Giving Birth to Sophia…

The Birth of a Priestess.

Water birth:
Natalia Valitskaya

Two days before the process began I suddenly discovered that the world was becoming brighter and fuller in volume, like a children’s fairy tale. And it happened several times during the day – it was like switching on D6 when you are used to D3. I was running a training, “Healing Relationships” – a girl had come to the presentation to see me – that is how she looks – with a huge belly.

Nine months before that we had been travelling together in India, and there, in the damp Himalayas that are so like the Carpathians, in the town of McLeod Ganj, where the Dalai Lama’s residence nestles, I told her:
“Lovely Ariel – you are pregnant”

She denied it, polishing off a big portion of “bater-zara-rice” and being very sweet while she did…

We told the participants of the training that, possibly, one of the evenings we would have a meeting with little Sonya)), so there might 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 it; that is what the future mummy wants and, it seems, little Sonya too, who decided to announce her arrival to me first.

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

The road begins with the first step and is born under 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 becomes the matrix of what they will take, all their life, as the “norm of life”, and will realise themselves within it.

A first birth lasts a long time – and its harbingers begin a week ahead.
Far from all people in our world are attentive to themselves, still less to their bodies: here I am not talking about looking after your appearance. People in our world have a habit of ignoring the body’s subtle signals – living in bustle and haste, dwelling in the world of outer cares and values.

Everyone’s threshold of sensation is individual, just like their system of values, in fact. For some, only pain is a signal they can catch, and only to pain does their attention switch on. And that is why some women feel that they give birth quickly.

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

By catching the various 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 – the signals – the language of the cell.

In the daytime, after talking with my lovely Ariel, I understood that after the training I would go to her. At midnight, stepping over the threshold of her home, 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 play-acted space modelled for healing the subconscious, but a living field of conscious choice, an attentive readiness to open to the gates of passage between worlds, to invite life and to meet a person being born.

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

A space of flow. Here was the father of the child about to be born, my close friend Kharita, the chief midwife, and her grown-up daughter Stasya, who was born in water. Stasya, like a bright spirit, appears now and then, giving touches to the participants of the event: to her mummy, the mummy-to-be, and the daddy-to-be; sometimes she rubs her cheek against you like a favourite cat, and goes off to doze, curling up on the big bed))
The process flows softly and tenderly.

At first the contractions seem very painful, the body tightens and cannot yet understand that, contrary to reflex, here you need to relax into the pain – to capitulate before it – and in the contractions we experiment with orgasmic breathing, tuning in to the mummy, sounding – not overacting, no Kabuki theatre, as if “you are the one giving birth to this – I am”… Sometimes in a contraction we merged hands, sometimes the back of the head or the back, giving the mummy living support. The state is deep trance, and I feel in the depths of my body the contraction of the womb, the pushes – 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 about so much, and even to dream, while by the clock this stretch is three minutes – and it keeps getting shorter: two minutes… one minute twenty-five.., and keeps lengthening in inner perception. Depth is not a metaphor, here it is a quality and a multiplicity of experiences.

The pushing is a mutual process, a natural wave of effort of mother and child. It is when everything that could open inside has already opened and the painful contractions are behind. We check the head, and, oh wonder, it is only two finger-joints from the opening, soft, plush, the fontanelle pulsing: girl, we are waiting for you, come here, it is good and free here, come out, lovely one…
With every push the moment comes closer when the child will be ready to dive under the pubic bone, push off with her feet from the mother’s diaphragm and free herself from the tight embrace of the mother’s womb, and swim out into the outer waters of the 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 would fold itself in the birth canal, and Sophia, injuring neither her mother nor herself, would slip out into the warm waters of the bath.

When Mummy, in the contractions, hung on the sturdy 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 Daddy – for this is a matter for the couple – Sophia came into this world. She surfaced into the warm waters. They did not take her out at once, they let her swim in free weightlessness. There, still under water, her little arms unfolded, her body straightened, and the baby raised her head and looked around.
A few more seconds and she would be ready to master the element of air!

A human being was born!

An astonishingly yellow – living – candlelight, reflected in the reddish water, the baby’s suede-soft pink body in the arms of her radiant mother, “Well, at last – you’re here!” “Sonya, come out!” – the woman in labour had been calling to her child only a little while before. The little one looks at us with wide-open eyes, moves her gaze, closes her eyes – thinks over what she has seen, does not screw them shut, easily and softly takes in the images and light of the world – her palms are open, she moves miniature fingers with long nails, her body is relaxed, naturally straightened – radiating grace, peace. She has no intention of crying.

How unlike the wrinkled, frightened little lumps – 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 that the medical staff, tensely controlling the process, can spare.

But here it was different: oh child, you are such… she is such… and only after a while do we look at each other: “so who was it we had born? Is it definitely a girl, or a boy?” We hadn’t even looked – the baby is so cosy in her mother’s arms, listening to the same, familiar heartbeat only from outside. And we so do not want to interrupt this blessed moment of unity. 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 this, and looks like this, and if you give her a finger – she takes it, clasping it in her open palm, and leg crossed over leg, and such a bold grey-blue gaze)) Such a strong, full, informative and long-awaited moment. And this person who has come is rich from the very start in her own unique qualities, so individual!

The umbilical cord was not cut at once. The delivered placenta was put into a little box. And so, with her “little 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 in its own time.

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

P.S. A week later Sophia is feeling well. Her little friend Radomir, also born at home, in January 2011, came to visit her.