Bonus Episode Transcript
Samantha: Like many other women in 2020, I gave birth at the height of the pandemic. And like many other Americans, I was forced to go through a serious medical procedure with no social support at my bedside.
So the thing about my story is the lengths that I went to prevent this from happening. I saw this coming, did everything I could think of to ensure the outcome I wanted: my husband present at the birth of our son, not to be separated from my baby. And, in a series of my best efforts gone wrong, that is the outcome we didn’t get. This is the story of that birth, of the ironies along the way, and of how, in the end, I found meaning in living through one of my worst fears come to pass.
Samantha (interrupting): That’s a great intro, isn’t it? I thought so. I’m interrupting here because it was only after recording that I realized, this story isn’t over. Not completely.
I’ve written this birth story a dozen times. As unpublished articles, unrecorded versions of this podcast, as a letter of complaint to the hospital (that one went unanswered). At first, I could barely write about it. Immediately afterwards and the rest of the day, things would just be, off. After two years, it’s gotten easier to talk about. But it still isn’t easy.
The last time I attempted to tell this story, I recorded in Advent. That is the version you’re going to hear today, with the addition of this preface.
I thought things were better. I thought any “trauma” was probably mild, and was fading with time. After recording the story you’ll hear today, I talked it over with my husband one night. We were out on a date. I thought it might add something to the podcast to interview him, to get some sound bytes from his perspective. We never made it that far. Having that conversation, reliving that experience, it ruined our date. A year and half later, and the pains of that experience have cut us in ways we can’t really explain. Not logically. I never released the episode.
Fast forward six months to today. I am 30 weeks pregnant, and the closer we get to birth, the more clear to me it is that something inside has gone deeply wrong. I can’t fix it. I can’t undo it. The best I can do is learn to live with it. For me, that means offering my story, our story, as subject for reflection.
I have had a wonderfully blessed life, not without its ups and downs, but up until now, I can say that nothing has happened to me that left me broken in ways that couldn’t be fixed or unwound. Except this.
I can’t enter an OBs office without my chest tightening and tears swelling into my eyes. Two visits ago I had a brief but humiliating panic attack at the office. I view everyone - nurses, receptionists, ultrasound techs, with deep distrust. Doctors most of all. I’m even beginning to feel suspicious of my doula. I know these feelings aren’t rational, but I can’t control them.
I’m desperate to give birth at home or a birth center - anywhere but the hospital. Unfortunately, they won’t take me. I’m what you call a complicated case. I have blood clotting conditions that make pregnancy and childbirth especially dangerous. My last birth was a C-section, which just ups the ante on the danger factor this time around.
The irony is I used to love the hospital. Well, okay, maybe love isn’t exactly the right word. But I felt safe there. I trusted that the staff had my best interests at heart. Those feelings are gone, and I can’t go back.
And maybe after hearing this you’ll think, oh she's just being dramatic. Maybe.
But I hope that in sharing this, we will stop saying that all that matters in a birth is a healthy mama and a healthy baby. That is not all that matters. Those criteria are the bare minimum, and we should refuse to keep the bar so low. But that is a topic for another time, a book chapter perhaps. Perhaps chapter 6 of Reclaiming Motherhood from a Culture Gone Mad - available now for pre-order. How’s that for a segue?
In the meantime, let’s get back to the story.
Samantha (continuing): In early March 2020, I found myself sobbing in the kitchen. I had just begun my third trimester, and the latest pandemic updates echoed off the television: women in New York were being forced to give birth alone. Caughting my breath, I steeled myself against the fear bearing down on me: I would not let that happen to me. I would rather give birth without my doctor than without my husband, I kept telling people. And that is what I prepared to do. Despite high risk factors making me a poor candidate for home birth, I had a midwife on standby. I still have all the gauze, mesh underwear - everything that they give you at the hospital, still wrapped in plastic under my sink.
We shut ourselves down the week before the whole country locked down, a day after unknowingly celebrating what would be our last Mass inside a church for so many months. I still wonder what the Walmart checker thought seeing me, hugely pregnant with a toddler in tow, pushing 2 carts brimming full of groceries through her check out stand as we prepared to fill our new freezer in the garage with supplies that would last us through my due date in May. I wonder what she thought a week later, when the shelves were suddenly empty and toilet paper a hot commodity.
We quarantined for months, didn't even let our kids see their grandparents. All of this preparation was not out of fear of the virus so much (although that was a concern; At the time, so much was still unknown). It was the fear of being separated from my husband, and from our baby after he was born. My OB assured us that as long as we were COVID-free, that would not happen. No need for a home birth, she reassured me with a smile. She explained the hospital’s policy: they would test me for the virus while in labor, and my husband could join me when it came back negative.
I had given birth before without an epidural, and wanted to do that again. I was skeptical about my own ability to do that without my husband, but I figured I could handle the 40 minutes laboring alone until the rapid test came back. And so, we did everything possible to guarantee the results of that test.
When I did go into labor 10 days before my due date, I went to the hospital on the earlier side to ensure we had enough time for that test to come back negative. I did not want to still be alone during active labor when the contractions became too intense to think. I knew what it was like to lose myself in the pain of childbirth, and I needed my husband to bring me back from that. His touch was like a natural anesthetic.
I ended up laboring alone for 7 hours in triage, walking the halls in my mask to try to progress faster, only to leave the hospital after the attending assured me, “We know without a doubt that you are not in labor.” That’s what she thought.
She told me to go home and take my blood-thinning shot. I’m usually not an obstinate patient; I want everyone to like me. I do as I’m told. But thank God - thank GOD - that in that moment, I didn’t listen to her. I knew I was in labor, and had I followed her advice, the emergency birth that followed just hours later could have been deadly.
I went home and tried to relax. I took a shower and laid down. It was the middle of the night, so I tried to sleep through the contractions. And I did sleep a little. I could feel that they were coming stronger and closer, so I sat up to time them. They were 2-3 minutes apart. Our time to get that COVID test back negative was slipping away.
We rushed to the hospital and by this time they were less than a minute apart. I had to pause every few steps on the way into the hospital to let the contractions pass (who puts stairs at the entrance of a labor and delivery ward, anyway?). My husband drove like a madman to drop off our children and be back in time. And he was, but the staff asked him to wait in the hallway because my COVID test results hadn’t come back yet. He was still standing there, deciding whether to try to force his way in, when the nurse came out to inform him he'd missed it.
What had happened was that they had done one last scan to check that the baby was in the right position. He wasn’t. In the few hours I’d been home, he flipped. After weeks of being head down, here was the moment of truth, and now he was breech. Instead of the drug-free delivery I’d planned, I was headed into an emergency C-section. My blood clotting conditions make a C-section especially dangerous for me, but now, with my waters about to break any second, that was my only option.
Residents cycled consent forms before me in a flurry of paperwork. Did I want to be sterilized while they were “in there” and “which direction did I prefer they cut my incision” I voiced polite responses, trying to make light of the situation, but I was annoyed. I was contracting 30 seconds apart, about to undergo the most dangerous iteration of delivery for my already high-risk pregnancy, and I was being asked to make life-altering decisions about the state of my fertility and the medical technicalities of the surgery. All I wanted to know was where was my husband.
“No husband has missed a birth yet,” they kept saying. They wheeled me into the OR, still assuring me that my husband would make it in time. I was the only patient on the floor. Everything was going to be fine.
At this point, I have to take a step back and point out the ironies: I have a Master’s Degree in Bioethics. I run a podcast that explores bioethics. I am currently under contract writing a book about the bioethics of motherhood. Chapter 6 is on childbirth. I am literally writing the book on this subject.
So I have to ask, how did this policy serve me, the patient, in this instance? Under normal circumstances, the “golden hour” is standard after a healthy delivery. Hospitals bend over backwards to assure mothers that they protect this window of time for bonding between a mother and her newborn. Even in the pandemic, the WHO affirms that women have the right to be accompanied by a birth partner. It is so essential to a woman’s wellbeing that we consider it a literal human right. Our had been locked away for months to assure we were negative, so that at precisely this moment, we would be healthy and ready to welcome our newborn son into the world. Together.
On a floor empty of patients but filled with doctors and nurses who had not been quarantined, who did they think was at risk? With my risks of postpartum anxiety and depression skyrocketing with every traumatic curveball, and my newborn son’s risks of difficulty feeding and bonding exacerbated by forced separation after the birth, who was this policy protecting? And from what?
The hospital had every reason to make an exception in our case, and I could tell that the doctors and nurses wanted to. But the “hospital” was an entity; there was no human being to hear and respond to our plight. Certainly not in the timeframe that action would have been required. My COVID test came back negative in 2 hours, just enough time for my husband to miss the birth and the team to whisk away my son, stealing those precious first moments so vital for bonding.
Why hadn’t they listened to me, a third-time mom who’s experienced natural delivery? Why didn’t they test me the first time I came in that day? And how many other patients in this pandemic have been stripped of something unnameablely precious in the sacred moments of life life fading out or coming to be?
(lengthy pause)
The obvious takeaway is, of course, the tension between safety and freedom. With so many people dying in isolation, what of our humanity are we sacrificing, and who are we keeping safe? We heard this tension echoed after 9/11 with increased security measures. We’ve beaten the mask-wearing horse to death. And of course, now Americans really have had their freedom stripped away in the form of vaccine mandates - mandates that offer dubious claims of protection in the first place. What are we willing to sacrifice for the sake of keeping people “safe”? Where is the line where we become so safe that we stop living? Which dimensions of the human experience are we willing to sacrifice in order to keep living?
But for me, the more important takeaway is about control, how the amount we have is so much less than we think it is, and how, in the end, that might not actually be such a bad thing.
I spent so much time and effort worrying over this one outcome, only to have everything happen exactly the way I’d feared. And yet, what if I hadn’t been so distracted by my contractions when we left for hospital the second time? What if I’d let my fears rule, listened to my need for control, and stayed home to deliver our son there? We didn’t know he was breech. We might not have known until it was too late. I would have been rushed to the hospital by an ambulance for the same procedure. I still would have been forced to give birth without my husband, but the medical circumstances would have been even more dire than the emergency I actually faced.
Disasters are part of life. We can’t prevent them. At least not all of them. Things are going to get wrecked, whether we try to control them or not. Realizing this is actually quite freeing. Sometimes people ask, “What’s the worst that could happen?” Well, we don’t actually know the worst that could happen. And we might never know.
Rather than worrying over the worst that could happen, or trying to control every tiny detail which is a futile effort anyway, what if we focused instead on the beauty of the moment and the people in front of us?
People like the station nurse, who noticed me grasping my rosary in the hallway and called me over to ask if she could pray for me, and if she could text her rosary group to pray for me as well. Or how about the fact that while they took away the saint medal I had brought for comfort (the only tangible reminder that I wasn’t alone in this as strangers cut into my body), I was able to keep this rosary because it was plastic, my daughter’s glow-in-the-dark trinket I had stashed away in my purse? Or how about the retreat I went on, and that last Sunday Mass before saying goodbye to the outside world - it was supposed to be silent, but the women there kept breaking the rules, (even the nuns!) to pass me notes of congratulations, touch my belly, or whisper well wishes in hushed tones? So many of them promised to be praying for the birth. One of them even bought me a card from the retreat center gift shop with a St. Gerard prayer on it (he’s the patron of women in labor. A man. Go figure.). Total strangers had committed themselves to caring for me spiritually during these exact moments.
I had been so anxious to prevent giving birth alone. I even thought I was alone. But really, I wasn’t. Not even close, I realized, as these memories came back to me in the following weeks.
And maybe this message I’m pedaling can be boiled down to looking on the bright side or clinging to rose-colored glasses. Maybe.
But what I do know is the inner turmoil and anxiety of grasping at control, control that is ultimately illusory, versus the real freedom of surrender and acceptance. The serenity of accepting what I cannot change, which makes me think of all the people in 12-step programs who are also trapped in a different kind of way, who, in precisely this posture of surrender find freedom from their addictions, and I know that I’m onto something deeper than just putting on a positive filter. I’m pretty good at trying to change things. Before this, I’m not sure I really believed there were things I could not change, or that there might really be freedom in accepting them.
This bonus episode is coming to you in Advent, and I think the timing is fitting in ways that go deeper than the fact that it’s a story about preparing for birth.
Because Advent also serves to remind us about a different kind of preparation, preparation that really, spans our whole lives: it’s the preparation for eternity. It’s a reminder that what’s here and now won’t last forever. It’s not meant to.
And this is where a call to surrender comes in. It’s not the same thing as simply letting go and allowing “the universe” to take over. It’s not passivity. It’s receptivity.
Because as Christians, when we surrender we give ourselves over to the One who made us. We recognize that He has a greater plan for us than we have for ourselves. We don’t “surrender” to just anything, to indifferent forces manipulating the universe. We trust Love Itself. We believe His promise that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him -- and maybe that’s not our temporal good.
So when we find ourselves trapped in fear during this pandemic, fear for our bodily lives, fear for our livelihoods, fear of our neighbors, fear of our government, fearful of being left unprotected by a vaccine or fearful of that same vaccine and its unknown effects --
Let us really listen to the Gospels this Advent.
Zachariah, be not afraid, for your prayers have been heard.
Mary, be not afraid, for you have found favor with God.
Joseph, do not be afraid to take Mary into your home, for the child conceived is of the HS.
And the angel to the shepherds, “Be not afraid, for I bring you good news of great joy.”
Let these angelic echoes resound. We may indeed be walking in darkness, but we have a great light. Whatever we are asked to endure in the here and now, whatever joy we receive in this present moment, none of it, not even death, has the final word.
As our baby-to-be’s namesake Chiara Corballa Petrillo reminded her own infant son in a letter before her death, “We are born into eternity, and we shall never die.”
(Music playing)
That’s all folks. For more Brave New Us, stay tuned for Season 2, Creating Life. Season 2 covers everything in the world of reproductive technologies, from IVF and NFP to surrogacy, embryonic research, artificial wombs, and prenatal testing. New episodes coming June 13. You won’t want to miss it. Sign up at faithandbioethics.com to be notified right away and get my latest take on medical research, technology, and culture. The newsletter is completely free although there is a subscription option if you love the articles and podcast and decide you want to support my research.
In case you’re just joining us, check out Season 1, a journey through the world of genetic manipulation. Start at episode 1 and listen all the way through.