Just as there are many different ways to see the world, there are many different ways to see birth. Birthing is a process. Just as you and I are the same in our physical structure (2 arms, 2 legs, circulatory system etc.), what has gone into the process to create the individuals that we are is very different. We all are conceived and go through a period of gestation. During  gestation, science now knows that every emotion and sensation the mother experiences passes through the baby and begins to hard wire both body and mind of the developing fetus.  When 9 months is up we are birthed into the world and have our first out of womb experience with our caregivers. This continues to set the stage for our deeply wired truths about safety, intimacy, love, nurturing etc. We then begin to have experiences in our outside world with siblings, babysitters and relatives etc. We learn about systems and how we are to interact to fit into our society through the dogma and rule structures of ours schools, communities and church. This is all a process. What goes into the process determines the outcome (who we believe our self to be as an individual). The same is true for the birthing process. What goes into the process (my deeply wired beliefs about myself and birth) determines my experience and ultimately my child’s first experience of life.

Birth can be intimate, chaotic and intense.  How often as we go through our own every day experience do we allow this information (intimacy, intensity and chaos) to be in flow in our own bodies? What you were taught about these experiences determines how you think about them and what you allow yourself to experience in your body. Intimacy, chaos and intensity are simply words but they hold such a deep energetic charge in the body. When they become triggered we have one of two ways to experience the information. As habituated as we are to brush our teeth, we habitually lock down our body on information that we consider unsafe, wrong or negative. We hold our breath and tense against the very device designed to process the information- our bodies!

Working with women who are pregnant, I am beginning to see the information (sensation/emotion)  that we as women lock down on and brace against daily. This can determines the aspects of birth we do not allow ourselves to relax into. We begin modeling to our children as early as in the womb, through our own experience of our self during pregnancy and birth.

As a Mother to two unique individuals I can reflect back to my own birthing experiences and they become powerful metaphors for what I was creating in my life at the time. Each birth process was unique but what was consistent throughout both was the fear. The fear of  trusting my body and the unknown. I had spent so much of my life moving through my world caught up in looking to my outside world that I could not see the power my own body possessed.

We have become a society who brace against our own lives with the illusion of control. Pregnancy and Birth show us something different. From the time of conception and possibly before, our bodies begin to change and morph with the genius they carry for embracing and  birthing a child. Just as digesting lunch does not require our intellect, the amazing changes that happen in pregnancy do not require our attention to be focused on figuring it out. The intelligence of the body creates everything it needs from hormone changes ceasing menstruation to ligaments relaxing making room for growth. Our bodies are powerful intuitive living organic processors that know exactly what to do when we become willing to get out of the way of thinking we can control, suppress and neatly manage this powerful intelligence.

We have become so adept at silencing our bodies with meds, alcohol and other distractions. The beauty of pregnancy is our bodies will not be silenced as the innate power of the body strongly wakes up during pregnancy and birth. So,we become left with a choice; do I surrender my intellect to the powerful process or do I brace against what I have not been taught to trust and try to disconnect from the power my own body carries?

Rewind a few years to my journey…

Newly married, I had created the life I thought at the time would bring me complete serenity and happiness. My husband and I were eager to start a family and a few months after being married we found out we were becoming parents.

In the beginning of my pregnancy I experienced the not so uncommon morning sickness and fatigue. I was in awe of how quickly my body was changing and making room for my growing child. I slowly began to realize my life was becoming more unknown by the minute. The planned, predictable, controlled life I had so carefully constructed with the illusion of physical, financial and emotional safety began to shift as my life moved from knowing to not knowing. I was all over the map. I had moments of relaxing into the journey but more moments then not I braced against the unknown of my body and my life.

I read many books, talked to many people and unknowingly focused my attention outside my own body for the right way, the latest technique or teaching. I had not spent my life with my attention focused inside where I live except in the odd yoga class or meditation moment where I allowed myself to connect to something I thought lived outside my body that I needed to connect to.

I knew deep down in my body the calling to have a natural childbirth. What I did with that knowing became the very thing that began to lock down the experience within my body. I moved quickly back into my intellect and created a fixation on ‘doing’ natural childbirth right. I began to create my own rules and treated the whole experience as a test. I could do this, I was strong. In the end I felt like I had something to prove to myself.

Although I have two beautiful healthy children, the question ‘would I change anything in my own experience?’, to be completely honest with myself, is still an I don’t know. For the simple fact of I know something powerful now- I know how to have my presence and my body in the same place at the same time. My experience would have been VERY different had I known it was all just information moving and that I could choose to relax into it because I know I Am all of it- the intensity, the chaos and the intimacy!!

I Am my birth experience and it is me if I choose to see it differently.