Birth, A Healing Journey
A blog post about a birth story, really another one?!
Yes and no. This one is about the discussion of birth and postpartum trauma healing, and while I can only base it off of my own experience with the birth of my son River, it feels like a story I needed to share. This is also a love letter to the very talented energy healer Anne Cameron (she’s a Reiki Master and so much more). To say Anne is good at what she does is really an understatement, but more on her to come!
So let’s face it, giving birth can be incredibly intense and traumatic, and this trauma has the tendency to stay stuck in the body. Case in point, how many women have you heard jump at the chance to share their scary birth stories with newly pregnant and unsuspecting women…. many, many women. And this is not to take away from the fact that their experiences are incredibly valid, this blog post is not about shaming those women and what they went through at all! Fellow mama you’re a badass warrior and you did the most incredible and beautiful thing, you grew a tiny human inside of you and then gave birth to that tiny human. This is something that will never not be a mind blowing accomplishment to me, so please know you’re amazing and I applaud you!!
If you’re feeling the need to unload your scary experience on to others, I see you and your pain and I want to help you.
The best thing I did for myself while pregnant was set up monthly Usui Reiki sessions with the best Reiki practitioner I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, the very own Anne Cameron. These sessions started when I was about 3 months pregnant with my babe and continued on for 3 months postpartum, and were a deeply transformative experience for me to say the least. Anne and I established the intention for these sessions to be entirely based on my pregnancy journey followed by healing needed postpartum. Going into these sessions I very much started from a place full of fear, fear around the what if’s, worse case scenarios, giving birth, along with the afterward healing with all that it entailed (ekk!). With all of this to work through, Anne met me where I was at and held the most beautiful space for me, always letting me talk out what I was feeling before and after our sessions. During these monthly times together I would lay on her loving Reiki table, feeling transported as a new aspect of my fear unraveled itself to me, rising to the surface to be seen, released, and healed. With each session she knew exactly what I needed without me ever needing to vocalize it, and would intuitively add in tools including various sound healing instruments and essential oils. It felt like each session had it’s own specific theme I needed to work out, and with each Reiki healing I received I felt a deep ease and inner peace come forth. Along with this pregnancy healing, I received an energetic alignment each time that quickly became apparent in the positive shifts of the world around me. Things felt like they were falling into place in beautiful ways I could never have imaged. For instance things at my day job at the time became noticeably much smoother and less abrasive, which was saying a lot because it was a constant headache of a job. Along with new opportunities emerging that I couldn’t have predicted, to summarize it was magick unfolding for me all around.
Low and behold with all of these monthly Reiki sessions now under my belt accompanied by meditation and deep reflection, I felt very ready and even excited for the experience to give birth to my son, feeling like I had released the entirety of my internalized fear around my impending birth long before the moment arrived. This feeling was joined with the sensation that I would be able to reach my goal of being able to surrender to the experience entirely and take it as it came without the need to control it.
My mindset was focused on allowing the experience to flow like a river, just find and stay with the rhythm by doing my best to avoid fighting any resistance I may feel as the expected turbulence would most likely arise. To ultimately just let it all unfold as need be without attachment of what it needed to feel or look like.
When my contractions started at about 1 am on August 31st I was so excited and ready for what was to come, and while I had initially given myself the lofty goal of going through the experience unmedicated, after 12 hours in without an epidural that decision had rapidly changed and I’m so glad I made the choice to get it for many reasons, but the biggest being it was the best thing for me. Despite the discomfort and intensity of the situation my inner peace felt very present and I even enjoyed the experience for the most part. However, I’m pretty sure I did all of the most embarrassing things a person can do in front of others during the course of my labor, and the funny thing is how little I cared. Once the drugs from the epidural were in my system it just felt like a party with some amazing people, -my birth doula, nurses, midwife and of course my sister and husband all in the room with me while I waited to become fully dilated. However once I got to 9cm’s dilated things took a turn and my baby’s heart-rate began to plummet with each contraction I had. The nagging feeling that had been with me throughout the pregnancy felt very real, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it, this was going to be a Cesarean birth and things weren’t going to be as simple as I had hoped. But I knew from my Reiki session imparted wisdom the best thing I could do for my baby and I was to surrender to the experience and what was needed, so I did my best to stay calm and go with the flow. As a large group of new to me medical experts gathered in my room all sharing the same sentiment of everything would be fine with a forced tone and wide eyes that gave away their true feelings, I kept true to my set intention and felt more calm than I could ever typically say I would feel about a high intensity situation like this. In this calm headspace that I was lucky enough to feel, I knew I needed to support my husband who was not able to channel this same energy (rightfully so), so I asked my birth doula and my sister -a very fabulous person under pressure and a nurse practitioner to boot, to instead be there for him and to help him because I was ok. From there I was quickly wheeled away to the operating room for an emergency C-section. *As a side note I have complete compassion for birthing partners of all sorts who have to helplessly watch as their loves go through this insane experience and they’re just on the sidelines. This is a very real trauma all of its own and deserves to be talked about and validated!!
Now on the operating room table, my calm state of mind was really being put to the test as I had the very present reality of being cut open (gag). To make matters harder I had what felt like a very long stretch of time without my husband as he scrubbed up and got his bearings, along with my midwife out of reach on the other end of the curtain, and needless to say I was feeling pretty alone and scared. But the universe did not leave me high and dry once that day, and I really felt like I was given the best set of medical professionals I could have possibly been surrounded by. The anesthesiologist to my side was so kind and loving that when asked, graciously held my hand, which truly made all the difference for me. Never in my life had I felt so vulnerable, yet I deeply felt I was in very good hands and that everything truly was going to be ok. Having called in my spiritual guides and helpers during my labor I could really feel how much love and care there was for me and my baby in that room, and it made me want to cry. It wasn’t long after my husband came into the operating room that our son was delivered at 10:12pm, August 31st. Hearing that first cry brought so much combined joy and relief it was moving beyond any words I can describe. From there I learned my babe had a triple nuchal cord (umbilical cord wrapped around his neck 3 times), which was why his heart-rate plummeted with each contraction and why he wasn’t descending as expected. Fortunately, he was healthy and unaffected by this complication! After this big moment and seeing my husband hold our little babe, I felt the large weight of the situation drop off of my shoulders and in its place very sleepy with this relief while I lay on the table and they continued to patch me back up. From there everything feels like a happy blur, I couldn’t believe my son was now here safe and sound. While there’s really so much digesting of the whole ordeal post birth that I could go on about, for me in a nutshell I felt incredibly grateful and really good. Maybe not physically good as I had some healing to do, but mentally and emotionally I was really good.
While I was in fresh territory now being a mom, the anxiety or baby blues I had expected to feel with this new role didn’t arise like I had questioned they might. Instead I felt calmer and more peaceful than I did before mom times. This is not to say everything about being a mom was more relaxed or peaceful than before (ha!), but rather I felt different. My sister, close friends, and husband all commented on this change and validated it further for me, that what I was feeling was apparent to them as well. I attribute this new state of mind with all the mental and energetic prep work I put into my birth, accompanied by having a birth that for the most part, I really enjoyed and felt proud of. My postpartum continued Reiki sessions were also fabulous, continuing to aid me in this new state of mind and being, along with Anne, helping my body’s healing process immensely. The continued sessions were also just a wonderful self love practice that left me feeling absolute bliss!
From all of the birth stories I have ever had the pleasure of being recounted for me, I have continuously seen a connection between positive birth experiences and feeling emotionally good postpartum. To break that down further, especially with giving birth being such an uncontrollable experience to go through, the repeated detail I kept hearing come up was women who were able to let go of control and surrendering to the experience, enjoyed their birthing process. Your birth is going to be what it’s going to be, and happen when it’s going to happen, you have zero control over any of it, so doing what you need to do to make peace with that ahead of time will do you wonders! Along with doing yourself a favor by checking in and being honest with yourself about how you feel about your birth after it’s already happened to see if there are any stored icky feelings of trauma within your body that need to be released. This message also goes for birthing partners that had to sit on the sidelines and watch the experience unfold before their eyes while unable to do anything. Reiki energy healing and meditation were my two big tools, but there are more ways to go about this process if these don’t feel like the right fit for you. More than anything I hope this can be helpful for you, wherever you’re at in your journey!
Thank you for reading and with so much love,
Megan
