inspirations

Each time we felt really connected we sent out huge prayers and powerful intentions. We asked that the souls of each person involved in the house-buying process would support us and somehow a few months before my due date, we were approved for the mortgage and we moved into a dear little house.

However, on my midwife’s first visit to the new house, she let me know that after months of getting to know her, she wouldn’t be able to be with me for the birth as I had moved just out of her area. This fairly took my breath away, I had felt so pleased with myself for manifesting a continuous care midwife on the NHS, one who had read Spiritual Midwifery and was deeply committed to the birth of my dreams.

However I was to find that there was much deeper healing afoot for me by staying present to the weirdness of what was unfolding.

Once in my new home I found that I now lived just under a mile away from the hospital that I’d been born in. It had been a long and tricky labour of 36 hours, which triggered my mother having a huge stress outbreak of cold sores around her mouth. Out of concern that I might be in danger from catching them I was separated from my mother for the next 10 days and placed in the nursery, only fed and held according to schedules.

As I was exploring in my rebirthing course, this start was to affect my life in everyway. If you look deeply into the circumstances of your own birth and then at your style and pattern of doing things, you will find connections and explanations for all your repeating challenges.

I’d never really felt safe in my life, feeling I had to work for the right to ‘belong’, my own value was in constant doubt and my efforts were often too much, too controlling and not particularly effective. I also rarely felt truly comfortable with my mother and was affected deeply by her moods and emotions.

During my course I was using breathwork to feel and clear the issues that had resulted from my beginnings, and it was somehow no surprise that this was when I became pregnant.
When Katie the midwife announced her inability to be with me for the birth, I knew here was the feeling of abandonment and separation from my mother acting out. Either I could yield to it and go into fright and victim consciousness, or I could stay present to my feelings of anger and fear and yet breathe them through. I chose the latter and whilst acknowledging my feelings, I knew that I was being invited by these circumstances to clear the past.

To register my pregnancy with the next hospital and to get a new midwife, I had to go and get my blood tests done. When I walked in there it felt so surreal, here I was walking the corridors of the place I was born in, and just a few months ago I had been living thousands of miles away. Just as I was on a rebirthing course I became pregnant, and within months I was somehow back in the hospital of my original wounding. Life is amazing!

Well I saw a little hospital chapel on my way to the lab, and spontaneously went in to find some stillness. I took stock of all I knew was unfolding and said a prayer asking for deep healing and integration of any and all issues from my birth. I called back to me any parts of myself which had been ‘left behind’ all those years ago, which is the shamanic understanding of trauma, and I thanked all the players involved for helping bring me to this place of empowerment.

A few days later I heard from my original midwife that her boss had been contacted by the second hospital, who were insisting that she be allowed to attend me after all our months of preparation. Without my intending that result, I had been blessed by a reversal of that old energy of abandonment, and to my great delight she was able to be with us at home for the marvellous, natural waterbirth of my son Hu.

In closing I would say that I have since learnt that there is yet more to be done for a full clearing of my old patterns. But as with the birth of Hu, I know that by surrendering to whatever is happening, and staying in close awareness of my body and my breathing, I can give birth by grace, not only to a child, but to myself as well.