Remember what you came here for.

This is what our midwife said as she placed the palm of her hand on Szerafina’s forehead. Leaning over our intertwined resting bodies, she smiled. With an exhausted body but amplified mind, I was able to lay with my new daughter at my breast and husband by our side.

The story of Szerafina, really begins with the story of Maeve, the name we gave to the very first baby girl that I carried in my womb for 12.5 weeks before she decided she couldn’t stay. We were living in Hungary, freshly married and on the verge of a cascade of adventures in foreign lands. I didn’t remember, yet, what it was to trust my body and the pregnancy and birth process. I had many early scans with this first child and ultimately a D&C (Dilation and Curettage procedure) that was dramatically devastating. On my healing journey, I came to a belief that there had to be a better way to experience coming into motherhood. It was divine timing, how I came upon the two women who would walk with me for the next year or so of my life. These women who spoke English in an almost entirely Hungarian speaking country, who were kind, knowledgeable, generous with their time and skills and who set me on my path in natural, autonomous and empowered mothering. I have so much gratitude for the brief yet poignant time that Maeve grew with me, she was the catalyst to my life as I now live it.

I knew almost nothing about homebirth at this point. JP and I would drive to the midwife’s house in the countryside and she would serve me herbal teas from her apothecary, ask how I was feeling, inquire about my relationship to my own mother and how she gave birth to me. She asked if I had fears, what I wanted for this baby and wanted to know what I was nourishing myself with. It was ethereal, familiar, emotional…yet still so far. JP briefly hesitated when I mentioned the prospect of me giving birth at home, only to fully offer his support as my warrior and solid ground very swiftly and confidently. The politics were messy, as usual. It was considered illegal to homebirth but I had entered the portal. There was no turning back.

On November 29, 2009, I had awoken somewhere between 7 and 8 that morning, finally rising out of the warmth of our bed after an evening of light sleep accompanied by mild discomfort and the three routine trips to the bathroom. I ate my breakfast slowly and with curiosity as I wondered if the somewhat rhythmic tightening of my uterus was of the regular Braxton-hicks variety I’d been experiencing rather frequently. I was 40 weeks and 4 days pregnant.

I glanced at the clock when the numbers read 10.30am. I called our midwife to let her know my sensations were regular and she told me to call her back when they were ten minutes apart. I timed them for an hour and was surprised to discover that they were already three to four minutes apart and lasting anywhere between forty-five to sixty seconds long.

Feeling calm and focused, I wrapped myself in warm layers and began slowly rotating my hips on a birth ball. Apparently it wasn’t cold, but I was chilled to the bone and unable to stop shivering. JP came home from work to find me breathing steadily and meditating on the distant world outside our bedroom window. He stayed with me through a few of the stronger waves, when an unexpected and forceful gush of warm liquid burst all over the birth ball and floor – my waters released! I called our midwife who was on her way and she said I could get into the pool if I wanted (I wanted!). She then asked me a question that threw me off, she asked if I had felt the baby move. I was in such sensory overload that I couldn’t differentiate what was happening within my body. In a small wave of panic I asked JP to listen for the steady beat, as he was accustomed to doing almost every night before bed. He did and after a few short seconds he assured me that our baby was well and strong. I didn’t doubt him for a second.

Our doula arrived first, followed by our midwife who entered the space without disrupting the trance, the dance that was yielding with or without my consent. They bore into my eyes, into my soul, and in an unspeakably powerful way, I felt protected and safe.

They didn’t ask me questions, tell me how to move, touch me or even check my ‘progress’, they simple readied themselves to bare witness to our experience. Yet, as I stared out the window and felt the cool autumn breeze against my wet skin, I wept with the thought that this was the truest unadultered raw state of beauty I would ever experience.

I cried.

I cried as the sky was an overwhelming grey streaked with vivid purple hues. I cried as I allowed the tears to wash away layers and allowed nature to bend me at the knees. I cried at the unknown and the fear of knowing.

At this point I needed something, I wasn’t sure what. My husband guided me to the birth ball at the suggestion of our midwife, to help bring Szerafina’s head down the birth canal. I gripped him hard as the scent of cedar essential oil washed over me, feeling the skilled hands of my doula working rhythmically into my lower back.

I felt her squirm and move to help herself down my uterus. The next few hours were intense, I felt pain, but I felt powerful.

When I was ready to push I instinctively layed on the floor on my left side and I remember being very direct with everyone, telling them where to stand, how to hold me and where to apply pressure. I felt fear, but once I initiated the pushing with confidence, my body took over with overwhelming force. The rest between pushing contractions was unbelievably good. Her head appeared, then her body all at once.

She was calm. It was dark and not a cry passed her lips. She was placed directly on my chest and it was a few moments before I even knew if I had just given birth to a girl or boy! She latched onto my breast with ease and we lay there together in the same spot on the floor for two hours, undisturbed. We were in love, we were in awe.

I remember the moonlight as it cast a knowing glow into the bedroom window and onto the bed where we lay. We were wrapped and woven into the fabric that connected all human beings gazing at that very same light, at that very same moment.

Giving birth was more than having a baby; it was a right of passage, the chance to experience transcendence, see God, to feel what ‘oneness’ meant. In that instance, for the first time in my life I didn’t question what I had come here to this earth for. In that fleeting moment, everything made sense. I had a glimpse of knowing, and am forever grateful.