturday, December 20 th I decided to go see the Buddhist relics that were on display at Tse Chen Ling www.tsechenling.org the local Tibetan temple. I knew it would start my labor. You just can't hang around the last remains of the Buddha and his saints and not have a transformational experience. And transform I did.

By 3pm I was having regular contractions, so I started my self hypnosis and stayed blissfully pain free. My mother came over, my father and stepmother were standing by, and my boyfriend was taking care of my every need (chinese food and ice cream). In serentypical fashion, the power went out, so we lit candles and had a lovely atmosphere in our cruddy little apartment. By 11pm the contractions were a minute long and 2 minutes apart - our cue to go to the hospital. I felt comfortable and relaxed as they wheeled me into the labor ward. this was going to be a breeze.

It was not to be. I was only 2 centimeters dilated and they wanted to send me home. "But there's no power or hot water at our house - and it's two flights up!" The nurses consented to let me stay in the hospital, "But you need to get up and walk to speed up labor." So my boyfriend and I began "The Kaiser Death March". We trudged up and down the hallways of the labor ward, and with each round it became increasingly difficult to maintain my relaxed state. The hypnosis wore off and I started to feel the contractions. Boy, did I feel them.

There really is no way to describe labor pain - it's the most pain you've ever felt - tripled. I'm sure there are some folks who might poo poo labor pain - burn victims, amputees, etc. But I'm sure there are women out there who have sampled various pains and still put labor pain at number one. I spent about 10 hours in the grip of labor pain. my boyfriend, mother, father and stepmother took turns massaging my back, holding my hand, and encouraging me to relax - the contractions getting progressively more and more intense. The monitor showed the strength of my contractions - and also the contractions of the other women on the ward giving birth. My birth team said that my contractions lasted longer and jumped off the graph in severity compared to the other women's. It was like being shoved underwater - with each contraction I lost touch with reality and entered into a world that was comprised entirely of pain. My only tether was holding the hand of my lover or my parents. Then I would resurface to consciousness and my first words were always "Shit, that hurt!"

At 10am (19 hours into labor) when the nurse told me that I was only 5 centimeters dilated (only half way there!) I looked at her and said, "I'm no hippie - give me an epidural." My boyfriend said there was a collective sigh of relief in the room - the people who loved me most were weary of watching me suffer. The argument against having painkillers during birth is that it affects your child - setting them up for a lifetime of seeking a fix. So I looked around the room at my loved ones and realized that every one of us had had a drugged birth, and although we each had come face to face with addiction and we had all turned out fine. Well. I'm still in love with coffee and get jealous when someone smokes in front of me. So my kid will too - big deal.

Once I gave the OK, the drugs started flowing. First, I got a shot of Demerol while we waited for the anesthesiologist to arrive with the major artillery. Demerol could stop an elephant, but it didn't even touch the labor pain - what it did was make the time between contractions more interesting. Then I got 2 shots of Phentenol - a drug they give to cancer patients - and the nurse admitted that it would just barely take the edge off the pain, but would help me relax in between. Damn those drugs. Where's the epidural? When they were ready, they waited until I was in the midst of a contraction and then shoved the giant needle into my spine - I didn't even feel it. Within 15 minutes I was pain free. I also couldn't feel my legs.

Then we waited for my stubborn cervix to dilate. And waited. And waited. The doctors got itchy and pressured me to let them break my waters and give me Pitocin to "Speed things along". I resisted for a good 10 hours. finally I gave in. I was tired, my family was tired - we were all ready to see the baby. By midnight of longest night of the year, I was starting to push my son out. At the same time, my father fell asleep on the couch next to my bed. I looked over between contractions at my snoring dad, "Typical - while I'm working, he's napping."

After 3 hours of pushing, the doctors started to get "scalpel fingers" and wanted to give me a c-section. Immediately I demanded that they bring the squat bar so I could use gravity to my advantage. "I am going to exhaust all my options before I consent to major surgery!" The medical staff told me that I couldn't possibly stand since I had an epidural. "Oh yeah? Watch me." I made my dad push me up to the squatting position and I gave a few good pushes sitting up. The doctor then told me they wanted to use the vacuum extractor to pull my baby while I pushed. However I would then forfeit the right to have my baby placed directly on my stomach after delivery so the pediatrician could check him out first. "NO WAY - it's MY baby and you WILL give him to me!" I believe it was my stepmother who went to bat for me, telling the doctors that I had made plenty of concessions - they could make some as well.

The doctor's urgency was made worse by the monitor that told them my baby's heart rate would drop whenever I pushed. They tried to use this information to scare me - but I shot back "I can hear the monitor - if you tell me what rhythm is optimal, I will stop pushing when it goes slower." But the doctor refused to empower me to work with the machine that goes " Ping ", apparently women are not to be trusted to do the right thing. They acted like they cared more about keeping my child alive than I did, and that pissed me off. Besides, all the painkillers and the epidural had worn off and that made me unfuckwithable. But they kept tryin' it on.

My boyfriend said the nurses looked like they were watching a game of tennis as I fought the doctors. I'm sure that the doctors were unused to being questioned in their authority. But I was feeling my power. The doctor was standing next to me talking - and a contraction swept over me with the urgent need to push and I turned to her "Are you going to hold my leg or what?" She looked at me as though I had asked her to clean the toilet with her tongue. I guess that helping a woman in labor was the nurse's job. When the contraction subsided, I looked her in the eye and said, "You cannot expect me to make a decision in the minute and a half between contractions. Go away."

Finally I consented to the vacuum extraction, and they attached the device to my baby's head. Without being consulted, they gave me an episiotomy - even though I expressly asked them not to. Arg. With one push my son was born and they put him on my stomach and he opened his eyes and looked at me. No crying - just a silent hello - and I replied "Hello there, mister!" He was perfect in every way - and I refused to give him up - the nurses kept trying to take him from me so they could weigh and measure him. Fergeddit lady, I worked hard for this baby.

The magical significance of my son's timing was not lost on me since I'm a Buddhist-Wiccan-Sufi-Cabalist-Jungian-Taoist-First Nation-Gnostic Christian-Esoteric Mystic. He was conceived on the Spring Equinox and born on the Winter Solstice. He made his appearance just before 4am on the longest night of the year - the dark before the dawn - when the veil between the worlds is thinnest. I'm glad I had the birth experience that I did - pain, drugs, fighting with doctors and machines that go " Ping " - it couldn't have been more spiritual. Had it been a 7 hour labor, it certainly would have been painless. But going through the painful part gave me a strong affinity for all the women in history (her-story) that had 36 hour labors with no drugs or sterile gloves. Countless millions died agonizing deaths bringing life into this world - and that's nothing to be sniffed at, or looked down upon. Let the hippies have their perfect painless birth experiences - the first noble truth is that life is suffering. And when the truth hurts - I can handle it.

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