Birthing Faith

Throughout my second pregnancy I became aware of a theme emerging, that of faith, i.e. trust. It first came up in the early months, the word just kept popping into my mind and repeating itself throughout. I paid special attention because this was a quality I knew I needed more of.
Through my rebirthing training, I‘ve learned that our early imprints from gestation, birth and childhood have a massive impact on our psyche and the way we view the world, creating a filter through which we decide the meaning of events. Also more mysteriously, somehow the things that we expect have an amazing way of happening, be they positive or negative. When we have any challenging experience, our birth imprints get activated and will give us quite a ride unless we become aware of what’s going on and work with it. Pregnancy is one of those times in our lives when everything gets very heightened.

For example, I personally had a very difficult birth, taking 36 hours to arrive. At the end of this I was separated for 10 days from my mother because she had a virus, which could’ve been fatal to me.
The stress of the labour and the impact of separation were to become my first major impressions of life. For example, I’ve always been oversensitive to stresses like loud noises and intense emotions and I’ve had issues around self-worth, which led to me being bullied at school and insecure within relationships. Being in a nursery with other needy crying babies, fed on a schedule and not in the arms of my mother at such an impactful time, seemed to create a very deep impression on me.

It’s amazing to consider that the issues that predominate our modern world originate for many back at the time of our birth. If we don’t experience life as safe, perhaps through being handled dispassionately by the birth team, or the noise and lights of the room overwhelm our delicate baby senses, or we don’t have the opportunity to bond well with our mothers and fathers for any reason, then of course this will register within the neural pathways of our brains. We can become hardened, needy and defensive, get a little jumpy, and see things askew. Some of the largest pathways in our brain are created whilst in the womb and during our births, this is when our foundational defence systems are created.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t update our perceptions, but it does take conscious awareness and intention to do so. The pathways we use the most in our brains become superhighways and we are preset to protect ourselves from perceived danger, whether or not it is a reality. This is why we get into fights with our loved ones in which they really can’t understand our point of view, why we find repetitive themes thwarting us and it can feel so difficult to live the lives we’d love.

To change those pathways we need to observe life closely when we are feeling ‘activated’. Typically there will be clues left, right and centre as to what is ocurring, which will allow us to rethink the situation and literally change our minds. The trick is to become able to stop reacting and to be willing to consider that our read on a situation might be wrong. It helps to breathe deeply to open the mind and keep the emotions moving along, personal observation and inner containment being the key. When under stress we breathe much more shallowly which keeps us swirling around in our old thought patterns and closing us down.

So back to my pregnancy, there seemed to be lots of issues challenging my faith. How could I have the birth of my dreams at home as I didn’t connect well with the midwives from the hospital? How would I afford the birth pool I wanted and how on earth would my partner and I manage with another child only 19months after our first boy was born?
I was somewhat worried and I was doing a lot of soul searching. When I got this message of faith, it stayed with me, tantalising and taunting me as I fluctuated in my thoughts. I tried my hardest to remember to breathe deeply and to choose trusting thoughts.

One day I got a call from a new midwife, who told me that she specialised in one on one home care. This was a great surprise as the other midwives had told me that this was not available. In fact, I’d been considering whether I should give birth unassisted rather than have any of them come and join me for my homebirth. I’d found them very focussed on the medical aspects of birthing and could feel their discomfort with my energy, which I knew would impact me deeply if they were with me. I only wanted someone there who really connected with me and could hold a vision of an easy ecstatic birth such as I’d experienced with my first baby. Due to the unhealed birth trauma in most people and a deep fear of retribution within our health system, many people involved in the medical world come into the room laden with energies unsupportive of birthing. They are often predisposed toward intervention and trying to make things happen rather than observing and supporting a natural process. Of course there is sometimes a need for medical aid, but the ideal would be for this to come from a place of wisdom and awareness rather than fear and anxiety. We are all affected by the energy of those around us and just one person feeling scared, holding their breath and indulging in fearful mental pictures will quickly infect the room, whether it be the mother or her support team. The best we can do is to keep our breath moving and observe our emotions without magnifying them with our minds.