Childbirth is truly miraculous, the things a woman’s body can achieve is beyond comprehension. The feeling of exiting a child from your body is indescribable. Being blessed enough to experience it twice I can tell you it was an exhilarating, beautiful and magical experience. But the mess, honestly. It. Gets. Everywhere. Between the blood, bodily fluids, mucus, placenta and anything else that vacates your heavenly body I was like uuuummmm where’s the baby.
I had a sweep of my uterus at 9am in the morning because my ob gyn was concerned that my baby was “Macrosomia”, which is just medical jargon for having a “big baby”. Ps he was not!!! Huxley was four healthy kilos and they had me semi concerned about him ripping my lady business in half. For no reason whatsoever. Plus, I only had seven stitches. Let’s not talk about how many I had with the first baby who ripped me from you know where to you know where (sigh).
I found laboring to be a constant battle of the mind. Trying to just “be” with the surges and let them flow is much easier said than done. My labour was animal like, and loud, very very loud. The noises that were flying out of my mouth sounded like something straight out of a David Attenborough documentary. Not at all like what we see in the movies or on the idiot box. At 6:04pm we welcomed our baby boy into the world.
This exact moment changes you forever.
This is the birthing of you.
You have no concept of time when you are in the delivery room. The surges (as the calm birthing/hypnobirthing/doula fucking whatevers) consume your entire being and your surroundings fade into almost nothing. I stayed at home for as long as possible because I didn’t necessarily feel like being fisted to check how dilated I was. Yes that happened, I was in early labour and oddly enough, it stopped my surges instantaneously. Please insert sarcasm here.
Medical experts have been trained to do a specific job, to keep Mother and Baby safe. However, it is my belief that some doctors are completely out of touch with a woman’s experience in pregnancy. Im not dissing the doctors, my obgyn is out of this world fantastic. There is no other man (other than my husband) id want to look at my vagina.
Please don’t let the medical “experts” coerce you into doing anything you feel unsure about. It is your body, your baby, your choice. If you want to read anything prior to your birth my number one recommendation is Ina May, A Guide to Childbirth. It is wonderful and id go as far to say that it changed my entire outlook on the historical and epistemological discourse surrounding birth.
There’s three women I strongly encourage you to follow on the gram. They are, The Naked Doula, Lucy Flow Official and the Positive Birth Company. All the aforementioned have enormous amounts of free information available and will really assist you mentally and emotionally once you become (or are already) pregnant. The online hypnobirthing course from The Positive Birth Company is phenomenal also. It was the best money I invested during my pregnancy. Other than my exorbitantly phenomenal bassinet (IYKYK, if you don’t, but you want to. DM me babe).
If, like me you had done some birth prep, course or attended your local hospital for birthing classes, you will have no doubt done some form of visulation exercise which attempts to prepare you for birth and what lay ahead. Some part of your brain is trying to hold onto that, the breathing techniques, the positive affirmations and all the other bits of information. The only thing that helped me in the moments of contraction was visualizing them as a wave, rising and falling. Practicing deep breathing and reminding myself that I am a bad bitch who can do anything and everything.
Just don’t let your mind win, you are the captain of your ship.
You got this girl.
Love and Light
MM
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