Wido’s Birth

By Antonette Bongartz

Antonette is a midwife and Rebirther, German training 1991-1996                                                                  

Excerpt from, BIRTH OF A REBIRTHER, edited by Archie Duncanson

Before I tell you something about the birth of our first child Wido, I want to dwell for a moment to relate to you some of my history as a woman, midwife and Rebirther.

I’m now 34 years old and since my 21^st year of life I have worked as a midwife, in hospitals and independently. I support women before, during, and after clinical birth or homebirth.  Out of a personal crisis I started with rebirthing in 1990.  First I took private sessions from a Rebirther for one and a half years nearly two times weekly, and then I met Binnie A. Dansby at a relationships workshop in April 1991.   In October 1991, I began my training as a Rebirther in Binnie’s training. The last 4 years have decisively changed my work, my relationship to birth and to sexuality, and my whole life.

In my childhood there arose sexual abuse between age 11 and 13.  From my tenth to my nineteenth year I lived together in a room with my paternal grandmother and spent the nights with her in her double bed.  My grandfather was dead and she was afraid to be alone.  We lived in the same house with my three brothers and sisters and my parents.  We shared the life together, but I felt clearly more separated from the others.  I grew up with a strict Catholic education, which was characterized by a splitting into good and bad and the associated guilt and victim consciousness.  In this jumble of events and experiences, I couldn’t find myself and I fulfilled all the pictures, which my upbringing, with three generations under one roof, ‘drummed’ into my head.  My grandmother ruled over my head.  On the one hand I loved her, and on the other I hated her.  She controlled my whole life and set strict guidelines on which way my life had to run.  Everything of mine was observed precisely, each of my drawers and even my piggy bank were gone through by her.  She wanted to protect me with her control, especially from men and sex.  But at the same time my grandfather on my mother’s side misused me nearly every Sunday.  He demanded my visits.  Nobody thought that this was unnatural.  In retrospect I would say that I stood beside myself, hidden in a maze of fears and superimposed ideals.  I lived in this way until my 19^th year.  Then, more by instinct than by conscious choice, I broke out from my home.  I wanted to run away, to be free.  In the beginning my new path also was filled with much pain, which I inflicted upon myself.  A lot of unfulfilling relationships with men and women, abortions, and rape were some of the way stations.  On the other side stood my work as a midwife, out of which I escaped constantly because I experienced it as unfulfilling, exhausting, and overburdened with fear.   As I’m writing I can see clearly today how my life pattern of “I don’t know who I am” ruled parallel in my relationships to myself, to my job and to my life.  My work as a midwife in the first years consisted of monotony, protecting the babies and mothers, giving painkillers and being lovingly strict.  I hadn’t experienced anything else in my training, and so I worked in this way.  But it didn’t satisfy me in any way.  I thought I needed to do other things, and so I visited theatre workshops.  I made my A-level and studied.  But nothing satisfied me or calmed my soul, which pushed forward to change.

I went back into my job.  Once again, I became aware that this was not what I wanted to have in my life, this big, serious responsibility of being a midwife.  Once again I saw that birth was characterized by the doctor or the midwife being guilty if something went wrong, if something sad happened to the baby or the woman.  Only a few people are open to take their own responsibility in the process of pregnancy and giving birth. The majority of people want the big control to be with or through technology.  In Germany only 1,5% give birth at home.  I don’t refute modern achievement.  I’m thankful for a lot of the technology that supports mother and child.  It only makes me very unhappy that people believe they will find the solution to the problems that occur in their own bodies, in technology.  Out of this distrust in their own self-healing power only a few women allow themselves to experience in full awareness the power of pregnancy, birth and the time after, and the power which results from this for their whole lives.  As long as this is so, the majority of births happening on earth will be controlled.  First comes the step to the Self, to personal responsibility and then the step that allows a birth without a need for control or seeming technological security, to such an extent as we need it today.  Then it will be possible to find the response in responsibility, through the conscious, aware experience of giving birth and becoming parents.  Why I write all this will be clear in the description of Wido’s birth and in my wish to support parents more and more to become aware of their own power, which lies in their taking responsibility for themselves, in fact as far as they want, and deciding in the end just how much they want to put into the hands of doctors and midwives.

Another wish of mine is to support midwives more and more to go into their own power of intuition, into discovering the power of working out of the learned background, into the power of doing nothing, the power of presence and being-ness, of listening and hearing the resulting answers, when the parents can’t find their own answers.  And these answers don’t concern only the physical changes but also the psychological, and such changes are happening more during pregnancy and during birth than suspected.   And, now to our baby boy, Wido.

When I recognized in August 1993 that I was pregnant, I was without my husband Günter and with a group of Rebirthers in Spain to support Binnie in her book project.  My first reaction was a deep joy and at the same time, fear.  Fear coming from: “Will I be taken from Günter by this child, will I be welcome in the world, will I truly be pregnant?”   Even though we had wanted a child since the year before, fear came up.  A lot had happened during this time in my (our) life: building a house, changing our financial conditions, and now a new baby.  My experience in one word, insecurity!   I wasn’t desired as a child, and so it wasn’t surprising that this thought showed up once again.  Even though all of this wasn’t new and I had been confronted with this whole pattern before, it now took on a new dynamic, a new intensity – Life and its memories repeating as a spiral.  The new life in my body brought up new energy.  My body changed a lot, new hormones and growth by the minute.  With this changing I would have to, or be forced, to grow to another understanding of myself, of my being.  This is something that every mother experiences.   I let myself be with these fears and talked about them in the circle of people I was with.  I felt comfortable and safe.  With them I knew: “Here I am welcome with all my stuff.”

For me the whole process of the pregnancy had a bit the character of a checking up.  Looking to see where I stood within myself and about my security in life.  My man, whose first contact with our growing son and partnership came through a letter from me, was very happy.   Also the others were happy, and this joy did me good.   It made me sure and self-confident to be here as a Mother.   With this support I could better accept myself and all the crises that I went through and still go through today.

Every woman experiences crises in her pregnancy.  The point is, that there exist different forms of expression, be it that a woman has different moods, reacts emotionally and incomprehensibly, or expresses her blockages against her growing, or that of the baby, through her body in the form of premature labor, vomiting, disturbance of growth, etc.  I experienced my blockages more on the emotional level.  Seldom did I have physical problems.   Next to the fear of not being welcome there was a second fear, of losing my freedom, a fear that my husband experienced as well.  Again and again I went through these fears.   Eva-Maria, my friend, and Günter, my partner, accompanied me through these fears with rebirthing sessions.  There were feelings of being imprisoned in my own body.  I saw pictures from my childhood which I associated with this feeling, and I found solutions most of the time through affirmations, the breath and working with colors.

One session has remained particularly clear in my mind.  I was pregnant in the 14^th week, the time when the fetus begins to be nourished by the mother through the umbilical cord; the time before this he nourishes himself.  In other words, a more direct and intimate contact with the mother begins.  Once again, I fought against the growing life in my body.  For me, immediately, the theme of dependence was kicked up.  I stood once again in the way of myself.  Once again this “I don’t want the baby.  I want to keep my freedom, my independence.  You are dependent with a child, restricted.”   I wailed inside for my freedom and quarreled with my destiny.  In the session, I realized that I felt afraid to experience once again the situation that I experienced in my childhood.  Nine years of my life imprisoned, not being an autonomous being, having all the needs of others, primarily my grandmother, besides my own to think of.  She had taken me fully in her possession and she shared everything with me.  Unfortunately this was mostly pain, sorrow and a profound rejection against every thing alive.  My grandmother lived in her own prison of Catholic education, and she gave it to me.  I searched for a solution, because I realized that I was mixing my earlier experiences with the feelings I had about the baby,.  Naturally the child would be dependent on me in the first time of life (growth, birth, breast-feeding) but how could I manage to feel free with all that?

I deepened into myself and my uterus and asked the baby to show himself to me, because then I would be able to get in real contact with him and not with all the jumble of old memories which I dumped on him.  I wanted to be with him in freedom and open to his personality.  I gave space to all the old feelings of defense and hate.    At the same time I had the feeling that I sank deeper and deeper.  After a time I got a feeling of oppression in my throat area and in my chest.  It was so strong that it felt like the beginning of an asthma attack.  Eva Maria helped me with affirmations and her breath.   She guided my attention to my uterus and my heart area.  The asthma attack didn’t come.   Instead a torrents of tears began to flow.   Afterwards I began to see colored circles.   In the middle a big green one, around it a ring of violet and around that, a ring of white light.   At this moment my feelings of defense against the child and the new energy that lived in his body, disappeared.  I let myself fall into the light and felt absolute freedom and security.  I knew that I met myself and the baby at the level of absolute innocence of two souls who were not bound by space, time or old ugly memories.  With this surrender to the colors, I had finally reached my desired conscious contact with our baby and I could separate myself out from the feelings of my grandmother.  This was a decisive step in the pregnancy with Wido. 

I again experienced how much a woman tends to make the child responsible for her indisposition in December 1993.  My emotional barometer with the child had reached zero again.  Once again everything was too much, simply everything began to develop troubles, my body, as well as my job.  Again I couldn’t handle the energy.  I cried a lot and I was very moody.  With these moods I went again into a session with Eva-Maria.  Without knowing the theme especially, she accompanied me intuitively.   She does that often, she knows me very well. Also this time she spoke the affirmations that came up to her.   She recognized quickly that it was again about feeling safe with my feelings in my body.   Within a short time I found myself in chaos of denial with the whole of my person and the child.  Every time the same words came up in my mind: “You’ve got the devil in your body” and this was the way I was experiencing my pregnancy at the time.  I wanted to cry and rage, and at the same time, I knew that doesn’t help.   At that moment I began to cry and still again the words stayed in my head.  Suddenly I knew where they came from.  Like a blizzard it shouted through my consciousness.  I had heard those words often in my childhood.  With my inherent energy and joy to live, I had symbolized for the people around me the picture of a little devil.  Because I was sometimes too much for them, I got stamped as “the devil”.  And this picture was still in effect in my mind.  With this they had silenced me.  This is one of the strongest pictures that I have experienced from my childhood: the devil, beast, hell, being damned forever.  I didn’t want to have these distressing emotional feelings anymore, and I blamed the baby in my belly for them.  I was in the 21^st week.  Over and over again the same words resonated in my mind.  I allowed them to be there and the feeling of rejection increased until I thought it would tear me to pieces.  My whole body tingled and in my head I began to separate what belongs to the past and what is part of the present.  With the breath again I came more and more back to my love for the baby.  The trouble, which I had had in my back and my head, went away.  Because it had been a very intense session I held my domed belly tenderly in my hands for a long time and talked with our baby about the things I experienced and that the rejection didn’t belong to him and that I was on the way to getting in contact again with my real feelings for him.  Again and again those moments happened during the pregnancy.  From time to time I felt more open and more receptive for his and my love.  Today I would say that Wido taught me surrender, and he still does.  He teaches me a devotion to the given moment and to the given feeling at hand and to my love for myself and my life.

In the process I was and am also supported a lot by my partner.  He listened to all my doubts, fears and chaotic feelings, and I do this with him.  Sometimes I act out my feelings unconsciously, and he opened the space for me to do this.  There were moments when he took or held the conscious contact to our baby, just when I threatened to drown in my tears and denial.  The whole time I felt that Wido felt safe and absolutely welcome.   And when I lost this feeling in me, then Günter was there and gave safety and security to the baby through talking with him or laying his hands on my belly.  In these moments, I could feel how Wido’s little body moved towards Günter’s hands.

Rebirthing helped me in this time to understand exactly what was going on, and that I’m not a victim of my emotions.  The sessions before and during my pregnancy and afterwards gave me a deep and connected understanding of the whole process of pregnancy, birth and childhood and in the end, to our baby, so that I can now give this that I write to the world.  To round off the report I would like to go briefly into the birth story and a vision for the future for my work.

On March 27^th, 1994 at 9 o’clock in the morning the water (amniotic sac) broke.  The evening before I had for hours worried about not getting ready in time with everything.  The cradle wasn’t yet ready and a lot of other trivial things.  Now, in the morning, I understood my worries – the time had come when the baby wanted to begin his journey, and I wasn’t really ready.  We were still lying in bed and I felt a deep ‘OK’ in me.  I woke  Günter and we called Eva-Maria and our midwife Carmen, also a friend of ours.   Because I still hadn’t any labor pains we took our breakfast quietly and arranged the room where Wido would be born.  I cleaned it and Günter built up the tub for the birth.

We decided to have a waterbirth, even though I hadn’t had any such experiences in my job.  For me it was clear that this is the element where I can relax and let go the easiest.  The first time I had any contact with waterbirth was in my rebirthing training with Binnie.  She has worked for many years very intensely with this theme, and supports couples and midwives who are interested in it and who want to give birth in that way.  Four years ago, in the beginning of my rebirthing training, I was very reserved about waterbirth.  Only through my own experiences with rebirthing sessions and my intimate relationship with water did I get more in contact with this method.  Also literature and discussions with colleagues who had experience with waterbirth brought me (and us) more and more to the point of letting our baby see the light of the world down in water.  In my warm water rebirthing sessions I had experienced again and again how easily and smoothly I could be with all my feelings, and how deeply I could dive into myself or my own intrauterine state.  Also, in the numerous sessions, which I led or accompanied, I made this same observation.  Now back to Wido’s birth: in the early afternoon Eva-Maria and Carmen arrived.  A meeting that we had had in January came back to my mind.  We had talked generally about waterbirth, about the things we still needed, and we had shared our fears with each other. The most amazing was, that what mostly came up were fears that we had experienced in our own births: “not having enough time and not being heard.”

Now we sat together again nearly three months later, and everything was ready.  It was around 6 in the evening when the first contractions started.  During the day I had felt a light pain at times, but that wasn’t so interesting.  Now labor began quite quickly.  Soon it was regular with an interval of 5 to 7 minutes.  Around 9 p.m. I became panicky, and Carmen realized that I wasn’t allowing myself to go into the birth process.  Of course, I had attended more than 1000 births of my own, so Carmen knew she needn’t say a lot, but only directed things.  I denied and got moody.  I wanted it to go fast, and so I put pressure on myself with pictures of a 4-hour birth.  I wanted to make it good and quick, without listening to what was really going on, to what and how the baby and I wanted to do it together.  Yet I had been the person who was afraid of not having enough time to deliver, who was afraid about being crowded, pushed by labor medicines and impatient attendants – an experience I had from my own birth.  All three let me be, and Carmen said only, “You two must first find out your won rhythm together – you and the baby; you have all the time in the world that you need.”  I looked into her eyes, astonished.  Then I realized, that was ’it’, that was exactly what I wanted!  My panic moved away.  More and more I became accustomed to what really was happening in my body, opening in my own way and time. Today I’m still thankful in my heart to Carmen, because she only did 2 checks for the opening of my cervix during the whole labor.  That gave me a feeling that I’m the one in charge of my body and not someone else.  Frequent check-ups would, to me, have had the character of sexual abuse again.

The opening of the cervix continued all night on until 6 in the morning.  We slept on and off in between. My husband lay behind me and held my hand.  During each contraction which came I pressed it and we breathed together.  As support, I also took homeopathic remedies from time to time, and between 3 and 5 a.m. I lay dozing in the bathtub.  Günter sat there with me and held my hands.  Time had become relative.  It had no longer any meaning for us.  His hands gave me the security that ‘I’m able to do it and can handle all my feelings and energy’.  Just his presence gave me power and the endurance to hold the thought “I can do it and do it in my time”.   Again and again I dived deep inside of me, and from this place I also took the power and the endurance that I needed for the whole process. 

Around 6 in the morning I finally got a pushing feeling.  I reached down to my vagina and my fingers right away touched the little head of the child.  I was totally open.  I couldn’t feel any parts of my cervix.  Gently, I gave in to the pressure feeling and stayed in the bathtub until Günter and Carmen had filled the big tub with water.  During this time Eva-Maria stayed with me, and we breathed together.  I held her hands and could press them just as I liked and when I needed.  I remember well our intense eye contact.  We both knew that I was near to the goal, nearer than ever before.  For Günter it was good to have something to do and the sounds from his filling the tub with splashing water did me good too.  In me I had a bit the feeling “I have won”.  This thought led me in the wrong direction.  It was deceptive and for a long time it took me out of the “being” state where I had been before.  Just being with the contractions, with the labor, without any conditions – there lay for me the key to the opening of the cervix and my heart.  By giving my concentration to the idea of winning I lost the feeling of “I’m with delivering and with the baby”.  So, in the following hours I gained the experience of what it really means to be with myself and the baby during each moment throughout the birth.  I reckoned that now it would only be an hour until I would hold the child in my arms, and so with this certainty of victory attitude I went into the big hot tub.  Here I choose the words “winning” and “victorious” consciously, because they show clearly my attitude toward birth, both to me and perhaps also to you, dear Reader.  It suddenly had the character of a fight, and this was something I knew very well from my work, where I saw 95% of the women starting to fight during their deliveries.  But the art lies in surrendering, as it does later in daily life when the mother or father are asked to surrender in order to avoid big stresses with the baby, surrendering to the given moment, and not looking ahead for a longed-for goal.

This last phase of birth went on for 4 hours.  In this time I went once again through a lot of extremes of being. We all knew that it was okay, all that was happening, and that Wido felt very well with it.  Now and then we listened to his heartbeats, which were always okay.  For all of us it was another special experience.  With every contraction that came I gave my whole power and attention down to the baby and pushed him gently in the direction of “openness”, and after each contraction his little head went back in again to the place where it had been before.  Günter, who sat sometimes in front of me, could again and again during the labor see a little bit of the back of his head, which then disappeared again into my vagina.  For a long time there was this 3-4 cm of his head that came out and then back again.  On the one hand, I doubted not for a minute that I could give birth normally, and on the other hand, a lot of pictures crossed my mind, pictures of suction-births or forceps, in a phrase, the struggle of letting go.  I was disappointed to find myself back again in a fight. This fighting feeling stayed for a long time, and I moaned a lot.  Doubts filled my mind.  Doubts about “his head is too big for me.  I’m not able to handle this, this being with my baby”.   The coming forth and going back was very nerve-wracking for me, and, I suppose, also for the baby, but he gave us signals all the time that everything was fine: his movements, thoughts that were not mine, and his fine heartbeat.  I took homeopathic remedies and it remained as it was.  After three and one-half hours I came to a point where I had been in the night, the point of surrender.  Thoughts came up like “I can do it”, “Stop groaning and get on with it”, “You can handle it”, “You are the authority in your life”, “Go into it”.  No doubts any longer.  I had stayed for three and one-half hours with my doubts and trying to understand the struggle in my body.

And then, when I ‘stepped out of it’, Wido’s head came out further and further, and it didn’t go back again.  I didn’t realize any longer if I felt pain, lust, or indifference.  I was on the other side of any sensation that I had ever felt before.  There were no words for this state I was in.  Only when I had, again, reached this point of being absolutely in the true moment, and not in the naming or analyzing of the state, did the birth go on.

More and more of his body became visible.  I had up until this time taken a lot of different pushing positions: on my knees, in the squatting position, four-legged position and now I was squatting between Günter’s legs.  He sat a bit higher than me.  I propped myself up on his thighs with my elbows so that my pelvis floated free in the water.  Again and again I checked with my fingers to feel how much of him was out.  More and more he became visible, and sometimes with the breath and other times with gentle pushing, he gradually crowned.

The more Wido showed of himself, the more astonished we became.  I had attended so many women and now I could truly understand their astonishment.  I felt it in every cell of my body.  The support in my back, through Günter, gave me all the safety that I needed to feel all the feelings that trembled through my body.  It was so good.  At the moment Wido’s head came out of my vagina, from one moment to the next, the astonishment changed into a cry of relief, and I saw with the others how he turned his head.  Carmen’s right hand lay gently at the back of his head and her other hand on his left cheek.  He opened his eyes and with his little mouth caught one of Carmen’s fingers and started directly to suckle.  Carmen was a bit surprised and she laughed, and then with the next contraction, first one, then the other, the shoulders were born.  With this he spread out his arms like a bird flying and looked at us from underwater. This first eye contact was indescribable, outside of time, and deep in my heart.  With the next contraction, I released him out to the world.  And immediately, there was the impulse to take him out of the water and into our arms.  I knew he was nourished through the umbilical cord with oxygen, even under water, and that he would start breathing first when his skin makes contact with the air.  But Günter and I felt the deep wish to take him into our arms, to welcome him after all this time.   And when he lay between my breasts he looked at us and began to breathe. A pleasant soft squawk came out of his mouth and after that he laid content, calm and breathing regularly, near to my heart.  Time after time he opened and shut his big blue eyes.  For me, a shiver of contentment and love ran first through my body.  And then tears of joy and gratitude fell down my and Günter’s cheeks. The first words I could say to him were: “There you are, my little one”.

Afterwards it began to feel like ‘storming’ inside me.  I didn’t know what I should do with all this energy.  I cried intensely out of relief.  I held Wido gently and firmly in my arms and gave him the possibility to suckle.  Suddenly the wish came up to call my mother and Binnie.  I sat between Günter’s legs and we both were stunned.  After all this concentration on the essence of surrender, on being with another being and on finding the way back to my own authority (“I’m the authority in my life”), it felt great to feel all this energy moving through my body and to allow it to move me to tears.  We calmed down slowly and we enjoyed the moments of happiness and ecstasy.  We phoned and let the world participate in our happiness.  After maybe 20 minutes Günter cut the umbilical cord.  He left the tub to take a shower, and I gave Wido into Eva-Maria’s arms. She stood outside of the tub and enjoyed, quietly moved by the picture.  Wrapped in a towel he snuggled up into her arms.  Then a little while later the placenta was born, I still sat in the water.  I wanted to shower too and to eat breakfast.  In the meantime, it had become 10:30 am, and all the situations of the previous night passed through my mind, right up until 9:55 am, the time of Wido’s birth.

After we had had our showers, Günter, Wido and I lay down in our bed.  He lay between us and slept.  We were served a marvelous breakfast by Eva-Maria and Carmen.  And so we four sat together on the bed and Wido slumbered between us.  When, after a while Günter, Wido and I were alone, we both knew we had given ourselves a great gift.  We had given ourselves the most beautiful and intensive experience that a human being can ever experience: the birth of a new Being in me, in Günter and Wido himself.  Every one of us experienced an intense change after all those hours together, which lasts until today.  It continues in new experiences.  I am thankful therefore that I opened myself and we opened ourselves to experience this change consciously, and to bring it to the world as I do now.

The experience enriched me and changed my work and my whole life, and my wish is to bring it out more and more. I want, as I said in the beginning of this story, to encourage midwives more.  Encouragement toward seeing in birth a phenomenon of surrender to the given moment, to seeing that a woman is the authority during birth, to seeing more to the state of the woman and the couple, and out of these