The freebirth of Freyja.

At 30 weeks birth started to call to me. I started to lose mucous plug and continued to until she was born. Each night as I lay feeding Bly to sleep, I would experience intense tightening’s in my womb. Each tightening would bring with it the strong sensation of downward pressure. I felt as though if I only relaxed my baby would just fall out. This continued every night for 10 weeks until I gave birth. I felt that breastfeeding deeply connected my babies throughout this journey, my body the tether between womb world and outside world, one baby in each. From the day I conceived Freyja, to the moment of implantation both of which sparked deep emotions of grief in my son, to each time he would place a hand to my belly and she would find the centre of his palm and kick directly into it, I knew that what my body could tell him through my milk was inconceivable and magical. And yet breastfeeding was my biggest challenge this time around, painful, aversions constantly, the grief and guilt, and my determination to continue, all wove themes that would inevitably come up during the birth process and strengthen me for what would unfold as my baby girl journeyed earthside.  

At 37 weeks the tightening transformed itself into contractions. For a week and a half they would come on at around 3pm everyday and subside by 9pm-ish, the same time as my labour. Over the final week the contractions would come on earlier and earlier, and become more and more intense. I look back fondly on these weeks and the surges I experienced because they were painless and liminal, feeling otherworldly, like I had felt giving birth to my son, it was the familiar sensation of being pulled from this world and into the psychedelic dance of birth. Id often been pulled in so deep that I couldn’t open my eyes and became blissful and distant as my belly tightened around my baby, feeling the portal open and stretch beyond time and comprehension. There were moments I was pulled into my own womb, into the heavens and a distinct contraction that pulled me into a reoccurring dream id had since i was a child. I’ll never lose my gratitude for those weeks of dancing in early labour, because when I did truly enter the fire of birth it was earthshattering and painful and void of those liminal feelings. 

The morning of 10th July I experienced my earliest contraction- around 8.30am. It was her ‘due’ date, 40 weeks since the first day of my last bleed, it felt almost comical that she decided to come then as we had surrendered through an entirely wild pregnancy. I love that no one had the opportunity to challenge that, no scans, no fundal measurements, no palpating even, I never wondered if she was ‘measuring’ big, small, early or late in gestation, this was my practice for trusting birth. Particularly in those first months where i met the challenging desires and doubts, leaning into complete trust of my body and my baby, working to silence the rational part of my brain that wanted confirmation and proof beyond what my body had already communicated to me. It was my devotion to this faith that prepared me to birth in my power.  

Mitch and Bly went to play at a friends place. As they left, my toddler, as they sometimes do, refused to kiss me goodbye and wanted nothing more than to be driving away, I turned back toward the house with tears in my eyes, i think deep inside a part of me knew this was our last goodbye as the dyad we had been for almost 3 years, and my heart ached that it was so cold and mundane. 

I journaled in the morning, writing to my baby, something felt complete about this entry and so it was. Like the night before, I had an overwhelming desire to go walking and be outside, there was this anticipation that any day would be the beginning of my confinement in postpartum, I wanted to see the world through these eyes one last time – everyday- just in case. I put a pad on, as you do when leaving the house in those final weeks, meandered around the block and came home to tuck myself back into bed.

Laying in bed at 2.42pm, staring at a photo on Instagram of a mother meeting her baby through a plastic sheet on a surgical table my waters broke. I threw my phone to the other side of the bed as though a bad omen and then quickly came back into my body and felt adrenaline flood my veins, utter excitement for what this moment meant. I had felt deeply spiritual journeying through pregnancy but in this one moment i was grounded firmly into the earth, my baby demanded i root down into my body. I held my belly and told her we would do this together. I messaged Mitch to tell him my waters had broken, to spend a few special moments with Bly before he came home and our big boy became a brother. I knew that the work was ahead of me and so I decided id try to lay in bed until the boys got home.

Not a moment later my contractions started, and with intensity. Our housemate Claire came to my room to ask me something and I told her my waters had opened and she smiled knowingly and said she had a feeling they had while she was in the shower. The connection of sisters sharing a home. She headed out for the night as she had plans and I didn't feel I needed support and by the time the boys arrived I was more than ready to get up out of bed and start moving around. Bly was asleep and so Mitch and I started to potter around and prepare our space for labour. My contractions were coming pretty close together already, maybe 5 minutes apart or so, and I as occupied myself making soup and preparing snacks, laying out puppy pads and towels I would pause to hold onto the kitchen counter and sway my hips as I experienced each surge. Then often i’d look up at Mitch and smile and remind him we were going to have a baby soon and we’d both giggle. I felt playful and curious even though the surges were already pulling me in deep, the intensity already making me buckle and vocalise, but as the sun started to descend and we’d had dinner and a bath I started to feel impatient. Something about bedtime nearing made me feel alert.  

Around 5.30pm we called our birth keeper, I anticipated to be entering liminality soon and I wanted an extra pair of hands around as we had always planned for Mitch to be completely present with Bly while I laboured. Id had very clear visions come through during my pregnancy that I would be labouring alone in darkness and so I felt myself retreating to the bedroom as often as I could. Mitch and Bly were playing together in the loungeroom and Bly kept calling me out with a “mumma look at me do this”, and so I found myself in the hallway between the bedroom and the lounge bracing myself on all fours over a chair, in between surges watching them play and trying to tune myself into the music I had playing in the bedroom.

My surges were intense and painful, nothing like what id experienced with Bly’s birth which took me deep into liminality, each surge feeling somewhat psychedelic, no, these surges were just painful expansion, but I embraced it as birth’s response to my intentions to let her decimate me. Id chosen not to have a pool or a tens machine this time for that reason, I wanted to receive the powerful medicine that birth could provide by taking me to my outer most edges and i had a deep faith in my ability. a distinct difference to my initiation into motherhood the first time, where I questioned what birth would feel like and had no true idea if i really could do it or not. In that experience i focused more on willing myself to the otherside of each contraction rather than asking it to take me. 

Each time I fell into a surge I was vocalising with a low roar, or at times just repeating “ouch ow ouch”, Bly and Mitch would come over and i’d feel little hands rubbing my lower back and little lips pecking my cheeks, and once id finished my noises Id hear little feet running back to where the games were being played. At one point Mitch was on the toilet and Blyy sat patiently on the couch witnessing me, during a surge I heard him call out “mumma! Can you smell my fart?” and as I vocalised through my surge I was present enough to think to myself, wow this is really cool, here I am bringing life into the world and still my world moves as it always does, toddler doing toddler things, I reminded myself that this is probably how my ancestors birthed for thousands of years, in the middle of the mundane.

I kept slowly stealing away into the bedroom, eager to relax into liminality, I still felt so present and aware, even as the surges came. In hindsight i know now that my responsibility to mothering my son kept me firmly tethered to reality, his safety in mind, and restricted my ability to 'let go' and float in the liminal realm. As I spent more time in the bedroom, moving around and labouring in different places I decided I was going to birth on the floor in front of the rocking chair as id found the surges to intensify when I was on all fours, hands on the chair rocking myself back and forth during the expansions. Mitch and Bly would come in intermittedly and check on me until our birthkeeper arrived at 7.30pm. when she arrived Bly came to tell me and asked me to come and say hello to her with him. So I left my nest and in between my contractions I came to say hello to her. As we interacted I felt myself leaving the decent toward birth and edging closer to reality, I really was in no space to be having conversations, and over the next half hour I felt the energy in the house change, as I think everyone had subconsciously fallen into a loving state of  ‘doing’ rather than ‘being’ and although subtle, the shift effected my primal body – the roots that extended from me into the ether- and I witnessed the surges become further apart and less intense. This was exacerbated by issues with the filming devices and hearing people fiddling with the tripod around me as i laboured. At this point I decided I wanted to be alone, I asked for our birth keeper to remain in the house but not enter the bedroom, and I told Mitch I didn’t need him with me, that I was happy in my nest and he could relax into playing with Bly. I knew it was important for me to set some boundaries so that I could continue to feel safe in my process and for things to continue to flow. This was all profoundly different to my first birth where i was so deep in liminality my eyes and ears seemed to be glued shut, and i didnt even notice the photographer's camera click and flash around me.

After that I fell back into the current of birth and effortlessly the surges became intense and painful again, like nothing id felt in my first labour, I couldn’t breathe through them, nor did I want to, I surrendered and howled like a wolf, I begged for them to end, I told them that they hurt, I cursed, and all the while I knew this is exactly what i’d asked of birth, I knew this was taking me toward the soul medicine.

I was eager for baby to come, Bly had been asking for bed for an hour, the only way he’d ever fallen asleep was under my wing feeding at breast, and so i felt a sense of urgency for him, again keeping me firmly grounded. 

Around 8.15pm, if I had to label it, i’d say this was the beginning of transition. I felt my surges shift from expansion into downward pressure. I was so relieved, this was the point i’d been working toward, the surges that felt productive. As soon as I felt my body bearing down during my surges I reclined back onto my bum and relaxed my body, all of a sudden I was experiencing the most mild contractions, and the only enjoyable ones during my entire birth, that I didn’t need to vocalise through, in complete silence I breathed with them and enjoyed the sensations of my baby moving down. It was then that mitch came in without Bly and we hugged and he held me and I told him “I’m going to start pushing soon” – not as a conscious decision more so that I knew my body would start to have me push as a natural progression of the process- and I smiled knowingly. As I leant into the comfort of these few surges mitch asked me how I was feeling and I replied “tired, just so tired”, not from the labour, in a strange and mundane way it was just because it was my bedtime and I really was just tired from having been awake all day. I still hadn’t fallen into a liminal state, I felt so present and aware. Throughout labour I kept reminding myself that Bly would need to be put to bed. like any other mammal birthing with their other young around, I had my body unconsciously completing the process of birth whilst my conscious mind was concerning over the safety and comfort of my existing child. I felt deeply connected to the nature of birth because of this.

Mitch asked me if I needed anything and I asked for a hot water bottle on my back. In the reprieve of these few surges I felt myself softening and craving comfort. If I had to label it id say that this was my moment of transition, which took me by surprise, because I always thought transition came at the height of intensity, during the moments of most sensation and output, right before the portal completely cracks open, but here I was sitting in the comfort of my surges offering me respite and anticipation and feeling as though I didn’t want to do it anymore. My mind wandered to all the possibilities, all the ways I could resist the intensity of birth. It was as if Mitch could feel that softness and defeat as he held me and he said ‘you know I can still run the bath for you if you want’. I had to reach deep then, down into my core, because everywhere else screamed “YES” through me, yes to the warm water, the soft muscles, the likely momentary pause in labour, the edge off my surges. But I admitted to myself that answering the call of comfort was not going to serve me, it wasn’t going to make this end sooner, it wasn’t going to bring me closer to the medicine I wanted to receive from the process, it wasn’t going to decimate me. My mind also wandered back to Bly, there was an overwhelming sense of impatience brewing inside me, my boy needing to get to sleep, the only way to that destination was to birth this baby. So I shook my head and declined the bath.

At this point Bly had been asking for bed for hours, he was at the point of delusion, mitch went out to try to settle him on the spare mattress, and I turned back to labour, the intensity ramped up entirely. I was bearing down with my surges and with each vocalisation I sounded more grunty and wild. As the breaks between them declined I would use the moments of pause to curse and unclench my fists. Around 8.30pm I heard Bly cry, I still hadn’t entered a frame of mind I would consider liminal, my mumma brain still listening to him in the other room, content to labour as he played and laughed, but when I heard his cry I called out immediately for him to come to me.

We moved to the bed and I lay him down next me, pulled him to my breast and decided I would feed him to sleep just I had for 1077 nights prior. His little body melted instantly, entirely relaxed, an invitation for me to do the same. Then Birth answered my intention – for her to decimate me – 2 surges came on with less than a minute between. I still don’t have the words that would do this experience justice. My body was being pulled in two directions, outwardly to feed my son as he took nourishment and comfort from me, and internally, my fundus gave an almighty shove of my baby down into my yoni, I was laying at the mercy of my two children and birth, each contorting my body in ways I had no control (or desire) over. Excruciating is an understatement. I got taken to a place within myself I have never sat with before and I think it will take me the rest of my life to integrate that moment.

I said to Mitch after the second surge ‘I can’t do this here’. I told Bly to unlatch and he immediately started to dysregulate, he was so tired. Mitch decided the only thing left to do was put a movie on for him , which he set up on the other side of the bed for him. At this point I was on all fours with my forehead pressed into the wall, during my surges I was making monstrous sounds, my body was bearing down without my conscious decision to do so, I felt myself pushing incredibly hard, sweat was pouring down my face, mitch would pass me a rag in between, this was the only time my mind was not concerned about Bly during my entire labour. He sat exhausted watching his movie and only once I heard him speak to say “mummy stop making that noise now”.

I felt her head drop down, and as it did I was gifted the control of my breath. Instead of the almighty roar as I pressed my head into the wall, I was able to sit back a little, hold my perinium and manage short little breaths through pursed lips while my body gently guided her head out. The sounds of birth descended into the mist of labour and now she was being born. Mitch asked me what I was feeling and I replied “the head”, he asked if it was moving down and I responded “IT’S OUT OF ME!!”. Shocked, he swiftly made his way to the back of me just in time to see her head pop out, as it did, flinging a bit of mucous at him. ‘Hello dad!’. Mitch watched as her head turned on the outside, at the same time I felt her body rotate inside me. A second later her left shoulder popped out and a second after that mitch guided her as she fell between my legs onto our bed. Her emergence happened so quickly, I’m surprised I didn’t tear. She started to cry before she'd even landed on the bed, it felt as though she'd taken her first breath while her body was still inside mine, the way the sounds of birth in the dark can warp time is quite incredible.

Before I could pull her to my chest I had to unwrap the cord from around both of her arms, strapped across her chest like a backpack. I lifted her and our skin met for the first time, chest to chest, I told her “hello, we did it, mummas here”. Relief and joy flooded my body as the birth high began to envelop me. She was spluttering a bit now, taking pauses that sounded wet in her sinus, intuitivley I felt she had not been squeezed very long in her quick emergence so I began to suck some mucous from her nose, spitting it to the side. When she had been cleared I turned to Bly and said “baby is here”, he looked up at her unamused and back down to his movie. He wanted one thing and a slimy little baby sister was not it.

The high was intoxicating, I felt powerful, the weight of what my girl and I had just journeyed through lay fresh on my heart, still pounding as though it were my ancestors applauding inside my own chest.  I sat in it for mere moments, knowing id be marinating in it for weeks to come, but still calmly consumed by the desrie to put bly to sleep. The wild normality of it all makes me smile, id just birthed life onto our bed and not half an hour later I was preparing to do bedtime with my son.

I took her in, smelled her, kissed her, helped her to her first latch. She was no stranger, the moment I saw her face I knew who she was, it was the most timeless experience to meet her, and then with relief I told bly I was ready to put him to sleep. 

There I was, high on birth, my son laying under my wing nursing to sleep, my placenta still inside me, birth incomplete but bedtime urgent, umbilical cord attached between my legs connecting to Freyja in Mitchs arms. Wild! Mothering as life moved from womb to world felt humorous and surreal, but here in this moment, I felt truly between worlds. Colostrum moving from my breast into my son as Freyjas placenta pumped blood through its cord into her. I truly felt my body a vessel between realms. Only in the peace and privacy of our home, in our family bed, not a soul to interfere with how I was choosing this moment to be. One i’ll never forget. Moments wrapped in magic and mundane.

In the darkness, only candlelight illuminating our room we lay together as a family, immersed in releif and joy, and then.. Mitch lifted his hand, still holding Freyja and said "babe shes bleeding" his hand covered in a dark substance, my heart skipped a beat in fear. I felt my yoni and found i wasnt bleeding, I stared for what felt like an eternity at this sticky hand and then suddenly smiled at my husband. She'd done her first poo into her Dad's hand. 

My contractions intensified, the act of nursing was letting my placenta know she could release. Baby is here. As my son drifted into his dreamscape I felt the birth portal soften, I felt myself relax. My placenta detached as I lay beside Bly and I gently guided her out and passed her to mitch to put on a towel. The next day I would properly see her, so petit, perfectly round, with a very short cord that nourished my baby perfectly, kept attached to Freyja for two days and nights and then by the bedside in a pot for four weeks, left to cast her aura over our postpartum space.

We cleaned a little, gosh birth can be messy, all fluids – everywhere – I had a quick ankle deep bath to wash myself of birth, we lay towels over the bed and left the rest till morning. My baby tucked safely under my wing for the first time in the very spot she was born, the same spot she has fallen asleep every night since.

Written by mama, Sarah.