The war on midwives (part 1)

Yamada was a youthful woman in her early 50s. We talked for an hour about my fears and anxieties connected with my obstetrical visits. By the end of the meeting, they had melted away.

I looked forward to subsequent visits: gone were the poking and the probing as I lay flat on my back with both feet in stirrups. Conversations were filled with assurances, about staying active and walking a lot. There was a lot of laughter. When I told her about my fear of pain and tearing, Yamada, who had become something of a mentor to me, explained that water helps soften and stretch the skin during childbirth. Episiotomies, a vaginal incision to facilitate birth, will not be performed. And tears, while common, tend to be minimized by the healing qualities of water.

We discussed my postnatal schedule. I will be sleeping with my newborn, learn how to breastfeed and take care of her. My husband will be taught how to bathe her so that when we finally go home, bathing would be his responsibility. That's when I get to take my short break.

We also talked about the what ifs. The birth house works in conjunction with a midwife-friendly obstetrician, who performs fetal stress tests and other evaluations in the final weeks. She told me that a few large hospitals in the neighborhood can accomodate sudden and serious complications. But given my state of health and regular monitoring, the likelihood of a sudden and serious emergency was virtually nonexistent. The only anxiety I had after hours of consultation with Yamada was that first-time births tend to take long — averaging 15 hours or more. She said it so matter-of-factly, I felt it wasn't going to be a problem. After all, she said, mothers all over the world have done it for thousands of years.

Nothing I did prepared me or my husband for Kimi's birth. Like a lot of life's huge undertakings, birth was not what I expected or pictured it to be. The little concerns I had: the tearing, the defecating, the vomiting, the embarrassing nakedness and the vulnerability of it all were inconsequential in the face of imminent birth. Childbirth was infinitely more dark, internal and selfless than I had ever imagined.

Since then, I have delivered two more times — once more with Yamada and two years later in Seattle with midwife Debra O'Conner.

At the time when my husband and I opted for a midwife-assisted birth, I didn't realize how unwittingly we had thrown ourselves into the middle of a big fight — one in which centuries-old wisdom about childbirth would clash with modern medicine. Only recently have I come to appreciate the fact that Yamada and O'Conner, who don't know each other, are kindred spirits in a world that is fighting for their extinction.