True stories about birth and giving birth

Day 601. To get home at last

My great-grandmother from my father’s side was a midwife. I’ve got my name after her. She was a simple soul – we should know this simplicity. People say that she could reverse the baby at the last minute if they were laid in the wrong way. She graved into my bones the capability of giving birth. She knew that my body – in spite of my slenderness and tight pelvis – is absolutely perfect for carrying a child and to give birth. However I got this heritage written in my bones only during my third childbearing. I have got home in my third childbirth.

In that time I’ve worked at a radio station. I just stepped inside the building when a woman came towards me and asked: “Are you pregnant?” I nodded. “Where will you go for deliverance?” I said: “Nowhere. I close the door and will give birth at home.” She asked why not with Ági Geréb? “I did ask her once, but at that time she had her fourth child and couldn’t undertake it.” “Now she will!” – said the woman firmly. Few days later she called and informed me: “Ági expect you fondly, call her!” By this time I was about in my twenty-eighth week pregnancy and didn’t go to a doctor. Ági asked from me only one ultrasonic examination on the thirty-seventh week.

In those days home-birth for country-folk was only by one way: as time approached we should have travel to Budapest where a family accommodates us. This is a beautiful human gesture, however I felt strongly against it. I did not want to travel elsewhere, it seemed as a strange place as a hospital. I had no idea what’s going to happen. Even if Ági says yes to come, I live 250 km from Budapest, and when the time comes it isn’t sure that she could make it.

By then I’ve felt several times that the Heavens – either we know it or not – always watch all our wishes. And I felt it again, right beside me.

Ági said to me: “Don’t give birth from the fourth till the sixth, because I’ll be at a conference in Kőszeg.” According to my calculation I would deliver on the sixth, so I asked her if it happens, would she come, because my town lies only 70 km from that place. She said yes.

In the evening on the fourth I asked my partner to make a photo of me. I have pictures from my first and second births, both was taken a day before childbirth.

I felt the first contraction at 3 a.m. I called Ági at 5 a.m. and at 7.12 a.m. she held a glorious little girl, Jázmin. (Her middle name is Aglaja, which means: “glorious”.)

Though it was my third childbirth, it was the first which began spontaneously. After this birth I got the time to become a mother, my child made me a mother. And with this experience I’ve finally had my heritage from my great-grandmother: that I can give birth (and “live and die”, as a great Hungarian poet says) on my own. My little daughter was born so naturally as the ocean waves.

My gratitude is eternal to dr. Ágnes Geréb who gave me a lead to my inheritance.

S. K.

first child’s birth > > >
second child’s birth > > >

Véletlenül kiválasztott mesék.

This post is also available in: Hungarian