this is my child - part two

“Embrace motherhood”, my friend said.

And in the void of my heart, I knew I didn’t want to.

That, maybe, why my child stayed unborn for 43 weeks?

She was into my cervix. “Embrace motherhood.”

I was feeling the contractions coming, and I’d scream “oh, no, no, no!”, and my friend would eco “yes, yes, yes!”…

I haven’t felt a mother for the first 4 months. I have felt a burden on me, I have felt lonely, sad to be bound to stillness, envious of my partner who was free …

I realize this, now. In the moment I also was happy that I could stick to a routine in which I could manage my baby, that could give me some freedom. And I don’t even know what switched so that now I feel differently. Yet, I am glad it did.

So now, instead of “this is my child”, I am claiming: I AM A MOTHER.

That second of February, early morning. I felt deeply happy to welcome her in my arms. She had started floating in the water, touching my thighs, blinking and talking. Two more contractions and her bum was out, a couple more for her legs, and I could pull her into my arms, to hear - right away - her beautiful voice. Shocking!

During the whole birthing process I had always thought “this is it, it’s over”, and it never was. Not even after that first meeting, because the pool became suddenly red. I stood up, walked out, seeing pieces of me falling out of me … or maybe that was her furniture, but it was everything a part from the placenta.

Some messy movements to get that out: had to breastfeed for the oxytocin, but my daughter was still attached to the placenta so, apparently, she didn’t feel hungry, I was never comfortable, in any position … in the end we reached the compromise in which I was seating on the Icelandic chair, my head on my friend who was holding my baby whilst I tried to attach her to my breast and my partner was running around, doing everything else was needed in that moment. Blop: out in a bowl - cut - eaten.

I crawled to my bed, the baby has been involved into a towel, because she was screaming too much - no time for diaper magic, and they put her next to me. Breastfeeding and dumb, we fell asleep. At the wake, the meconium was out and the adventure just started.

Before my pregnancy, I was a burnt-out manager who was trying a parallel acting career without understanding that she didn’t want to.

Before giving birth, I was an individual who listened to three impulses at a time and followed none, and I claimed to be free, because I didn’t know better.

Now that I have to be for another human being, and now that I don’t find it daunting anymore, I realize I am now whole and living in the present moment, with gratitude.

I know it’s not for everyone to feel highly skillful and present in one’s own energy and vitality, but this is my experience and it’s important for me to share it, since every birth is different, but every birth it’s a journey: it requires us traveling along, because it’s a generator of change - change that will happen, with or without us.