The Birth of Rhema Eve

The Sunday morning sunshine is streaming through my bedroom doorway and all is still and quiet except for the punching of my keys and the small breaths of my beautiful baby girl beside me. I glanced over just now and lingered over her perfect little profile peacefully sleeping after a warm bath and colostrum latte.

Birthing a daughter into the world has been the most sacred and beautiful experience.

I was thrilled when we saw the two lines appear in the bathroom early one Monday morning the third week of January. We were praying for our baby girl, and a soft joy filled my heart. A few weeks later the dreaded nausea overtook my body and I spent months in bed and on the couch forcing myself to eat and trying to keep it down. Thankfully I could keep enough food and fluids in my body to keep from being dehydrated most days. The nausea and fatigue followed me into the second trimester and then the third until the countdown to her birth was the only sure promise I had of relief. I was diagnosed with mild Gestational Diabetes and went on a strict diet and exercise regime. I spent many days running to the toilet and weeping for strength. Just a few weeks ago I sat praying out loud for the energy to mop my dirty floors. Rafi looked up and said, “Mom why are you praying like that?”

“Because I need strength, my son.”

The past few weeks have been full of projects and a lengthy list of tasks to accomplish before Rhema’s birth. I had a few days of extreme sickness again, and messaged the pastor of the church we attend to ask for anointing and prayer for healing. That Sunday friends gathered around me once again and prayed. God had impressed on my heart to pray and believe even if we were just a few weeks away from her due date. Every day after that, I felt more energy. My glucose slowly stabilised until I was eating dates filled with peanut butter again. I was thrilled to feel good, partially because we needed to move Mama Zina into a new apartment and I wanted to help my friend clean her kitchen, and I had a funny little mental list of nesting tasks like organising storage at the center and filling the fridge with fresh food that didn’t NEED to be done but I was able to do them. I was so happy to be able to walk some distance, serve other people again, and cook beautiful dinners.

Since my glucose was stabilising, I had a good chance of home birth with my Greek midwives. My baby was measuring in the 98th percentile but I wasn’t worried because my Rafael was also a chub with a very wide head at birth and I had him naturally after a very challenging almost 48 hours from start to finish. That might be a story for another day, but we were in a stressful season of transition over his birth and needed to leave the country because of visa complications just 10 days after his due date. I took the midwives brew on a Saturday afternoon, and it put me into some sort of labor, which waned the next day and then came back by evening. I laboured all night again and pushed for seven hours during which we transferred to the hospital so my midwife would have more support. Rafael John was born two hours after we arrived at the hospital, pink and healthy and without one squeak of protest. He nestled into my exhausted arms and took up rooting for milk, which he didn’t stop doing until he was 2 1/2.

With that first birth experience in mind I had a few clear prayer requests for God this time around. The first was that my friend Rosalyn Wenger, an absolutely stellar midwife who has delivered around 3,000 babies could attend the birth. She was coming to Greece for a conference over Rhema’s due date and offered to come a week early. I didn’t want any pressure to go into labor at a certain time, but we all prayed hard that she could be present at my birth. The second was that I would deliver in less then 8 hours. I prayed that I would not push more then an hour, not tear at all, and that I could give birth at home. I was praying with the very real experience of birthing Rafael when so few of my prayers were answered for his birth. God had done a lot of healing in my heart the past three years and I was sensing an invitation to pray specific prayers for a beautiful outcome with my Rhema Eve.

Some of you have followed the pain free birth movement with me and been fascinated at the hundreds of stories of peaceful women pushing their babies into warm water and oxytocin highs. I believe many women have experienced this beautiful way of birthing but the movement does lack some fundamental theology of suffering for the ones of us that have experienced traumatic birth. I believed with all my heart that birth without trauma was possible before my Rafael was born, and yet I endured a very challenging birth. God showed me how He often gives strength to endure instead of an elimination of discomfort. That said, I love most of Karen Welton’s pain free birth course because I believe in the beautiful physiological birth she advocates for and I believe in many cases if we learn to trust and surrender deeply, birth can be a deeply empowering and beautiful experience.

The other side of the Christian birthing world is a harsh view of God’s curse on women which results in tight-muscled women with a furrowed brow carrying the weight of believing that we must resign ourselves to agony and trauma in our birthing because of Eve. A deep dive into the Genesis 3 text reveals that although childbirth will always be challenging so is the curse of work for men and we don’t expect our labouring men to come home from work with trauma and agony every day.

Birthing life into the world is promised to be an intense and challenging assignment, but God has not cursed every woman after Eve to need to endure trauma in her birth just as He has not cursed every man after Adam to be traumatised by physical labor.

One of the most problematic phenomenon for women is that we often believe we must control the outcomes of our birth. The timing, ambience, and location all become an anxious obsession instead of a peaceful surrender. Even believing God for a pain free birth can be a form of control instead of surrender. Letting go of the need to know how and when it will all happen by daily verbal acknowledgement of the sovereign will of God is the most powerful way to ensure a peaceful birth.

Growing and birthing my Rhema Eve was a full surrender assignment from God. I tried every way to abate the nausea except for medication, which I would have tried if I was not able to keep enough nourishment in my body. I was upset at my GD diagnoses and the doctor’s alarm at her measurements. I wanted to eat late at night to settle my stomach but instead went to bed hungry and woke up early praying for a stable fasting glucose number. I was often restless because I wanted to serve people instead of have everyone serve me. It felt like I was limping through the weeks, leaning on everyone around me, trying not to cry about everything. And now as birth was coming closer, my midwives were unable to let me birth at the new natural birthing center because of her measurements on the Doppler scan, I was considered high risk, and at some points the hope of home birth was waning.

“I surrender Lord.”

Monday evening of last week I was tired after a long day. We had a Farsi class and I did a thorough Monday reset on the house, after which Rosalyn and I went to help Mama Zina clean her new house. We came home to make chicken and rice bowls and Rosalyn made some delicious french carrot salad and pickled onions. I made a creamy cucumber salad and we fried some chicken Eric had marinated. Rosalyn patiently did Miles Circuit with me up and down our 6 flights of stairs, curb walking, and the awkward bottom up pose on the couch. I had been having pretty intense irregular contractions all week. My Rhema was very low in my pelvis and I felt birth was near. I got into the shower and the water was hot and healing, my body relaxed and my water broke. I was so excited I peeked out of my back hall curtain to tell Rosalyn, who is the calmest and most peaceful person one could ever want in their house over birth. She never said or encouraged one thing to start labor unless I asked her to and just worked and sat with me like some old friend who knew exactly what I needed.

I put Rafael to bed, who was in quite the energised mood singing through the house “XY Chromosome, Hallelujah!” and then lay in bed later asking “Is God telling Rhema to come?” When I asked him what he thinks God is saying he replied with full toddler confidence, “Rhema will come on Wednesday so she’s cuter.”

I thought to myself, “I sure hope not because this is only Monday evening,” but went to bed to try to sleep.

The contractions were quite regular and too intense to sleep so I moved to the couch where I finished Karen Welton’s birth classes between contractions and also remembered that I had forgotten to clean the tops of the large shower heads that were covered in dust so I took a stool and cleaned them. Ha! Sometime early morning I drifted off between contractions and got some rest. Eric got up and I sent him for some supplies to make my midwives Mom’s recipe for homemade yogurt and granola. Since I had purposed to ignore labor as long as possible I got into the kitchen and helped make it. Around 10 am the contractions stopped and I took a long rest that afternoon.

“I surrender Lord. This baby will come in your time and your way.”

That late afternoon I got irritable and needed fresh air. I asked if we could go find some hot crispy falafel to get my body moving outside. It was our day of rest, so I was trying to relax but I felt like my baby was about to fall out and I had a lot of intense contractions as we walked. We didn’t find the falafel I wanted but we walked relatively far and found a charming little Greek restaurant that had moussaka baked in a little clay pot. Moussaka is the most creamy comfort food you can imagine; layered egg plant with beef and potatoes all drenched in a lovely béchamel and baked to perfection in the oven. I ate it slowly and enjoyed every bite before we walked home. I was much refreshed in spirit when we got home and ate a big bowl of granola with blueberries because I was tired of watching my glucose levels before I got into the hot shower again and sang worship song after worship song God brought to my mind. His presence was covering the bathroom and I felt like I was on sacred ground so I just kept singing to Him.

I planned my next day out in my planner and went to bed at peace. Not more then five minutes after I fell into a deep sleep, I woke to an intense contraction. Then another, and another. I wasn’t believing it was active labor so Eric started timing them for me and they were all 5-8 minutes apart. When I got into the hot shower they intensified and I started to feel like I was losing control. I called for Rosalyn and focused on trying to J breathe through the contractions. Suddenly I wanted to throw up and I thought to myself “this feels like transition but it can’t be.” Rosalyn was peacefully present with me in every sense of the word and I knew why God arranged for her to be in Athens because I felt panic come over me with the intensity of the contractions. I was thinking I still have hours and hours of labor ahead of me and I was already weak and exhausted. I sensed the voice of God saying clearly, “Joy comes in the morning.” We moved into the living room and called my midwives. I was on all fours deeply breathing and trying to keep my vocalising low and deep when I could.

I remember saying, “If anyone calls this prodromal labour I’ll hit them!”

Rosalyn assured me no-one was calling it that and she believed I was in active labour. Eric laughed at me like usual. They turned on the affirmations on a birthing app I had downloaded, but the lady’s voice box sounded coated with butter and immediately annoyed and distracted me. I already knew my body was made for birth, thank you very much. I needed something more substantial (zero judgement to those of you that find the milky affirmations helpful). I asked for some scripture reading instead.

The contractions continued to intensify until I was standing and hanging onto Eric for support. At some point I was laughing and saying, “I need Karen Welton to come rebuke this pain!” It took every bit of stamina and courage I had in me to get through the contractions and then I was so weak I tried to lay my head against Eric to breathe. He was so kind and solid, even when I bit him on the neck like a frustrated little burrow. My first midwife came and sat on the couch and held a bowl I threw up in immediately while apologising profusely because I knew she is pregnant and nauseous herself. Rosalyn reminded me that throwing up is worth 10 contractions. Every word she said bolstered my courage. I kept asking, “Why am I so crazy? What’s wrong with me?” and she would answer gently, “Kate your baby is coming very fast and you’re doing exactly what you need to do.”

Not long after that my body started bearing down with the fetal ejection reflex. My second midwife arrived. I was so surprised at my body I didn’t know what to think but rolled with it because I was committed to surrendering to what I was sensing when I got to pushing phase. Every contraction after that brought my little girl lower and lower. I was afraid to get excited because it was hours before my Rafael was born. I moved positions which dislodged a mild shoulder dystocia and she slipped into the world, 8 pounds and 13 ounces of pure perfection. I fell onto the ground weeping and shaking, gathering her up into my arms and staring into the most beautiful face of my Rhema Eve.

I felt a combination of extreme shock and complete ecstasy. Eric was full of joy and delight. I couldn’t calm my body and Rosalyn’s words and firm hand grasp helped ground me. She told me my body might be having a trauma response from my last birth and helped me breathe. I asked Eric to kiss my face so I could try to calm my body, and slowly I was able to drink in the world and the calm flicker of the candle and the face of a perfect baby girl who had rooted for milk and was latched on perfectly. Rosalyn checked her watch and said my pushing phase was 26 minutes long.

She was pink and calm and didn’t make a squeak of noise. Her head was covered in the most beautiful dark hair, and she had multiple rolls of chubbiness in her arms. She looked like a peaceful little angel that had come to make wrong things right in the world. I wept with joy.

Rosalyn helped me get into the shower before I crawled into my own clean bed and kept staring at my baby in complete shock that she was with us only four hours after I had gone to bed. Rafael was still peacefully sleeping. Eric and I soaked her in and I video called my family who were all shocked and filled with relief. I had opted not to tell anyone I was in labor because so many of my friends and family are international and I knew they would worry. Mama Zina told me the next day that she was laying awake praying for me until 2:00 am when God told her to be at peace. Rhema was born at 2:15. Eric brought a candle to my bedside and I just lay there and stared at my baby and couldn’t sleep. It was so peaceful and calm and Rafael came and crawled in bed beside me without noticing she had arrived. A few hours later she made a few squeaks and he sat up and said, “Did you hear that baby?” before laying down and sleeping again. When he woke up and saw her on the bed his whole face filled with sheer delight.

“She came when we were sleeping!”

“YOU may have been sleeping, little son.”

The sunshine streamed through the doorway at sunrise. Eric made me a fat oatmeal waffle I had been dreaming about for weeks, drenched in maple syrup and butter and fresh whipped cream and berries.

Joy truly did come in the morning.

And all I can say for days is “Thank you Jesus!”

Photo credits: Jenn Rutler/Rutler Photography