Jessica,
Ok, I am attaching my work in progress. I have been revisiting and reworking my story, so it doesn’t feel like an end product, but I wanted to send you something. ...The baby massage with Lynne was so great, and Addy seems to respond really well to the relaxing touch. We just celebrated her 3-month birthday. The end of my childbearing year!

One year since conception, she has completed her “fourth trimester” and is now officially an infant. We had a beautiful circle and ritual where I read her birth story and the letter I wrote her before she was born. I am so proud of her! I will be sending new pics so check them out, especially the “then. . . And now” I hope you guys are doing great. I heard you will teach at the new Golden Bridge. I haven’t gone to any baby and me yoga classes yet, but I am really looking forward to building my practice again. We are heading to NY in a few weeks to attend my oldest girlfriend’s wedding and see my family. Addy is beginning her big travels!

Love and kisses,
Nia, Addy and Reese

One Contraction at a Time

My daughter was born at home surrounded by people that will love and guide her for the rest of her life. She was guided into the world by her own making as she and I worked together to reshape my pelvis contraction by contraction. The process of opening to birth was to dive fearlessly into the unknown-ness of myself that I feared before as overwhelming abyss-like darkness. I had played and feared that edge for many years, feeling positive that if I moved into that intensity, it would surely lead to my own death. In a most profound and vivid way, as I just allowed that possibility, I experienced it becoming beautiful. Looking back, the pain was the resistance to that experience and to those parts of me that I had believed ugly and beyond repair. As I released, surrendered, and trusted that surrender one contraction at time, I was finally liberated from my mind. Now, my daughter lies beside me, her little body nuzzled close to my breast in the early morning sun. She is silent and still for a moment, and then a tiny sweet coo emerges briefly as she meanders through baby dreams one perfect breath at a time.

I chose to have my daughter at home because I feel comfortable and safe here. My home is where I create familiar, sacred space through the laughter and tears of common everyday life. Here is where my husband and I make love, share food, invite friends, and brush our teeth. My toilet is my own, I know how to work the hot and cold handles in the shower unconsciously, my bed is full of memories of staying up late getting to know my husband, and my kitchen is abundant with food and medicinal herbs. Here is where I will raise my daughter, the walls and doors of which she will see as I walk her to sleep over my shoulder, the views of which will turn up in her dreams for the next hundred years. As we each imprint the memory of our beginnings as a family, the background will be of a cozy and well-loved apartment in Hollywood, California, no matter where our journey leads us. For me it was an obvious choice and a safe choice.

My water broke at 4:30 in the morning the last day of January after the last night I could possibly stand to be pregnant. I had "bottomed out" only hours before sobbing in my husband's arms through the final "I can't take it anymore" meltdown. I woke up in a wet bed and in a scratchy voice whispered, "Something's coming out of my vagina." "Do you think this is it?" replies another hopeful scratchy voice. In the bathroom, another gush and a call to my midwife. Wow, it was really happening. The day had finally come after I was so sure that it never would. I gushed one more time before crawling back in bed over a towel and going back to sleep. My water was clear and there was no need for concern. I slept in and woke up later, still with no contractions. I ate breakfast, and called my best friend to go walking.

We ended up trying on shoes at the mall and eating pizza on Hollywood Boulevard (not where I thought I would start my Labor Day). I dutifully and purposefully walked the stairs hoping to initiate some contractions to the rhythm of bad pop music over loud speakers. After two hours of walking, I still had no contractions but I was exhausted. When I got home, I called my midwife and we agreed that I would take a big nap and then two ounces of castor oil upon waking if I still had not progressed. I was having fewer contractions after my water had broken then I had been having for weeks! At 6:30 I awoke and took the castor oil, and by 8:30 I was having a few tiny menstrual-like cramps. Only an hour later, at 9:30, I was in full active labor, with contractions two to three minutes apart, and my midwife was on her way.

In the hour before she was in my house and set up with her assistant, our friend Jeffrey arrived and helped me through contractions. Nkem sent Beth home to rest, our doula arrived, and my husband was the utter presence, the silence in which all the chaos was danced. He was totally there for me and I knew it.

He was listening to every breath, every glance, every uterine squeeze, whether he was in the room or not. I swear that night he was omniscient. I could feel him in every cell. On top of being my number one support person, he was outside arranging parking, filling the birth pool, and getting ready to catch the baby. Each person in my birth support team was there for a reason, some expected and some unexpected. I labored on.

The labor itself was as uniquely personal to me as a mind-altering drug experience can be, and it took place in an uncommon perception. I feel that I healed many unresolved experiences by laboring without pain-controlling drugs. There was a crossing-over from feelings of "ugliness" and uncoordinated movements to a rhythmic dance as I surrendered over and over again. I was loud, wild and uninhibited, and it was one of the few times in my life that I totally let go. Let me tell you sisters, it felt goooooood! To push was delight, giving movement to the intensity that was building inside like water filling a dam before it is allowed to deluge into the ocean.

After the birth pool flooded twice (unbeknownst to be), I got in for a very short period of time, floated around through a couple contractions, and like a mama bear, my body just started curling in towards itself. Nobody yelled at me to push like in the hospital scenes of the movies. There was again just pure, organic momentum. My midwife checked me and I was given the go ahead to push my baby out. I was so relieved to push, and I felt like I had really accomplished something, and the pride in that moved me. I could totally do this.

Adelle was born into the warm water, but my daughter came out needing a little extra help to breathe the cool air of her new world. I looked in awe at this other human that had just came out of me, got out of the water and onto the bed, and my midwife began to administer oxygen. Looking back, I am still surprised at how calm I felt and acted, despite the intense atmosphere of the emergency protocol.

Honestly what I was thinking was, "I just worked so hard to grow this girl inside me for the last ten months and there is no way she is not going to live". So Reese and I touched her and talked to her and called her into life, as did all the beings that surrounded her. After a long two minutes of two start-ups into crying and then out again, my girl pinked up and screamed. Every time we ask her about it she gives us a little mischievous smile.

Death is often close at the most intense experiences of Life, but when life calls and we have made the choice to live, live we do. I am so happy to have had my baby at home. I believe she was invited, supported, and loved into being, rather than forced or pushed. We had everything we needed for her safe entry, including hospital back-up, and by Grace and Love, we were able to stay in our home and become a family. My daughter nursed five minutes after she started breathing. She is perfect, and I believe her gentle birth will serve her. It definitely served me.