She panted at times as if to give birth again — only this time to deliver herself from this life
By Gerald Grow
After the ultrasound and a visit to the birth center, Christl, who would be 41 at the time of the birth, turned to me and announced, “I’m going to have this baby at home without a midwife — and I hope you’ll be there.”
Her experience with our first son in 1977 soured her on a hospital birth. Even though she negotiated what she wanted, the new shifts ignored the agreement. And, sensitized by pregnancy, she did not like the midwife’s vibes. So, our second child was to be born, in the summer of 1985, on the bed where he was conceived — with just the two of us present.
We worked hard to make a home birth possible. We took classes, we rehearsed, we studied. I practically memorized a manual on emergency childbirth — the most useful thing I found.
Christl gave herself totally to being pregnant. She exercised, she practiced yoga, she meditated, she danced, she followed a pure diet. She focused every day on bringing a healthy baby into a loving home. She meditated on her ancestral home in the Austrian Alps and summoned the generations of mothers whose birthings had produced her, and me, and every person who ever lived. She was calling them, and joining them.
As the pregnancy progressed, her body grew entirely new dimensions. Her belly and buttocks spread. Her breasts revealed their true identity as organs for nursing. A new strength emerged, a new grace — and, with the growing bulk, an inexplicable lightness. Behind her confident posture, a ferocity flickered, yet she remained preternaturally joyful. Her eyes shined. She glowed. Something powerful and ancient rose up and filled her and shaped her, took her over, came to life inside her. It was as if a goddess entered the room. I was in awe.
Relax, the manual said. Women have been giving birth for millennia. Birth is not an emergency: It is the most natural thing in the world. — I was convinced of this, at least when I was with her.
We gathered supplies, arranged for a friend of hers to stay with our first son during the birth, and prepared for the day.
On a Sunday, her water broke around dawn, and the first contractions started in the early light.
I won’t give many details, and there are no pictures of the birth because Christl was a deeply private person and forbade them. My role was minor, but that’s what I can write about — helping her change position, massaging, adjusting pillows — but mainly propping up her confidence, supporting her determination, shielding her from doubt, soothing a feeling, monitoring her heartbeat, being her strength when she needed it, waiting, watching, being there for her, and doing whatever she asked.
It was labor, and it was long. As I studied her face, drawn inward while she breathed into contractions, I could look up and see through the window the great live-oak tree that spread over the bedroom with its resurrection ferns, Spanish moss, and, on warm nights, flying squirrels — and, beyond it, the wide, spreading sweep of Greenwood Cemetery that rolled away behind our home. Life and death, being born and dying, hovered in the air all day as Christl labored.size=0 width=”100%” align=center>
In our home, 36 years later, Christl lay on our bed and labored again. Throughout 2020, confined by the Covid-19 pandemic, alone with just each other, we had one of the best years of our lives. A happiness arose between us that felt ancient and newborn and immortal. When we met in our 30s, we knew one another as friends for a whole year before falling in love, and now, in our fourth decade together, the apotheosis of that friendship reprised in a deep, rich movement of the symphony of our life together. We did not know it would be our last.
Then the pain started. For three months, as she requested, daily I rubbed Dr. Christopher’s Cayenne Ointment into the mysterious backaches that moved from place to place, then became more frequent and more intense.
Christl had always healed herself. She had a repertoire of herbs, exercises, essential oils, supplements, qigong, yoga, diets, and meditations that had kept her in robust health. But after three months the pain got so bad she let me take her to the emergency room — her first medical visit in 30 years.
A kindly Jamaican doctor showed the results of the tests and answered what an oncologist soon confirmed: She had pancreatic cancer, it had spread widely, it was incurable, she likely had from three weeks to three months to live, and while intensive treatment might add a little time, the treatment itself would bring new suffering.
We had already watched a good friend and my brother go through pancreatic cancer, and we knew how it ended.
A child of divorced parents, sent off early to Catholic boarding school, Christl always wanted a home, and together she and I made one. There she became the kind of mother she wanted — fully present and engaged. She gave birth at home. In some years, she schooled both sons at home. She created her art at home. Home was where she grew a garden and planted fruit trees.
When the ER doctor said it was normal to remain in the hospital overnight, she announced that, no, she was refusing treatment — and asked me to take her home.
There, Christl embraced death, as she had embraced life.
With the ballooning pain pressing from one direction and the hospice morphine pressing from the other, she labored without complaint or blame or embarrassment or regret, disappearing little by little deep inside — now losing balance — now unable to walk — now confused — now struggling to turn over — now unable to speak — still deeply focused, still breathing into the pain, panting at times as if to give birth again — only this time to deliver herself and sever the cord that bound her to this life — which she accomplished after three weeks of labor, with me and our two sons supporting her throughout and holding her at the end — including the son who, in this account, is about to be born.size=0 width=”100%” align=center>
Well into labor, that summer afternoon in 1985, fear entered the room like a presence. It hovered just inside the door, about a foot off the floor — a dark, shimmering, formless thing made of tangled hair and terror. This was the crisis we knew to watch for, the transition when the modest, tender opening of a woman’s womb begins to stretch unimaginably, so it might become wide enough that an entire infant can pass through it into the outer light.
Christl lay and turned and crawled and squatted, eyes open, eyes closed, fierce, pleading, concentrated, distraught, breathing hard, panting gently, clawing the sheets, or completely still. She put every strength into letting go, fought to surrender, stretched to her limit — and beyond. Groans rose like thundering echos in a cavern whose distant origin was the gasp of orgasm.
I kept watch. For the next half hour, the fear stayed in the corner of the room, till this groaning, shuddering, gasping, begging, crying, howling transition passed, her strength held, her agitation settled. The air in the room grew lighter, the crisis eased, the fear evaporated, and, after her breathing calmed, Christl began to labor again, more quietly, with renewed heart and focus. We did not have to call the emergency number the OBGYN had given us.
As the long summer day approached its close under the oak tree overlooking the cemetery, into my waiting hands Christl, pushing with purpose now, delivered, head first, a boy child. It was a moment of blood and fluid and sweat and mucous, pain and relief, labor and respite. A fragrance rose from the baby’s skin like the music of angels, and we overflowed with tears, laughter, relief, and utter joy, as we mutually welcomed our child into the world.
When we married, an ancient challenge waited for us like a boat on a stream, and with the courage of love, we leapt in and let that boat sweep us toward whatever adventures lay ahead. Then the doors and windows, the gates, the shutters, the tollbooths all opened, the locks and hinges sprung, the waters parted, the sky said, “come!” and every stone sang aloud. Everything was possible — because we had each other.
We left the umbilical cord connected as long as it continued to pulse. Using thread, I tied it twice, then, with sterilized scissors, cut between the ties.
After nursing the baby and marveling at each perfect finger and touching him all over, twice, Christl handed him to me with a look of love I will never forget— then called her woman friend from the other end of the house, and the two of them disappeared to walk the neighborhood till the afterbirth was born. — The placenta went into the freezer. We later buried it under a rose bush.
I held our son, immersed in the fragrance of vernix and the salty odors of sweat and blood and birth. I had spent most of my life as a student or teacher — living with clean hands in the airborne world of culture and ideas.
Now I was forever committed to living here, with this family, on this earth. It was as if I, too, had been born — had left the timeless world of abstraction and entered the world of time and change — a world of birth and death — and the love in between.
The oak tree, the sweet little flying squirrels, and the cemetery agreed.
After a marriage that filled 42 years with life, Christl Kaserer Grow died Feb. 15, 2021, three weeks after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She was 76.
Gerald Grow is a retired journalism professor. More at longleaf.net.