Journey to the Water

by Kristi Zittle

© 2010 Midwifery Today, Inc. All rights reserved.

[Editor’s note: This article first appeared in Midwifery Today Issue 96, Winter 2010/2011.]
Photo by Lynsey Stone Photography

As a retired midwife, I’d like to believe I have grown in wisdom and maturity over the years, to find that the changes I have made in practice and philosophy over the years are for the better. This is definitely true when I look back on my philosophy of birth and the benefits of water in the antenatal, birth and postpartum periods.

In the beginning I remember wanting to do it all. I wanted to “manage” my births and my clients—not because of fear or the unknown, but because I was so excited to experience yet another priceless moment of catching a newborn in my arms that I just wanted to get things done. Because of this, I would tinker with the process. Even though I saw little signs telling me it was best to leave it be, my enthusiasm for the birth itself always got the best of me. This was especially true when anyone would mention waterbirth to me. The thought frightened me and seemed unnatural, but truly I think it was just a matter of me figuring out how I would control a birth when the mother and baby were in a large tub of water. It would change the convenience elements for me and would definitely make it much harder to do the things I’d been trained to believe were necessary in labor—especially during the delivery and immediate postpartum.

As time progressed, the joy of holding that newborn in my arms never changed, but my eagerness to get to the birth itself calmed, and I began to allow my ladies to birth at their own pace with my encouragement and help. I felt important and needed and it was a great feeling. I enjoyed hearing them say they could not have done it without me. And I kept my simplistic and somewhat selfish views on waterbirth close to my vest.

All of this changed suddenly when—24 weeks into the personal pregnancy of my very much prayed for and desired twin sons—I went into labor. As I watched my very tiny, very weak little boys enter this cold, cruel world, I knew it was too early. I knew it was not to be. Hours after their little bodies crashed out of their comfort and into the cold, they gasped for the last time, their little lungs unable to sustain the life breath they so needed to survive. My world, my hopes, my entire philosophy of birth came crashing down on me. I had lost all of my trust and joy in welcoming newborns. But I did still have hope in the God who created me and my precious sons, and I knew that He could restore me and strengthen me in the process.

I truly thought I would just leave midwifery all together. The thought of welcoming another’s baby into the world was hard for me to bear. But my higher power had other plans for me and thrust me headlong into the birth world again. This time, I could not trust in myself, I could not trust in my own knowledge and understanding because I had seen that even when everything is done “the right way” and even when the “experts” are used, we cannot affect the ultimate outcome. I realized that, for me, my trust in the Creator (who, in my belief, made birth happen naturally with or without “help” present) was in complete control. I realized that I had the ability to trust in birth as a normal and physiological process by which a woman was made to conceive a baby, nurture and care for it within her womb, give birth to it, and then nurture and care for it outside of her womb. Even as I write this, it seems so silly to have not fully realized this in the first place. But with this realization arose many questions. If no help is needed for this process to occur normally and safely, why would a mom desire to have someone with her during labor and birth? If this is such a normal and natural process, why do we need to do the things we are bound and determined to do along the way. Why monitor and chart? Why insist on following the dates? Why introduce procedures, which may be harmful to the mother and the baby? Why do we feel a need to dictate how the process occurs at all? And in this questioning, I realized I had been doing it all wrong. When it came to my views on pregnancy, birth and postpartum, I had been more concerned with what I had been taught and how I should handle myself, than with what was best for Motherbaby.

Why did it matter if I had issues with birthing in the water—it should be the mom’s choice, with her knowing it meant a more hands-off approach to birth. My entire philosophy of birth began to change with this realization. I no longer wanted to or felt a need to manage the details. I wanted to encourage mothers and fathers to live and love through their births. I wanted to be the person in the background who offered words of encouragement, shared scriptures to uplift, sang songs to soothe, and whispered all the while, “You can do this. You are doing this.”

I began to see the need for true nurturing, which included teaching fathers how to care for and nurture their wives and what to do as a part of the birth process (with or without me). I did not do this because I did not want to help, but because my actual presence at their birth was a privilege and a very sacred honor and I had finally realized to be “with woman” meant just that—to literally and physically be with her, to not be managing her or controlling her or even using my power of suggestion over her to affect what her body already knew how to do so beautifully without me; I did not want to interfere, I did not want to hinder; I wanted to be a blessing.

It was also at this time that I began to realize that waterbirth could allow parents to have a more normal birth and that parents could use the water to ensure that even a nervous care provider meddled less.

Not long after this epiphany, I conceived again. My pregnancy was difficult from the start. Not physically, as things were fine in that regard, but emotionally, as I struggled daily with trusting my own body. I fought my fears and tried to put into practice the very words and actions that I encouraged my clients with daily. Because of my battle, I knew my birth would need to be unique. I usually enjoyed being pampered by a midwife, having her call the shots and simply following her lead. This time though, I wanted peace, quiet and a total and complete focus upon my relationship with my Creator. I knew that I would do battle with my fear of death and the unknown—so I needed to put my trust in God and not in a person. For me, the changes meant I would choose to birth without a midwife present and I would choose to use water therapy during my pregnancy and labor, and possibly for the actual birth. My husband and I planned to have our 16-year-old daughter present to catch the baby as a way of helping her heal the grief and loss of her twin brothers. We also planned to have a precious friend there, to pray without ceasing while I labored. Our friend had some birth knowledge and although she was coming as a friend, I think having her there gave my husband the peace he needed for this birth. After months of emotional battles, our birth day arrived with a bang. I had spent nearly four weeks soaking and relaxing in my “spa-in-a-box” almost every night, hoping that floating my belly under the water would encourage my baby to settle into an anterior position (I have a history of most of my babies remaining posterior through labor and more than half being born in a posterior position). My typical slow-to-start labor was not on tap for this birth. My contractions began voraciously booming their way through my body and the fears took over. I sang and wept and begged my Creator for peace. I wanted no interference; I wanted to be alone. I did not want to hear a Doppler ringing heart tones or have someone tell me it was time for vitals—I simply wanted to trust in my Creator. Hours went by and the contractions were relentless. I had never felt such excruciating pain in all my other births—I feared something was wrong. My daughter comforted me, my friend prayed aloud. My husband was battling his own demons and was aloof and set apart from me—also very different from our prior births, as we are usually so close and intertwined throughout. I think we both needed to handle things our own way and I knew he was loving me while struggling with his own fears.

Getting into the hot tub was a relief, and I wondered at first why I did not get in sooner than this. I had expected, from talking to other women about their waterbirths, that the pains would decrease in intensity and be far more manageable once I was in the water, but when the pains increased and I could find no peace, I began to cry out all the more. My sobs were not only from the physical pain I was feeling, but from the grief of losing the chance to love and mother my twin sons. I would never hold them in my arms again. Never see them take a sweet breath of life. I would never hear their little voices giggling at one another or watch them sleep close as they had done in my womb.

I was joyful of the thought of a new baby, but my sorrow for my twins was overtaking me. Through it all though, in the depths of my mind, I knew I could trust in my God, who created me to give birth to my baby. I knew I could physically withstand all manners of pain that would normally crush me to the ground, for my child needed my strength. And I knew that the water’s warmth, which had enveloped my body and soul, did not cause things to get worse, but had actually allowed me to release these emotions. Eventually, the rocking of the fluid allowed a calm that I had not sensed prior and I could hear my Creator saying, “You can trust me.”

After nine births that had lasted 12 hours almost to the minute, this hard-as-nails labor brought forth a living son just six hours after it began.

More than two years later, in a much stronger state—no longer acting as a midwife but having fully learned to be “with myself”—I chose to birth my daughter in a very similar, but even more empowering way. Again, I knew I wanted to be alone (this time fully and completely alone, as I battle to worry what others will think of me during my struggles in labor) and because even the smallest suggestions to me in labor usually make me change my course. At 1 am on a warm August morning, my contractions began. I knew from the start they too would move quickly and I was not to have a drawn-out, 12-hour labor as I had in the past. When I finally climbed into the waterbirth tub at 2:30 am, the memories of the water’s warmth enveloped me and I was truly transformed. I knew no one was around, I had nothing to overshadow my thoughts, and like the darkness that surrounded me in my quiet and very still kitchen with only the flicker of a few candles, I yielded to every ounce of what was surging through me. As I moved through the water with ease (something so wonderful to a woman of size is the ability to change position instantly like one can in the water) the pain became manageable in a way it had not been while on “land.” I changed position often to suit whatever I needed for each developing contraction. As I felt my precious baby within moving around to get to her “perfect” place, the positions for me would often need to shift and change as well. At 3:45 am I realized that my body, without any help from me, was expelling my baby from the womb that had cared for her and pushing her into the vaginal canal. Meanwhile, my eldest daughter had heard my sounds from a nearby room and awoken her father to join me.

While I was singing loud and, I’m sure, quite off-key, he gently sneaked into the kitchen and sat in the chair I had placed near the spa. He stroked my hand and was just present. At 4 am my body released our precious daughter into the warmth of the water that had been rocking her to sleep each night for the six weeks prior to her birth. The same sweet water that had helped her to find her perfect positioning for descent and emergence. The water that had helped me to find a place where I could enjoy her birth regardless of the physical discomfort that came with it and the same water that allowed my large frame to move with such fluidity and grace. As I reached for her and drew her up and out of the water and closer to my heart, I opened my eyes to take it all in. Nothing could have prepared me for the picture that now resides in my heart as the sweetest memory of birth I have ever had. In the reflection of the water I saw the sweet and amazed face of my precious 10-1/2 lb baby girl. As the water danced off the flickering candles in our dark kitchen, I could see the faces of my husband, so amazed and in love, and my two oldest daughters, who had never fully entered “my space,” but were standing like angels in the doorways. From both sides, they were not guarding the space as if something bad were going to happen, but with trust and awe, as encouragers, and with love just embracing me and their new little sister from afar!

I trust in birth in ways I have never even comprehended until now. I know with certainty that, for me, and most likely many others, a waterbirth is a blessing that often cannot be fully understood until it is experienced and embraced. And although I still believe in the blessing of having a midwife or someone there to encourage and nurture the family, my desire is to help educate families to embrace responsibility and to find which ever way that they can say they did it themselves. For everything that goes along with the birth—a midwife, a doula, a friend, or family member, water therapy of any sort (especially a water labor and birth)—is just the icing on top of an amazingly yummy cake!

Kristi Zittle is the mother of 12 children and one grandchild. A retired midwife who spent 11 years serving women and their families in four states on the East Coast, Kristi now teaches at Ancient Art Midwifery Institute’s Midwifery Skills Labs. She coordinated the Trust Birth Conferences held in 2008 and 2010 in Redondo Beach, California, and is coordinating an upcoming 2012 conference that will be held in Nashville, Tennessee.

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