Articles by Shelley CampbellCircle of Birth
I took my place in the circle as eighteen women found places to sit and began to settle in. After five days of training together on how to be a knowledgeable and informed source of support for women traversing the psychologically delicate passage of childbirth our current assignment was our role in Preserving the Memory of Birth. The group of new doulas had spent the morning discussing the statistical data and research that women seem to retain a heightened memory of giving birth to their children for the remainder of their lifetime. Even very elderly women who may have lost track of a million specifics of day to day life will be able to recount with remarkable clarity the birth of each of her children.This fact among many others, we learned, underscores what a psychologically seminal moment this passage is as it is imprinted into consciousness forever. As we settled into our chairs I sensed an undercurrent of anticipation was creating a focus pulling the circle into a moving wheel. Each mother present was to tell her own birth story. If she had more than one child she was to choose which birth passage she wanted to share and those non-mothers among us had the important task of providing unbroken attention by listening fully throughout the afternoon. The diverse group of women from different parts of the country and world, varied social backgrounds and a range of ages fell easily into that locale of intimacy women seem to have readily available to them. As a grandmother my story dated back over 30 years.
As I sat collecting my thoughts about what I would say I naively thought to myself, my story is from the archaic past---things are better now. As if entering a magic theater, I listened to the stories coming closer, as each individual took her turn. Simultaneously my story began to resolve and take shape in the back of my mind. I felt a jolt of energy as images began to flood into conscious awareness and I shifted my body in the chair as I noticed a sharp uncomfortable edge begin to protrude from the center of my chest cavity. I hadn't revisited this story for decades and I wouldn't need any further research papers on how deeply this memory is seared into the subconscious mind. I listened intently as two women described profoundly traumatic emergency Cesarean's. Each spoke in turn about the terror they experienced as they were rushed into the cold OR, a drape put over their face and suddenly became an empty body on the table as their child was cut out of their womb.
One had experienced a panic attack in the middle of the surgery and faced several months of post-traumatic stress after returning home with her newborn baby. The other spiraled into a severe post partum depression which required hospitalization. Their heads bent together as they recounted how the health of the child was handed to them like a prescription to absolve the haunting memory that would forever be a wound in their hearts. By the time my turn arrived I didn't care if my story had been thirty years ago. I could hear my voice start to rise. "My story was a long time ago, 1971." I said. "I was the littlest Earth Mother having jumped into the counter culture with both feet. The story I want to tell is the birth of my second child, the first had been born 22 months before when I was only 18 years of age. I didn't know it at the time but looking back I can see how ill prepared I was.
The father of the child was even less emotionally mature than I and didn't have a clue how to be a supportive presence." I set the stage for the circle. "Looking back he was just a kid, he managed to stay for most of the labor but elected to retreat to a waiting room for the final couple of hours when things got rough ." , I was surprised as a wobble appeared unexpectedly in my voice. Several heads nodded as the emptiness of my abandonment was touched for a moment by the circle of attention holding my story. "The doctor had arrived in the middle of the night to discover my contractions had stalled." I continued. "I began to hear the phrase, 'failure to progress' ---they still use that phrase today as if they are diagnosing a disease.
It was a Sunday morning, and I know now that doctor didn't want to spend it hanging around waiting for Mother Nature to set the pace." I was looking back at the story and seeing it though the wisdom of the decades of experience in the intervening years as I simultaneously was lying in the hospital bed as they started the pitocin augmentation to stimulate contractions. "I've always been very sensitive to medications", I said to the circle, "I didn’t know that then but I remember how my fear began to escalate as the jagged medically induced contractions began to rock my body. I felt my confidence begin to ebb away as I realized my long practiced Lamaze breathing techniques were not going to be equal to the task." Looking back I remembered the pain, disorientation and fear and how they began to consume me as each vaginal check revealed the centimeters of dilation were mounting quickly. "Suddenly everything was happening at once as I was wheeled into the delivery room as a nurse on either side of me screamed, don't push!.
Looking back I can see I must have been in that phase of labor called 'transition'. Remember what we covered in class yesterday about the emotional components of the progression of labor?" I asked. I was engulfed by the vital memory pulling me back into the experience as I lay on my back on the swiftly moving hospital gurney filled with despair. I heard my voice create a bridge to the group as I said aloud, it must have been transition as I wanted to die. Although I was being instructed to consciously not push, the OB and the anesthesiologist in some bizarre state of disengagement from the reality of the situation, as if by rote, took ten minutes to administer a "saddle block" which was the medication of choice at that time.
The two doctors had an affable connection and between directives to turn over and expose my back, not push, hold my breathe, they chatted merrily. My voice began to rise with a punch of anger as I continued. "I can't believe this---I had forgotten this all these years….. as the final contractions mounted to push my baby into the world my two male physicians' talked sports! Do you believe this? They jocularly ran through a play by play of the previous day’s big football game." "I recall there was a nurse in the room but she was focused on assisting the doctors. As soon as I was allowed back into a birthing position, in one push my dusky blue baby emerged and within seconds that first breath sounded like a thunder clap in the room. I remember exactly how alone I was when they announced the sex of the child, no one to share that remarkable moment." I said.
Although I was barely 20 years old my obstetrician insisted on calling me, Mrs. Campbell, creating another layer of dissonance to add to the list", I explained. As I entered the movie again I was hearing the obstetrician say, "Mrs. Campbell, tell me what is the sex of your older child? And then without waiting for a reply, he said, you've got a boy." "What is so amazing to me now is that although not even consciously registered at the time the lack of sensitivity to me, my objectification as a patient was a violation clearly not unappreciated by my psyche, that avalanche of anger has been in there all these years.", I said. The unnecessary medication did not take effect until about 15 minutes after the birth. Still reeling from the emotional trauma of the events I had just experienced I discovered my legs were completely paralyzed. This would continue for 36 hours. To accompany that terror was a headache from the epicenter of that special hell of modern medicine gone wrong which we call side-effects. "It must have been one of those long passes into the end zone when he shot the medication into my spine," I said with angry sarcasm. I turned to indicate my story had been told and passed my attention on to the next woman in the circle.
As I listened to those following me I felt my anger rise and fall. One minute I was composing an indignant letter to the hospital in the back of my mind and the next I was combing through phone books to find the physician's in question so I could scream my indignation in their faces. My practical mind knew the doctors were long since retired and there was no redress available but it would be irrationally processing this anger for many weeks to come. As we completed the circle of stories we calculated the rate of emergency C-section in our group to be a shocking 45%. Another 40% had experiences which were traumatic in varying degrees. My naïve thought that things have changed for the better proved false. We did have two among us who had the heroic births all women dream of and we took the time to savor their stories and the foundation of confidence it had sealed into their spirits.
Although I had been disturbed by my memories I paradoxically began to feel a new sense of integration which would continue to ripen over the subsequent weeks. By welcoming these shadows into conscious awareness and into a sympathetic circle of my peers, it felt as if the bracing solvent of honesty was creating a fresh wholeness in my spirit. The mythic figure of the wounded healer came to mind as I felt my passion for creating a world that honors women and the sacred passage of birth deepen. As the circle was closing we spontaneously extended our hands to our neighbors, creating another layer of intimacy. Over the afternoon we had experienced the Memory of Birth and found its unending vitality. We all had experienced the astonishing knowingness which can exist spontaneously between women and had renewed our commitment to create change for our sisters in the future.
