Two facts are true of my birth story:

1. I accomplished the birth of my dreams. The birth I meticulously planned and prepped for over a year. An unmedicated, natural, home birth. It was transformative. It was sacred. It was primal.

2. It was the most deeply confronting, gruelling, challenging, and most intense day of my life. It took me to places I didn’t know existed. It broke me, it killed me, it spat me out, and it re-birthed me with my daughter. 
   

They say birth is the process you must go through to prepare yourself for motherhood. It is both an ending and a beginning - the death of the maiden and the birth of the mother. One would not understand this truly until one has walked the way of birth, to find themselves on the other side, entirely new, in ways they never could have imagined.

EARLY LABOUR

In the early hours of Saturday September 5th, I walked myself to the bathroom. 3am, tired and groggy, it took me a few minutes to realise I had been sitting there unusually long with fluid continuing to come out of me.  My bladder felt empty, but still something kept coming. I made my way downstairs still leaking, put on a large pad and waited. Within 5–10 minutes, I felt a small gush. Clear fluid, no smell. 

My waters?! I think my waters just broke.

I was unsure, but what else could it be? The leaking stopped and I took myself upstairs to wake James. I stroked his face lightly.

 “Baby, I think my waters just broke”, I whispered - a bit of fear coating my voice.

We had planned this moment – the moment when something changed to tell us that we were entering into the journey of labour. James wanted it to be a celebration, where we send fear to the ether and feel all our plans fall into place. We were ready.

“That sounds about right, that’s good, this is a good thing” he said groggily with a tired smile, touching my arm. “It’s okay my love, let’s get some more rest, the best thing we can do is sleep and we’ll see what happens from here”.

The few hours in bed afterwards some abdominal cramps had me aware but not unable to rest. The light pains were nothing hard or unknown, but they told me something was shifting - that our baby girl Elsie was going to begin her journey soon. These cramps subsided with the rising sun, but James and I entered the day with the mindset that labour was upon us. I didn’t plan for my waters to be the first sign of labour  - it’s uncommon, and in contacting my midwife and doula, they weren’t super convinced that it was my waters, it could be a few things. So we would wait and see what happens.

The day was bright and sunny, so James and I took ourselves to the markets and walked around Glenbrook. Around 11am I felt my first, stand-alone contraction, I was so sure of it. It was wave of energy through my back and belly that I had not yet felt before in my life - and it came as quickly as it went.

“Woah, that was a contraction!” I said to James as we walked.

“Okay let’s go home!” He said quickly & half-jokingly – knowing well we planned to not treat contractions as an emergency when they arrived.

 We shared food and took ourselves home, the afternoon somewhat uneventful, but it became beautifully ours. With a very few random pains and odd contractions popping in and out of my body, James and I cooked dinner together with my “early labour” playlist softly playing throughout the house. It had our wedding ceremony song in it.

 “Do you remember this song?” I said to James with tears in my eyes, having a moment.

“I remember” he looked at me with such love in his eyes. We had come so far together.

We ate a candlelit dinner that I cried over as well, because I knew it was our last as just us. This dinner signified the last 11 years of James and I’s relationship that we had built, the life we had cultivated together, before we would bring our child into the world and become a family of three.

Outside, a storm of wind of power took over and shook the trees. It howled and whooshed and whispered, and I think it was the stirring of Elsies soul, readying herself. We took a step outside to find the whole street was in a blackout, the streetlights cut, the houses around us darkened. You couldn’t see to the ends of the road. Yet our house stayed alight - our solar power keeping us unaware of the depths of the night surrounding us.

After a movie and a game, it was time for bed. I stood from the couch around 10pm, and I had a contraction. Then I cleaned up downstairs and at 10:15pm, I had another one. By the time I was upstairs at 10:30pm, another wave of heat and pain gently flooded my core. 3 contractions, 30 minutes. Then a bit of a break. We cooped up in bed, and I prayed that I could just have a few hours of rest to prepare my mind and body. It was something I had wished for myself - to go into labour after a full night’s sleep and to feel well rested. I look back now and can see it was the first moment I was shown that labour takes notes from no one. I lay in bed very much awake, James asleep next to me, and by about 11:30pm the contractions were regular and undeniable. It was time.

I had planned my labour the best a first-time mother could possibly plan. My whole pregnancy I educated myself, I practiced hypnobirthing, did calm birth classes, read books, exercised, stretched. Each stage of my labour was carefully thought out – what I would do, where I would be, how I would breathe. So now, it was time to action.

The headphones came out at midnight and I started my first round of hypnobirthing meditations. A 30-minute meditation, encouraging me to breathe, to soften into each contraction. The room was dark and I was breathing deeply – learning to “make friends” with the feelings of contractions. To understand them, welcome them as a part of me. My surges could not be bigger than me, because they are me. This pain is healthy pain. It is functional pain. As the surges intensify and grow, I grow with them.

I repeated this meditation three times. Then, I started my 50-minute labour track that I had listened to and practiced multiple times throughout the end of pregnancy. These tracks would become my anchor for 2 hours in bed as I simultaneously softened and fell deeply into early labour with the first budding hours of morning.

Contractions right from the beginning are an intense and painful feeling that need to be breathed and worked through. Four counts in, eight counts out. Repeat. I surrender, I soften, I accept.

When laying was no longer tolerable, I got myself up and sat on the birth ball facing the window at the back of our bedroom. The moon was my only light, it illuminated my face as I rolled in circles and figures 8’s, hypnobirthing tracks still repeating in my ears. The remnants of the storm still moved and groaned through the trees. I told James to stay asleep and get the rest he would be needing to support me through the journey to come. The journey that was undecided, unknown, and inevitably uncontrollable. 

James was up around 4am to set up the home. He communicated with my girls and the family and supported me with anything I needed. His role was to get the pool blown up, the house clean, to organise food and to just be with me. This journey was also his - he was the protector of the space and he was to be my anchor for the hours to come.

Getting through the morning feels a blur - eclipsed in my mind by what the enormity of what that evening had in store. I laboured in our bedroom some more - headphones on, on the birth ball leaning over the back of a chair, breathing, moaning, and starting to feel the high of my hormones coming through as the hours passed through me.

Contractions began to intensify and make their mark on my mind and body. So, we started to execute the next phases of our plan with some more pain management. The tens machine come out. Four pads stuck to my lower and mid-back to send electric pulses into my skin, to re-direct my attention from the waves of tightening and heat and pain. I could not decide whether I hated or needed the tens, yet I would continue to ramp it up for the rest of the morning – so I guess it got its use.

Our doula Aimee was in contact with James and she encouraged us to do some spinning babies techniques. This is something we learned in her classes – they’re specific stretches and positions I could get into that help to create space and balance in the pelvis, with the aim of helping baby find an optimal position for birth.

So, here we were at 9:30 am. Tens machine pumping my back, contractions increasing regularity, and I was upside down on a chair. Knees on the seat, butt in the air, elbows and forearms flat on the ground, blood rushing to my face, and I would hold this for as long as possible. This is called the Forward-Leaning Inversion.

“I can’t fucking believe Aimee has me doing this right now” I grunted.

But I knew that these were in the plan. This position could potentially allow my baby to float out of the pelvis with gravity, then reposition her head and body before settling back in a more favourable position. So, we did the different stretches and positions, James directed and supported me through each as I kept trying to remind myself of my affirmations and stay focused.

Through photos I’m reminded of different moments that are a haze in my mind of the morning. Labouring in the shower, in the lounge room, then on the birth sling, then in the kitchen hanging onto the bench.

I could talk briefly between contractions, but this was no longer feeling like a softening into labour. This was feeling like confusion, like regret, like fear.  I don’t think I acknowledged how much I was already holding, how much I was already fighting. I had to shut out the shadows of uncertainty, the wavering strength and second-guessing. I kept reminding myself that here, there was no room for fear. We have a plan, and we have a team. I just have to make it to my doulas arrival, then I’ll have extra support, then I’ll know we are getting somewhere. So, hold on. Do another contraction. Ramp up the tens. Relax the jaw. Soften the shoulders. Keep. Breathing. This hurts. This really hurts.

James continued to liaise with my doula, Aimee. Generally, she would arrive when we progressed toward active labour. When contractions were regularly 3 minutes apart from the start of one to the start of the next. So, 1 minute on, 2 minutes off. Repeatedly. I waited impatiently for any updates from James that my contractions were getting closer. My eyes continually darting to his watch to assess the timer and the time of day, praying that I would see something that would give me more hope. Again, I would not acknowledge it, I would not admit it, I would not give it a voice – but I felt I was already wearing thin.

Around 1pm, James waited until a contraction finished.

“Aimee will be here in just a few hours”. He informed me gently.

A few hours. A few fucking hours. I had already been labouring for 15 hours.

I felt my patience and power diminishing as contractions shook and tightened my body every third - fourth minute. The reality of having to face this relentless pain for a few more hours hit me, and I fully realised then, that even when Aimee gets here - she isn’t a magical fairy who can whisk me away from this pain and bring my baby into the world. I saw for a moment, just how far we were really were from the end.

A deep, lost, sob broke out of me. And another one. I leaned my head and weight into James chest, sobs and tears falling from my heart as I confessed to him for the first time that I was not sure if I could do this.

“Baby please, please help me, I can’t, I don’t think I can do this” I wept and let it all go as he held me, my body shaking with each sob that tore from me.

“You can do this my love, let it out, it’s okay, we’ll do this together, you are strong, you are powerful, remember that” he reassured me.

Aimee would tell me later this was most likely the transition between early labour and active labour. Things were about to ramp up, and I had no choice but to wipe my tears, and enter a new state of being.

ACTIVE LABOUR

At 3pm Aimee arrived. She entered the house on a whisper as I moaned through another surge. The house had calm meditation music playing. James was giving me counter pressure through my back to help ease the intensity – it was my favourite pain management for each contraction, and it meant James had a workout of his own to upkeep. 

Aimee touched my leg and I grabbed her hand as her arrival convinced my battered mind that we were close to the end. The level of physical pain and mental push that I had already endured, surely we were close. I was moaning low, swaying. And the next two hours continued in that way with Aimee and James support. I was internal, eyes closed, just getting through what I could. These hours were spent hanging off a scarf that wrapped over the edge of the kitchen bench. My body instinctively lunging one leg forward and swaying.

At 5pm, my midwife Ashlee was arriving to check in on us. Aimee had informed me earlier and used the words that Ash was “popping in”. I was so viscerally aware of that detail – the detail that told me they weren’t convinced I was far enough, that she would not stay yet. So many thoughts swayed in my head. If Ashlee comes and decides to leave, where would that put me? Did I have it in me to continue if I knew there were enough hours ahead of me that it would validate Ash going home to fucking Parramatta and coming back when I was more established? How far along was I really? Would I see another sunrise?

When Ashlee arrived, as normal when a new person enters a birth space, my contractions slowed slightly. A birthing woman is highly aware of her surroundings changing, like an animal sniffing and searching for danger. I could sense a new presence and it mixed up my game. But no - that couldn’t happen. Ashlee needed to know and understand just how far I was so she knew I was ready to birth this baby and would tell me to get in the pool. I started panicking, thinking I needed to prove to her just how far along I was so she would tell me I could birth and get me out of this. I felt myself searching deeper for contractions, moaning with them to force them to intensify so she KNEW just how far I was. She was never going to be convinced – she knew how far I was.   

At some point, I voiced fears to Aimee. 

“I’m so scared Aimee, of not knowing how long this will take. I’m so scared that I’ve come this far and I’m only 3 or 4cm dilated, I don’t know how to be okay with that or what the next steps are, this is too much”. 

I was gently offered a vaginal examination. It would allow my team and I some more information of where we were at with this labour and what our next actions would be. I agreed and took myself to lay on the lounge. The exam itself wasn’t too uncomfortable. Ash dug her fingers deep and ran them circularly along the inside of my cervix – she discovered my waters were indeed not broken. When she had finished, I sat up and as I did, my waters gushed out of me and onto the robe I was sitting on. Ash had given the sac a little poke which initiated the break.

“oh my god my waters, oh my god the couch!” I panted. “We were supposed to have a drop sheet on the couch!”.

 “oh I forgot about that” James admitted.

 “You had one job” I breathed jokingly. And we all had a laugh. For a moment I felt strong - that I could still make a joke. It was nice.   

 “Do you want to know numbers? Because what’s more important to know is that the progress you have made is amazing” Ash informed me. “To get to this point is a lot of hard work. Your cervix is stretching really well, which means it has softened perfectly and this progress is great. We’ll keep going like this together and you will birth your baby”.

I nodded slowly like a lost child as I processed her words and started crying.

“You’re not going to leave me? I thought you were all going to leave me” I cried. “I’m so scared of going into another day, of seeing another sunrise”.

Ashlee informed me strongly that she wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, she was confident that I would birth this baby before the sun came up, and she doesn’t usually like to make statements like that. Aimee second that Ash wouldn’t often offer that confidence to a birthing woman.

It was enough of a spark of hope for me to find a new sense of confidence in myself. A new shred of power to cling on to. Maybe, maybe I could do this. I just needed to keep going. 

I would later find out that I was in fact, 4cm dilated at that point, but my cervix could stretch to 8. My baby’s head was in the right position – but she was also posterior. Her back facing my back, which increases back pain known as “back labour” and can lengthen labour time, among other things. They didn’t tell me this, of which I am grateful for.

So we continued. I laboured on the toilet. In different bathrooms, ripping flimsy towel hangers off the walls as I grasped onto them. I was on all fours on the loungeroom floor until I found myself at the dining room table. James sat behind me on a bench, he never left my side, always he was there caring for me. Still giving me that counter pressure that strained his muscles, constantly whispering words of encouragement, staring into my eyes. He was my rock and my guardian, my protector and my peace.

“Go and get her from the stars baby, go and get Elsie and bring her here”. He would whisper to me during contractions.

“Remember your lion, he’s with you”, he reminded me.

My lion was a symbol. A sign sent to me by my mother in the months I grieved her loss. She sent me a lion in a vision so clear and so vivid, right before I took my Everest Base Camp hike to drop her ashes in the mountains of the Himalayas and process my new life and new loss. My lion on that hike would become my strength and my courage, his paws walked beside me on the hardest day when my endurance diminished and my emotions were heavy, and he would remind me I was never alone. He became a part of me. A gift from a mighty mother in the ether, to a daughter who needed help and guidance.  

But right now, I could not feel him. All there was, was pain, and my husband.

It was here, at the dining table, around an hour after being checked, that something shifted. My contractions took a step up to another level. My moans went from deep humming and rhythmic groaning to something more animalistic. I was louder. Primal and uninhibited sounds rising from the depths of me as I clung onto the table. I was squatting and sitting back on James knees, pushing his legs to the point they were shaking. He was struggling to hold us there under the weight of this increasing energy.

“Fuck, this is intense” I remember him saying.

Around 6:00pm I started bearing down and I instinctively ripped off my undies. The energy in the room had shifted. Aimee was walking around setting things up - the pool was filling with water. There in the pits of the most pain I have ever experienced in my life, I started seeing the light. The end. The sound of the water filling the pool, filling my mind with courage, it’s fucking go time. At this point, James saw Aimee and Ash share a celebratory  “hell yeah”. We were prepping to push this baby out.

“I think I need to push!” I told everyone.

“Go with it” Aimee encouraged.

“When the fuck can I get in that pool?!” I asked impatiently.

From the loungeroom Ash calmly told me “We need to wait until the baby’s head is coming out. Wait until you are feeling an uncontrollable urge to push, otherwise you will get in the water and things will slow. If you feel that urge, go with it”.

So I did. Everything in my body told me to push. The minutes ticked on, and on, and on as I gave it my all. I couldn’t form any thoughts except the thought to bear down, the imagery in my mind of my womb pushing my baby down through my birth canal. But something felt off. I had the urge yes - but the feeling of my pushing didn’t match the anatomy that I knew was supposed to be this phase of birth. I felt it was my mind pushing my body, not my womb and my baby acting uncontrollably. 

But I wasn’t giving up! We were here and these contractions, they told me to push. For almost a whole hour they told me to push and push.

Until they didn’t anymore. Until, everything slowed, and slowed, and then stopped.  One minute I was making powerful, ancient, growls and bearing down, the next I was panting, then breathing, then slowly swaying - in limbo. Minutes went by with no contraction. I waited and waited for another surge of godlike energy to rip through my body, but all I found was silence. The room was so still, so quiet. At some point even our meditation playlist had stopped. No music, no talking, no contractions.

It was in that silence that my doubt and depletion found a new place grow. Aimee and James observed with care as I slowly shuffled back to the kitchen bench and leant over it. Wasted and broken, with my baby still stuck inside my belly.

“I’m so confused” I directed at Aimee. “What’s happening, why has it stopped?”.

“This could be a rest and be thankful phase” Aimee offered. “Or your body might just need some more time”.

“I just, I just don’t know what to do”

“What do you feel you need? Maybe, we just need to take some rest?” Aimee asked.

I didn’t know what that meant. We were supposed to be done. We were right there. Does rest mean I failed? Maybe she isn’t going to fit? I thought I was doing well? What do they know that I don’t? Something is wrong and no one is telling me. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Where do we even go from here? I’m trapped.

Together we decided it may be good for me to shower and calm my body. So, we turned ourselves back to the bathroom. James and I have reflected now, that if the pool was 12 on a clock, we had made it to 11 over the last 20 hours. We had physically worked our way clockwise around the house from the bathroom, to the dining room, to the kitchen,  stopping right before the pool. So close. But we were about to rewind, moving backward to re-trace our steps. So, in the shower we went for 10 minutes. Contractions few and far between, not progressing. I needed to lay down for some rest.  

 James and Aimee trailed me on quiet footsteps as I found my way to the couch. Laying down, I took some breathes as more thoughts swam in my head. We are going to need to call the ambulance soon. Everyone in the room knows something I don’t. How long can this go on for? Is my baby going to be okay? She’s not going to fit through my pelvis that’s why this stopped. I am going to transfer and need to get a C-section and that means I will need to labour for 45 minutes in an ambulance and then more so in fucking Westmead hospital. I have failed. I don’t know if I am going to survive this.

 My vision blurred, my doubt piled on top of me, and I thought for moment - I might actually be dying. It was my sense of self fading, while we waited for the contractions to find their place in my body again. It was here that Aimee and Ashlee were starting to rest as well, deciding to take some naps.

 I began contracting more regularly again on our couch, James still steadfast beside me. I was still pushing down with each contraction as my body told me too. Each surge felt like lightening through my mind, because I no longer had the confidence in my body anymore. I felt like my body had betrayed me. I felt like I was an idiot for choosing a home birth with no access to pain relief. What if this all went wrong? I am stupid. I have done this to myself. I was wrong. My body does not know what to do. 

Each thought was like a mental whipping that paired well with my contractions. I was getting physically and spiritually flogged.

These hours felt darker, deeper, and harder than any others before it. It was James and I, navigating this darkness together as best we could. I stared into his eyes, beyond his eyes, looking for doubt, wanting him to save me. I was hopeless, and I could see he was just as lost as I was. And I felt for him, to be watching me suffer like this, to have no idea where this journey would lead us. He would later tell me that this point in the night was for him, his time of doubt. He was unsure if we were going to be able to make this happen. He was doubting the process, the team, the journey. We didn’t know what we were doing.

“Help me, I don’t know what to do”. I pleaded with him.

“We are going to need some direction here” James said to Aimee. 

Aimee was calm, gentle, and kind. She came to me and asked what was going through my mind.

“I don’t understand why we were right there and she didn’t come” I told her. “I don’t know where to go from here and I don’t know how much longer I can cope”.

Aimee gave the suggestion that we wake Ash and get another vaginal exam. It would help us understand what’s happening and what we can do to move forward. I didn’t even have to think about it, I just wanted answers.

Ashlee did her check. We discovered that I was 8cm dilated and my cervix was swollen. There was no way that Elsie was going to come out of me 3 hours ago. Positively, she had moved to an anterior position, back facing my belly, her chin still tucked, an optimal position for birth. I would come to understand later on, that having a posterior baby can lead to feelings of an urge to push before fully dilated - it creates more pressure to the cervix, which matches well with my journey so far and why my body thought it was time to go before it really was.

This new information gave us direction. It also gave me answers. I was not a failure. There is nothing wrong. My baby is in the perfect position to birth. My baby is safe and well. I was not a failure. We just weren’t ready yet.

I looked to Aimee and put all my hope in her hands.

“Do you – do you truly think I can do this?”.

“Yes. I really do” she told me, not a hint of doubt in her voice. “There is no reason why you can’t. And now we know what’s happening, we can do some things to help”. 

She explained the plan to James and I. I was to take two arnica tablets under my tongue, 4 times, every 20 minutes. The herbal pills would help to reduce the swelling on my cervix. Also, I needed to keep labouring.

I needed to keep contracting to allow my cervix to fully open but for this to happen and  for the swelling to reduce - I had to fight the urge to bear down. I was not allowed to push. The goal was to redirect my surges and try to breathe through them. I could support this by lifting my hips in the air, putting my face down into the lounge, and with each surge I would blow my lips to move through them and keep the energy in my head and not my pelvis. We would use the rebozo scarf or James hands to continually shake my hips back and forth quickly, which would encourage relaxation between contractions and increase  space and movement in my pelvis. 

And once again, it was time to level up. We had a plan and I would execute. I just needed answers and direction. I was strong. I could continue. For Elsie, I could do this.

I had no choice really.

The next hour and a half was the rock bottom of our labour journey. Ashlee was taking a a sleep in the front room. Aimee in and out of dozing - though always present, on the couch next to James and I, as I surrendered my body over to the surges. The urge to push was SO real, but I reminded myself it was a lie as I blew and blew and blew my lips, face down into couch. My body convulsed and shook with each one and I held my bum firmly with my own hand to stop my hips from throwing themselves downwards.

James stroked my hair. He blew his lips and breathed with me on each contraction. He reminded me of all my strengths. Reminded me of my father’s wedding speech - were my dad proudly told everyone that I was the strongest person he’s ever known. He reminded me I was powerful. He shook my hips over and over and over. He was not giving up either.

It was around 12:30am, when I felt a sudden “pop”.  It was Elsies head falling into my pelvis, I knew it. Something just happened and it was a signal. My body threw itself over James onto the floor as I squatted and started crying out.

 “Her head came down! I felt it!”.

I grabbed James and I pushed and roared through one contraction - but my confidence in myself was so shot from the first time.

 “I don’t know!! I don’t know if this is right!”. I cried.

I forced myself quickly back up on the lounge because I was so convinced I could be wrong again. Ashlee made her way over and said told me that it had most likely been long enough now for my cervix to fully dilate. That I could try and push again.

“I can’t do that again” I said between working through more contractions that were still pounding my body continuously. “I can’t push and not know if it’s right. I need to know I’m ready. I won’t survive doing that again, can we please check that I am ready”.

So we did. I lay back down, James grabbing my hand, and Ashlee dug her fingers inside me one final time. Feeling around and assessing as this moment of silence determined our next moves.

A smile came over her face. “Get up and go sit on the toilet, let’s start pushing this baby out, you’re ready to go”.

 Everything inside me cracked open as I finally allowed this incessant urge to push completely take over. Fuck moving, this was happening here. The next contractions came and I became completely uninhibited.

 “I CAN’T, I CAN’T” I screamed. “PLEASE I CAN’T FUCKING DO THIS”.

 This is transition - the short moment between active labour and the pushing phase. I had told myself before labour that I wouldn’t speak these classic words that every woman seems to speak in transition. That I would hear it coming and tell myself instead that I could. Now I understand there’s really no escaping those words.

I flung myself to the floor again, my arms locked my arms around James neck, and the animalist, ancient, noises took over me. The finish line was in sight. Yet still one, giant, and final, task lay ahead – to bring Elsie into this world safely.

 James smiled in my ear, I could hear relief and hope coating his words.

“Baby, we’re doing this now okay, it’s happening, you did it, you did it baby, lets go, you can do this”.  

 I was directed a second time around - to push until Elsies head was coming through, then we would get into the pool. So, I let the power of birth take over my entire being. My uterus pushing down with a force of it’s own will - pushing Elsie to us. A mirror was held below me, the girls waited to see her crown.

 I started pushing on the floor of the loungeroom at 12.40am. At 12.47am, I finally heard the words I had been waiting for, for over 5 hours since the water filled that stupid, inflatable, piece of plastic.

 “Okay Sally, let’s get into the pool” Ashlee directed me.

 “I AM BIRTHING THIS BABY ON THIS FUCKING FLOOR” I decided. “I CAN’T MOVE”.

 “Trust me, you will love getting into the pool, James will carry you, we will make it happen” someone said.

 So, we made it happen. I don’t know if my legs did anything, as James took the entire weight of me around his shoulders and dragged me to the pool.

“This is fucked!” I told everyone. “This is insane!”. Adrenaline flooded my body and everything inside me buzzed at the thought of this all being over. Of one final feat.  “I can’t believe people do this! This girl has things to answer for! This is DUMB”.

Shit just rambled and poured out of my mouth, everyone having a bit of a giggle as my delirium ran rampart.  

A baby’s head descending slowly out of me, arms still interlocked behind James neck, I lifted my legs over the side of the pool and submerged my body into the warm water. Relief. It soothed me. I was on my knees, leant over the side of the birth pool, James taking my weight.

Ashlee had said I was pushing great on the floor and that I needed to keep doing that in the water. The pool reduces the benefit of gravity on pushing and can also just change the way a woman pushes. So, in the water when the first contraction shot through me, I gave it my all. My vocalisation was outward, pushing and groaning out of my mouth. I could feel her head stretching me. My pre-planned affirmations for this phase of “it’s just a stretch” literally nowhere to be found in my head. Those affirmations didn’t have shit on what this feeling was. Just a stretch? Fucking really? I felt I could split in two. Ashlee monitored Elsie’s heart rate. It was going strong, she was fine.

“Did I do good?” I asked, wanting direction, clarification. 

“You’re doing amazing” Aimee spoke to me.

 Another contraction. My fingers dug into James arms forcefully as I pushed and pushed. The contraction subsided and Ash came with the doppler to my belly. Elsies’s heart rate again thumping at the same pace. At some point our second midwife, Chantelle, turned up and walked into our home. James and I had completely forgotten she was even tending this birth. 

Aimee came to my side and spoke with empathy and care.

 “Sal, Ash has said that you’re not pushing the same way you were outside the pool. You’re doing amazing but we need to push a bit harder okay? We need to direct the energy down”.

Putting her thumb and middle finger together, she made a small circle about 10cm wide and explained to me “We’re just seeing about this much of her head”.

Shit, okay. I need to work harder.

A baby’s head doesn’t come in a linear fashion. It will descend and crown, then move back up, then descend further on the next contraction, and go back up. I knew this prior to birth, but the knowledge and all my tools we’re far gone many hours ago. So I would push, feeling her head stretch me, then feel her disappear again. And again.

Another contraction. Another heart check for Els with the doppler. Each check between contractions was silent as we allowed the sound of her lifeforce indicate her stress and oxygen levels. This third contraction, Ash placed the doppler at my belly and we listened – to a heart rate that sounded different to the last. 

“Is she okay?!” I stressed. “Is her heart okay?”.

Ashlee told me she’s okay, it’s normal for a baby heart rate to drop a little, as she went back and took notes on her laptop while I worked through my next contraction. Every single sense in me was aware of an energy shift. Of my baby. At the next contraction the women in the room coached me further – I needed to stop making noise outward. Instead I needed to breathe in as deep as I could, hold it, and squeeze. I needed to re-direct all of my energy down and into my bum.

“Like the biggest poo you’ve ever had to do, push all the air you can down” Chantelle explained.

So I did as I was told, and it started to make a difference.

“Go, go, go! Yes Sally! That’s great! That’s working!” they cheered me on. And I had felt the difference in the progress that kind of push made. Her head was truly coming through now and making space.

“You’ve figured it out baby! Keep doing that, whatever you did - do that. You’ve figured it out” James spoke in my ear. Holding my limp body out of the water as we waited for the next push. 

Ashlee came around my front again. Doppler out. Silence and space from everyone as the heartrate that was found – but was not regular, not strong. Ash said nothing as she paced back to her laptop and spoke with Chantelle.  She isn’t recovering. Babies heart rates are supposed to recover. Something is wrong.

“What’s happening?” I asked distressed. “Is she okay?”

“We just need to push really hard okay Sally, exactly what you just did we need to do that again okay”. It was Ash, or Aimee, or Chantelle – I wouldn’t know. All three women were coaching me and supporting me in bringing this baby earthside.

 But there was a strain now in the room. I was hyper-aware, out of body, everything thought cleared out of my head.

 Another contraction brewed and I locked the fuck in. My baby needs me. I need me. I need to get her out. So I pushed with all my might down and down, my face squeezed as I felt every place in which Elsies head opened and stretched me. It came and it came and it came, then contraction reached its peaked and dropped, and her head moved slowly back in.

 Doppler out. Silence. A heart rate. Irregular. Slow.

 Ashlee made no statement, going back to talk to Chantelle. James and I held eachother. All I could imagine was my baby needing CPR. All I could imagine was not hearing that heartbeat on the next push. I was outside of myself. Pain did not matter anymore, my body was not mine anymore, all there was, was the thought of her. The thought of what would come next. There was some talk.

 “I’ve got the oxygen over here” I heard Chantelle inform Ashlee.

 “Sally, listen to me. You need to get her head out on this next push, or we are going to have to get you out of the pool, and we are going to have to get her out”. Ashlee informed me.

 At that, an absolute silence fell into my being. A search. A cry for help.

 Mum, I need you. Mum, can you please help me?

I saw my mother kneeling in front of me. She was watching. No sympathy in her eyes – just a firm understanding and an anchored determination. A thousand women of past in her eyes. It was my mum, but it was all mums. Women who have birthed and bled and cried for millennia. I needed not just my mother, I needed the mother. The unshakeable force that nothing and no one can fuck with if her child needs her.

 And my baby needed me right now.

 I am the mother.

 “You’ve got to get her now out my love. Give this everything you have okay?” James said in my ear. I knew he was just as scared as I was. But he believed in me. He always believed in me.

 A final contraction begun its incline. With it I took my mighty breathe in, steadying myself, and when I shut my eyes, a giant and lions paw slammed down in dirt, right in front of my vision. It struck down with a statement – we are doing this, together.

 A strength in me I never knew existed – maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it came from somewhere else. But it entered me as I entered this contraction and I fucking pushed.

 “GO SALLY KEEP GOING KEEP GOING KEEP GOING”, my team all encouraged.

 Chantelle moved forward and slammed her palm against my lower back, pushing my bum down towards the floor as she coached and coached me to continue. I pushed and I pushed and I pushed and I felt Elsie continue descending as she moved and moved. My contraction slowed but I thought fuck you contraction, I will not stop. I pushed instead with my spirit, defying my body that wanted to slow. I will not fail her.

“SALLY YES, YES, THIS IS IT”

 I felt the “pop” as the last of her head squeezed out of me. My midwives were not fucking around – she had to come out quickly. Grabbing her head, they rotated her swiftly, tugged and pulled, and ripped the rest of her body out of me. James would later say she came out like a rocket - she flung out in full force.

 A 27-hour long journey came down to these very 5 seconds. Nothing that happened before mattered anymore as I instinctively flipped myself over and Ashlee passed Elsie onto my chest.  Her wet body was impossibly soft and velvety, the small weight of her felt so floppy and delicate.  I looked down into her little face, and I couldn’t believe what was before my eyes.

 This tiny, delicate, new being with huge, dark, almost alien-like eyes that stared directly into mine. So aware. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.  

 “Hi” I breathed. “Hi baby” I said a little louder and high pitched. “Hi there, Hi, Hi!”

 I didn’t know what else to say. I was lost for words. All I had was shock and awe. James was beside me looking at Elsie over my shoulder with a huge smile on his face. Relief and joy and love radiated from the both of us and I turned to look at him and we kissed.

“I did it” I told him.

“You did it” he repeated. Holding me.

I held Elsie from my chest to take a better look at her. She was looking between both of us - a little dazed, a little confused, not making a sound, but she was okay. She was going to be okay.  Ashlee helped me rouse her a little by splashing some of the warm water on her body. I kissed her face. And nothing could ever take this moment away from me. I did it. I brought my baby to me. 

Her first delicate little cry came from her mouth, and my heart could have burst right out of my chest. There she is. The final confirmation I needed to know we were safe and that she was truly going to be okay. I couldn’t believe we made it here. I couldn’t believe I was holding my daughter. That we just went through what we did - what the fuck was that? There was no need to process right now – I had no capacity to process right now. All that there was, was just her and her beautiful face.

We stayed here in the water for just 10 minutes or so until it was time to get out, we needed to birth the placenta, check me for tears, and get Elsie nice and warm. Getting out of the pool was no small task. I had my baby in my arms with her umbilical cord still attached to the placenta inside me, and my body had nothing left in it to stand or move. James supported me up out of the water and my body immediately started to go into shock. Shaking and shivering and convulsing, I somehow made it out of the pool and lay on the couch that was covered with drop sheets. Elsie lay on my chest and we were covered in blankets as I breathed slowly with Aimee to recover myself.

Elsie remained so calm as we lay there together whilst the team ran through their post-birth processes. Both of us wet and dazed, just piecing together the reality we had found ourselves in. Both of us new and raw to this world and to each other. James stood behind the couch looking over us, smiling at his daughter in complete awe. Our protector.

 This is our family. Now three, but we are one - James, Els, and I. A team. We walked that labour together and made it out. Though hell and back, through doubt we did not falter and we did not yield. That is how our journey began. With depthless love, with patience and determination, with courage, and with guidance from something greater than us.

 And that is how we will walk our life. This is what we will teach you Els – we will show you what true love is. You will know safety. You will know peace. You will know wonder. We will teach you all we know, and you will teach us and change us in ways we cannot foresee. We are open to your lessons and we will grow with you. For the rest of our lives.

I am the mother. I am your mother. And I love you with all that I am.

ONE WEEK POST-PARTUM

I feel myself coming back to life slowly. Peeping around the corner shyly to look at the real world again. My body is healing well, my mind will take some time – but with her, it’s easier.

The clichés are true. She was worth it. The hours, the pain, the trauma. I went to hell and back. I broke entirely and I’d do it again tomorrow if I had to, to keep her with me.

My power was stolen from me for a moment. Birth shattered me and left me in the gutter, beaten, bruised, and bleeding. It kicked my ass physically, mentally, and spiritually. I laid there my sorrows for a few days, unsure if I would come back. But now I am lifting myself up, muscles shaking, determination stirring in my stomach.

Because birth didn’t defeat me. For a moment, I thought it won the battle, but me the war. Though I have come to realise that it didn’t even win the battle. I fucking kicked ass. Everything I planned for and everything I wanted, I did and I made happen.

I built a powerful team, I used all of my tools, and I birthed my baby naturally with no medication, in my home. I did that, and no one, not even labour, can take that from me.

Birth – you did not take away my power.

You only broke me so I can now rebuild myself stronger and more courageous than I have ever been before. My comeback is brewing, and it will be my most beautiful. I promise that.

And one day, I will meet you again. I will have fears, but I will have no doubt. There will be no doubt ever again in myself. Because I went to the depths and I never gave up.

I am so proud of myself.

And I have the greatest gift in life to show for it.

My Elsie girl, let’s do this life together.