Birth

Hmmm. Birth. What does this bring to your mind? What kind of birth? What kind of images? What kind of stories?

I want to rewrite birth. I have given it, 5 times, in several different ways, and each time it changed me – even in the space of the 2 minutes between the cesarean birth of my twins, my soul was permanently shifted. Birth is…spiritual. Dark. Mysterious. Powerful. And it changes we who give it.

My first birth was blissful, innocent, otherworldly. Contractions built over weeks, culminating in absolute delight that real labor has actually commenced, my body fluidly laboring in the trust I had in its power. 18 hours of ebbs and flow. Gregorian chant, walk, pause, walk, dance, rest, rinse, repeat. Toward the end I was suspended in bliss, utterly connected to the Divine as He turned me into a river that would allow my baby to pass through. Jason Mraz’s music loosened me and energized me in the final corridor, when fatigue and uncertainty began to over take my exhausted body with uncontrollable shaking. 

Transition. Always the hardest part  of everything in life, when nothing holds still and the world seems to be coming apart at the seams, and we must rely only on the constant of our own unshakable spirit. The room blurred, time vanished and the serene face of my midwife paired with my husband’s crushed hand became my anchor through the pain of skull against tailbone, pushed together by the force of the strongest human muscle.

And then we were born. As she came into the light, the heavy veil lifted from my eyes and the euphoric cry, “My baby!” escaped me. I crossed into a starry eyed period of oceanic love so strong it felt reminiscent of romantic love, in a very grounded way. 

Birth changes us, deep in our psyche. The complex and beautiful hormonal cocktail of birth fundamentally shifts our brains into an altered state that peaks during birth and postpartum, and where they reside to some degree until weaning (this was at least, my experience). We literally lose ourselves and become found as mothers. 

And every birth changes us. We exist in time, us humans, and no matter how many times one does something it is a unique experience, but this is amplified in an enormous way in birth. Each birth strengthens us, sometimes by itself, sometimes by breaking us down further than we’ve ever been broken before so we can be remade from new, stronger, more real fabric. God Himself is the gold that fuses us back into one piece, scarred and stronger than ever.

Although rites of passage aren’t very present in my culture, birth, with its profound physical, spiritual and psychological imprint, is an undeniable rite of passage. As may be obvious at this point, I am a fan of natural birth. I love finding out just how powerful and badass I am again and again. No one event improved my body image or self respect quite like that birth above. There is no other experience that makes me feel as powerful, as capable, as wild, as embodied, as fierce and surrendered and independent, as birth. This is femininity; this is one very undeniable embodiment of feminine power. 

And THAT is how I want to see birth presented to the young women of our world. As an honor, a joy, a gloriously powerful gateway into motherhood, into a deeper and fuller womanhood. An opportunity to learn to trust themselves, to dig deeper than ever before and through a fierce surrender, to be the thin veil between heaven and earth as an utterly unrepeatable human being crosses the divide.