LOU IST DA
Nicole’s pregnancy was easy, passed every measure and test with flying colors, every feeling in her body told her all was good. She experienced none of the usual hurdles: no nausea, no insomnia, no complications, although she did start to snore like a chainsaw. She slept well, ate well, stayed active. She went to every prenatal checkup, did the ultrasounds, took her pregnancy supplements with yogic-like discipline, and practiced seed cycling in alignment with her moon phases. She got pregnancy acupuncture, stayed up with current research, rested, stretched, listened. She was the textbook example of a prepared, healthy mother-to-be, and Lou responded in suit. He was always in the right position, heartbeat always steady and strong. Doctors could tell he was a male extremely early, actually mistaking his member for a third leg. The entire pregnancy unfolded like a slow, quiet miracle.
Yet despite all this, because of her age, modern medicine had slapped a label on Nicole: “geriatric pregnancy.” Geriatric. Jesus Christ, she doesn’t wear diapers! She was 43, not 83. That word has no business being anywhere near a woman fit as an ox and more in tune with her body than most people will ever be. But in the clinical language of obstetrics, she was considered “high risk,” based not on her actual health, but on her birth date. Because that’s what the modern health system does, it reduces people to data points and checkboxes. It doesn’t ask how you feel, how you live, what you eat, or how strong your intuition is. It asks how old you are, what your BMI is, and whether your hormone levels fit inside its little charts.
I feel the blame for this isn’t so much as current status rather what’s silently eroding women’s reproductive health long before they ever think about having a baby. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals, like the phthalates found in perfumes and cosmetics, BPA in plastics, and PFAS in clothing, have all been shown to interfere with hormone production, ovulation, and fetal development. We're living in an age of synthetic hormones, overprescribed birth control, and environmental toxicity. All the stuff that quietly gets swept under the rug, dismissed as conspiracy or “inconclusive,” based on statistics pulled from flawed studies funded by the very industries themselves.
I feel much of the Western medical system treats pregnancy as a problem to be managed rather than a natural process to be supported and nurtured. And women bear the brunt of its cold calculations. Every time Nicole came back from a checkup, she’d carry with her a list of statistical warnings and technical suggestions. “Based on the data, this level is on the lower end of normal and there’s a slight risk of this or that, so we’ll just need to monitor it.”
Modern medicine has come far, not doubt, but at what point is too much information too much information, when does it stop helping and start getting tangled up? When does caution become anxiety? When does support become control? It felt absurd sometimes. Like, “Ma’am, just so you know, there’s a 0.03% chance that if you fart, you might also shit a little, so maybe locate a toilet before every toot.” I mean, come on. We’re drowning in data and yet somehow forgetting the most basic truth: that women have been giving birth since before the word “birth” existed.
The body is not a machine. It’s not predictable, clean or linear. It could give a shit about statistics, its here for two reasons: to serve us and to teach us. A finely tuned organism that gives us feedback disguised as symptoms we’d otherwise not notice. It’s mysterious, intuitive, and tuned to rhythms chose not to understand and discard as woo-woo. Science likes to pretend it’s got it all figured out, but in the end, it just wants something to hold onto because it fears what it does not know. We’re just animals trying to interpret fart, rather than laugh at it.
And then there’s that stupid due date, that arbitrary line in the sand that the medical world clings to, as if the cosmos follow calendars, the cosmos is the calendars! As if birth can be penciled in like a dentist appointment. A due date is a guess, a statistical average dressed up like prophecy. Predicting the exact moment a soul decides to enter the world is like trying to clog a toilet with piss. While others worried, keeping her phone busy with their insecurities “When was the due date?” “Is he here yet?”, Nicole remained steady, grounded and trusting. She knew what her body was doing. She had tuned herself to the same frequency Lou was kicking his feet to.
We had decided to give birth at the Luna Geburtshaus house, a midwife-led birthing center that offers a home-like environment for pregnancy, birth, and postpartum care. Housed in a restored old farmhouse, we thought its stone walls, ceilings yielding beautifully exposed wooden beams and softly lit birthing rooms would provide a calm space for Nicole to give birth with some experienced supervision. Unlike a hospital, Luna emphasizes minimal medical intervention, rather the midwives support women through labor with warm baths, movement and massage.
Lou decided it was time to begin his descent around 1:00 AM on February 25th. At first, the contractions were scattered, intermittent like a dull thunder storm, but by 3:30 they had settled into a steady rhythm, coming every two to three minutes with an undeniable insistence of nature in motion. After helping Nicole descend the five flights of stairs, we waited for our taxi in our run-down apartment’s tiny entrance. Nicole, focusing on her breathing as she sat on a cardboard box filled with flattened cardboard boxes.
Me, in my own head, thinking how finally the time has come, birth, the continuation of death. And yet there was a calmness that I wasn't expecting, placed me on the verge of uneasy. I was ready for the thunder, the lightening, the “oh shit its coming right now, we gotta delivery this bad boy ourselves” type of energy. I was bracing for nicole to scream and grab my hand with vice grip like intensity, yet here we were, in a damp cold cellar, surrounded by an ear ringing silence. We were together, yet alone in our own experience, completely unaware of what was to come.
Our minivan taxi glided silently through the dark, sleeping streets of Bern. The world felt paused, empty and on the verge of surreal as we made our way through the cold silence of an early winter morning. Nicole, hunched over in pain, still managing to crack jokes and exchange small chat with the driver. Me, still bracing for chaos.
We arrived at the Luna Geburtshaus and were welcomed by the soft presence of a woman who had dedicated her life to the sacred intimacy of birth at 1:30am. She silently led us down a quiet hallway to our private birthing room and gave us a few moments to arrive. Strangely, it had the energy of what i imagine death to look like. The way you approach the other side and some gentle soul is waiting for you, offering their shoulder as you begin to process that it’s over, that you did in fact die and that you can never go back. To rub your back while you weep with the understanding that all the burdens and agonies of your life actually had reason and purpose. And to finally hold you close, as the truth lands upon you, that it all made sense and everything you needed had been right in front of you the whole time.
The early hours flew by. There was a sense of magic in the air, the newness of it and the anticipation. Dawn crept in through the windows, casting a soft, muted light across the room’s gray stone walls. It had been easy to stay present thus far, Nicole was managing the contractions with grace, breathing through them with strength and focus, and I was filed with the thrill that at any moment, we might meet our son.
But as the hours wore on, slowly the energy began to shift.
The contractions kept coming, not stronger, not closer, just… relentless. Steady and unchanging, like the ticking of a clock. Occasionally, one would spike, a deep wave of pain that made her double over and vomit into a bucket. The rhythm of labor that once felt like forward momentum now felt more like a loop, like we were running in place but running ou of food. Like one of those dreams where you are just trying to get somewhere, but something always gets in the way, and you never arrive.
Morning gave way to afternoon, and then to evening. We tried everything: soaking in the warm tub, swaying on the birthing ball, shifting positions, pressing into counter-pressure, groaning, humming, breathing. And still, the contractions kept coming, offering her no more than five minutes of rest between each one. Nicole hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before. She couldn’t keep down even a sip of broth. She hadn’t slept. Her strength was beginning to wane — visibly, palpably.
By the time the third wave of midwives rotated in, night had fallen again. The hours blurred, neither of us ate breakfast or lunch. Time bent, it was now dinner time. Nicole was trapped in a tortuous trance, she had begun releasing deeply primal, powerful, yet haunting moans with her contractions. Deepening into something with a nightmarish energy that the stone walls swallowed and echoed back. It began to feel like a dungeon, like we were back in medieval times, undergoing a slow death.
Her eyes would meet mine occasionally and there was something in them that shook me. Not fear, not panic… but something quieter. A fading. Her skin had gone pale, goosebumps rising across her arms, her hair damp from sweat, now cold and sticking to her forehead. She looked like she was dying, her soul slipping away with each contraction, like a genie reentering its bottle. And there was nothing I could do.
I rubbed her back. Held her hand. I curled my body around hers, becoming the big spoon, holding her with the tenderness of someone trying to keep her from contracting into oblivion. My arms wrapped gently over her belly, cradling the life that had not yet arrived, and my chest pressed against her back like a steady wall. Each time a contraction took hold, I could feel it ripple through her and into me, a tight, trembling wave that seized her from the inside out and transferred through her spine and into my ribs. Her body would stiffen against mine, her muscles tightening like cords drawn too tight, the involuntary bracing of her breath, the low sound of her moaning into the dim light and I would hold her just a little firmer, visualizing her pain moving through me.
The hours became a tunnel, no longer tethered to day or night.
And still, Lou was not yet here.
After we entered the wee hours of the next day, Nicole knew something wasn’t right, not just with the birth, but the entire energy of the space surrounding us. After 24 hours of labor, despite the sweat, vomit and understanding we had developed with our midwives, who had took care of us so wonderfully for the last 12 hours, the torch was passed and in came two new faces: one a certified midwife, the other still in training. No matter what they could do, they could simply never be the midwifes we had been with for the last 12 hours.
Nicole was in the bath again when the switch happened, nearly shivering because the water was now lukewarm. She looked like a ghostly version of herself when she’d entered that tub the first time. And then the door opened, and in came these two strangers offering encouragements that fell into the room like plastic confetti. Pre-packed and stale like a gas station cheeseburger that’s been under the hot lamp for 7 hours. They tried to step in gently, but it was clear by their words and actions they had never been here before.
One of them, in an attempt to lighten the energy, suggested putting on a playlist, some premade collection of “healing” and “spiritual”, two-minute tracks that sounded like they belonged in a yoga class in a strip mall. I felt nauseous how wrong the moment felt and for the first time i was genuinely scared. All of those pre birth thoughts stemming from birthing horror stories where either the baby or the mother, or even worse, both of them die during birth. It sent shivers along my arms and nearly sent me into a panic. It felt like we were fatigued from treading river water all day, now it was night and now we could hear a distant rumble in the distance, like we were approaching a waterfall . It felt like we were knocking on deaths door and he was just about the open the door.
The midwives left us with that horrid playlist to our own devices and we got nicole out of the bath and we cuddle on the bed, she was cold to the touch, shivering. she looked at me with exhausted eyes, and I looked back. No words were exchanged. We both knew, the moment was not right, not in sync, not in harmony. She asked to be transferred to the hospital and once again found ourselves driving through the cold dark Bern streets to Inselspital, the large university hospital.
The contrast was jarring. Everything from that point had been organic and natural. The soft stone and wood of the birthing house gave way to bright fluorescent lights, masked nurses in blue scrubs, sterile white walls, and an unmistakable sense of sterility. Relief washed over me, i knew that we were now in the right place at the right time. I felt safe and protected. Nicole was wheeled into a spacious labor and delivery room surrounded by large, humming medical devices, their blinking lights rhythmic and steady, reassuring in a cold, clinical way. She signed a few papers, met the doctor on site, and then was prepped for the epidural. I watched her finally exhale, her body visibly relax for the first time in more than a full day. Her eyes softened and her lips curled into a tired smile. I smiled back, filled with a reassurance knowing that everything was once again on track. The energy shifted completely, like someone had flipped a switch. We synchronized immediately with our new midwife, who mysteriously felt like an old friend we hadn't seen in a long time.
Things got blurry for me here, i was too exhausted to keep my eyes open and so the nurse had brought a cot in for me to lay next to nicole. In a haze, I drifted in and out of sleep, catching fragments of nurses coming and going, the beeping of Nicole’s heart rate, until i had caught up on some rest, just in time to say goodbye to our midwife as her shift ended and say hello to the two new midwives who took her place. When those two arrived, everything shifted. It felt like when a famous closer trotted onto the infield, taking their place on the mound or the band was done making their final adjustment and threw a famous chord into the audience, unmistakably from a hit song and that the show was about to start. I watched as Nicole came back to life, rising from the dead. She sat up straighter, that look of determination returned to her eyes. It raised me from the cot, it was the moment i had anticipating birth would look like, cinematic. I positioned myself next to nicole, held her hand while her legs werre propped up to give birth just like you see in the movies. Time went blurry again, when the contractions came, and with the help of the epidural, Nicole was able to give each push everything she had left, meeting them head on, squeezing my hadn just as i imagined whe would. gradually more nurses arrived, until i noticed there must have been at least 7 of them in there.
Eventually the doctor arrived , a confident woman i instantly trusted. she gave us the low down, (in german) and although i didn’t understand, i understood the tone, there was still a chance, but time was running out. Apparently, Lou had turned sometime since our last ultrasound. The back of his head was now pressed against Nicole’s pelvis, his position making it nearly impossible for him to descend. To make things more urgent, there wasn’t much amniotic fluid left. The window to avoid an emergency C-section was narrowing fast. The doctor assumed her quarterback-like position in front of nicoles whoo-who, and taking her fingers and prying open nicoles vagina with a vengeance. She encouraged me to look and pointed out what was undeniably Lou’s head, a soft and full of brown hair. He was so close. yet he wouldn’t budge. His head remained stuck, pressing against bone, unable to turn. Nicole pushed with everything she had, but it became clear: the odds were against us, and our time was up.
And then everything changed. The air thickened. It was time. Nicole was taken from me, and I was led to a small room to suit up, paper gown, shoe covers, hairnet, mask, gloves. I sat alone on a plastic chair waiting, watching the nurses move in and out of the operating room through large sliding doors, opening and closing each time they went through as they finished preparing the space.
Finally, I was ushered in. Nicole lay on the table, draped from the chest down by a large curtain. I sat beside her and as gently as i could, rubbed the back of my fingers along her forehead and then kissed her forehead. Her eyes were tired, yet strong, way stronger than mine, i felt ready to break down crying. Thirty-foud hours of watching, unable to help other than remain present and strong for her had wore me down. My nerves were shot.
She lay there, moments before getting her stomach sliced open ten centimeters and i sat there fighting back tears and sickening “what-if-she-doesn’t-make-it” thoughts.
Then the doctor asked, “Are you ready?” And within moments, from behind that curtain, came a silence, a charged pause. I peeked over and watched a little blue Lou be lifted up like simba in the lion king. Silent, barley moving, umbilical cord still attached, hanging. I looked down at nicole, my eyes stinging with tears and kissed her. The doctor immediately brought hm over and placed him in my arms, a tiny 3.4kg body, hot to the touch against my forearms, completely helpless, honest and true. Together we looked at him, i was crying so hard my arms were shaking, hot tears rolling down my face, lips pressed tight to keep from sobbing.
The nurses told me to take him to a little operating table, wiping away my tears with little white kleenexes as i placed him down as gently as i could. His eyes still yet to open, his body gently wiggling like a human worm. They performed a quick series of tests, checking his breathing, heart rate, reflexes, muscle tone. Apgar scores. Then they told me to pick him up again and follow them into another room I laid him down once more, where hey measured and weighed him, listened to his lungs, and gently cleaned him. His head tilted to the left, directly facing me. I looked at his eye lids, watched as he opened his eyes and we saw one another for the first time. A moment I will never forget. That moment cracked me open. From a deep part of me, somewhere i had never been, never knew existed, poured a love that put fear in my heart. In that moment, both heaven and hell flowed through me.