Lessons Jillian Taught: My Experiences with Birth

 By Debbie Hull

I thought she was out of her mind. My sweet midwife friend, Pat Jones, approached me about a new play by Karen Brody, Birth. She wished to produce the play and she wanted ME to read for a part. The only theater audition experience I have was back when I was in my 20's and, for the record, that was some while ago. I broke out in nervous hives all over my neck and arms and wore a long-sleeved shirt to the audition in the bone-melting heat of a Houston, Texas August. This did not auger well for my participation in a play about birth, even if birth is a subject about which I am passionate. I showed up, asked her which part I should read and yada yada, I have had the privilege of playing Jillian De Moya in each of Houston's five productions of Birth.

 I have never seen the play myself. I have only been a member of the cast and I believe that those experiences, cast member versus audience member, must be very different. It has been incredible for me to see and hear the reactions of audience members to the show. After each of the shows we do, we have a talkback panel, a time when the cast and birth professionals from the community answer audience questions and discuss possibilities for improving birth services in our community. After the very first show we did, back in 2006, we had a woman stand up and tell us in tears that she "got it." Her daughter was planning a homebirth and she just could not understand why. Seeing the play opened up her mind and heart to understanding and supporting her daughter's birth plans. Another woman who had experienced a cesarean section did not make it past the opening lines of the play before her tears started to flow. The play provided a forum for her feelings, for their airing and validation and healing. I have seen, from my position on stage, pregnant women gently rub their baby bumps, as if to protect their babies from the experiences their mothers are witnessing. An elderly father attended a performance with his pregnant daughter a while back. He spoke eloquently about the power of the message of the play, of how important was the information. A local physician attended a performance, he was invited to be on the talkback panel afterwards, and was pleased with the honesty of the stories about birth in our country.

 As powerful as the message of the play has been for such varied members of the audience, its impact on our cast has been, for many of us, life-changing. We had a pregnant woman in our group one year. She joined our cast having already planned to birth her baby at a local hospital, not knowing that the hospital has one of the highest cesarean section rates in town. Halfway through our rehearsal time, she had changed her mind and switched to a homebirth with a midwife. One young woman in our cast found her voice and began to take charge of her own health care, asking questions, seeking answers and insisting that her physicians pay attention to her when a health crisis arose in her life. Another woman who had experienced a cesarean section found a release for some of her grief when she portrayed Lisa, a woman angry and sad about her own cesarean section. Another cast member had a lovely VBAC. A cast member in a more recent production, new to our group, discovered that there were still some feelings left to be processed as she revisited her birth experiences while working on the play.

For me, personally, getting to travel with Jillian through her evolution from an out-of-control, over-the-top, just-kill-me-if-you're-not-going-to-give-me-the-epidural birth to the empowering epidural to a homebirth has been such an unexpected blessing. My children are older. I have processed and re-processed my own birth experiences and, frankly, I thought I was past it. Playing Jillian has given me the opportunity to open up to even more soothing and healing of these old wounds. Our cast is most loving and gentle and when they love on Jillian, the love seeps through to me and my soul is bathed in that love. And women, even women who USED to be in labor, need that.

I teach in my childbirth classes that pretending to be in labor, laboring too soon, is exhausting. Many parents, especially first timers, make the mistake of rushing to the hospital after one contraction, way too early and end up being subjected to interventions they heartily wished they’d avoided. Many moms-to-be feel fearful that they will somehow miss cues and not know they are in labor. I urge mothers-to-be to follow the advice of author Martha Sears, RN and author, and pretend that this is not it, until you just can’t pretend any more. I teach them not to work at labor, not to “do labor”, until their body requires it of them. I encourage them to trust the truth that labor will declare itself. But it wasn’t until I got to act out labor, to assume the posture and breathing patterns and focus of a laboring woman, it wasn’t until then that I came to TRULY understand how very much energy we waste when we “do labor” too soon. Trying to be in labor is exhausting.

There is power in the telling of a story. Jillian, and the other women portrayed in the play, had the courage and generosity and wisdom to share their birth stories no holds-barred, the bald truth, the good, the bad and the ugly. Not all of them got the care they and their babies deserved. Not all of us in the cast and not all of us in the audience were given the kind of care we deserve, either. But in telling these stories and in hearing them, there can be healing and nurturing and a way made for a better next time. Playing Jillian taught me that.