I envision a world where giving birth to our children is something we consider a sacred, natural emergence; an event that belongs to mothers, their babies and their families. An event that is seen as matter-of-fact, because it is simply what women’s bodies were created to do.
Birth without noise, interference, fear, or the unnecessary involvement of strangers, institutions or industries. Birth that is not sterile, surveilled, managed, disconnected, interfered with and sabotaged.
There is a wave of women and families who have started asking questions and considering options that don’t fall into the mainstream approach to birth. Exponential healing is occurring with each child who is born in a way that centres the mother-baby dyad. Each birth that is allowed to unfold physiologically reduces birth-related trauma, disconnection and complications.
There is a beautiful saying among homebirth communities: Peace on earth starts with birth; and I wholeheartedly agree. Our children’s births, as well as our own experience of giving birth, shape who we become in a massive way. It ripples out into our communities and the collective field of souls.
Like many women, I grew up hearing rather scary accounts of birth. I was never exposed to birth as something beautiful, natural or revered. When it was my turn to start a family, I only knew that if I couldn’t find an alternative to being at the mercy of medical staff in a clinical, fear-based setting, I didn’t want to do it.
Even though I didn’t fully understand why, it felt inappropriate and wrong in every fibre of my being as a woman.
I am so grateful that I went on a journey to find alternatives and to the people who could support me in birthing on my terms.
What that looked like for me was birthing in the comfort and safety of my own bedroom, attended by midwives for my first two births. I say safety, because to me that is what a safe birthing place is. And, as I subsequently learned in my training as a birth educator, that is because the blueprint for physiological birth requires the mother to firstly FEEL SAFE.
Certainly, there are women for whom a hospital setting and medical supervision denote safety, and that is an interesting topic in itself. But for birth to unfold as it would, the ideal setting is actually the same as the setting in which the baby was most likely to have been conceived…
Yes, giving birth requires the same things that making love does. Privacy, low light, warmth, comfort and trust allow the exquisite dance of birth hormones to cause the perfect unfolding of birth. Unique and varied from birth to birth.
In allowing myself to face all the feelings and sensations of surrendering to the process, I received the initiation into motherhood that birth is designed to be. It really is a rite of passage – one that I would not have allowed to be hijacked from me, because it activates us for motherhood. It is the transition into a new reality, in every area of life and self.
While I was pregnant with my third child, I did some deep soul searching – knowing what I know, trusting what I do, what do I truly NEED to carry, birth and raise this child?
I had never considered employing a gyneacologist/obstetrician for my pregnancy care. They are specialists and can offer care that is appropriate when there are real problems.
This time, I opted to have a few visits with my midwife-friend and, a few months before the birth, I realised that I really just wanted to do this by myself. I knew I had the inner resources and I understood the process…
Most of all, I knew this was my last child and I wanted to simply sink into the communion with existence, becoming one with the divine, opening as the portal to this precious new life. Without needing anyone, being aware of anyone, or giving up my power to anyone to save or protect me.
So that is what I did.
My midwife-friend was on standby, but when I started feeling contractions as my partner and I went to bed on a dark winter’s night, I was calm and certain that I simply wanted to enter fully into the deep dark opening of my body, psyche and spirit.
I laboured in bliss through the night and, in the transition between my body opening and my body starting to expel my baby, I entered a moment of fear. I moved about, stood in the shower with hot water on my lower back, returned to my hands and knees by the side of our bed to my partner’s warm touch. After an eternal moment, I started feeling that tremendous urge to push. Suddenly our baby was crowning, and the next moment his head was outside my body. He rotated that semi-circle that babies instinctively know, to line up their shoulders to the vaginal opening and shot out of my body into the hands of his father.
I took my child into my arms and placed him on my belly. He took a breath and started crying with me kissing him and stroking him and cooing gently to him. He became quiet and started raising his eyes to my face, our eyes meeting for the first time.
He then started making his own way to my breasts where he started suckling. After some time, his placenta fully detached from the inside of my womb and it, too, was expelled. We placed it in a container at my side as I was laying back in awe and relief.
Eventually we severed the umbilical cord and I lay into a warm bath. All the while, my new baby on my chest, relaxing my trembling body. Afterwards, we all three tucked into bed with tea and food to rest and marvel at our child, before his brothers woke up and came to meet him.
The day after his birth, my midwife came to massage me, bind my belly and feed me delicious, warm, postpartum spiced rice. I did not leave home for 40 days, except to sit in the garden with my baby on me.
I offer up my story as inspiration and as an antidote to the over-complication and distortion of birth – and so many other aspects of life where we already have everything that we need after all, exactly as it is. My freebirth may seem like a radical departure from the norm, but it is not radical when we consider the design of our species.
My choices are not appropriate for anyone else, but we all have the ability to ask questions, access information, consider our options, do preparations and make choices that are in alignment with ourselves as mothers.
I will always be profoundly grateful for the grace that led me to experience the simplicity and freedom of honing in only on what was ESSENTIAL to me to bring my children into the world.
And that is what it feels like… freedom. So many things I don’t have to outsource – no experts needed when I have my intuition, no gadgets and goodies to rely on and nothing to take my attention away from what is right in front of me… a little baby who needs only to be close to me to be safe, nourished, regulated, nurtured and healthy.
The information is readily available. Science backs up everything that mothers instinctively know.
