I will not sugar coat it: a pain medication-free water birth at Our Community Birth Center was the most brutal, metal thing that I have ever done – and worth it!

I had low stress and laughter in the days leading up to my first birth. I was able to play a lead role in a horror movie short, hike in rainbow-filled, fall days, visit pumpkin patches, and attend a 7-year old’s soccer game pregnantly dressed in a Marilyn Monroe Some Like It Hot dress with my life partner Nick.

Halloween 2024, my favorite holiday, was in a few days, and I had Braxton-Hicks contractions for a month. These sensations permeated my back, clustered randomly, around 5 am on the day before my due date.

The morning before my due date, Nick’s sister heard of my back contractions and avidly proclaimed, “You’re in real labor!” Maybe not, I thought, since the pain was not rhythmic yet.

Excitement mounted anyway. After a goofy Marilyn Monroe photo shoot distraction with Nick and a box fan, I capped the night ready for adventure.

I gingerly tipped out of bed at 7 am without waking Nick. I showered laboriously, texted my doula, Imani, midwife AlexAnn again, and pals, and listened to my funny, meaningful birth playlist with my concerned cat, Lou. Lou was the first outside of me to sense pregnancy, sniffing me with flexed ears.

I attended my 11 am birth center appointment where AlexAnn confirmed that I was 2cm dilated! It was happening. As I requested, she sent me home to labor on.

At home, contractions increased randomly. I put on my “The Revolution Will Be Midwifed” sweatshirt that I got from my childhood friend and midwife Kathleen years ago. I had my go-bags on standby.

Nick and I turned on Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and cuddled more with Lou. As contractions became too strong to focus on the movie, Nick kindly drew me a bath. By 3 pm in the bath, my contractions were rhythmic at 3 minutes apart for 30 minutes straight, morphing from menstrual cramps into waves like multiple charley horse pains striking through the middle of my body. Kathleen asked, “Is it like charley horses right now?”

I knew this pain level was likely to increase dramatically soon. Charley horses of the apocalypse? I tried to calm my fear thinking, “I can do this. This too shall pass.”

By 5:02 pm, Nick drove me back to the birth center with stormy, uniquely triangular rainbows above it. AlexAnn pronounced me 4 centimeters dilated. Yikes! All day to dilate less than half way! AlexAnn gave me the OK to return home again for more labor, assuring me that I was progressing well.

Not two blurry hours later at 6:45pm, I returned with more intense, indescribable, full-body-radiating pain tides only 1-1.5 minutes apart. I was 6 centimeters dilated.

Distantly, from my birth playlist, Robyn sang, “Indestructable,” and Cardi B rapped, “Let it Happen” in Dorian mode.

In between unyielding back-to-back monster contractions, I had rare seconds of reprieve. I lived in the present – wherever that was. Days or minutes could have passed. I existed in a separate, psychedelic realm. I could laugh in my mind. Hypnotically focus on music and gratitude. And, I could think of millennia of humans on earth who experienced and would continue to experience birth with less information and resources than me. I felt so privileged and lucky.

I wore a yarn birth ceremony bracelet woven by friends. I thought of loved ones alive and passed on. The Gandalf-Balrog battle from Lord of the Rings I watched earlier came to mind. The stop motion Werewolf in London transformation scene from that week did too. Both appeared to be happening inside me.

The warm water of the tub brought some relief. I floated in the big tub’s real and metaphorical waves, trying to anchor to the porcelain. Since I closed my eyes, I had little sense of whose support hands were whose. I heard voices of affirmation. I was simply grateful for any and all souls there.

I involuntarily sounded like a combination of male opera singer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a dying cat, and an ancient war cry, wailing for 9 hours straight. I tried to aim at lower, chanty sounds, as advised earlier by my Childbirth Prep facilitator and my sister, Rachael. This helped me stay loose.

45+ hours of total labor, with 10 hours of monster, torturous-like-nothing-on-this-planet contractions, less than one minute apart!

My baby’s beautiful cry was sweeter music than I ever knew as a musician, but I was the last adult in the room to see him as he was born behind me. When I turned, I was shocked that he sported my own thick, jet black baby hair that turned to reds in the first year of life and beyond, fitting his middle name, Fox. My team helped us move with the umbilical cord to the bed for cuddles, nursing, and eventual cord cutting by Nick.

Dorian Fox, at 8lbs 4oz, was born in water and co-caught by his papa and AlexAnn as planned as he “psychedelic internal supernova blob” rocketed into this realm at 1:56 am (less than two hours after his due date).

Dorian is a mystical music mode where the 6th in a minor scale elevates. Think “Riders on the Storm,” “Sweet Dreams,” “Stayin’ Alive,” and most funk. It also means “Gift of the Sea.”

I cherish the privilege and honor of this rare birth experience and supportive environment.

My birth playlist also provided comfort and comic relief behind my pain trance, with moments such as “Push It” during final pushing, “Monster Mash,” L7’s “I Came Back to Bitch,” and more gems, many coincidentally in Dorian mode.

Equally crucial to me are the ongoing postpartum coordinated care and community created by the birth center, Daisy CHAIN, our birth class, Baby Clinics at the birth center, Baby Pop, Parenting Now, and more. Our Community Birth Center helped us to navigate our baby’s severe tongue tie, social/emotional transitions, and my rare, late postpartum hemorrhaging that required surgery.

After not sleeping for a few days postpartum, I had my 2 am “freak out” when I found an old closet box with a witch hat and a fox mask inside. I realized that 6 years prior, I unconsciously wrote my song, “Talk of Dreams,” including a repeating “Halloween” chorus, in A Dorian mode, and that Nick, an acquaintance at that time, briefly appeared in the music video wearing the fox mask. And my friend and doula Melvyn too, wearing the witch hat. “Nick! Is this a FOX mask?” I asked. “Hm, yea. Weird.” he said. “Nick!” I gasped again, ‘I think ‘Talk of Dreams’ is in Dorian mode! 6 years ago? Dorian raised 6th?” The flukes. I already had a postpartum therapist to call. We donned the hat and mask for Halloween 2024 with our little pumpkin, Dorian Fox.

On Dorian’s first birthday was the birth center’s Trunk or Treat Halloween event. We happily visited his birth crew where he was born.

And recently, while embarking on my first solo trip, I ran into a fellow Childbirth Prep parent on her first solo trip too. We were coincidentally on each other’s departing and returning flights. The serendipity and commiseration felt essential to us.

Thank you to our amazing birth team, Daisy CHAIN doulas, coordinated care teams, my love Nick, our dear friends, family, and community alive and passed on whose spirits were with me for the most metal endeavor of my life!