And Now: Enter the Birth Terrors

How ironic that I write this on the heels of my last post, where I found myself in a place of acceptance amidst the uncertainties of Birth. And now, enter the Birth Terrors. It is the second night where I am awake and restless at the 4 o’clock hour. Passing through a veil of crankiness, exhaustion, irritability, profound restlessness, agitation, frustration, I think “I’m just tired” as I thrash my way into sleep. Today’s wake up ushers me directly into the unexpected jaws of terror: a literal cold sweat, shortness of breath, vice clamp around my heart and I can’t seem to get out. My body is shaking and I enter into a giant ‘HOLY SHIT’ moment when I feel acutely how much fear I have yet to metabolize about Birth. In the same vein there is gratitude that I’m feeling this at all (and an understanding that this is one of the threads that needs to be experienced and metabolized before baby will come).

All of this utterly blindsides me. Out of nowhere, and yet obviously living in the deep crevices of my body lies the trauma and fear from the last time I gave birth (and perhaps too the trauma and fear from my own 42 hour labor entrance into the world when I was stuck in my own mother’s birth canal). What if I get STUCK again? What if I can’t get the baby out? Intense claustrophobia propels me to run to the open window in search of space. I trip outside at 4:50am thinking “why don’t people tell you all this is wound up in Birth? Why don’t more people talk about these things?” I do laps, shaking, around my neighborhood block, crescent moon trying to shine through into my awareness. Thank God for the birds singing. They call me away from my terror as I catch my breath.

I didn’t know this lived in me. I didn’t know this fear of stuckness and claustrophobia was still alive in my experience. How fascinating that these forces of emotion and cellular memory go underground until they are triggered again.

Returning to the status quo of my baseline sanity: I’m reminded that all I have to do is just feel my way through this. We feel what we are letting go of. Feeling equals metabolizing. Burning up. Will this memory of stuckness serve me? Yes, if I feel into it again, awful as it is, and move through it.

I find myself wondering why on earth I’ve chosen to do this again? 40 plus weeks pregnant ushers in my first moments of doubt and dread. All of this feels normal and yet all of this feels vastly under attended to somehow (Meaning: there are so many emotional, physical, and psychological thresholds we as women bump up against and move through around Birth and perhaps there is too little weight placed here. Do we fully acknowledge the vast spectrum of emotions that can emerge? Do we talk enough about it?) All of the sudden we are in it, past it, forgetting the intensity of it…until we walk into an unexpected pocket of remembrance.

40 Weeks Pregnant: A Thin Veil Between Worlds

After the birth of my first son, my midwife said to me, “Don’t you think ushering new life is going to bring you to your knees? It brings me to my knees every time…“

We’d been talking about my struggle for several hours to push Rowan out into the world, and how the pain literally brought me to my knees, over and over again for four hours of pushing in the middle of the night. Those brutal hours from 1:30 to 5:30am were unlike any other: A threshold, a portal, an unmistakable glimpse into the vast power of the mystery that is life – beyond my control, vexing yet awe-inspiring, bringing me to my knees in a gesture of humility so all-consuming it took my breath away again and again. There was no way out but in. No turning away or back. The threshold had to be crossed.

And here I am again: standing at the gateway to Birth, which is akin to inhabiting a thin veil between worlds. The word ‘liminal’ comes to mind: Of or relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process, occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold. The space in between. I rest in this liminal realm where I’m called this time to lay down the desire to know what ultimately can’t be known. Already I’m being taken to my knees: reminded by the powers that be that there is nothing to do other than trust a process far greater than oneself. All I have to do is be available, surrender… And yet, here I am, spinning conjectures and betting odds on when and how baby will come…

It strikes me that instead of inhabiting the familiar world of intellectual odd-betting and grasping for what is “known,” being 40 plus weeks pregnant is a time to settle into the mystery of liminality. We can choose to hang in the spaces in between. We can swing freely in the balance of the inner and outer, the inside world and outside…much like the womb contrasted by the vast space of everything else. We can walk the thin lines between darkness and light, mystery and the known, fullness and release, contraction and expansion. Even if not pregnant with new life, perhaps there is a lesson here that we can all access, for the womb is our origin and we have all made this journey from breathing water to breathing air, most of us having hung upside down in our mothers even as the rest of the world was so-called “right side up.”

For this brief moment in time, a pregnant woman holds the sublime reminder of a passageway between worlds. She is the circle of yin and yang holding a small universe of life inside. Herein lies a blueprint for living: remember the mystery from which you sprang and to which you will return. Learn to bask in the not-knowing. Trust forces at work beyond your control and let yourself be humbled by what it can take to bring new life onto this Earth. Relinquish all desires to know and control. Only then, resting gracefully in the liminal realm of mystery, will you enter into the fertile plains of free-flowing unbridled creative synergy: that which truly does propel forth new life and make the world go ’round…

Birth is Like Jazz…

This poem (“Neonatology” by Elizabeth Alexander) struck me as I enter the 40th week of pregnancy: waiting, something like a jazz ensemble ready to unfurl but still a mystery in the making…

Giving birth is like jazz, something from silence,
then all of it. Long, elegant boats,
blood-boiling sunshine, human cargo,
a handmade kite —

Postpartum.
No longer a celebrity, pregnant lady, expectant.
It has happened; you are here,
each dram you drain a step away
from flushed and floating, lush and curled.
Now you are the pink one, the movie star.
It has happened. You are here,

and you sing, mewl, holler, peep,
swallow the light and bubble it back,
shine, contain multitudes, gleam. You

are the new one, the movie star,
and birth is like jazz,
from silence and blood, silence
then everything,

jazz.

Baby Blessings

Ceremony, Ritual, Creating Sacred Space:

To give oneself time to set intentions, to enter into a different realm of time passing, to slow down, create beauty, dive into artfulness, speak from the heart, listen deeply, mark a threshold, make a transition sacred, to acknowledge the holiness of the great gateways in life: birth and death and all the sacred markers in between.

Old Lessons…

Amidst the nesting and preparing for baby to arrive in a few weeks, a confrontation with old self unfolds. Going through old papers, poems from a decade ago fall out. Looking for something, notes in an old journal speak to me in a new way. It’s as if I’m being reminded of where I’ve come from in light of where I am going. At an apex waiting point, teetering towards the birth of my 2nd child, I settle into new rhythms and a renewed self-identity as Mother.

The following are excerpted from the Artist’s Way ‘morning pages’ exercise I undertook about seven years ago. The words jumped out at me from those days of writing three pages of stream of consciousness entries daily for several months. Herein I find sound reminders in light of what often feels like diving off a cliff into the unknowns of childbirth and motherhood…And I remember to look back to my roots for inspiration as new things are about to unfold.

——–

When we move towards our dreams, we move towards our Divinity. Just breathe and bow, Divinity says. Breathe and bow. Kneel at what is happening and trust a greater process. Become humble to a principle greater than yourself. 

——–

Practice: to work through confusion, to find a ballast, to find a center through disorientation. To rest in what is. 

———

Even the anxiety of tension and resistance is beautiful. Like a sacred circle around ourselves, we can feel into our processes and choose contentment. This is the challenge: to love through closures, to trust ourselves and keep working with our edges. 

——–

Rather than a question mark, BE the clarity of an answer. 

———

When we can trust our conversation with the Divine, we can relax. And, there is also the dry, dull persistence of pushing through difficulty with Trust – and trying to also see the beauty in This.

——–

If we listen and create, we will be led. We will always be led to Here. Just remember: overwhelm prevents progress. One thing at a time is the key to getting anything meaningful accomplished. Know that the pace is important and don’t stop; Every day, offer something to the whole. Gentleness in the face of overwhelm: this is crucial. 

———-

Follower of No Separation

Right now I am a follower of 

“No Separation” 

This nor that, 

Here nor there

I weave between traditions and practices

like a mendicant in search of a holy light, 

which is always

already

Here.

No separation: seamless living with what arises,

going with a flow, 

acknowledging grace of present moment,

being in a state of love -

and not just in mind or heart

but full body

extending into an ether of oneness. 

No separation: quiet gaze understanding

common heart of wisdom

swimming beneath all disputes and orthodoxies.

Soft wind blowing leaves,

reminder of cycle of life

which transcends words.

No separation: the space Beyond and Before.

The space steeped in silence

like hot cup of tea:

burns but delicious - 

a drink to be savored, 

a Holy Gift:

just like human life with all its complex flavors

unfurling into 

One 

Great

Expression 

(some call God).

The Great Horned Owl

She is perched on the edge of her nest. Three owlets grow and burrow next to her: pushing her to the edge of her home, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She will wait patiently all day until dusk overtakes the sky, when she’ll silently fly in search of food for her little ones. All day she will sit, with only her eyes and head moving occasionally. She looks at me with one watchful eye, the other closed. Her ears tilt towards me and her babies’ heads bob up to see the commotion of parked car and toddler rustle. Through the binoculars I see myself foolishly through her sharp yet relaxed gaze. It is as if she is saying “What is this? Camera clicking and binoculars mediating, sunblock being smeared on child’s face?” She just watches me. Nothing between us. No lenses, no filters, no film on skin . She is not troubled to move, even slightly.

Long neck, chin drawn in, tall stature, still frame: she strikes me as being akin to a great meditator: drawing herself into one composed line, she sits quietly and observes, tending her babies with the perfect zen-like non-perturbed gaze of a realized master. In this tree top I see a reflection of how I would like to perch: still mother, resting patiently as my children learn to fly…