I definitely wanted to be a mom. I mean, I always wanted to get married and have kids.
I just wanted to experience that as a woman. I just wanted to, you know, have children
and watch them grow and, you know, experience the world through their eyes.
I don't think I really knew before getting pregnant what kind of birth I wanted.
There's several hospitals in Atlanta. Basically, you just pick one and that's where you have
your baby. I read a lot of Ina May Gaskin books and I think immediately we were both
just like, we have to have a natural birth. We have to do it the way it was meant to be
done. December 31st, New Year's Eve, it was about 6 p.m. and I reached to put my boot
on and my water broke and because of the meconium we decided I needed to go into the hospital.
I walked back into the delivery ward and there was a nurses desk right when you walked back
and there were about four nurses sitting there and they looked at me and said, you don't
look like you're in labor and I said, oh, well, I'm not yet. Oh, you just wait. Like,
you will be in pain soon enough. You know, they were just making little comments like
that. Like, oh, it's coming for you. I just kind of felt like I was in inconvenience,
you know, holding them back from whatever holiday plans they might have had with their
families. You know, we were going on 24 hours since my water had broken at that point so
the hospital was getting kind of nervous that I wasn't progressing as quickly as they would
have liked. I was being induced. They kept upping the pitocin and then I'd say it was
probably around 4 a.m. on the second that the midwife came in and just said, okay, you're
going to need to have a C-section. You know, your water's been broken for too long. We
need to get this baby out. You know, I was devastated because they hadn't mentioned
that word at all up until that point and my husband, Michael, he got really upset. He
stormed out of the room and that was really hard. And I just, I didn't want a C-section
and I felt like they were threatening me. They said we can try vacuum extraction, which
I hadn't really done any research on or given any thought to. And I said, okay, you know,
anything to have this baby vaginally, I just don't want to have a C-section. It was kind
of just done very quickly. I had internal tearing and external tearing and I had to
have a lot of stitches. But in that moment, I was just so glad that she was there and
glad that I didn't have to have a C-section and it felt like even though I didn't have
a C-section, it didn't feel like I delivered my baby. It felt like someone took her out
of my body. And so I just wanted that, I just wanted that feeling of I did it, you know,
and I didn't feel like I did it. I felt like someone else did it.
There's a very strong thought in the United States that birth is not safe, that it needs
to be managed and we need to save women from childbirth. And I feel like women are starting
to understand that and to request that they have control over their pregnancy. And so
as we created this space, we created it as a basically a sanctuary where the process
can happen in a very private and loving way.
It wasn't until after Stella was born that I learned about birth centers and the fact
that Atlanta was most likely going to be getting one soon. I found out I was pregnant. And
I, with the second one, I just had tears in my eyes because I was so excited. I just thought,
you know, I'm going to have this opportunity. This is going to happen. And you know, the
birth center was due to open just weeks before my due date. I was past my due date. And as
soon as I sat down to use the bathroom, my water broke. I went to the bathroom when I
got home and I noticed that again, I had meconium in my fluid for the second time. They weren't
going to be able to deliver the baby at the birth center because of the meconium in the
fluid.
I think that was really hard because you can say over and over again, every pregnancy
is different. Every birth is different. But when it starts unfolding exactly like your
other one, it's really hard to kind of get out of there while I know how this ends.
I remember when Andrea came in after her due date and she was worried. And we just had
to, you know, we had time together and said, hey, you know, everything's fine. I know that
that was something that was, she was here to redeem an experience that was traumatic.
And we had to figure out, how do we still redeem this experience? We can't go to that
space anymore. How can we bring that entire safe space to you at the hospital?
So we got in the car, we drove to the hospital. Anjali was there to welcome us as soon as
we got off the elevator. And she had set up Christmas lights and candles and she had brought
in an oil diffuser and it was just, even though I wasn't at the birth center, it felt like
I was at the birth center. She sort of brought the birth center to the hospital for me.
There was an emotional moment. She had tears in her eyes and she just kind of took it in
for a moment and turned to her husband and said, we can do this. In one moment of just
feeling that, she went from whatever fear she was hanging onto to we can do this.
Crystal, which is one of the other midwives from the birth center, was there just to see
me. I mean, she wasn't even on call that night and she just came to see me because that's
how much she cared. And that was amazing. She rubbed my back and she said a blessing
over me. She was saying things like, your body is ready to do this, your baby is ready
to be born. It was like my body just let go. It was like I just knew at that point that
I was ready to have my baby.
They need to hear that we are with them, that we believe in them, and that we will do whatever
we need to do to ensure that they have what they need.
