Walking through the Land of Birth: how our daughter came into the world

The time had come.

I was kneeling on a hospital bed.

There was only the push.

I was exalted. Strong. Powerful.

After a labour that had washed me off my feet, where all I could do was breathe and keep watching the eternity behind my eyes… this. Suddenly. It was easy. It was powerful. The push. There was no pain, just the push.

To all other’s eyes, I was the sitting sentinel. Throughout the preceding ten hours of labour, I had not moved, not spoken, not even opened my eyes or mouth to speak. I was meditating. I was CalmBirthing. I was the Birthing Buddha.

Inside me though, another story was being told.

I had been walking through the Land Of Birth. I was shamaness. Warrior. I walked deep into caves to fight the Bears Of The Pain Tribe. I had won. My fight had been victorious. I had found her. I was returning home. I was bringing my daughter back with me.

It was early evening. Twilight was soft. There were only small, golden lights on.

I could feel head, shoulders, back, elbows, legs, moving through my hips.

For the first time since I had ventured into Birth Land, I begin to make a sound. A long, deep hymn, a song known only to whales beneath deep oceans and moonlight. My birth song.

There are people all around me in Room Seven. A woman doctor who watched from the corner. Our midwife. Another midwife whose amber wild hair and eyes reminded me of Hera. My love beside me. Our doula. My spiritual mentor.

All around the world, there are people praying. There are medicine men on mountains. Shamanesses burn sage. A tribe of women and goddesses circle, waiting for news. Ancestors and elders from the rainbow world reach out, love touching love, offering a new spirit into this world.

The One That Is Coming? Oh, how loved she is already. We are protected. I know this.

There is only this moment. The moment of push.

Around the hospital, it is A Night Of Birth. Every room at the inn is taken, every manger is being filled with Jesuses, every woman is becoming Mother Mary.

A woman is giving birth in the room next to me. We sing our birth song together.

I sing to her:

“You are strong. You are doing it! You can do it! I am here. We are going to do this. Yes.”

I hear her strength song, her own words whispered back to me.

We met each other at the edge of Birth Land, our children in our arms.

Before us, a long, slippery slope down back into the Land of the Others, the Real World.

We look at each other. Our brows are furrowed, damp with sweat. We bare streaks of blood from our initiation. Our hair is wild and mattered.

But our eyes. Oh, our eyes. They are the most beautiful they have ever been. Exquisite. Filled with light and courage and bravery beyond what is known. We have claimed the treasures of our heart – our children. Oh, had we fought for them. With all the love in our hearts and the sky inside us. Oh, we had won.

We turn to the slope before us.

We laugh at each other, and dive… our war cry of Mooooooooooooootttthhhhhheeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrr….

This is the moment she arrives.

In one breath, one wave of energy washing over me,

she slips from the world inside me, to the world outside me.

She is here.

She slips into the hands of my love.

He gives her to me.

Her eyes are wide open and blue. She lets out one cry.

She is quiet, and strong, and exquisite.

My own personal Jesus.

She is here.

That was the moment.

The moment my daughter was handed from the stars into the world, and into my arms.

The moment I returned into the world, never to be the same again.

Every moment since then. The hard. The tear stained. The exhausted. The elated. The throbbing love. The glad heart. The brilliant, blindening changes. The moments that have widened me. Opened me. Made me less. Made me more.