The Most Power I’ve Ever Felt: The Story of a Home Birth

Miriam and my husband whispered, as they began to fumble with the tub. I said nothing, though it was getting to be too late to move. Cori, my doula, arrived as I was in the middle of a contraction. The only illumination in the room was a string of tiny white lights. My friend Gwen, a filmmaker and birth photographer, snaked them into the inflated birth tub, expecting me to be there. By the time the tub had been inflated and filled with water, getting into it was impossible. The contractions were too consuming. I couldn’t move.

Cori and Miriam, doula and midwife, sat on the bed near me, just watching. Ben knelt beside me, his “Rock the Vote” T-shirt clinging to his chest. My back began to ache. I mentioned this to Cori, who asked if I might want to try the shower. Our drain was clogged, rendering it out of commission. A to-do list item we were going to use the weekend to address. Another bathroom seemed so far away, too distant to travel to in that moment. Everything inside told me to stay put. Cori found a heat pack and pressed it to my sacrum as Miriam watched. When a contraction came, I would use my voice to bring myself into it, to move with the feeling. I relaxed my muscles and imagined moving the baby forward with full-throated sound.

I remember a distinct break in the contractions that felt like I had awakened from a deep sleep. I came to consciousness, greeted Cori, thanked her for the heat, reached for my phone. My nails ticked on the glass, navigating to Spotify. That was the last moment I felt firmly rooted in the room before the contractions began to roll into each other with no reprieve.

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