Giving Birth – To Children, To Ourselves
In the early days of learning to hold Council in the Way of Council tradition, I was still very green. I had recently returned from a Zen Peacemaker retreat, around 1998—and something had shifted in me. The practice of listening and bearing witness in this way had opened a door I hadn't known was there.
Not long after, I gathered a group of women friends in my home and invited them into circle. We were not polished or practiced. We were simply willing. That Council became a turning point, one of the early one’s I facilitated. We came together around the theme of birth, not only the births of our children, though some of those stories were shared with trembling beauty, but the deeper, often quieter, ways we each give birth to ourselves.
It was in listening to those stories, and offering my own, that I began to understand what it means to be truely present for life as it unfolds, raw and unfiltered. To sit in the centre of that mystery with others, speaking from the heart, listening from the heart - this is how I began to learn what it means to Bear Witness.
Maternal love, sacredness, and intimacy
We had a cottage with a good-sized garden where we both worked hard growing vegetables. Hannah had her own little patch too, where Josh helped her to grow beautiful flowers: cornflowers, snapdragons, her own lettuces and sweet peas. The garden enthralled her and she loved all her plants.
I worked in a café in the local town of Malton, north Yorkshire. We met a tribe of like-minded locals and made friends with people from Camp Hills, a Rudolf Steiner community. My time and passion were focused upon making a nurturing home for us and making things good for my children. I attended Natural Childbirth classes and read books by Frédérick Leboyer on Natural Birthing techniques. I joined the women in the class to organise ourselves into childbirth groups and to find midwives and sympathetic doctors to support us in having our babies at home.
It was the Seventies and prevailing medical opinion insisted that the home was not a suitable place to give birth. Consequently, we encountered a lot of resistance from the medical profession. They told us that if something went wrong it could be very dangerous for our babies and ourselves. Home birth was decidedly not in fashion. Not only was it not encouraged, it was considered irresponsible and even selfish to take the risk. The natural process of having a baby had been thoroughly ‘medicalised’ at this time - and in our small rural community, most of the doctors were old-fashioned.
What made it possible for our group was that one of us, Vivian, was a midwife herself. She had, had two home births already and was about to have her third. Her strength and determination made her almost like a natural childbirth activist. Vivian’s support made us feel guided and confident. In our area, there was only one doctor who was not resistant to our ideas and so we all signed up with him.
As for me, I had no concerns or fears at all about giving birth at home. It was absolutely the right thing to do. I felt strongly about how my baby should come into the world. I wanted to be fully engaged, protective of every aspect of it, the first touch, the sense of peace in the atmosphere, to let him or her arrive gently into this world with as little stress and shock as possible. My baby was not going to be whisked away from me, as they did at that time in hospital births and like what happened when Hannah was born. Rather I wanted to ensure that she or he would come straight out of my womb onto my body, to feel my heartbeat, to be wrapped in my energy.
Hannah became part of our preparations. She would put her hand on my stomach to feel the baby growing and moving. She helped me make blankets and prepare the room. We made new blankets for her too, to match our new baby’s.
‘You’re going to have a little brother or sister,’ I explained. ‘He or she is growing inside me.’
‘But where will it sleep?’ asked Hannah, with an expression of some concern. ‘And will she or he have its own toys?’
‘To start with, she - or he - will be in a basket in Piers’ and my room,’ I answered. ‘A baby needs a lot of looking after, you know, just like you did when you were born. Now you can help too, if you like, because you will be his or her only sister and you can show her things.’
‘Can I hold the new baby?’ Hannah asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ I reassured her. ‘I think this new arrival would like that very much.’
‘When our baby is coming,’ I said to Josh, ‘we must make our room welcoming for him or her. I want to clean everything. And,’ I added, ‘we should have beautiful flowers, like roses, so that the scent of them bathes the atmosphere.’
‘I agree, Pip,’ he answered. ‘I can cut flowers fresh when you go into labour.’
Together we decorated our bedroom, painting it a soft ‘apple white’. We hung some of my peaceful, mystical Kahlil Gibran prints on the walls. I put geranium and rose oils into the vaporiser to diffuse a soft scent of ease round the room. Josh had bought a natural wicker baby basket for our new arrival, while I made blankets from pure soft wool and cottons.
We were ready and excited.
It was April 21st, 1977. 5 a.m.
I woke with a lower backache, which felt just like a period pain. ‘This is the beginning of labour pains,’ I thought. ‘I knew it,’ I said to myself, half excited and half nervous. ‘I’m going back to sleep while I still can!’
I didn’t wake Josh. I was ready, fully prepared: I’d really planned this through all my Natural Childbirth classes and all my reading.
7 a.m.
I woke again. The contractions were stronger now but still quite far apart. ‘Time to tell Josh,’ I thought. It was also time to start some exercises. ‘Do I have time for breakfast?’ I wondered. ‘Good idea: more energy for later.’
Josh cooked me a massive vegetarian fry-up, consisting of mashed potatoes with cheese, veggie burger, mushrooms and tomatoes.
Now the contractions were coming closer together. I was crawling around the floor, moving back down into child pose with my big belly resting on my knees, practising my breathing. Long, deep, slow breaths. The crawling helped. It seemed that my stomach hanging down had less to hold onto, feeling comfortable suspended that way, even though the contractions were getting really strong. My back was aching more. My whole large stomach, where this baby lived, seemed to have two layers. There was the inside, the safe womb, caring for her, keeping her safe, feeding her; and then there was an outside, this outer layer, which felt to me like a clamp that seemed to shift around independently from the inside. It was a sliding, circular door, spiralling and contracting, getting ready to open, to move this baby down the birth canal.
Falling into a world
10 a.m.
My waters broke. Josh phoned the midwife.
10.30 a.m.
I put the washing machine on to do a wash. ‘Get ready, get prepared,’ I thought. ‘Make my nest clean and safe. Act normal.’ But I could feel my mind being altered and my breath shortening. ‘Keep those long breaths coming,’ I told myself, trying to keep my awareness on those longer breaths, getting down onto the floor. I crawled, the pains getting stronger and stronger and closer together. Josh was talking to me, trying to help as much as I would allow him to before I got pissed off with him.
11am.
Rowan, the midwife arrives. She said I’m more than halfway dilated having examined me. 'This baby will be born by lunchtime.'
‘I’ll have a bath, a warm bath now, with oils. I’ll relax and it’ll help me handle these damned contractions.’ Josh ran me a bath. ‘I’m not going to lie down,’ I told myself. ‘I’m not going to bed, not until the baby is ready.’
Josh was getting our bedroom ready and he took Hannah to our neighbour while all this preparation was happening. We wanted a peaceful atmosphere, a beautiful energy. We lit candles.
12 noon.
I couldn’t stand it anymore. The pain was too much. My mind was going into another world and I was getting moody. It was too difficult: the pain was too much! I lay on our bed in our peaceful room with Josh by my side. I tried to do more exercises, but I was feeling overwhelmed. Rowan the midwife had returned and she asked me if I would like some gas. I had made it clear that I wanted no drugs, except gas and air.
1.15 p.m.
A sliver of sun shone into our darkened candlelit room through the crack in the curtain. Through my pain, I was aware of a peace within the room, despite all my shouts and screams. When Josh tried to wipe my brow and I slapped his hand away in temper, the midwife said, ‘Ah, the final stage is here.’
1.20 p.m.
A baby girl was born.
We named her Rowan after the midwife.
Today -
I publish this today, on the anniversary of Rowan’s funeral. She died four years ago from pancreatic cancer.
The love that opened in me at her birth has only deepened - magnified a thousandfold through the long, aching path of grief. As I continue to bear witness to her passing and to live with her absence, Rowan has become a teacher for me - a teacher of compassion, of humility, of fierce, unrelenting love.
In her death, as in her birth, I was broken open.
Today, I reach out with that same heart to all mothers who have lost children - in the violence of war, in the quiet tragedies of illness, in the forgotten corners of injustice.
I pray. I speak up.
For love, justice and peace.
