The fierce and primal labour ward birth of Ted

Every birth is a lesson. I'm still waiting for the wisdom to unfold. It seems to me that to be postpartum is to be translucent - like a fairy's wing, the light shining through you.

Still touching the veil, not fully of this world. The spirit wandering while the body is tethered. Through the womb that bleeds, the eyes that weep, the breasts that feed. I pour with life, a vessel that is filled only to be emptied over and over in service to another.

To be postpartum is to be a beautiful, vacant shell, where a creature once lived, washed out by a wild storm. The shell remains, but a new creature has not come to claim the body as home. Yet.

My last caption and self-portrait before he came - Harvest. The old ones understood that every harvest demands a sacrifice.

The fierce and primal labour ward birth of Ted. My undisturbed, wild pregnancy culminating in the place I wanted to avoid. So far from what I planned, and yet I knew too much to ignore the signs of my body in labour that home was no longer the safest place to be. The stages of grief as I came to terms with my choice in that hospital room where I laboured all night on the floor.

The denial, the bargaining, the anger, the depression... The self-pity, the uncontrolled sobbing and wailing dredged from the depths of my being. I watched myself outside myself with the wise eyes of a doula and smiled and thought... good, good, knowing with every emotional release comes a further opening and descent. And eventually the acceptance as I slipped into the water of the pool and felt my hips widen and my waters break.

I have never been so loud in birth. Have never worked so hard to move a babe through my pelvis under such stressful conditions. I made sounds that I've never made before to bring him into the light. Then it was the job of others to help him fully transition into life.

In my second birth, the ego death was taking responsibility for my birth and baby and learning to find all my answers within, no external validation. For this third birth, I was being asked to allow the identity I built up around my freebirth to die. You already know the sound of your inner voice. You've received the dreams, the messages. The choice is yours. The power is yours. The unfolding will be what it will be...

So often I observe in my work that these babies come here to bridge gaps in our consciousness, to awaken us to an unconditional love that is beyond ideology. There was so much I had deconstructed in my mind already, but the body's wisdom is older and slower. It would have been easier to walk away from birth as a portal completed, thinking I'd learned all I needed to. And yet I chose to plunge back into the deep end to be scoured clean. For the walls of my hyper self-reliance to crumble.

Eternally grateful to Sam who was by my side the whole way. I keep thinking of the psalm "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me"

There is more to share but it's not for now or this space. I have no regrets - I would make the same choices again.

So here I am - with the wind still blowing through me. If you hold me to your ear you might even hear the roar of the sea.