Faith

"You had him where?!!" I usually smile and laugh and nod with my eyes coyly turned down. I mean, what do you say to that? To the exasperated looks of disbelief and head shaking that goes on when I tell people I had my son in the car. "So, did the police come?" That's my favorite, as if my little son, Miles, was breaking the law by entering the world. "Were you on the news or something?" Yeah, I'm a local celebrity for opening my legs and doing the only thing I could possibly understand at the moment, let my baby fall out. My mother-in-law said that when she told our story to her eighty-something year old dad that he started to cry. This one I didn't understand at all until she explained that he was overwhelmed with emotion imagining our courage and steadfastness to have the baby unassisted in the car. My close girlfriends, all of them mothers, have asked if I was afraid which is the funniest question by far. Fear never crossed my mind. I don't think I really know how to be afraid in the moments of childbirth. I feel so strong and capable. Giving birth has afforded me the two clearest moments of my life when I've felt the most authentic power. Not "in Power" as in control, mind you, but power with a little "p". The kind of warm ribboning force that streams through me, connecting me to every other woman who has dared the task and work of bringing another life into the world, connecting me to every other soul who has stood up and been present for the work that needed to be done.

But I was lucky too. I never want to underestimate lady luck. Especially when it comes to babies. What a strange world we live in that babies come into this world under circumstances so fraught with uncertainty. Before our techno phallic age the entire process was fully of magic and mystery. I can barely imagine living in a world that didn't entirely understand how babies made their way into the womb. Even the lovely elderly woman across the street laughed at the thought of being able to look inside the womb to see the gender of the baby before it was born. The entire process has always been about having faith. Faith in the strength of the female body, faith in the unborn child, faith in the community to support and protect both in their vulnerability, faith in the unknown. And I think that's the clincher for a lot of people. The thing that makes having my Miles in the car seem so brave or unbelievable. There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to bearing and raising children and we live in a world that barely tolerates not knowing what's coming on next on the tv. Science has taught us that we can predict when the baby will be born, (or schedule it if convenience need be.) What the gender of the baby will be (heaven forbid their gender identity not fit) Science makes us believe if it's broke, we can fix it and above all that we are in control. But we're never really in control of anything. Not really. And to imagine so robs many women of the real experience of power to be found in childbirth... the power of letting go.