Medhaa, the baby's story:

things were warm and comfy inside my mama's tummy, and i was perfectly happy there, even though it was starting to get a little cramped for my tastes towards the end...but then i started hearing some interesting things going on outside! Mama and Papa were talking about going to Goa for my birth...Goa!!! How cool is that? I can't wait to tell all my friends when i grow up!! Then later i heard a nice warm new voice, which would become very familiar--It was Corinna...my midwife...and for the first time i felt someone touching me from the outside....she gave my mama's tummy a massage and gave me a nice massage on my feet, my back, and my shoulders...mmm...it felt so nice...she showed my mama and papa how to feel me through my mama's tummy and so then i felt my mama and papa's hands touching me for the first time! wow! i was starting to get a little excited about that world outside. Then i heard corinna's daughter, ijeoma telling me not to be born on the 29th of October because that was her birthday...hmm….(naughty smile) but I can’t wait to see what this outside place is all about, i thought. So the next day, early in the morning....i made my move...i took my time...cuz there was a long way to go and lots of work to do...so i went slow and steady. Mama stayed nice and calm...whenever she started to get a little tense, I could hear Corinna’s voice helping her to relax and breathe, and then I felt refreshed. Even though my home for the last several months suddenly started to squeeze me every few minutes, i could feel that mama wasn't afraid, so i wasn't scared either. We relaxed in some nice warm water for a while, which made the squeezing a little less. Soon I was on my way down…ooh! I felt something new….some cool air on my head and I could hear other familiar loving voices…my papa’s, ammumma’s, and kunjamma’s, cheering me and mama on…”come on! You can do it!” I felt kunjamma’s hand on my head…then Corinna’s…Hmm…this is not so bad…I might even take a little nap…..corinna grabbed my shoulders and gave me a little twist, and then there I was in that new and exciting world! 1:05 pm. on October (uh-oh, sorry Ijoma!) 29th! My Papa cut my umbilical cord once I started breathing and handed me to mama. It felt so nice to snuggle up against mama’s warm body….and wow, was I hungry! And I knew just what to do….mmmm….milk! What a great world this is….!

Papa and Ammumma and Kunjamma all held me and I looked right into their eyes… Then later Corinna’s daughters and husband came in…Birthday girl Ijeoma held me and smiled and I knew she wasn’t mad at me for coming on her birthday! Now she is my big sister. And my papa’s mama and papa, Ammi and Aupapa arrived from Kerala within minutes of my arrival! What a beautiful family I have! I am so lucky to have had them all around me as soon as I entered this new world.

That night I slept in the birthing room where I was born with mama and papa… I didn’t cry at all because well…there was nothing to cry about! and I slept the whole night peacefully with no worries…because I felt so safe and secure….my mama and papa have been right next to me since the moment I came out. i know this is a great world I’ve come to! I’m so glad to be here!

So that’s my story…now I’ll let my mama tell you her story….......

Lakshmi, the mother's story:

When you really want something from the deepest depths of your heart, the universe conspires to make it happen....

By choice and by circumstance, i had waited a fairly long time, by Indian standards, to become a mother. But all those extra years gave me a chance to really contemplate pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood...and so i knew it was not an experience that i wanted to take for granted. Becoming a mother happens only once in a lifetime, after all. Besides being the most intense and transformative rite of passage in a woman's life, childbirth is a miracle of profound beauty that deserves to be treasured and respected. I knew I wanted to have the kind of childbirth experience that I had always envisioned…full of tenderness and sacredness. I had read a lot about and intuitively connected with the ideas of natural birth and gentle baby-centered birthing …and I was always fascinated by the idea of waterbirth in particular. But I didn’t think these options were available in India. So I had no choice but to accept hospital birth as my only alternative. But as my long held dream faced reality, I found that reality was full of harsh edges-during my pre-natal visits to the hospital in Calicut, I found the atmosphere to be very impersonal…mechanistic, assembly-line like. For example, one day my doctor had to see us in the middl e of attending to 2 births…She was harried and tense and shouting at nurses in between while she was seeing me...her mind was on her patients in labor, as it should have been…but I was disturbed to think that her mind was also on all of us who were in the waiting room while she was with them. What scared me the most was when I asked her about the cesarean rate of their hospital. “It is around 40%,” she told me coolly. 40%!!!! I was shocked…that’s almost half! That day I went home and cried, and even thought about maybe having the baby at home…in warm, familiar surroundings…but though I was confident in my body’s natural ability to give birth…my pregnancy was healthy and normal and if my body knew how to conceive the baby and grow the baby, I was absolutely ce rtain that it would know how to give birth to the baby… no one, not even I, had the confidence to really consider that as a possibility. So I swallowed my reservations and resigned myself to having a hospital birth… I also felt sad at the thought of the little baby being whisked away immediately after the ordeal of birth to be weighed and measured and tested and pricked. But I told myself that no matter how it is born, it will be beautiful just to have the baby.

But then one night in my 7th month, Arun, my husband, on a whim,…did a search on the internet for waterbirth in India and found Corinna’s website!! I had been making him read about waterbirth on the internet--even though I knew it wasn’t a possibility-just for the sake of knowledge. He told me about it and I was so excited, but scared to get too excited because we had to find out more, and there would be lots of people to convince…going all the way to Goa wouldn’t be an easy thing to manage. I could just imagine all the questions-Goa? Why Goa? No doctor? Travelling at this stage of pregnancy? At your age? I expected staunch objections. And there were a few …people telling us we were crazy, telling us we were taking a huge risk. And then of course everyone was naturally concerned. They had never heard of waterbirth and the idea of not having a doctor present made everyone rather uneasy. Home births had been common here until recently… in fact both Arun and my parents were born at home. But in those days, it was fraught with risks, with high infant and mother mortality rates…my own father’s mother had died in childbirth. So naturally people would be fearful about the idea…but miraculously, all the people who really mattered were supportive, because they knew it was something I really wanted. So Arun made a trip to Goa to meet Corinna and was immediately convinced….again everything seemed to miraculously fall into place-he found an ideal place for us to stay within our budget that was just a 10 minute walk from the birthing center. So many things, too many to mention, just seemed to fall into place for us to be able to go. It just had to be right.

Soon we were in Goa…we had arrived first at the flat and found that Corinna had decorated the flat for us and had kept drinking water and tea, sugar, biscuits and fresh fruits for us there. I hadn’t even met her yet, but I was so touched by the care she showed. Then she came over to meet us after we had settled in. As soon as I saw her, I felt immediately comfortable…she looked like just the kind of woman you would want to have at your side during labour-strong, grounded, calm, and pleasant and confident in her experience. Over the next few weeks, she gave us classes to help us prepare for childbirth and gave me regular checkups, in which she gav e me massages and taught me and Arun how to feel the baby inside my belly and feel its position. It was such a beautiful experience, so much more thrilling and personal than seeing the ultrasound, because we were really touching our baby for the first time and knowing how she was lying inside me…before that, it had been such a mystery. There was such a huge contrast between my checkups with corinna and my checkups with the doctor… Corinna spent time with us…talking, answering questions, helping us with any thing we needed, whereas I would usually only spend about 5-10 minutes with my doctor (after waiting sometimes for up to 3 hours to see her) and would usually end up forgetting one or 2 of my questions in the rush. With Corinna, the relationship was personal from the outset, whereas I’m not even sure my doctor even remembered me in between our visits. I don’t blame her…it’s just that she has so many hundreds of patients. And I really loved the way Corinna encouraged Arun and my mother and sister to be involved at every stage. At the hospital, they didn’t even allow Arun to come in to see the ultrasound….but Arun pushed his way in anyways! Then there was the birthing room…it was such a lovely big space, beautifully decorated, with warm lighting, including candles and aromatherapy. There was a big tub, a shower, and various other birthing props such as a birthing ball and a birthing stool. Again the contrast with the hospital and its drab rooms with metal cots was stark. This was absolutely luxurious by comparison. You know, now sometimes people ask me, “weren’t you scared (without a doctor)?” How do I explain that I was much more scared of the hospital? And that here, there was so much support…never was I left alone with my fears for even one moment…and besides that Corinna is a professional, certified German midwife, and she had hospital backup if needed, so where was the room for fear?

About 3 and a half weeks after we arrived in Goa, after spending a day at the beach, I started feeling contractions at around 3 am on Oct. 28. Corinna’s daughter Ijeoma had told me not to have the baby on the 29th, which was her birthday….naively, I thought I’d be finished by that evening and Ijeoma could have her mom the next day on her birthday…but no such luck! I stayed at home and relaxed during the first stage of labour, which lasted till 9 that night! That night Corinna came and picked us up and drove us to the birthing center. When we arrived, Corinna had put flowers on the bed for me, and there was nice soft music playing…maybe I was extra emotional at that time, but I felt so moved by all these small personal touches. Arun, my mother, and my sister all stayed in the room and supported me throughout the labour, which lasted until the next afternoon. Each one of them played a huge part in our baby’s birth. My sister and Arun took turns rubbing my back, during contractions. Even Peter, Corinna’s husband was involved…heating water in the middle of the night for the tub, while Arun brought the hot water into the room in buckets and filled the tub. My mother prayed and told me everything would be ok. For my mother, who like most people only thought of giving birth in hospitals, it took a lot of courage for her to trust in my decision and support me. It was very difficult for her to watch me go through so many hours of labour, but she stayed there with me, and in the end I was as proud of her as she was of me. Then of course, Corinna was there, giving me strength, and encouraging me, allowing me to lean on her, and reminding me to breathe, and reassuring me that everything was going on just fine. Corinna asked my sister if she wanted to touch the baby’s head as it began to show. Then everyone started to get excited…baby was almost here! Arun and my sister started encouraging me and cheering me on…poor things, no one had slept in over 30 hours or so. When the baby was finally born, it was a truly emotional moment for everyone…my mother burst into tears… My sister said she looked totally peaceful…with a small smile on her face.Arun yelled out…”It’s a girl…She’s Medhaa!!! He named her at first sight! Then he cut her umbilical cord himself under Corinna’s guidance and handed her to me. We were all forever bonded as a family by the experience we shared. And Corinna and her family have become a part of our family too, as I wouldn’t have been able to manage without her strong, calm pr esence, and her knowledge and experience, and especially since my first born daughter and her first born daughter are now “birthday sisters”

Medhaa didn’t cry at all the first day of her life outside the womb, but she was certainly vital, bright rosy pink, and alert, looking right into the eyes of everyone who held her. All her instincts were sharp, as she properly suckled within minutes of her birth. That night, she slept between me and Arun on the bed on which she was born…and she slept through the night, only getting up to feed…and she has never once given us a sleepless night yet, touch wood! And to this day, our sweet baby remains a calm and pleasant child, smiling often, and hardly crying…touch wood again! Maybe that is her natu re and we just got lucky…or maybe it has to do with the special, beautiful way she was born….

Even the post-natal part of the experience was wonderful and sacred…Corinna visited us often to check on my healing and on the baby…and was always available even to counsel us through our occasional new-parent panic attacks…and after a couple of weeks, we planted a mango tree over Medhaa’s placenta in Corinna’s garden….what a lovely way to root (no pun intended!) the entire experience we had in Goa…