My daughter’s birth journey started a couple days earlier with waves of contractions coming and going, gaining a gentle momentum, each wave preparing me for the crest of the next one to come. At exactly 6am on her birth day I awoke to a familiar sensation and instinctively ran to the bathroom to release the water that had just broken. With a smile, I called the midwife and my two dearest sisters to make their way over to the house. Our daughter had begun her final descent.
The early hours passed at the house easily. My nearly 2 year old son played with our friends, I would occasionally surface from my bedroom to be with them, contractions and all. I made myself a hearty breakfast of buttered french toast, occasionally pausing to pass through a contraction while leaning over the kitchen countertop, and then returned to the bedroom to continue laboring as the waves deepened in intensity. I labored silently, passing through some of the most intense portals of my life, traveling deeper and deeper down this initiatory path. I repeated a couple of mantras to myself – “simply open, simply allow,” and "the only way out is through.” Those words helped me remain present in every rich moment. Chocolate was also helpful.
Deep in the timeless space of a heavy contraction I envisioned the energy it must have taken the universe to be born, and that this birth felt like a microcosm of the original big bang - carrying with it the same magnitude of exquisite profundity. I thought - if the cosmos could yield to the birthing contractions, so could I. After all, aren’t I made of the same star stuff? It was with spinning galaxies and swirling nebulas against an infinitely black sky that I breathed to meet what was being asked, no, expected of me, a star child. Grow, woman. Grow in the way you were designed to. You are not as limited as you believe you are. Expand beyond your bounds to meet every rising crest. And once you arrive at each summit, open completely and with certain trust, for the quake of creation is blessing your holy body.
I shiver now just to relive this memory of grace and power.
Hours passed, more hours passed than we all thought should. We stood at the edge of doubt for a breath and turned our backs on it just as fast. I called out to my beloved daughter. I let her know we were ready, that I was tired, and that we wanted to hold her, smell her, kiss her, love her up. Slow movements on the bedroom floor, turning this way and that as she passed through her own portal of intensity. I climbed up on my bed for the final hours as I was taken to the furthest limits of sensation imaginable, and then beyond those to the limits that are simply unimaginable. A woman’s body is an incredible thing. I became The Mother - and every mother that came before me - primal, raw, beautiful and fierce, channeling the original energy of Creation itself.
She finally crowned and her father’s hands reached out to meet her. In a moment, one body became two and I became gratitude - breathing it, crying it, emanating it from the core of my being. The whole body shook and sang with thanks. For a while nothing else remained in the room other than Creator and Created and all the Love that has ever and will ever exist in the cosmos.
What fortune it is to be a mother.