Marya's Conscious Conception and Freebirth

There was a day last March when I was laying on my yurt floor, in Olympia Washington, stretching and listening to music when all of the sudden I sat up with a bolt of recognition.  The thought sprang to my head and propelled my body upright: “I need to have a baby sooner than I thought.”  I nervously laughed at the immediacy of this feeling coming from the depths of my body.  

My partner Daniel came home an hour or two later and I couldn’t control my excitement.  “I have to tell you something!”  He looked at me, smiled, and said, “What? You think we should have a baby sooner than we thought?” 

“Yes!” 

He had experienced the same thought that I did.  We couldn’t ignore our Spirit Baby any longer, who was making themselves clear that they were ready to make a home in my body, which was a full season earlier than we planned.  A month later, on the night of the New Moon and Earth Day, we opened the portal for our spirit baby resulting in an experience that left my partner and I in an altered state that lasted for weeks.  

As I waited for my body to tell me I was pregnant, my senses became extremely heightened.  The smells and sights of Spring would bring me to my knees, and I would just sit and feel the warm wind on my skin and smile, in complete awe and contentment. I felt as though my body was a bridge for my new, not yet embodied, spark of life to experience life for the first time, and as a result, I, too, felt like I was experiencing everything for the first time. 

Almost like clockwork, week 6 came and so did the nausea and the exposure of my intuition to an entire unseen realm around me.  I could feel everything that was not in health about the way we were living and intuitively felt that we had to leave behind our beloved yurt and almost all of our possessions and move to the city of Buffalo, NY.   So we did, unquestioning and only trusting.

Throughout my pregnancy, I gathered wisdom and stories from the wise women in my life, books, and online.  I sought out the hard truths about allopathic prenatal care and pregnancy management, which only reinforced my intuitive trust in undisturbed pregnancy and birth.  

I chose to have a wild pregnancy and most importantly, I chose to trust myself, my body, and my baby every day.

During my third trimester, Daniel and I took the Free Birth Society’s “Complete Guide to Free Birth” course and really began to dive in together on all things birth.  I learned to notice when others were projecting their unprocessed trauma onto me and not take it on.  I became stronger in myself and discerned what was me and what was someone else.  

I planned to go into labor at 42 weeks and to be in labor for 3 days.  Imagine my surprise when our fiery little soul, who was ready to be born from day one, decided to be born at 38.5 weeks in just six short hours.  

I went into labor an hour from my home, and immediately knew the time had come.  I got pulled over by a cop for speeding on the way home, but by the time I had arrived home I had already turned inward and was so quiet and still my partner and sister thought that my labor was a false alarm.  Little did they know I was already in labor land, breathing deep into the sensations.

At one point I began moaning the typical “vowel sound” of labor--AHHH EEEE OOOO… and then something inside me told me to keep the energy in.  So back in I went. Rather than resist, I welcomed each wave.  And then my body began to convulse in a downward heave.  I went into our tiny bathroom with my partner behind me and continued to breathe with these new sensations.  It hit me that this was the Fetal Ejection Reflex.  I looked up at Daniel with wild eyes and said, “this baby is coming soon,”  and with a moan and another convusion, out came our Leo Rose’s head.  Daniel reached up to hold his head and Leo began suckling on Daniel’s fingers.  A few moments later, the last contraction came, and with it the pink screaming body of my beloved son.  

I brought him to my chest and couldn’t believe how perfect he was.  Shortly after, I looked down and saw that the placenta was already on its way out of my body.  I grabbed a bowl and out it slipped, no pushing--all body lead.   We went into our bed, all body and covered in vernix, with candles lit and the lights off.  It was a dream, and now I know--truly--how powerful we women are. 

--Marya