Pregnancy is one long menstrual cycle

This was the pregnancy that became embedded in me, the knowing that this particular cycle of the womb is like every other cycle of the womb and the wild earth.

The first trimester is like the bleeding, the inner winter. The woman walks alone through the bleak inner landscape, her apocalypse concealed from the world. She embodies death and the possibility of death even as life grows in the darkness of the womb. She contemplates. The death of her maiden life, the death of her life as a mother to one, to two, to more. She may be pale, retching, cramping, weak. This is the necessary first death of self she will experience as a mother to this baby.

As we move out of the first trimester and into the second we enter inner spring. Her energy rises, she feels able to emerge from her cocoon as her belly begins to sprout, maybe she even feels her baby move like a butterfly. She is called to share her gift to the world with the world. The promise of what is to come, like the blossom of the springtime. Excitement is building within and without. Anticipation. Joy.

Second to early third trimester we have summer. The ovulation of pregnancy. Radiant and in full bloom. Alive, vital and growing at an exponential rate. Strangers may smile at her as she walks past on the street, for she is a magnetic beacon of light and life, she brings to mind everything that is precious and beautiful. Everywhere she sits becomes a throne.

Late third trimester we move into inner autumn, pre-menstruation. The pregnancy begins to feel more like a burden than a blessing. There is the call to go inward, there is resistance to strangers and those who are considered threatening. Anxieties and irritations arise easily, and she can be overcome by the urge to furiously purge and rearrange the living space in anticipation of her new phase of life. She feels taut like a bow string ready to be released. She hangs heavy on the vine awaiting harvest. The pressure is rising. Each day feels long and drawn out. She is ready to descend.

August

What a messy and beautiful month. Devotions coming back in slowly... Grateful for bead practices and the accessibility of mantra and repetition when intensely mothering. A friend asked me what the difference is between working as a healer and being on maternity leave.

I call it maternity leave but really I know it will be years before I find my feet. The main difference for me is when working full time as a healer, your daily life is full of rituals, boundaries and mastery over energy. To be able to hold space for the flow, you must become a fortress. The routines that will protect your body and home from what is coming in and going out.

Magdalene, the tower.

How do I feel now? Like a marshmallow. Boundaries collapsed. Rituals blown to the wind. I am building back devotion step by step in new ways, alongside devotion to my baby. My bones have not even been closed yet and I definitely won't be ready for any work before then.

If you are hoping to work with me please join my waiting list, although I am active on social media I am not working and will not be for the foreseeable.

World breastfeeding week 2025

I wrote a whole post about world breastfeeding week then accidentally deleted it while I was breastfeeding. So here I go again...

I'm on five years and counting into nourishing babies, about half the time I have been a mother. It was the thing I was looking forward to the most third time around and also one of the biggest considerations about whether I felt able to commit to nourishing another child. Initiating a tether that might be in place for years to come.

I would dream of it years after weaning my last baby. My body remembers. It's built into my embodied memory and my psyche. The delight of it - their eyes wide and roving, the little gasps, the mouth open like a baby bird as they try to find the breast. The rapid suckling and then the deep and dreamy swallows as the milk pours out and oxytocin and prolactin settle over you like a mantle of calm.

Waking up in the dark of the night just as they stir and drawing them close, as they latch on and you both drift off into the land of sleep.

Your toddler falls over, and wails, and you settle them within seconds.

For my fellow type B mothers who may forget to pack snacks but it's impossible to forget your own breasts.

The day after I gave birth, feeding my third child, I remarked "I feel like I've got a superpower back. Like until now I was missing a limb."

Like anything, it's a mixture of light and shadow. The tongue tied baby where it felt like I was putting my nipple into the mouth of a shark. When she would only feed in the daytime if I stood wearily swaying and feeding her in the sling so she could control the flow.

DMER. Where my body became so overwhelmed by the domestic abuse I was living with, it gave me panic attacks when the milk let down. Luckily that disappeared when I left.

The sickness bugs where they vomit all over you and ask to latch on again. The toddler nursing aversion where you swear to all the gods you could do anything except feed them again, anything except that, but then they ask and you find the will to do it again. Somehow.

It amazes me that something so fundamental to us as a species has largely been lost in our modern society. In the UK we have one of the worst breastfeeding rates in the world. This is multifaceted and something I've explored in other posts in the past. There are so many possible solutions, reducing the medicalisation of birth, increasing visibility of breastfeeding, more trained support. 

From what I've observed there is often a war between wanting to breastfeed and societal expectations of how a new mother and baby should behave. 

For somebody as experienced as I am, I still feel a wave of anxiety latching my new baby in front of somebody I don't know very well. Especially if I feel some part of them disapproves. And that is exactly the sort of thing that stops the milk flowing and makes a baby fussy. I may flippantly say "you see more on the top shelf in the newsagents" but my body doesn't feel the same.

Postpartum women were never meant to be around what the body considers strangers or threats. More wisdom we have lost.

For breastfeeding to work for nearly every mother who wants to, I feel we would need a complete societal overhaul that I don't think I'll see in my lifetime.