On birthing, ourselves and babies, or what happens during transformation

I have been pondering over ideas of pregnancy and birth, actual and symbolic. Pregnancy and giving birth, being myself born has reappeared in my dreams, as it has in the past, during times of transition and transformation. 

I have been thinking about the stories I know about my mother giving birth to me. How it has been for her and also for me to arrive, with effort, pushing and even the family joke about the doctor having to “jump on my mum’s belly” for me to finally come after endless hours of labor, and presumably endless hours during which something in me must have not felt ready, safe or even willing yet. 

Marion Woodman, one of my favorite Jungians, devoted the soul-body, writes about her own observations around people’s actual birth experiences that tend to show up as a pattern every time life requires a step forward, a transformation, or a new level of awareness. 

The way we entered this world tends to be the way we continue to enter each new spiral of growth. If a birth was somewhat straight forward, people might handle passages of transition with ease and confidence and trust. It birth was challenging, fear and anxiety or symptoms of suffocation might be present during important life changes. If birth was premature… we might approach life and milestones in that fashion. 

The birth of my own baby, which was in the USA, also comes up for me especially lately as I support him into his own transformation into a man. The day I gave birth still stands as the most precious moment of my life. Not only precious and important, not only beautiful and sacred. It was the moment of the greatest transformation for myself. A life before and a life after. Often uncomfortably unrelated. Somewhat snapped in two. But that’s not the story I want to share now. 

It’s the story of an energy, a deluge, a wave – no, the entire ocean, that overcame me and the readiness and determination that came through me – never felt before. New visitors to my body, psyche and mind. So when these powers landed and centered themselves into my birth canal, all I wanted was to push with the might of a Titan. 

Now I am sitting with an interesting thought. A thought about what would be the exact opposite of this force. I am no physicist but I have known and been subjected to the laws of nature just like every single atom of the Universe. 

What could be a force, equal in power and opposite in direction that was needed to pause my laboring? When I locked eyes with the nurse, and spoke with a mixture of certainty and panic that I am ready. That he, my baby, my flesh but not mine too, was for certain communicating extremely clearly with me that he is ready. 

We were two mighty minds and bodies about to converge into one profound process. Of togetherness. We both, about to birth each other, knowingly, united, one mind splitting into two bodies, but sharing an intention for a new Becoming. 

So. The moment of convergence crashes here. Nurse sternly speaks. Time stretches into infinity. Her words say something but meaning takes its bloody time to arrive. And I hear “wait!” 

What?!? How can one wait? What does waiting even mean at this moment?

Nurse explains briefly. We called the doctor and she is on her way. 

So here is where you find me, dear reader. I am sitting this morning with the enormity of 20 minutes. A human invention. A clock. A timer. Something that one needs a brain to understand. And the Titan of a force pushing through me had nothing to do with my own simple human brain; it could not care less about human inventions. 

This is where physics enters my thinking. And I am trying to explain to myself how my mind has had to fabricate that other opposing force and indeed oblige me to … wait. 

So I waited. So he waited.

The ocean inside where my baby was, was blocked by an oceanic barrier. Stop. Wait. Wait for someone, something outside on a watch, to arrive and do/help/whatever so I can do something that was already in motion and was doing itself. 

How and why did I do that? What aspects of my own story, my personal story as well as the collective story that I was raised on, must have taken place to allow for this to be possible. I don’t yet fully understand. Although I am beginning to. 

To be told from the outside who you are. 

To be made to wait, sit, stop, do, not do. 

To obey. 

To suppress. 

To listen to external voices. 

To somehow convince yourself that these external voices are the ones. 

To push down an entire ocean inside and store it somewhere. Where????

So these things seem to matter more than we realize. 

If a baby is being told to wait, held back… not allowed to follow their own wave, to surf it with ease and trust, what happens to their natural instincts and life flow? 

How often and automatically do we wait for someone else to tell us Go? How often do we silence the ocean inside? And to what cost?

There will never be answers to why but awareness helps here (as well as awareness about the medical system that has lost its ability to trust what we humans intuitively know, but that’s a other story too).

I know that today my responsibility as a mother is to sense, attune to, see the glistening of ocean water as it comes through him, and offer him a surf, and maybe a little sunscreen. 

But also get out of the way. 

As he remembers that deep inside him is an entire ocean.

I can smell it on him. 

With love,

Aleksandra