35 Weeks

I contributed to this Zine awhile back. This is Volume 3. I feel humbled to be included with the other women who shared their stories.
In case you don't want to read it sideways here is my story:

My baby came to into this world early and quickly - at home. In lots of birth circles, particularly in homebirthy circles, I play up the quickly part. I make excuses that I didn’t transfer to the hospital because there wasn’t time. Otherwise, I’ve been accused of being irresponsible and acting irrationally and risking my son’s life. Fingers pointed in my face, hate mail in my inbox, and my birth story ripped apart on the Internet. The words of home birthing mothers and midwives used the same condemning tone and quick and harsh criticisms that critics of home birth use against them. My first instinct was to go into hiding, to silence myself, to feel shame and embarrassment. I was reminded that women have been pushed in to silence for so long, especially surrounding birth, and I don’t want to stay silent any longer.

What really happened is simple. I went into labor at 35 weeks, my midwife came over, and I gave birth. I never thought what I was doing was radical it was simply a sequence of events. I wasn’t thinking about statistics, or textbook issues that preterm babies can face. I got my baby out and assessed later. I know my midwives did the same, they knew me; they knew my story, my history and my healthy pregnancy. We both knew a hospital was 8 minutes away. My son was born in six hours at 6 pounds 7 ounces he was healthy, I was happy. In three months time my son was a fat and vibrant twelve-pound infant, grown from sweet love and Mama’s milk. Our instincts were right. He did okay. We did okay. I did amazing!

Those of us who do things that are out of the ordinary, that shock and might scare some folks often take the heat. My experience should not open the door for hate and condemnation, but for others to listen, to read, and to learn from it. My eyes are open now because of my birth and the subsequent backlash. I can see that standardizing birth with statistics and textbook problems and solutions erases the human aspect of it. The work that radical midwives do provide an important role not just for women giving birth, but also for keeping cultural history alive. The further midwives are pushed to standardize, the farther away we move from women’s autonomy over birth, our bodies and our babies. Institutional and medical hegemony rein no matter how you contort the language to appear otherwise. The toxic system will never be accepting of homebirth midwives, so we need to keep smashing the system from the outside.

In peace an solidarity,
Jessica