The Birth Was The Easy Part

Having recently appeared on BBC Wales News and BBC Radio Wales talking about my freebirth, the thoughts that have been running around my head are along the line of…

“Woman gives birth without any help” – is this honestly news? It shouldn’t be.

The birth was beautiful, magical, empowering, affirming, but I don’t think it should be the exception. It shouldn’t be a spectacle. I think the majority of women are physically capable of birthing without assistance. I know that most would also rather not, and that’s okay too. I think whatever kind of birth a woman has it should be all those things.

When I think about the baby and the journey we have been on in her short life so far, it really feels like the birth was the easy bit. We talk about birth as though it is the main event, the pinnacle of our achievement.

And yet I have been told by women they felt me in the birth room even though I wasn’t there, just from the work we’d done together during their pregnancy. I know some colleagues who barely made a birth and then poured their heart and soul into postnatal care, where they worked themselves to exhaustion like never before.

The birth is the intermission. The pause.

Things that were harder than giving birth…

The stressful pregnancy that nearly broke me where the only light I could see was the one in my womb.

Moving all my belongings, clothing and food, from one refuge to the next at an hour’s notice in the rain and the dark. I hadn’t washed my dishes and the baby was screaming and Judah was so tired but we couldn’t stay a moment longer. Dragging everything through a million layers of security, getting soaked and lost in a strange part of the city.

Making myself officially homeless, involving an all day wait in the housing options centre, overheated and overcrowded, with a fussy feeding baby. Not enough food for me and Judah so I went without. Sweat dripping down me and Judah running riot, biting through his tongue, blood everywhere – but we couldn’t miss our turn. When his tablet ran out of charge just as we made it to the interview room and he growled in my face and knocked his Ribena all over the floor and I couldn’t even hear what the woman was saying.

Crashing another car. Sitting in the car on a hill trembling with fear, tears rolling down my cheeks because I genuinely couldn’t trust that it wouldn’t just roll down the hill while I was in the house.

The endless services - if there's anything that's intolerable to a freebirthing mama, it's engaging with services.

The debilitating migraines and the fear that rises in my throat, still. The dissociation and the ongoing jolts of adrenaline that punctuate my days and nights.

I would give birth again tomorrow if only to bathe again in its innocence and ecstasy.

I would choose that meaningful pain and power over this senseless chaos.

When I felt wise but knew nothing.

A Postpartum Poem

I am flattened
By the birth of my second child. 
Before she sparked in my womb
I stood tall
And strong. 
The world was on my terms
And I a woman of passion
Not to mention
Of means. 

Now I see myself
In my new
Vulnerability. 
Panic fluttering in my heart
As she nurses at the breast. 
Echoing over and over again
A fool
I put my safety in something
That did not exist
Does not exist
If it ever did. 

Did my great-grandmother
Feel like this? 
Did she roll up her sleeves
And get on with it? 
I know that she did. 
They tell me of it. 
It didn't have to be me
We women have more options
Than we did before. 

And yet still I am still rendered immobile and weak. 

The Mother I Used To Be

Both children sleeping, to both of you I am ‘mama’.

Judah has an understanding of what that means, he knows that I grew him, he tells me it’s a hard job to look after him and Autumn-Violet all the time. He says he is too clever for me. To him I am almost laughable, a joke, errand woman, silly mummy… and he holds his face up and shuts his eyes for a kiss of blessing.

Autumn-Violet, it’s more base and instinctual, what is mama? She is a clean nappy, an animated face, pretending to chew on her fingers, the soft breast to nuzzle against at night.

I wandered blindly into pregnancy with Judah, my strongest memories of that time the way he would do a double kick and punch and leave me breathless. I would grind the coffee at 7am, trying not to puke at the smell of the pastries, and he would kick and squirm as I woke him up. I remember before even conceiving him, lying in my bed and imagining him, creating him in my head before I did with my body. His birth expanded my mind and opened up a whole world of possibility. I see myself, newly-wed, hopelessly optimistic… lavishing my love on this tiny baby who quickly grew round and jolly, just from my milk, my happy boy. It was a simple time. Cleaning my little two-bed flat on Elm Street while he slept in the sling, going for coffee and playdates, walks on the beach and to castles with his brothers. Long naps in the afternoon as he swapped breasts over and over again and we dozed in perfect harmony.

His will was strong – maybe I loved him too much, poured all my unwanted love into him, was thrilled by him, his assertiveness and courage making my heart swell. He was never put down as a baby. Then, complex words spilling from his toddler mouth as he directed us all and watched us scurry around to meet his demands. Slamming the door in my face as he goes off on his adventures. He has always seemed larger than life to me. He is my boomerang, always returning home.

Sometimes I think he had the best of me, the sweetest, the most soft. Fresh, unfiltered love, with barely any of the trauma that was to befall us before he was two. I see us laughing together, mama and baby, growing up together. Raw and boundless.

Autumn-Violet, you are a catalyst. To say I cherished my pregnancy does not even cover how I felt about you. How to explain the joy of your movements even while my body stiffened with adrenalin and my body nearly wore itself out? You were the one who made me feel beautiful.

How do you see me? Here I feel some guilt. You used to kick in protest in the womb when I would set boundaries for Judah and he would wail. I often joked maybe you did not want to come out at all based on what you had heard from me so far. I worried that I had damaged you somehow with my sickness, stress and grief. You were bundled up in the sling at a week old and dragged on school runs, to the park, to soft play, your feeding and changing always on the go, never slow, never a bonding time. Then when rest finally came Judah would wake you up and smother you with love.

You are the light. You knit our world together. How we adore you.

To you, maybe mama is the one with the strong voice and the set jaw. The warrior who in the midst of chaos still gets arrested by your amazing smile. You are happy, uncomplicated, you like your space. You make things easier, taking everything in with your wide, gazing eyes. You’re strapped in, swept along, on a mission again, with the woman steering this unsteady course for our family.

Have you missed out? My love for you is more doing than feeling, the depths I have gone, the things I have done...

I have moved mountains for you.

You missed out on the sweetness but you came along just in time for the strength.