Gosh, where do I start. This little soul has and continues to usher in so much growth and transformation for me. 2021 has been the biggest year of my life. I always wanted lots of kids, I felt like I might be satisfied with 4 at a minimum but after each baby my (now ex) husband said ‘no more’. After my wonderful free birth with Summer he said he would definitely not have another baby with me if I chose to free birth again. I don’t even recall how I got an agreement to conceive my 4th baby but I did. Probably because I talked about it so much. Probably because every day, for much of the day, I was thinking about becoming pregnant again. It’s an undeniably powerful force that longing for a baby. Becoming pregnant again was on my mind constantly.
At first I wanted to try in September 2020 but I had quite a few births to attend over the Christmas period so I decided to wait to avoid being tired and sick during that time. I was very glad about that decision, it was a full on time with 7 women due over the course of 6 weeks. I got the timing wrong in December and January so it was February that this little person decided to join us. I intended on a completely wild pregnancy and free birth this time and thought I’d kick it off by not doing a pregnancy test and continuing to chart my cycle to confirm my pregnancy. As if I could wait! And seeing those two lines on a pregnancy test is such a thrill for me so that’s what I did. I was so excited to be pregnant again. This was going to be my ultimate pregnancy, birth and postpartum. I was going to have a relaxed and chilled pregnancy with as few commitments as possible already knowing that I was going to Freebirth. I was going to birth at home again like a boss and have the most luxurious and low key fourth trimester. I thought, 4th time, I’ve got this figured, sorted, nailed. For some time I had been experiencing a level of contentment about life. Things were fine and for all intents and purposes I was living the dream. But there was always a deep and turbulent presence keeping me unsteady. What was it? You’ve got to be careful when you get to that point of relative contentment and gratitude. That’s when God takes a look at you and says, ‘You know what? You’re coasting now. I reckon you’re ready for the next level’. And that’s exactly what happened. And I knew it was coming. I had no idea what form it would come in but I knew there was an uplevelling on the cards. I worried it would be a challenging birth or a complication with my baby. I had no idea what was in store for me but I knew there was something. I just had to trust. I figured I was able to trust and surrender for my last Freebirth so whatever was coming shouldn’t rock me too much. Little did I know I was about to enter into the most challenging period of my life to date. I was leading a 6 week Mother Rising Immersion, a series of women’s circles which was an amazing experience that I can’t wait to offer again. In the first week, one of the women joked that she had just come to find a girlfriend. We discussed how much easier life would be if we each had a wife. Actually, it’s something I’d thought about a lot, what life would be like with a wife. I’d had a previous pattern of miscarriage before successful pregnancy so I thought this pregnancy might follow the pattern and be a loss but week after week this new little person hung in there. At week 6, a week earlier than the first 3, the sickness started. Oh what a drag that time is. Constant nausea, extreme food aversions, occasional vomiting. I always look back and think, ‘oh it’s not that bad’, but it really is. At about 5 or 6 weeks, I asked two of my close friends if they would support me during my birth. I had no idea how this would develop into the most challenging yet incredible journey of my life. My husband had already said he would not support me to birth which was fine with me on the surface but I had an element of deep sadness around that. That my partner did not want to support me through such an epic moment in time. The next few weeks went by with my confidence in my pregnancy constantly wavering and with my level of sickness easily surpassing my previous experiences. I feel this is such a difficult time in pregnancy. I don’t know if the pregnancy will stay, I feel disgusting and the promise of a little baby to love at the other end just feels so abstract and distant. Like the light at the end of the tunnel is just a little too far away. And I have the growing realisation that I have to give birth at some point. Now, as a birth keeper who espouses the virtues of the incredibly transformative and life affirming adventure of birth and someone who wants to have lots of kids you’d think I would love giving birth. Well, here’s a secret. I don’t. From the minute I become pregnant again each time, I kind of dread the fact that I have to do it again. Yes, It has become quicker and easier each time and yes they’ve all been relatively straightforward and ‘normal’ but it is still SO HARD. Don’t get me wrong, the moment that little baby slides out and I see them for the first time and meet my newest love is utterly incredible. But each time I’ve given birth I’ve sworn I’ll never do it again. And here I am, with 4 kids. My relationship with my two friends was developing and we were spending more time together. With 9 kids between us it was always fairly noisy and full on. Courtenay and I spent a few long days together getting to know each other on a deeper level. Then I started feeling something more but I didn’t know what it was. I wanted to spend time with her and missed her when we weren’t together. Was it possible that my friend was my soul mate? Is that even a thing? I was googling so many random things, it’s quite hilarious when I think about it now. It didn’t click that maybe this thing I was feeling was love. And then, towards the end of my first trimester I figured out what it was. It was indeed love. And the feeling was mutual. At that moment, both of our lives changed forever and I was completely naive to the intensity of what lay ahead. Thinking back it was a time of such hope and joy yet fear and dread. I’ll write the story of the first months of that journey another time but let’s just say it was the most hopeful and simultaneously traumatic time of my life. Months of existing in a vortex of internal chaos lay ahead. Is uncertain love not the most soul crushing experience? It feels like living on the edge of a precipice where a single word could send me plummeting into eternal darkness. While it’s not an actual loss, not a death, not even a near death experience, the possibility of love rejection feels nothing short of impending death. My nausea and food aversion got even worse. By about 11 weeks there was nothing I could comfortably eat. I felt like my body was shutting down. My vision got worse, I was tingling all over and had severe diarrhoea for about 2 weeks. I lost 10kg over those two weeks and felt sure that the symptoms I was having in combination with the stress and turmoil churning my inner world would deter this little soul from staying. But they stayed. Through so much stress and turmoil, they stayed. A couple of weeks later, I told my husband I was gay, had fallen in love with a woman and was separating from him. It felt like the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say, lying there in the dark, with my heart beating out of chest with fear and nerves. I’ve never felt so much guilt, inner turbulence or uncertainty in my life. If I had known how much pain was ahead I don’t know what I would have done. Sometimes ignorance is the better option. Seeing the world through rose coloured glasses and following my heart is what I did. Looking back now that I’m on the other side, I wouldn’t change the new direction I took. There are parts I would do differently if I had my time again but I’m so happy to have arrived where I am now. I’m on the other side. It felt like this time would never come. Such a poignant reminder that if all else fails just sit tight and wait for time to pass. During this time I leaned heavily into trust. It was the only thing that kept me afloat, knowing that it was all out of my hands and that I was being divinely guided. That everything was unfolding the way it was meant to. That whatever happened, time would heal. My mantra was, ‘trust, courage, surrender’. I was holding on. It felt like a wild storm and I was holding on with the tips of my fingers. Just. Everyday I felt so much guilt about my distraction from my pregnancy. I was so preoccupied with my changing and seemingly out of control life and so filled with uncertainty that it was hard to focus on my baby, let alone bond with her. That still upsets me but I have to trust that our journey together was perfectly orchestrated. We were meant to have those experiences together, Phoenix and I. When I look back on the year I can’t believe I made it through. I shake my head in wonderment at where I am now. Life has certainly uplevelled, in so many ways. It almost makes me laugh to think that I thought I knew myself quite well before. I’ve learned so much about myself and that journey is ongoing. The more I learn, the more I realise I don’t know. Fast forward to October, 37 weeks pregnant, Courtenay’s parents moved into their granny flat so we could move into their house. At 37 weeks pregnant I moved out of my home that I owned for 9 years. At 37 weeks pregnant I stopped living with my husband. At 37 weeks pregnant my kids and I moved in with my new partner and her children. At 37 weeks pregnant I started coparenting my children and supporting them through this change all while preparing for my Freebirth. It was f****** epic. I don’t even recommend going to the supermarket at 37 weeks pregnant and there I was making several massive life changes all at once. I cried for days. My kids were a mess. I was a mess. I felt like my life was a mess. That feeling is the most unsettling and awful feeling possible at that point in pregnancy. Hands down. But all the while, I was experiencing a new kind of love that I had never felt before and felt so supported. Such extreme polarity in feelings mixed with end of pregnancy hormones. No wonder I shed so many tears. And then things started to settle just a little and I felt a glimmer of readiness to meet this new little person. I rested as much as I could as I waited for labour to start. I had many strong labour sensations over the days before my birth and several times went to bed wondering if that was going to be the night. Then on Monday the 8th of November I was definitely feeling things. I went to bed that night thinking that I could have a baby in the morning but then woke up some hours later with no labour. When I got up on Tuesday morning I figured that tonight would be the night. I messaged my chiropractor and booked a home visit for that day. I spent some time resting in bed that day too as I knew I wouldn’t be going to sleep that night. I knew my time was coming. Courtenay said she knew something was happening too because I was different that day. I made sure to eat well and stay hydrated during the day and as the afternoon turned into evening, my labour was definitely in its early stages. It was so lovely to be able to share this lead up time with Courtenay as she was as excited and confident and ready as I was. The evening came and by the time we were putting the kids to sleep at about 8pm things were getting stronger. I was on hands and knees in the bed waiting and waiting for the kids to go to sleep, when they finally did I went straight to the other bedroom where I had imagined I would birth. I had some birth supplies set up in there and a stack of towels and pillows on the bed. I also had a little altar set up with some crystals, candles and other things. I knew I wouldn’t look at it in labour but regularly looked at it during those last days of pregnancy and used it to set the intention of creating my birthing space in that room. I had spent some time in there the day before imagining being in there in labour. When Courtenay’s kids went to sleep, she came and joined me. Courtenay’s Mum was there to stay in the room with the kids and by some miracle they all stayed asleep. The sensations were getting stronger and were still quite far apart, maybe 1 every 10 minutes. I was on hands and knees leaning over a pile of pillows on the bed and was able to sit back and lean against the wall and sleep in the breaks. I was grateful for the long rests but being woken up by a building contraction is pretty torturous. I would be woken and quickly get back to my hands and knees position for the surge. I could feel they were getting stronger and I was starting to vocalise through them. It’s amazing in my two freebirths how acutely aware I was of everything going on in my body, of where I was in labour, but in a feeling way, not a thinking way. In an internal way I suppose, no one on the outside asking questions or doing things to me. My focus was completely internalised and didn’t need to be anywhere else. In my mind I was repeating reassuring and strengthening affirmations like, ‘I can do this’ and ‘I am strong’ but I wasn’t loving it. Not at all. I groaned and complained the whole time and was repeatedly saying ‘this is so BORING!’. It certainly didn’t feel like an amazing experience to embrace but something hard to get through. My head definitely wasn’t in the greatest place for labour but I knew I had inner toughness and resilience that I could draw on that would see me through regardless of where my head was at. I was relying on that. And I still had in the back of my mind that maybe this birth had a big lesson for me. But I had to trust and surrender. There was only one way forward. Straight through the fire. No easy option. No turning back. Suddenly things shifted, the surges got longer and more intense and were back to back. I was no longer able to sit back and rest. It was on. My sounds increased dramatically and I was yelling into the pillow in an attempt to not wake the kids up. I was resisting the intensity and wishing for it to be over then I decided I needed to surrender more and let the intensity take over. It is such a hard thing to surrender to such intensity but I knew it would all happen more quickly if I did. I relaxed my legs, hips and pelvic floor as much as I could and let the intensity take over. I allowed the stretching, the opening, the pain to consume me. I released control and surrendered. With that, the volume increased again. It was the only way I could stay centred. I was so vividly aware of the sensations I was feeling and assessed myself as being in transition at a point when I had some big wild contractions one after the next. For me, transition isn’t so much an ‘I can’t do this anymore’ time, it’s more of a ‘ok, can we get this over with?’ time. It wasn’t long before the sensations started changing again and I knew I was coming up to pushing. ‘Sensations’ feels like such a gentle word but what I was feeling was far from gentle. It was like a tornado raging inside my body, a thunderous avalanche, a devastating bushfire tearing through me and bringing me to my knees literally and figuratively. I was both excited to be getting close and dreading the intensity of this stage. I knew that once I started pushing I’d only have 10 or so minutes to go. I could hear my noises changing and the increasing urge to push at each contraction. Soon the urge built to the epic force of nature that it is and I was pushing hard, screaming into the pillow and sobbing between contractions. This part is so hard. So unbelievably hard. It hurt. I desperately just wanted to sleep. It was relentless: Torturous. Yet my body knew what it was doing and on it went. My only job was to surrender as much as I could, release control and let it happen. Easy to say, so hard to do. How do you relax and surrender when you’re pushing what feels like a spiky pineapple through the most tender part of your anatomy?I felt inside and felt nothing so with the next contractions I pushed even harder to get some movement. My membranes ruptured with a gush and I asked Courtenay to check the water which was clear. The next time I felt, there was the top of my baby’s head. It’s an amazing thing to feel your baby’s head for the first time, knowing that this little person you’ve been growing for 9 months is just moments away. It was only a few more contractions and big pushes and she was coming. I slowed down the pushing and held her head to keep things slow. I didn’t feel the need to rush this part and had torn in my previous births so thought I’d try and minimise that as much as I could. We had agreed to wake up the kids who wanted to be woken for the birth so Courtenay’s mum went and got them. At the time I didn’t really want anyone else in the room and in hindsight I wish it had just stayed Courtenay and I. On hands and knees, my baby’s head was born in a climactic moment of sweat, tears, exhaustion, effort, and utter relief and there was that sweet moment of rest before the final push. I asked Courtenay how the baby looked and she said they looked perfect. I was breathing fast and gathering myself for one final effort to meet my baby. I felt the contraction build and pushed hard to feel my little one slither free onto the bed. Hallelujah. What a moment. Every time. What a moment. Sheer relief. My little baby born into my hands onto the bed. I had never caught my baby on my own before and I wanted to this time. And I did. I looked down at this miraculous little person who was moving and breathing and transitioning straight away. I saw she was a girl and felt such relief and joy. By the end of my pregnancy I felt so strongly that she was a girl but there’s only one way to know for sure! Oh that moment after birth. Done with the work. Baby is here. It is done. Such intense relief. Labour is over. I sat down and held my soft and slippery baby to my belly. Studying her familiar little face. There were others in the room now admiring our sweet baby. I was kneeling, holding my new baby girl then wriggled over onto my bottom. No small feat when you’ve just given birth. She had her first breastfeed after much wriggling and snuffling around. What a lovely feeling, that first latch. When mother and baby first reconnect and relax on the outside. Some of the children woke up and came in at this point which was kind of part of the plan but as soon as they came in I knew I didn’t want anyone else in the room, I just wanted Courtenay, space and quiet. But it was the middle of the night, they were a bit sensitive and needing their mums so I let them stay. After a short while I was feeling crowded and overstimulated and really needed space to birth my placenta. I had never felt the uneasy, unwell feeling of waiting for the placenta before but it was very apparent this time. I was irritable, slightly dizzy and just didn’t feel great but I hadn’t really lost much blood so I knew I was ok. I asked all of the others to leave the room and got back up on my knees to allow gravity to assist. I gave my cord a little pull and felt the placenta drop down and slowly emerge. What absolute relief. I immediately felt better like the colour and life energy was coming back into my body. There was minimal blood loss and I then felt fine. I think it was about an hour after birth that the placenta came and her cord continued pulsating for about 50 minutes of that hour. Quite incredible. Third stage complete and the labour process complete. It all went so smoothly and perfectly. The niggling worry I had about a complication or challenge had been for nothing. I was extremely grateful for this. And to be supported by someone who loved me, cared for me and trusted me so much was amazing. I am so lucky. After now homebirthing three times and freebirthing twice, I am personally so far removed from birth in the system. I now cannot imagine choosing to birth in a place designed for sick people. I feel quite nostalgic and sad thinking about it all now. Wishing I could go back and do it again with a better mindset. I had so much going on in my head, so much, that I kind of missed the whole thing. I wasn’t present and in a relaxed place at all which I do hold a lot of sadness about. And that extended to my early postpartum too. As I write this, Phoenix is 5 months old and the most delightful little soul but it took me some time to fall in love with her. Those early days and weeks were tough. I have never really cried postpartum with my other three but I cried with Phoenix, so much. While still healing and bleeding from my womb, I was negotiating with my children’s father about the amount of time we would each have with them. While feeling the waves of postpartum emotion I was dealing with property settlement conversations. While navigating the turbulence of matrescence again, this time as a mother of four and step mother of three, I was learning more and more hidden truths about my old life. While leaking milk from engorged breasts, I was grieving the loss of my home from the last nine years. While trying my hardest to meet the needs of my three children and new baby, I was torn to pieces witnessing the grief, confusion and sadness in my children, especially my second son. Yet at the same time I was so in love and so happy with Courtenay. So happy. What a tumultuous mixture of feelings all bundled in together with an undercurrent of postpartum hormones and a sprinkling of home sickness. My postpartum was not the restful and healing 40 days I had dreamed of before I conceived Phoenix. It was hard. So hard. The afterpains were excruciating. Bringing to tears every time I fed. Phoenix cried and cried for 10 weeks. I was stressed and struggling. And then, she started sleeping long stretches at night, she stopped crying and started smiling instead, things started to settle with my separation, I started to feel more at home in our new home, the kids started to feel happier and more at home, we all started getting into more of a rhythm together as a family. And two mums in the family is incredible! I’m so grateful for Courtenay’s support through it all. It was perfect. And now things are feeling good. Phoenix is the most delightful, happy little baby and life feels so much more settled. It’s busy but we are happy. I am happy. Phoenix has little pixie ears and dimples in her chubby baby cheeks. The cutest little thing! We call her Pixie. Pixie Double Whorl Delight in fact. And I couldn’t be more in love with her. My little fourth baby. My second daughter. An absolute shining light and a true delight when she smiles her twinkly little gummy smile. I fall in love with her more every day. What a journey and period of transformation and growth she has ushered in for me. That’s why she was named after the Phoenix. Growth, transformation, death and rebirth, rising from the ashes. I’m excited for the future. It’s looking so bright.
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AuthorI live in Darwin in Australia's Tropical North and am the mother of four beautiful children. I am blessed with working with women through their fertility, preconception, pregnancy, birth and early motherhood journeys. I am committed to lifelong learning and am interested the childbearing cycle, natural parenting philosophy, menstrual cycle awareness and the spiritual journey of motherhood. Archives
April 2022
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