Birthing From Within: Labyrinths

The Birthing from Within logo is a labyrinth, so you know they are an important! I use labyrinths throughout my Birthing From Within series to talk about everything from stages of labor to comfort and coping techniques to postpartum. To me, labyrinths offer the perfect framework for thinking about any hard time in life. If you are new to Birthing From Within, start here.

Labyrinths offer a map of labor unlike any of the others that you might see. For example, a common "map" is to assess progress in labor based on how many centimeters someone is dilated. While that does tell us a small piece of information, it doesn't tell us how much longer labor will be, whether or not you and your baby are safe, or how you will be able to cope with the remainder of labor. The beauty of the labyrinth is that it offers a way of thinking about labor that isn't attached to a timeline, expectations, or averages.

For example, I was at a labor for someone who shouted, "I can't do this for 8 more hours!!" After talking, I realized she was thinking of the average amount of time someone spends in active labor: 1-8 hours. Luckily, I was joined by one of my favorite midwives who said, without missing a beat, "One hour and eight hours are two very different amounts of time." And that is a big struggle in labor! We have NO IDEA how much more time it will take. Any linear map is not going to fully serve you in labor because labor is not linear.

Labyrinths are not mazes. They don't try to trick you or trap you. There is one path in and one path out. They have been around for thousands of years (at least). They are religious symbols. They were used prehistorically to trap spirits and to define ritual dance paths. They offer a chance to breath and meditate. You can find them all over the world, and there are more than 100 in just Illinois alone! In class we take a deep dive into labyrinths, their history, and how to create your own.

Many people who have taken Birthing From Within with me come back after their birth to say that the labyrinth was the most helpful tool as they navigated the twists and turns of labor and birth. For that reason, it remains an important part of class.

Labyrinths work exceptionally well as maps for birth because when you meet your baby, you have arrived at the center. You have completed your heroic journey and triumphantly hold your baby in your arms. Now, you will need to turn around and get back out. A birth class is not complete without time spent preparing for postpartum. The transition to parenthood is not complete the moment your child is born. Postpartum can also be a winding path of finding a new identity, changing relationships, and many new challenges. The labyrinth acknowledges this transition as multifaceted and leaves room for both the journey inward towards your child and outward as a parent.

Personal Experience with the Labyrinth

Last year, I traveled with my partner. Initially, we planned to spend 3 month backpacking through Europe. Then, my partner got a remote job and we realized that if we left Europe and spent time in some more budget-friendly places we could keep traveling, so we did. Often people assume we were on vacation - and don't get me wrong, we were very privileged to take the time and we know it. That said, longterm travel is not vacation. We slept in dorms with strangers who were unpredictable (one violently shook my partner awake for snoring), scavenged in markets for healthy cheap meals, navigated immigration and visas... and I had many hot, sweaty breakdowns. It was not ever just amazing or just hard: it was a complex, multi-month intense experience with high highs and low lows.

When I returned from that trip in February, I thought that those 9 months were getting through a labyrinth to the center. That as soon as I hit US soil, I would turn around and start making my way out of the labyrinth. I liked that we had traveled for the time it takes to gestate a human, and I was excited to see what my "postpartum" time would be like. Instead, I was in the goo. The muck. The dark, grimy tunnel that is the very center of the time in the labyrinth. I was crawling on my knees and struggling: struggling to get my business back up and running, to find an apartment, to feel at home in a country that I often feel critical of.

The thing about labyrinths is that they adapt to your experience. Sometimes you don't know exactly where you are in it until you are out of it. For some, the center of the labyrinth is meeting their baby. For others, its surviving postpartum preeclampsia. Still others, it is going home from the hospital or getting pregnant after years of trying or witnessing someone they love give birth powerfully.

Now I know that the very center of my travel labyrinth was actually finding home. I'm still someone in the middle. I've got an apartment for the first time in 4 years and the dust is very slowly beginning to settle. I'm slowly unpacking clothes I haven't seen since before I realized that I'm nonbinary and trying to figure out what still fits. I suspect that now that I've found a home, it will take some months to crawl back out of the labyrinth.

I hope that sometime in the future, I'll gather my chosen family around my table, feed them a meal I cooked, and experience a moment of knowing that I've made it back out of this labyrinth. Just as I hope all my class participants hold their child in their arms, maybe at their first birthday party or maybe later, and realize that they have made it out of their labyrinth.

If you would like to explore labyrinths and how they might help you through labor (and life), come to one of my Birthing From Within classes!