Let it in, Let it go, Round and round, We flow. Weaving the web of women.
Let in in, Let it go, Round and round, We flow. Weaving the web of life.
Helped this little dear come into the world this weekend. Had a wonderful team at Crouse Hospital who thanked us for sharing the birth experience with them,. The attending OB (Dr. Brown of CNY Women's Health Care) took a moment to stand aside with me and talk about the miracle of birth how it draws "people like us" into it as a profession. What an honor, to be seen as a professional birth worker. Although I know I am still very much an amateur, it meant a lot to be recognized as a valuable part of the team.
It especially helped to hear that because I was blubbering tears all over myself and consequently the leg I was holding and thinking about how UN-professional that was! But, I have a little "emotional mess" wiggle room for this particular birth I think. That baby buckling means a lot to me.
It was such an honor to have been asked to attend the birth for so many reasons, and to feel like I had worthy contributions as a team member was even more special. I won't go too far into something so personal here, but I feel it needs to be said that this baby is a very meaningful connection in the life that I have been trying to build for our children, a life where family means something other than obligation, where connections are born out of the love we have for each other as fellow beautiful people with a shared history. I've never really had that for myself, and I feel that some of my blunders over the past decade have been born of me desperately clutching to the promise of it. But all of these feelings are still so very amorphous, and I have only just begun to be able to sort out why I have tears dripping from my chin from time to time. I think it best boils down to how blessed I feel to have had this opportunity to build up and repair on a relationship with family that I have not been able to approach until recently. And what's more, is that it really emphasizes the work that I've done to get to this place.
The birth was a chance for me to realize how much I've gained over the past decade. Not just the information that I've learned and retained in regards to birth and motherhood, but also how the connections I've made in that time have influenced my life and the strength that I have found in them, and consequently in myself. Starting from the chanting workshop by Marie Summerwood when I was freshly pregnant with my first, to lessons from my own doula during her faithful attendance of my similarly Scorpion long labor and the friendship that bloomed between us, and especially to the sense of belonging that I've felt at every Syracuse Red Tent gathering and Solstice Celebration.
Each of those experiences gave me the strength and the know-how to help sing this little one into the world, and I wouldn't be the person that I am today without them. Those connections birthed me into a womanhood that I hadn't known could exist. How reassuring it is to be able to look back on it all and recognize your purpose-- to feel so palpably how you are meant to fit in the world? Something to hold on tightly to.
On a similar note, I finished my tattoo this month. Remember, the one with the peacock? You can see a hint of the feather in the photo above. It takes a good 7 years for a peacock to grow such a beautiful, full tail. And when he does, he molts it every year and has to grow it all over again.
Life is.
