I began writing my birth story ten days after the birth of Akita. I had an inner urgency urging me to put pen to paper and write every bit before time washed its clarity away from me. I was conscious of being in a very special cocoon then that gave me heightened awareness and immense love. I tried to protect that space, ferociously at times, from any influence that would try and bring me too soon back to the mundane. To write took me days as I stretched the process out and included so many details. What I write here does not include everything (it would fill a book!).
I sat in an armchair and spoke to my partner Aaron about how much I had enjoyed being pregnant. I spoke of how thoroughly I had changed over those last months, how much learning I'd accomplished and how much better I knew myself than ever before. As I spoke I listened to myself speak in the past tense. I thought how strange that was as there was still nearly one month till my baby was due. Part of me knew what was going on for half an hour later I felt a warm trickle of water flood from my vagina. The week before my hind waters had broken which had seen me visit Birralea at Box Hill hospital to be checked out in case something was amiss. Luckily there were no signs that the loss of fluid could require an early induction of my baby. It had introduced me to the birthing suites though which was unexpected as I was planning a home birth. I ended up having my baby there as I had not once factored in the possibility of a premature baby and the midwife I had was not confident to deliver a premature baby out of a hospital. We also did not have a house at the time, so things do work out interestingly.
With my waters breaking so many feelings began to rise. Uncertainty, nervousness, shakiness, hot and cold rushes
- and this could be it! Fuck! My baby's on its way or something bad could be happening! The water had a pinkish colour to it and I knew it was for real. I looked back over the last few days and realized all the steps that a higher part of myself had been guiding me through. My day to day brain not aware that I was in
pre-labour but my body doing all of the things to prepare and stock the cave with appropriate foods. I had had the first migraine I'd had in years. My body trying so hard to get my attention! Stop working, rest, slow down, please. I'd been so tired, I wanted to sleep and sleep. At the same time I had a strong need to go and buy packets of frozen raspberries, lamb back straps, a roast lamb, punnets of strawberries, heaps of bananas and cartons of yummy bonsoy soymilk.
It was about 10pm. I called my midwife, Nicola, who suggested resting and seeing if contractions would begin. I went to bed and not long after gentle contractions began about ten minutes apart. At some time in the night I was feeling the contractions more intensely and had to get out of the bedroom because I needed to be louder. I left Aaron to sleep and went out of the room to spend this time with myself feeling these new sensations and feelings and the movement of Akita as she began to be born. I went around the house and pulled out all of the spare doonas, pillows, cushions and camp mattresses I could find making a nest on the lounge room floor. I spent the night there and I moved my body around with the ripples of pain and opening that were more frequently engulfing my body. Very late in the night I groaned and yelled out more loudly and Aaron came running out of the bedroom. He had not understood what was going on when my waters broke at all.
The contractions were close apart and up until then I'd felt as if this birth would happen quickly. I wasn't sure where I'd be for the actual birth of my baby. It was all I could do to be with each contraction. I know now that unresolved tensions between Aaron and myself had a lot to do with the flow of the birth and the lone wolf in me would have loved to have been by myself on the earth somewhere doing it under the moon.
By the early morning it had become fairly routine and I was making the most of my moments between contractions to fill myself with food to give me more fuel. I was starving. I gobbled strawberries and made a batch of banana pancakes topped with more banana and honey. I'd mix the batter, contract, get the frypan oiled, contract, tip in the batter, contract, turn it, contract, cover it in banana and honey, contract and quickly eat it up before the next contraction swept through me.
It became daylight and we started to talk about what we were going to do. I called Nicola at 8.30 and she said to just come into the hospital later on, keep timing my contractions. I packed a bag and Aaron went to Coles to buy
supplies: maternity pads, grapes and more bananas. When he was at the shops I realised I was starting to lose it. I was tired and had gone through most of the night myself. Aaron had been fussing about once he woke - busily tidying, organizing and sweeping. It was pissing me off. I needed support and all of the disconnected undercurrents of our relationship were beginning to roil about in me. I called my friend Erin Aiyana who I'd tentatively arranged as my support person who could massage and reiki me and just do whatever came up. She quickly changed her day's arrangements and came over a while later. Aaron had never met her so there was some uncertainty on his part if she should be there. I needed someone to lay their hands on me who could help bring me back into myself because I was starting to fray. Aaron called a few minutes after I'd spoken to her and I told him what was going on. He cracked it. He got angry at me and said
"you've done it again. As soon as I left you called someone else in, we are supposed to be a team!". I began to weep hard and cry and cry and cry. It really washed me clean. It was really clearing and I just melted into it. I could not respond to him. He said I had to call her and tell her not to come. I kept crying and just hang up on him.
That was it for me. I decided and shifted in that moment to a new part of me. I would never again let anybody tell me what to do or try to control my life. There was no way in hell I was going to call Erin back. I knew exactly what I needed and knew that Aaron could not and did not need to provide it for me. There are still a lot of wounds I feel as I write this, buried beneath a life that keeps going on between Aaron and myself. I'm sure equally as much hurt and misunderstanding resides somewhere in him.
He came back from the shops and apologized to me. Erin soon arrived and put some female love from her hands and presence into me. We discussed going to the hospital at about 2 o'clock. By midday I realised that if I was going to be in a car it'd better be over and done with sooner than later. The idea of contracting while cooped up in my little Peugeot seemed torturous. It was horrible and I longed to be teleported there, as the drive seemed to take such a long time. We finally arrived and Erin and I raced in. It was fortunate I knew the way from my previous week's visit, as I didn't want to mess about. I had the image of the birth bath in my mind's eye and wanted to be in it as soon as I could. We met Nicola and a student midwife, Claire, and went into my birth suite.
Straight away Aaron set us a nibbles platter on the bed tray on wheels. Dips, crackers, grapes. He kept disappearing and ransacking some fridge he found and bringing back plates of sandwiches. It was really funny and we weren't sure if he was depriving other women of their food. The hospital rations seemed
meagre and crap.
I was strapped to the foetal heart monitor in the bed and very soon ripped it off because it was ridiculously tight around my lower abdomen. It made me so pissed off the stupid damn thing. We used a handheld sonic aid heart monitor as needed throughout the rest of the time. Akita''s heartbeat stayed so regular the whole time. Around
120 -130 or so. No matter how stressed I got she just felt real calm.
My first encounter with the paediatricians and their odd thirst for doom was when I was told that because of my membranes having ruptured there could be an infection so it was necessary for me to have penicillin. I did not believe there was any necessity for that and my hackles went up. It was so easy for me to get pissed off at anybody who hovered around diverting the energy away from where it needed to be. Eventually I succumbed to their repeated badgering and told them I'd have the penicillin shunt put in my arm if they'd just fuck off. It was so annoying and taped onto my wrist so it kept snagging on stuff. So much about being in the hospital illustrated how ignorant the whole
set-up has become. So many things that made no sense and were against basic laws of being the natural animals that we
are. Like filling the birth bath up with water that was too cold and giving me drinks of iced cordial. Things that contract and slow down the body, when my body was in a really active process. I get so irritable when I'm confronted with people feigning such knowledge and authority who are actually doing dumb arse stuff.
The birth bath was warmed up with lots of kettle loads of boiling water and I spent a lot of time in it. Erin spooned mushy raspberries into my mouth and tried to give me reiki in peculiar positions owing to the way the bath was set in the room. I recall it being a really dreamy expansive time in the water. Many contractions. Another memory was how altered my state of consciousness was. Even though I felt very far away from the ordinariness that surrounded me I still had a hyper sense of every detail that was going on. I could answer questions not directed at me about things that must have seemed like I'd not even been aware of them. I felt very alone as well. There was never a time when I called out that it was too much or wanted to give up.
There was a point when it was really full on and I connected with a very deep or high part of myself that I feel I'd never been acquainted with before. And it was she/me who held my hands and guided me and told me I could do
it. That was so beautiful and strong.
Another part that was great to feel was the immense feeling of liberation to really let loose such animal wails and roars. And at some of these times part of me who is the comic felt with x-ray vision the people walking down the hallway outside and found it really funny to bathe them in these howlings. It was so raw. It was in the bath that I began the moan
"Akita Akita Akita come on please come to me and be born". So I knew her name but do not know if anybody else heard.
I do not remember having had any internal checks to see how dilated my cervix had become but after a while Nicola put a mirror under me to try and show me my babies head beginning to show. She asked me to feel my vaginal opening and feel her head. What I felt was not a head to me. As Akita's head bones had slid over themselves to make her head more flexible for delivery it was
unrecognisable to me. It felt rubbery and weird and I just did not believe anyone that it was her head.
A fear that had come up strong for me through pregnancy was that I would bleed to death in labour. Whether past life memory, cellular memory of experiences of women in my lineage, or the reality of birthing over time just being part of our collective women's memories. I felt that what I felt beginning to protrude from my vagina was my cervix or some part of my insides that was being forced out and I'd rupture and
haemorrhage. This fear halted everything and after a while I realized that having too long legs for the bath was stopping my circulation so everything was on hold. I was helped out of the bath and led back to the suite.
Having someone to speak my fears to may have helped move things again. But at the same time there was an energy I was invoking that was to really be with everything in MY OWN time. The pauses gave me time to go inside, recoup my strength and draw on other resources and be replenished for the next phases. I became confused by Nicola's instructions when it was time to push. The breathing suggestions and the pushing just couldn't make sense to me. I thought I was not meant to push even though that's what my body wanted; I thought I was meant to be breathing in some weird way that allowed my body to move my baby down by herself. It was bizarre and I was in opposition to the process.
At some point I got it and it was really funny and then I had something to work with. I had to sit on the toilet to give me something to brace against and Nicola and Claire so patiently and diligently applied hot compresses to my perineum to help my skin to stretch. I did not tear at all and am sure it was due to their care and experience. At some point everyone around me started to send out this vibe that it was all going for too long. Possibly because of the stupid
'eye on the clock' hospital protocols. It felt fine to me. I really needed these expansive dreamy bits. Aaron said something like they'd need to bring out the forceps if I didn't hurry up. It really shitted me. He reckons it was his getting me angry that got Akita born. I know he's deluded.
There was a scary moment when Claire put the sonic aid onto my pelvis and we heard absolutely nothing. I picked up on the fearful look that passed between the two midwives and my sense of surety was rocked. Nicola tried again and there was her heart beat as regular as ever. Phew. I had been scared that she had given up on me and died.
The pushing out of Akita was the most painful and hardest thing I've ever done and the most entirely rewarding endurance effort I've ever been called upon to
perform. At times the burning, stinging, stretching pain was so intense it blurred into an exquisitely pleasurable sensation. It was such a feeling poised so close to both pleasure and pain. Her head would come down and pop back in. It kept happening as I summoned my courage to really go for it. And gradually she emerged further and further until the last push I broke and wept and wept and clutched Aaron who sat on the side of the bed as I squatted beside it on the floor. I held on to him so hard and really risked some heavy vulnerability with him. I felt as though I was giving him a taste of the child he would eventually be forced to step away from all of his boyish dreams in responsibility of and really be selfless to. Who would clutch him and weep and demand everything as our children deserve.
I felt Akita's head push out of me and it was such an amazing relief. With her head poking out of me I wish I'd had a photo of me from behind. It's such an unusual and comic image to me. She let out a cry of Waaaaaaa! It was wonderful. There was some fear that her umbilical cord was around her neck but then it was realized that it was her elbow or hand poking out so Claire gently moved it and I felt her move her shoulders and swim out of me in a gush. I love that feeling. Even though she is my only child that feeling has always been familiar to me. It felt like a tiny dolphin rushing out with a swishy, fishy feeling. She was passed up to me and it was really awkward trying to hold her with the cord still coming out of me. I held her and felt the thick white vernix covering her. I felt as if I was tripping and was saying to Aaron
"hey feel this stuff, it's amazing". Like Neal from the young ones but I couldn''t help it. It was very surreal. I pressed my hand on her and lifted it away feeling the waxy, grippy, sucking feeling as my skin peeled away from her. It is such a great substance. It made me think it must be helpful if you do give birth by yourself and need to catch your own baby, it's a really protective coating so that you won't drop your new born. She was born at 7.59pm.
The whole time the cord felt flat and cold and white and gummy. So I do not know about the descriptions of the placenta still pulsing. I was adamant that my placenta be delivered before the cord be cut and that should only be done after the pulsing ceased. I had said before the birth that it would be me who cut the cord or choose if we would let her be lotus. Time once again stepped in to assist my choices. The placenta took its sweet time to come and the events around that third stage of labour are quite hazy. After a while (again it seems I was taking
'too long' and not fitting in with hospital time) I ended up sitting on the toilet again with a blue hospital cloth under me to catch the placenta. Gravity was needed to help it slide out. Nicola asked if she could give it a little tug which was something I'd asked not to be done, in that haze I accepted and she gave a very gentle tug and it sloshed out. It was completely let go of by my body and was just sitting in my vaginal opening. I must have been holding Akita still but even this part is troubling to me as I really can't remember if the cord had been cut or if we waited till after the placenta delivery. There is a confused energy that holds me when I remember that time.
I know that I just gave up on all of my desires to cut the cord or have a lotus birth. I asked Aaron if he wanted to cut the cord and he was surprised as I'd been really adamant about doing it. He did it and that is a regret for me. And part of that allowance to him was a strangely token offer to give him something to do in the midst of a situation that I've never really known if he wanted to be part of or I just demanded of him. There is so much weirdness that can come out of a birth if we don't get clear and close before it takes place.
I had had an intention blessing in me to invoke as I cut the cord but I let it sweep through me as Aaron did it:
We are connected
Yet we are separate
I cut the cord that we have
nourished one and other with
So that you are free to be on your journey
and I may be on mine
Of service, love, assistance, guidance
and friendship to you
Yet ever respectful of your
divine sacred path that even
as your mother I cannot walk entirely with you.
It was not long before the paediatricians came back in the room and began to spread fear and turmoil and panic about the space. Akita's birth weight was 2.48kg's which was 20 grams below the statistical ok for a four week premature baby. They wanted to take her straight to the special care nursery and test her blood sugar levels and put her in a crib. It was not the energy we needed around us in these first moments together. We could understand why her glucose levels were important but didn't get why she needed to be taken away. We were told she would need to go on a glucose drip or be given formula as soon as possible. She was also born just a bit too soon to have her sucking reflexes developed.
I had so been looking forward to having my newborn baby climb upon me like a little marsupial and nuzzle around to find my nipple! We were fortunate that Nicola mentioned that donor breast milk was another actual option for a premature baby. Of course this was not condoned by the hospital and is illegal. This is pretty damn absurd, yet understandable in ways due to potential transmission of disease. However, I do believe that a switched on new mother would have a sixth survival sense in some way that would sniff out a clean or diseased milk supply in any potential donors. We had no idea of the amounts of breast milk we'd need to somehow acquire for Akita, but I am so thankful to the stubborn ignorance, faith and courage that steered me to that choice. After the experience we went through I am surprised that I have not seen this birth outcome mentioned on birth plans. Premature births are so common that many women must be confronted with the unnecessary stress of having to select a means to feed a possibly tiny baby before their milk comes through. But then, absolutely any outcome is possible in birth so a birth plan could end up as long as this piece of writing if all eventualities were included.
We did not have Akita's blood tested for glucose. I did not get that Akita may need some kind of feeding straight away. I really believed that if she had been born then she must be all right and she'd be right with my colostrum. But she could not suckle so I was shown how to hand express my colostrum and draw it up into a plastic syringe and then squirt it into her mouth. It was an arduous task. And she got tiny little drops. We racked our brains to think how we could get some breast milk. We realized Dionne was breastfeeding Imogen. It was about 10pm. I gave her a call and she drove straight over. I am so absolutely thankful to her. It was so good of her. She sat and excruciatingly expressed milk from a hand pump. I can really understand now how difficult it is to express milk from your breasts when your baby breast feeds as they need or want rather than if you are used to expressing. It just doesn't flow the same. Even so she gave us about 20ml or so and it was like gold to us. Such a small amount that somehow we made last to feed Akita little syringe fulls over the evening and in the morning.
By the morning, after being woken up every two hours by the changeover midwife to feed Akita again, I was over the hospital. I know now that there are midwives and doctors who can make the experience of a premature birth a hell of a lot less of a freak-out. I do not know if I have conveyed that well enough. That it was really far from calm, the experience pissed me off and my hackles were up often. I also know that I was already so dubious of the hospital scene that anything and everything was magnified as an invasion and affront to the beautifully
honoured initiation I wanted. I also own that there was so much messiness below the surface of my relationship with Aaron and my own unfinished business that it was all exactly as it could have been and suited where
I was at then.
Since the birth of Akita learning keeps right on going. The revelation of new depths and opportunities to heal and transform are still in my path. One big lesson we got once we finally escaped the hospital the next morning, was how to receive. It took seemingly ages to get the correct person to bring us the correct paperwork to sign to waive the hospitals responsibility over Akita as we wanted to leave against their wishes. I was getting so annoyed. The breakfast was crap. Dry, cold toast, a tiny portion of tinned pears, a little box of cereal and a tiny carton of REV. It was so dumb. How could any woman who had laboured for hours and needing to get some milk happening not be given a huge plate of delicious food? Talk about der brains. I told them I had to leave because the food was scabby and I had spaghetti bolognaise in the fridge at home and had to get to it. There are so many things about hospitals that make no sense!! It does my head in.
Anyway, we did go home and we were given a chart of how feeding should commence. I so wish I'd had an alternative source of advice, but that was how it was. We began feeding Akita at regular intervals in amounts that gradually kept increasing as her body got used to taking the milk in. It quickly became clear that we really needed heaps of milk. We arranged an expresser so I could start milking myself to keep the colostrum coming for Akita as well as to stimulate my milk production as soon as possible. Then we had to look wider for milk donors. For about three or four days we were like milk junkies. Calling women to ask for milk. It was like scoring.
I was in a state of hyper vigilance and was arranging pick ups from women, one I did not even know, that Aaron could collect. It got really tense as even though Aaron had been adamant about only breast milk in the hospital, when the reality hit he got really pissed off that he had to drive around and get it. We had a fight about it because he reckoned I should drive and get it and I was in no space to drive. The angry resentful fights in vulnerable moments are so penetrative. We were both so tired and in a situation so unexpected and unprepared for. I knew it was only going to be a few days; I was pumping my breasts like crazy. I had a very deep faith that it was all fine. I feel that the hardest part we were both adjusting to was learning to receive. Not only were we being given precious milk by such beautiful women who were so understanding and even considered it an
honour to help in such an intimate way, we were also being delivered delicious meals by people from a food roster which a dear friend had set up. Being two very independent people, annoyingly stoic even, the whole thing was really new and all sorts of buttons were being pressed.
It was three or four days and then I woke up with engorged breast with stacks of milk that Akita could solely consume. I was so thankful. It was another week or two before Akita could suckle. The regulated feeds were a drag. The not knowing when she wanted or needed a feed was disappointing. I always felt that it was always so jiggled about. She was still in such an intrauterine dream space for a few weeks and disturbing her to feed her could at times seem unnatural. She had reflux and threw up her milk for months and I really believe it was due to the stress and
topsy-turveyness of our first feedings. Yet all of the times of being with her to feed were so bonding and special and it was a magical time of such bliss and love that aside from all of the stuff that did not happen how I wanted I have a divine and incredible little baby girl who is now a toddler and makes up for those two weeks of not quite ready to suckle by really letting me know when she wants my breasts and NOW.
