I've always been fascinated by birth and birthing.
Now
of course, with my third - and most likely final - birth rapidly approaching,
it's never far from my thoughts.
My Poppet asked me recently about fairies, about
magic. And I told her, sadly, that fairies are just pretend they live in
story-world, not our world, but I'm making a baby in my tummy, and that's like
magic.
When I was her age I remember trying to hatch an egg
by wrapping it in a little doll blanket and trying to keep it warm, later I'd
watch, awed and entranced as our chicks pecked their way out of their eggs.
Even as a teen I was fascinated - one of the books I wrote then - later
published by a small press, has a three page birth scene in it, wherein my eleven
year old heroine delivers her friends twins – one of which is a footling
breech, in the middle of a hurricane. I re-read it recently and couldn’t help
laughing ruefully about how blasé my character was about it all – I get more
stressed trying to merge in heavy (okay, any) traffic!
It was the first of many birth scenes I've written or
intend writing, relying heavily on the account my mama wrote of my own birth.
Since then I've written several more - including one with triplets in myth-time
Ireland, based on the birth of the Irish sun god, Lugh. And there are several
more again in my 'to-write' list of novels.
One of my characters - an ex-were-wolf queen is going
to have twins in a remote myth-world castle, surrounded by wolf-people. Another
is going to have one birth in our world - and her next (twins again, seems to
be a theme) shortly after being kidnapped into myth-time Ireland.
When my grandfather had a series of strokes and came to live with us while he recovered, he
returned, again and again to the 'big events'. As a minister, the 'big events'
for him were christenings and weddings, Christmas and Easter. He would often
stop the family and say it was crucial for the service to be held immediately. Luckily, he wasn't so
interested in conducting funerals.
For me, birth is the 'big event' and, even when not
expecting any day, I remain fascinated.
I've always loved listening to people’s birth stories.
I've read of people who hate being told 'horror' stories while they awaited the
birth of their first born, and I've never understood it. I've always been
honoured that people will share such an intimate and precious, life-changing
time in their lives.
And right after a birth? I think many people do want
and need to talk about it. It is massive. It can be very traumatic. It can
totally change the way you see yourself and the world.
It's such a liminal, transformative,
terrifying, exciting, joyous time.
Pregnant with the Sprocket, I'd ask if people were
happy to share their stories, and they'd remember so clearly and seemed so
happy to talk about their experiences, caught up in it again. And the stories
were all so very different, as different and personal as the women themselves.
I love reading about births, (although I'm still a little peeved that of all
the birth stories I've read one of the easiest, pain-free sounding births was
that of a young mum in the middle of nowhere in the desert, in a hippy camp,
high on marijuana. It just didn't seem fair,) and watching birth stories on
television.
Of course, before Sprocket, I assumed that other women's
births had no relation to my own future births - which would be a series of
'rushes' in which I would breath my baby out to meditations of whales and
dolphins easing through ocean and harp music playing. A-ha.*
And for some women, that's how it is - and that's
wonderful. (Although Odent I think has a lot to answer for - just because he
witnessed one woman give birth
without pain because she 'wasn't afraid' does not mean that all women can, or
will, do that, fear or no fear. We are actually individuals, and so are our
babies. Our births are unique combinations of how our bodies and our babies
bodies work. For some of us that involves a lot of pain or surgery, for some it
doesn't.)
Now, not quite as sanguine, I'm yet excited, honoured.
It does seem like magic, that soon another little one with all the potential,
with all the promise and wonder, will come into the world. That this little one
who has wriggled and kicked within me, whose brain has developed connections,
whose tiny fingernails have grown, who has started to consider the noises, the
changing light beyond her cocoon, will come out to meet us, to change the world
for us.
Nine moons beneath my heart, my little one is
preparing to make the hardest, most challenging and, in many ways, most
dangerous journey of her life.
It is probably not surprising that my thoughts revolve
so much around her and her coming, that I am so easily distracted and find it
so difficult to concentrate on other things.
While I would like to say that I am keeping up to
date with world events and am abreast with current happenings, that when I’m up
half the night with heartburn and aching hips I’m busily tapping out my next
novel, the truth is, my world has contracted to my little ones forth coming
arrival. While I’d trying to think of other things to write about, and will try
to stretch myself a little more, let me admit now that the next few weeks on my blog are
likely to be heavily birth and baby focused. (Um, yes, probably even more so
than now!)
*Well, he was yanked out to Enya, as the obstetrician
remarked on pityingly.
