Childbirth roars through women with a powerful energy. With some planning, love and trust, that power can be used to knit together hearts, lives and families.
Birth is a healing thing
Having been raped at 17, I knew that I needed my birth experience to NOT resemble rape in anyway. And to me Rape is being in a vulnerable position with a man that you do not trust or know, touching you in places you would rather not be touched telling you what to do, against your better judgement, and feeling like your not in control. For ME that meant staying as far away from the hospital as possible, where all the potential birth rapists convene.
I knew before I even experienced birth that I would be in the most uncontrollable, vulnerable situation in my life, and I not only wanted, but I NEEDED it to be a good experience, with the only person in my life I trust implicitly, my husband John. If it was not, or had not been the birth it was, I fear what my mental state would have been afterwards. I feel it would have been like being raped all over again, and being the basket case again, I was for 9 years in silence before I started to even admit to anther human that the rape had happened.
I can't imagine not having UnaBirthed my daughter, my first child, Anjohli. I knew from long before she was ever conceived that gentle was the way to go, and that only I and John would be able to fully understand the process of MY birth, and what I and the baby needed, emotionally, as we had confidence that the physical just happens without needing to be guided.
Seeing that John and I are so close in our relationship and love for each other we feel each others pain and pleasure without the other one expressing it, I knew that the birth of out child HAD to be a good experience for all three of us. It was OUR inner wisdom that allowed us to have the best birthing attendants available to us for our Unabirth, us alone, sharing an intimate moment, trusting each others actions, without question.
There is something so feminine in giving birth that for me was enhanced tenfold by just being in the moment of the waves of the contractions pushing our baby out into the world, feeling the overwhelming urge to push and following my husbands directions without questioning his authority or knowledge.
Birthing his child into his hands, I, at that very moment trusted him so implicitly. I was probably the most vulnerable I have ever been in our relationship, and I didn't shy away from it. I accepted it and embraced it, for the first time in my life, I just wholly trusted another human being. The first time since I was a small, innocent, newborn infant myself, before I had lost the automatic trust in my care givers. Before they had given me just cause to not ever trust another human being, which was reinforced at 17 years old.
Trusting completely was amazing. It was healing. Birthing my daughter was primal. I was woman, he was man, we were doing without words what women for thousands of years before me had done, yet it felt so much like I was the first woman to ever birth. There were no worries about shaved legs, or looking decent or worried about how I looked in the moments of strong contractions or worrying about my woman's rights in our male society. There was no worry about what kind of sign it sent to my husband and the world that I was giving in to my husband's directions and commands. No thoughts about the fight for power or to be leader in our relationship that happens on occasion. No fight over whose job was what. We were just doing.
We were two, and in love, with complete trust, we became three.
By Ril G.
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