A Homebirth with the Terminator

By Joanne Rendell
Web Exclusive - January 8, 2007

Homebirth and Terminator movies are an unlikely double feature. Women don’t usually give birth to the strains of gun fire, screeching wheels, and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “I’ll be back.” It’s an odd, perhaps ridiculous, scenario. Nevertheless, it’s what I did.

So how, exactly, did a blockbuster action flick factor into my son’s birth? I suppose it started with the woman warrior. If I’d never seen that drawing his arrival would probably have been a more run-of-the-mill affair. I can’t remember exactly where I first spied it—the pen and ink picture of the woman brandishing an ornate shield, with a long sword by her side—but I do remember I was four months pregnant and still undecided about where I was going to give birth. The hospital and home both had their own pros and cons in my book, and neither had emerged as the obvious or right choice yet.

The drawing of the warrior woman captured my attention because of something I had heard at a birthing class, just a couple of days prior. The class’s instructor, a slightly imposing woman who claimed she “loved” giving birth, had encouraged us to banish thoughts of birthing women in passive, sickly, lying-down kinds of roles. To give birth, she explained, was to struggle long and hard, and we’d need to call up all kinds of strength, to endure, to sweat, to scream, to battle onward towards victory. She repeatedly told the room of expectant mothers that we were going to be “fighters…warriors!"

At the time, I didn’t buy it. I smirked at my neighbor and decided the instructor, with her “pain-embracing,” exercises, was a whack-job. However, when I encountered the drawing of the woman warrior a few days later, a link was forged. Something about her beautiful, stoic, strong, determined, femininity reminded me of a group of women dear to my heart: action movie heroines.

Suddenly, the idea of being a warrior in birth became appealing. It resonated. I embraced the idea that I could be Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. I could be Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s Michelle Yeoh. Or Geena Davis in A Long Kiss Goodnight. Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider. Or Demi Moore in G.I. Jane (bad movie, I admit, but you can’t help admiring Demi for those one-armed press-ups).

As I connected the dots (the powerful drawing, the birth class instructor’s fervent message, and my abiding affinity for Uma and the other ladies), my decision of where to birth emerged, strong and clear. Forget the hospital, with its creepy instruments, endless monitoring, and veiled promise of sterile, medicated birth. If my partner could deal with the mess, I would confront the intensity, and together we would welcome the mystery. “Bring it on!” I shouted out loud, “I’m going to give birth, warrior-style, at home.”

To access and develop my warrior self, I decided I needed help. All the homebirth literature I read prescribed distraction and encouragement as the two “musts” of labor. Homebirth veterans talked of baking cakes and ironing. It was written that one woman even painted an entire staircase between contractions. For encouragement, these women looked to loving partners, doulas, or to other women who had been through the same experience.

Of course, I too would need a team of cheerleaders: the midwife, a doula, and my partner. But, I also decided that the best way to be both distracted from the slings and arrows of labor and encouraged in my warrior ways was to watch action movie heroines doing their kickass stuff.

But who would I chose? Uma, Michelle Yeoh, Angelina? Who was to be my companion, my sister warrior? I racked my brain. None of them seemed quite right. They all seemed too beautiful, too lithe, too nimble. Even when bloodied and gashed, they were somehow too, well, too perfect for this occasion.

Then it struck me: Terminator’s Linda Hamilton…a.k.a. Sarah Connor, her character in the film. She’s the one, I thought. Okay, in the first Terminator movie she’s a bit fluffy with that nasty 80’s hairdo and Dynasty-inspired blouses. She definitely has an edge though. Not everyone can survive the Terminator’s ruthless pursuit and then finally crush him in a giant, super-industrial metal press. By Terminator 2, whoa, she’s buff, she’s hard, she’s mad, and she’s intense. If you’ve seen the movie, you must remember her chin-ups: biceps bulging, face steely, jaw set. She’s a woman you don’t want to mess with.

Why her though? In short, because she’s a mother. A mother who is charged with summoning infinite inner resources, laying her own life on the line, sacrificing everything to protect her son and his vital role in the future of the world. In Terminator 2, she is not only mother and protector, but also fearless, intrepid leader, as she trains son John for his rebellious future—expending enormous effort and limitless will to stop the pesky forthcoming nuclear holocaust. This is one, resilient, gritty, unstoppable, mama—just the inspiration, I thought, for my warrior homebirthing self.