Giving Birth to Sophia…

The Birth of a Priestess.

Water birth:
Natalia Valitskaya

Two days before the process began, I suddenly noticed that the world was becoming brighter and fuller, like a children’s fairy tale. And it happened several times during the day – it is like switching on D6 if you are used to D3. I am running a training, “Healing Relationships” – and a girl came to the presentation to see me – look at her – with a huge belly.

Nine months ago we travelled together in India, and there, in the damp Himalayas, so like the Carpathians, in the town of McLeod Ganj, where the Dalai Lama’s residence nestles, I said to her:
“Lovely Ariel – you are pregnant”

She denied it, tucking into a big portion of “butter-zara-rice”, and was very sweet about it…

We told the participants of the training that one of the evenings might possibly bring a meeting with Sonechka)), so there could be changes in the dates of the training. The seminar is the seminar, but Sonya may decide: it’s time!, and I will be taking part in this, because that is what the mother-to-be wants and, it seems, what Sonechka wants, who decided to announce her coming to me first.

Six years ago my husband and I gave birth to our second child in the comfort of our home – and she, my Vera, never stops amazing me with her sensuality, her depth and her emotional maturity – such children are very different from others, born on the production line.

The road begins with the first step and is born beneath the feet of the one who walks it, and it is impossible to overestimate the significance of the first moment of a person’s arrival in this world, of their first breath and first sound. It is precisely the first, whole impression the baby has of entering life that will become the matrix of what they will perceive all their life as the “norm of life” and will realise in it.

A first birth lasts a long time – and its harbingers begin a week earlier.
Far from all people in our world pay attention to themselves, let alone to their bodies: I am not talking about looking after your appearance here. People in our world have a habit of ignoring the subtle signals of the body – of living in bustle and hurry, of staying in the world of outer concerns and values.

Everyone’s threshold of perception is individual, just like their system of values. For some, only pain is a signal they can catch, and only pain switches their attention on. And so some women feel that they give birth quickly.

And yet there are some for whom the phrase “contact with oneself” is not a question of philosophy but the ability to register the subtle signals of their inner life, including their bodily life. These people are tuned to listen to themselves and to trust themselves and their bodies, not thinking that someone else – such as a medical worker – can understand them better and figure out what is going on inside them.

By catching the different sensations in the body – both pain and delight – we grasp its wisdom. This path of self-knowledge is called the Path of Soma.
Soma – the cell. Somatics – signals – the language of the cell.

In the daytime, after talking with my lovely Ariel, I understood that after the training I was going to her. At midnight, crossing the threshold of her house, I found that the mystery of the transpersonal processes that had been launched at the seminar had now settled here – and this was not a playful, staged space for healing the subconscious, but a living field of conscious choice, an attentive readiness to open to the gates of passage between the worlds, to invite life and to meet the person being born.

The birth took place in the half-light of candles. A cosy house, a dog wagging its tail and sniffing around, pictures on the walls. Egyptian motifs in the decor of the room: sandy golden shades, little ebony sculptures, natural stones – artefacts – trophies brought from different journeys. A handmade cosiness – the lady of the house is a needlewoman and an artist.
Relaxing, quietly playing music and our synchronous connected breathing during the contractions – the woman in labour and her support group.

A flowing space. Here are the father of the child being born, my close friend Harita – the head midwife – and her grown-up daughter Stasya, born into water. Stasya, like a bright spirit, now appears, giving touches to the participants of the action: her mum and the future one, and the future dad; sometimes she rubs her cheek against someone like a beloved cat, and goes off to doze, curling up on the big bed))
The process flows gently and carefully.

The contractions seem very painful at first, the body clenches and cannot yet understand that, contrary to reflexes, here you have to relax into the pain – to capitulate to it – and during the contractions we experiment with orgasmic breathing, tuning in to the mother, sounding – without overacting, without Kabuki theatre, as though “you are the one giving birth to this – I”… Sometimes in a contraction we joined hands, sometimes we gave the mother living support with the back of the head or the back. A deep trance state, and I feel in the depth of my body the contraction of the womb, the pushing – yes, the body remembers – and it is unexpected and amazing.
It is amazing that the time between contractions is so long that we manage to live through, remember, experience, laugh so much and even dream, and by the clock this stretch is three minutes – and it keeps shortening: two minutes… a minute twenty-five.., and lengthening in inner perception. Depth is not a metaphor, here it is a quality and a variety of experiences.

Pushing is a mutual process, a natural wave of effort from mother and child. This is when everything inside that can open has already opened and the painful contractions are behind us. We check the head, oh, wonder, it is only two finger-joints from the entrance, soft and plushy, the fontanelle pulsing, girl, we are waiting for you, come here, it is good and free here, come out, my lovely…
With each push the moment approaches when the child will be ready to dive under the pubic bone, push off with her feet from her mother’s diaphragm and free herself from the tight embrace of the mother’s womb, to swim out into the outer waters of a warm home pool. The woman in labour lived through this part of the process squatting in a warm bath. We waited as long as was needed. So that the head could mould in the birth canal, and Sophia, injuring neither her mother nor herself, would slip out into the warm waters of the bath.

When Mummy, during the contractions, hung on a strong neck at hand, and the force of gravity in this position was on our side, helping the child to come out. And so, having shifted the woman’s weight onto the father – and this is a matter for a couple, after all – Sophia came into this world. She surfaced into the warm waters. She was not taken out at once; she was let to float in free weightlessness. There, still under water, her little arms unfolded, her body straightened, and the baby lifted her head and looked around.
A few more seconds and she would be ready to master the element of air!

A person was born!

An astonishingly yellow – living light of candles, reflected in the reddish water, the suede-soft pink little body in the arms of a glowing mother, “Well, finally – you’re here at last!” ” – Sonya, come out!” – the woman in labour had called to her child a little while before. The little one looks at us with wide-open eyes, shifts her gaze, closes her eyes – thinking over what she has seen, doesn’t screw them up, easily and softly takes in the images and light of the world – her palms are open, she moves her miniature fingers with their long nails, her body is relaxed, naturally straightened – radiating grace, peace. She isn’t going to cry.

How unlike the wrinkled, frightened little bundles – a mixture of pain and fear – that are pulled out of equally frightened mothers, with the statistical information about the child: weight, height, sex – the only thing that can be reported about the “individuality” of the person who has come into the world. And that is all the attention the medical staff, tensely controlling the process, can spare.

But here it is different: oh child – you are such… she is such… and only after a while do we look at each other: “so who was born to us? Is it definitely a girl, or a boy?” We hadn’t even looked – the baby is so comfortable in her mother’s arms, listening to the same, familiar heartbeat, only from outside. And we do not want to interrupt this blessed moment of union. Right now it makes absolutely no difference who you are, child. Whoever you are – you are – and that is a miracle!

We look at the child – she is like this, and like that, and looks like so, and if you give her a finger – she takes it, clasping it in an open palm, and one little leg over the other, and such a bold grey-blue gaze)) Such a strong, such a full, informative and long-awaited moment. And this person who has come is rich from the very beginning in their own unique qualities, so individual!

The umbilical cord was not cut at once. The delivered placenta was put in a little box. And so, with her “suitcase”, the child moved to the “Egyptian chambers”. The placenta goes on pulsing for several hours, giving the baby everything that belongs to her, then dries up and falls away within two days.

This is called a lotus birth.
Without violence, everything goes at its own pace.

That is how Sophia came into this world!
She enchanted us with her trust and her calm.
Child, beautiful one – you are the embodied wisdom of life!

P.S.
A week later Sophia is doing well. She was visited by little Radomir, who was also born at home, in January 2011.