Childbirth was a shock, no question about that. I wasn’t prepared for any of it, not the pain, nor the intensity, nor the unabashed gush of bodily emissions. And certainly not for how seeing my son for the first time was, in a lightning flash, the most transformative event of my life.

My pregnancy itself had been uneventful. Besides the tendency to nap throughout the day, I had remained healthy and fit. I’d watched my body change with interest, felt the little kicks and hiccups with excitemement, was generally prepared and happy—I had the right number of receiving blankets and sleepers lined up, after all. What more could I do? But labour seemed to transport me to a different realm entirely. One akin to what I imagine torture to be. I fell apart. I lost control of myself.

The evening my labour started—I mean really started, not the menstrual-like cramps I’d had through the day where I was still able to eat and chat to friends on the phone—I couldn’t believe the pain. Despite the weeks of practicing hip opening asanas and deep breathing techniques, I felt an unabiding panic set in. Yoga went the way of the hot ginger compresses and homeopathic pellets I’d been advised to turn to for natural pain relief. I remember thinking, “No, this can’t be real,” as the pain came in wave after wave of what felt like violent assaults, but with no hope of getting away. I felt utterly trapped. But at the same time another part of me was aware of my mental fragmentation and amazed by it. Hadn’t I read books about birthing, gone to pre-natal classes, prepared my mind and body with exercise and mantras? How could I be so utterly shattered by this very natural process?

I watched in astonishment as I became animal-like, up on all fours, rocking and moaning, clawing at the bed sheets. Eventually my arms gave out and I rolled onto my side panting and shaking. I heard someone say, “You’re fighting it. Don’t fight it, it only makes it harder.” And I wanted to scream out Fuck You!, may in fact have done just that, I can’t be sure. But it was true, I was fighting it, pleading, beseeching it to stop. All my energy was narrowed into one thought and that was: Make it stop! My focus on the pain was so complete that if for a moment something changed--a hand that had been rythmically rubbing my back one way switched direction or the melody of some music stopped--it was as if my world had dropped away and I would grow frantic and yell wildly until it started up again.

At one point during my pregnancy when I was sitting in my back yard with a friend of mine I’d pointed to a thick bough of the large apple tree that branched out over my garden. “I think I’ll give birth there,” I’d said, “hanging onto that branch.” She looked at me oddly. She had a couple of kids herself. “I don’t think you will,” she’d said wryly. But somewhere in my mind I felt confident that I would be one of those women who would conquer the pain of childbirth and remain calm and poised throughout. But there I was, despite my previously unshakeable resolution to give birth at home, moaning to the midwife, “I want an epidural. Take me to the hospital.”

“That’ll take an hour,” the midwife snapped back and proceeded to enumerate every step that stood between me and the needle. Being no light weight she was prepared for the last-minute, desperate pleas of the inexperienced, overwhelmed home birther. It was clear she knew what she was talking about and so the matter was firmly closed.

I dilated fairly quickly, given that it was my first child. But when it was time to bear down I had no idea what to do. One of the midwives offered up a description of the pelvic cavity, the dip and tilt of it and how pushing was simply the act of following its natural curve down and then out. But I could make no sense of what she was saying, couldn’t connect it to the burning, ripping sensations that had engulfed the lower portion of my body. And so I raged on imploring it to stop, just stop, finally stop.

Somewhere into the second hour of pushing I was struck by an important thought: the only way this torture would end would be to get the baby out. It was as if something clicked into place and I became an active participant in the matter at hand instead of someone fighting for my life. All this time my husband, the midwives, and a friend or two had been holding the reality of what was taking place. While I was in some jungle in my mind running from a pack of tigers they were in my bedroom trying to deliver a baby, and now I was finally joining them.

And so I bore down and pushed in a way I never had in my life, pushed so completely it felt dangerous or harmful, certainly to the veins and arteries in my neck and possibly to my rectum, which I feared might leave my body with the baby.

Finally, finally, the baby slipped out, the pain ended and the midwife jabbed a long needle into my thigh. I wondered why she was turning away, suddenly losing interest in me after having made me the centre of attention for the past twelve hours. But then I heard her say “Call 911” and a strained silence fell over the room. I vaguely remember my friend, the one who’d flown in from Montreal to be at the birth, say in a frantic voice to someone on the phone, “Yes, a home birth.” Then a mad scrambling over on the other side of the room.

Apparently the umbilical cord had been wrapped tightly around my son’s neck. As he’d hung halfway out of my body he’d opened his mouth to take his first breath with no success, then his second, still with no luck. Then he’d given up. Secondary apnea, the mid-wife explained later and apparently in learning how to breathe it’s two strikes you’re out. Friends present at the birth spoke later of the terror they experienced during the two interminable minutes it took to resuscitate my son and hear his first lusty cry. But, oddly, I was calm. It seems heartless to say, but I don’t remember being alarmed in any way. I felt no concern or anxiety. Perhaps I had some sense of the unfolding script, a glimpse into the final outcome and I knew everything would be fine. But I don’t think it was that, much as I’d like to pat myself on the back for my prescience. I simply didn’t know who they were referring to in their frantic maneuverings and ministrations. It was as if my son didn’t exist yet. I had been in such intense pain for so long I noticed only that it had finally stopped. It was over. Something had been whisked away from my nether regions around which the mid-wife and her assistant were now huddling, but I couldn’t make the connection to what it was.

Within minutes, during which I heard a baby’s cry and pounding at the front door as the emergency crew attempted to gain admittance and save a baby’s life, a small bundle was handed to me. It was May, a warm night, and the receiving blanket was wrapped loosely around my son. He had a fair amount of brown hair and he was very beautiful. His eyes were open. They were more like slits than eyes but I could see into the gray liquidness of them. One of his tiny legs was crossed over the other one; I remember noticing this. His legs hadn’t been arranged that way by someone, he had put one ankle over the other, had placed it there himself.

After that nothing was the same and I imagine it never will be again. After seeing my son for the first time, his face turned up toward my face, his daintily crossed ankles, after recognizing the arduousness of his journey to reach this moment, I could never be the way I’d been even a moment earlier. Here was this being, someone I’d created out of the fluids and churnings of my own body, whose care I was being entrusted with. The enormity of it all was stunning.

To lie there beside him later that night after he’d been weighed and prodded and a small point of blood had been extracted from his heel was godliness itself. I was in a state of exaltation. To think I’d lain with him night after night during my pregnancy—lain on him at times—and been nonchalant. To know him, to see my son, opened up a whole new level of meaningfulness for me. And after that, nothing in my life was ever the same.

Sarah Byck is a psychotherapist and writer living with her husband and two sons in Toronto, Canada.