Becoming Eve
I was in the joys of early second trimester pregnancy as I held hands with my husband in the parking lot of IKEA, giggling at potential names and nicknames for our future child. I placed one hand on my small bump, squeezed Brendan’s hand with the other, and then looked into his adoring eyes and said, “I don’t know if I’ve truly processed that I’m going to experience ‘rip-my-body-to-pieces-crucified-pain.'”
I had debated the pros and cons of the epidural weeks prior with my best friend over tacos. At first, it seemed like taking the drug was the logical choice: “Why make a martyr of myself?” I reasoned with her. “I’m already dramatic enough as it is, maybe it’s best for the baby if I’m calm.”
But there was a stubbornness in me that insisted that I go as long as I could before asking for the epidural. I was confident in my high pain threshold, yet the idea of extreme, out-of-this-world pain was a concept I hadn’t fully grasped.
After a hearty IKEA lunch and a sweet meandering through the nursery section, I finally located the Höllass garbage can I wanted for both the price and trademark name. As I held that small waste of black plastic in my hands, the thought nagged at me once again: why am I choosing to kill myself with pain? Why don’t I just take the drug and be content?
I was Eve in the Garden of Eden. I wanted to taste the apple. Doctors provided us the drug we needed for a painless birth, and yet I still wanted to taste from the Tree of Knowledge. The more I thought about it, the more my instinct yelled at me to just do it and climb the damn tree. Or I might regret never knowing.
You may have deduced by now that I was raised Catholic. My first stories of the childbirth experience came from church. It was the first lesson I learned in story time, just as it is the first chapter of the Bible: The Story of Adam and Eve. Basically, Adam and Eve lived in paradise. God told them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Eve could not resist temptation and convinced Adam to also eat from the tree. In doing so, original sin was created, Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden, and Eve was punished with the pain of childbirth and subordination to man. To quote the Bible: “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
I remember learning this in Sunday school and seeing all the boys standing up from their desks, pointing and laughing at all the girls. “Girls suck! You screwed it up for all of us!” they sneered. I remember the silence and shame that we felt. I remember feeling my anger bubbling to the surface. I just knew it wasn’t true. Girls were not to blame for everyone’s suffering. And there was no way in hell that I would be ruled over by any man. But I had no comeback. It was written in the Bible. And the Bible was the final word.
Couple my Catholic upbringing with the plethora of movies showing a woman in labour screaming her head off, and you had a pregnant millenial that knew that shit was about to hit the fan. I needed a game plan. I researched water births, laughing gas, and this new thing called hypnobirthing. My midwife gave me some information about an in-person workshop that was offered in the city, but it was pricey and no one at the office could give me a review. Most women were just opting for that sweet epidural, because honestly, why wouldn’t you?
I pushed these thoughts to the back of my mind as I began my next contract in Newfoundland, where I joined the cast of Surrealestate for their second season. I felt like Julia Louis-Dreyfus when she was pregnant on Seinfeld, carrying larger and larger boxes and wearing baggier and baggier jackets. One day on set, I had a conversation with a co-star that took my life onto a completely different course.
“Are you going to do a natural birth?” he asked.
I had read about the enormous benefits of natural, unmedicated births and I told him I really wanted to try. At the same time, I didn’t want to put too much pressure on myself, so I was just going to go in and hope for the best.
“My wife did hypnobirthing. It was incredible.”
A soft, little bell went “ding” in my head. Just at that moment, we were called back on set to film our scene. “Let’s talk after this,” I said to him. “I’m going to grill you with questions.”
And I did. He told me their birth story and it sounded exactly like what I wanted. He told me that his wife took an online course called Hypnobabies. She listened to the tracks every day and throughout the entire birthing experience. The tracks kept her calm, focused, and even trained her body to feel a wave of relief when he touched her forehead.
What kind of hocus pocus is this? I must have this knowledge.
He told me about the important and specific jobs he had throughout the birth. He had his own “birthing partner track” that he listened to leading up to the birth. He was responsible for advocating for her, telling the doctors and nurses to not speak to her when she was having a birthing wave (the hypno term for “contraction”) so she could focus. He put a sign on the door to notify people that they were doing a hypnobirth, and to speak in low and reassuring voices. He was also responsible for playing the final “pushing track” on a bluetooth speaker so that the whole room could hear the hypnosis track as his wife safely birthed a healthy baby boy.
It was then that I realized that hypnobirthing wasn’t just for me. It was for Brendan, too. Without it, I would be hurling ice chips at him and screaming, “WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME???” as he cowered in the corner, afraid and desperate with a pallid face that said he was broken and would never be the same again. That just didn’t sound as fun.
Hello Hypnobabies
I purchased the Hypnobabies At-Home Online course just as I was about to begin my third trimester. I listened to those hypnosis tracks for an hour to an hour and a half every single day. Eventually the sound of that music and the woman’s voice felt like home and comfort. I almost always fell asleep, but for some reason, I would wake up right at the end of the track to hear the woman’s voice say “3, 2, 1 … and you open your eyes, awake, and feeling great.”
Is this working? (YES IT WAS!)
I told my midwives that I was preparing for a hypnobirth, and that we would only be using certain language in the room. Brendan was so great at correcting them at my appointments any time they would say the world “contraction”: “Ahem, excuse me, it’s actually called a ‘birthing wave’,” he would interject as we high-fived. We talked about the forthcoming “birth” not “delivery” (because the baby is not a pizza), and we discussed the baby’s “guess date” not their “due date” (because it’s a baby not a library book).
Language is powerful, so we both stayed on top of it and I stayed on top of my bubble of peace. As I grew bigger and my guest date grew closer, I found more and more people wanting to dump their birth traumas on me, sharing their horror stories of doctors forcing interventions and ambulances and last minute c-sections. After one mother cornered me at a party and told me that the first year would be so hard and that my husband “will never understand”, I cried in the car ride home, listened to my “Bubble of Peace” hypnosis track, and vowed to not socialize with anyone who didn’t already know and support my birthing plan.
I treated childbirth like a marathon. I knew that I wasn’t going to do well if I didn’t train for it. Every day I did at least a half hour of prenatal yoga, chipped away on the online course, listened to my tracks, and reminded myself that when I put my mind to something, incredible things always happen.
My favourite track in the course was called “Visualize Your Birth.” The detail with which it helped me manifest my dream birth was the basis of some great conversations with Brendan about what we wanted our day to look like. Together we decided that the best time of day for it to happen was in the morning. I would make it as close to 40 weeks as possible. The birthing waves would begin in the evening, I would sleep through some of them, and then I would walk to the hospital.
This was a sticking point for me.
The hospital is literally down the street from my house. I can see it from my driveway. We timed it and it was a 3 minute walk. Like hell I was going to pay for parking.
And that’s essentially how it happened.
Your birthing time has begun
I hit 40 weeks and 1 day. We went to my favourite Korean restaurant for some spicy kimchi soup to get things going. I didn’t realize that the waves of constipation I began experiencing after leaving the restaurant were actually birthing waves until I found myself moaning deeply and sitting on the toilet at 4:30AM. I had fallen asleep listening to my tracks around midnight, and they were still playing on repeat in my headphones. I woke Brendan a little after 5AM when the mucus plug came out, confirming what I had suspected. He went back to sleep with the dog and somehow slept through all my birthing waves which grew deeper and louder as I leaned over our bed. I shook him awake at 630AM, telling him I couldn’t time my waves anymore because they were too close together. He thought I was being dramatic, but once he realized that my waves were lasting longer than the time in between them, he called the midwife. After explaining the situation, he passed me the phone.
“Hi Sophia! This is happening fast. I don’t even think I’m in hypnosis yet,” WRONG. “I also really wanna poo …” It was at that moment that my moans changed, sounding more like an engine revving, as my body started making small pushing efforts.
We agreed to meet at the hospital. Brendan helped me with my pants and shoes at the front door. “Look at us!” we proudly declared to each other. But now was the moment of truth.
“Are we driving?” Brendan asked.
I stood up and said it like a question or maybe a tiny plea, “Wait …”
And I opened the door.
The street looked exactly like how I had envisioned it in my hypnosis track. It was as if someone had put a golden filter on the picture that lay before me: the houses all lined up in the light of the sun, the trees gently rustling, and the ice and snow melted away, revealing a wide, open, beautiful road. It was 7:30AM. It was quiet. There was not a single person or car to be seen.
I did not choose to walk to the hospital.
My body just started walking.
The sun and the fresh air felt so nice. Brendan quickly caught up with me, supporting me as I had a birthing wave at the first intersection (I made sure to cross the road safely first), and then filming me when I urged, “Film me or nobody will believe it.”
Here is that video:
Our midwife arrived in the birthing room about 5 minutes after we did. As I recovered after a particularly strong birthing wave, I felt her hand on my shoulder. I turned my head to the left, looked at her and smiled. “Hi! I’m so happy you’re here.”
She checked my dilation and sure enough, I was 10 centimetres dilated. Ready to push.
“Woooowww …” said the nurse in the corner who had admitted us and was staying for the show.
I had walked to the hospital fully dilated.
Here is a picture of a beer can that Brendan designed on our kid’s 1st birthday:
I pushed for an hour. The birthing wave that came over me with each push was a power that I didn’t even know was possible. Boom. With each forceful wave, my body was saying, “Go. This is what we do. I am here.” Each wave was a warm pressure hug bringing my baby closer and closer to my arms. I felt my baby moving further down with each push, as I moaned the words “peace” and “I love you” out loud (I later realized that I was just following the guidance of the hypnosis track that was playing on the speaker, but at the time it was just soothing background noise to me.) Brendan would put his hand on my forehead or on my shoulder and say “peace”, and every time he did it, it felt like a warm, orange liquid drug poured through my body and I relaxed. It felt amazing.
I was in my meadow, my special safe place that I had created in the weeks leading up to this day. I could see the reeds and the flashes of light coming through them as the sun sat in the middle of the sky. It was warm, but cool enough to sit on a picnic blanket with a summer dress on and feel refreshed. I was with my kid. We were doing this together. I was telling them that we would finally get to see each other soon and that I was taking us safely there.
After a final push, Sophia put the baby on my chest. I took a couple more breaths and I finally said, “I did it.”
“Yes, you did!” she said.
Another breath.
“That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
When the midwife confirmed that it was a boy (we wanted to keep the sex a surprise), I took another breath, patted his back and said, “Heya Roque.”
Eve’s Reward
Every year, on Roque’s birthday, I tell him the incredible story of the day he was born and the journey that we took together. I never thought I’d say this, but my childbirth experience was not painful. None of it was certainly tortuous. None of it was what I had imagined it would be when I first got pregnant. It was hard work. It was beautiful and it was empowering. I actually felt my power. God is, indeed, a woman.
Stories are written for us before we are even born. So much of growing up, for me, has been confronting those stories and staying curious about the ones I can re-write. I think that is what “carving a life out for yourself” is about. And it’s possible.
To the birthing mamas out there: Our bodies are built to do this. Eve was not punished with childbirth. She was rewarded with it. She searched for something greater than what was in the Garden of Eden because she was inspired. She followed her intuition, and it led her towards great knowledge. What a brave woman. What a gift she was able to give us. Eve was the original vessel of human life, and with the creation of humanity came joy and sadness and fear and grief and rage and love. Deep love.
If God created the heavens and the earth, then Eve created the people who live in it: strange, complex, beautiful humans. She created them with the same power that lives in all women. Thank goodness that she listened to her herself, and thank the heavens that she stayed curious about what lied beyond the Garden of Eden. Or else we would not be here. And that is real power.
*If you are interested in taking the Hypnobabies course that I did, please use my referral link here. You can also use my personal discount code ElenaJuatco20 to receive 20% off your purchase.
Full disclosure: I do get a small commission for every purchase that is made on the Hypnobabies store via my link. I am not getting paid to write this blog, so please consider it a way to keep me writing and Roque into college one day.
