Almost there, and scared outta my little head….

I have one birth left, a birth that is dragging out, a VBAC mom scared outta her mind, but determined, and I realize that I am also scared outta my mind.  My client has had start and stop prodromal labor for the last month.  She is not someone who wants homebirth for homebirth’s sake, which I appreciate; her last birth, by cesarean, was incredibly traumatic, unwanted and her epidural didn’t take.  She felt every cut, and is choosing homebirth with me mostly out of anger and fear, unaddressed trauma and the blind need to do something different, anything.

I see myself in her, my own anger, fear and unaddressed trauma overwhelming as I reach towards something, anything, new.  Like my client, I am simultaneously looking back with regret, though I try to replace it with compassion for myself, for the idealistic 20 year old I was when I started doing this.  It is hard.  I am angry and I am afraid and I don’t know where I am going.  My fear and my anger make it harder and harder to believe in myself as I try to learn a new way of being.  I have known for a long time that I need to get out,  that I need something, anything, new, and I have been on the fence, trying to find a way to honor this without having to undergo the big change that actually not being a midwife would entail.

Here is what changes when I am not a midwife, and here is why this prodromal labor stretches out so long: Since I was a little girl, I have learned and believed that being a good woman means scurrying around serving others, and that good women think of themselves last, always.  Shining as a woman means making sure that everyone else has enough food, and then bringing dessert to the table.  Good women go out on limbs for others, but never for ourselves.  Good women take their value from what they do for others, not for themselves.  The long nights of a midwife are exactly what a good woman does, endlessly rubbing backs, endlessly fighting uphill so that the woman in front of me can have her VBAC in a broken system, endlessly smoothing back laboring women’s hair and endlessly helping others be empowered.  Endlessly available and endlessly exhausted, endlessly smiling reassuring and endlessly marginalized.  Wanting an end to this is not something a good woman does.  Men, maybe.  But not good women.  And here I am, a good midwife doing all the things a good woman does,  yet wanting a new way to be a woman, wanting to write books that are all about my own voice and serve no one, wanting to stay up late thinking my own thoughts and smoothing back no one’s brow, wanting to matter as my own self, without serving anyone else.  Here I am, wanting to prioritize myself, and panicking, because if I am not a good woman, who will I be? After 30 years of only mattering if I am serving others, I am making the audacious statement that I matter no matter what, that I am enough, just on my own.  And I have no model for this, at least not female models, and I am scared scared scared, because being a woman has always been the biggest thing about me.

This has been a hard labor, and it has not even begun.  Like my client, I am scared to take that leap, scared to trust my body works/scared that I will be enough if I am not endlessly rubbing backs, scared to have faith in my ability to give birth/scared to have faith in my ability to write books and make it in a competitive world where my voice better be strong.  It is hard to be confident when I am questioning everything.  I need to be confident.

I hope that my client find it in her to take that leap, to trust herself, to give herself over to the change and limit-testing that is labor, to listen to her own voice.  I hope she finds a way to move past her fear and her anger and her unaddressed trauma, and jump into something new, find a way to make it hers.  I hope she takes me with her.  Once she gives birth, I will be done, I will be alone, in a new world where all I will have is myself, and the process of change.  I hope I can begin to believe what I have been telling women for years.  This jump is scary, and you have everything you need for when you land.  You can make it through.  You are strong.  You are enough.  Endlessly enough.  So many nights saying those words, and I wonder if my own voice is enough to guide me through.

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