birth.
the littles were playing in their room, keeping busy, bossing eachother around.
the baby was on my lap, we were lounging on the couch in our bedroom, on and off nursing, her favorite style. looking out the window at the slick wet of the green, the mucky brown of the almost tilled garden plot, the brightest blue jays soaring by, a turkey vulture even higher. i sipped my coffee and water (becasue i was nursing after all, the kid needs something other than caffiene) and I revisited her birth. i felt it in my wole body, in her whole body as she laid across my lap, hands reaching for my golden dove necklace pulling it, tugging it, her feet pressing into my belly flesh, her little toes flexed then pointed, flex then pointed. pushing herself away and then coming close. i closed my eyes tight and saw the space of that night she came through; the lit fire, the blue of the tub, the bubbles in the water, the shoulder of my lover. and the people around that should not have been there. i wanted to erase it. rewind. play it again.
oh, i long to write her birth story. but when i will, the fear will stop me from sharing it. unless of course i take the easy route and talk about it as it seems, at it looks to the bystander. Joy! Peace! Life! but to talk about the deep work that happened inside, the drum of destruction and the flag of surrender and the ache of regret. because the birth journey and the baby in arms are two very seperate experiences. yes. i give thanks i had my Z, not surgury all healthy. and no, it is not the birth i would have gotten if i honored the voice inside that said: intimacy. create intimacy.
i stopped myself in my tracks. i looked back at my ivory white child, her cheeks to damn rosie, her eyes rings of gray around swamp-green. she is here, and i love her.
i put her to my breast and she fell asleep finally. i played around on the computer, catching up on women who write and write really well. and i came across this, and she wrote exactly what i needed to read.
http://fourlittlebirds.blogsome.com/2008/06/28/intimacy-in-birth/
her post is why i fear to share a story of a birth that was so perfect yet so painful. and her post is why i must share it.
to truly listen to oneself and hear is the only story we can share. i can write Z’s birthstory the way everyone wants to hear it because damn it, i had a homebirth with a live baby. or i can tell it as it really happened, i can tell it with the lessons i learned. i can tell it as a heroine, which i am, but i must tell it as it was given to me.
i should have done it all alone.
As soon as i can muster up the courage to write it, I will. until then, thank you fourlittlebirds. Thank you.
