When Birth Includes Death

The universe has a way of throwing me into expansion… hard. I remember when I got a natal chart reading with my mentor Donna Maria, she asked me if I’ve had a hard life so far, because my chart conveyed such.

I didn’t view my life to be super challenging in that specific moment, but when I sunk in deeper and she and I started going through my chart piece by piece, it became clear that yes, my life HAS been full of many many challenging periods and moments, but that I am perhaps really good at coping with them, or viewing them all as perfect by this point in my life.

Challenging, yes.. but not without golden lessons and opportunities for exponential growth.

Looking back at my life and those challenging times (like almost drowning in the ocean as I tried to surf, like losing the brakes on our RV as we were barreling down a curving moutain road, like a childhood full of the feeling of invisibility to the point of actually embodying the immense falsity that I was in fact invisible, like being raped by someone I trusted when I was 21 years old).. I realize that these all felt like rude awakenings in those moments, like my innocence and naïveté (about the beauty of the ocean, about the magic of the mundane parts of life, about my power, and about the nature of the human experience in this school we call life) were lost in one brief and jarring experience of ultimate clarity and awakening..

Those moments, as they were each happening, all felt like The End, like death, like life would never be as pure or as light anymore … but in fact, over time, those moments have become my defining moments, my *spiritual* awakenings, the lessons and experiences that have made me open more, love more deeply, trust more confidently, and yearn with more action for a better world and a more joyful way of experiencing life.

Something Sophie Strand was quoted saying really stuck out to me in relation to all of this:

“I want to honor the bewilderment. In the gospel of Thomas there is a preoccupation with astonishment. It says, “First you seek, then you are troubled. When you are troubled, you will marvel.” And so the entry point into a spiritual quest, into an interrogative, participatory relationship with the Sacred, is being troubled. And then reaching your state of marvel. And marvel, of course, not being this kind of pleasurable experience, but being vertiginous, feeling like you’re being spun, not knowing quite where you are.”

What I have realized just yesterday, actually, is that I am currently in the midst of one such spinning astonishing awakening. My innocence has been lost, the bubble has popped, and I don’t have the same naive doe eyes about life and birth specifically, that I had just two months ago.

But some part of me must have signed up for this, right? Some aspect of my Soul that knew that these moments of disorientation would and will lead me to closer participatory relationship with my origin, with the Divine.

This has taken me a long time to write… Days have turned into weeks and then months, and I’m still trying to organize my thoughts on what has happened in my field over the course of the last two months.

Ultimately, as of right now at least, what it has boiled down to is death. Death in birth. Death in pregnancy. Death in life. Death in order to be reborn.

In the last two months there have been three deaths in my energetic field.

And they shook me. Hard. They really did.

They made me question my path, they made me question everything.

They caused many miniature deaths within my own body, deaths of my self, death of ego, death of … like I said, my naïveté.

In the midst of these three deaths, after the first two but before I was aware of the third, I was laying on my back on the warm sand in Maui, and I closed my eyes so I could tune into my other senses. The first thing I picked up on was the sound of rattling, which sounded like the rattling of a snake’s tail. I live in the desert so the sound of something near me rattling is not something that sets my soul at ease.

I quickly opened my eyes and looked around, but then realized, as I felt another swell of the breeze and heard it again, that the rattling was coming from the tree I was lying under. Peering up into the branches, I saw long brown seed pods moving gently in the breeze. They rattled as the wind moved them and the seeds inside them shook.

Peering more closely at the tree, I noticed that all of the branches sported long spikes as well. These spikes were about two inches long and shaped like long needles. Wow, I thought, a tree that sounds like a rattlesnake that also has dagger-like needles all over it. Must be a protector tree, holding space for the beach, probably protecting it from people accessing it and harming it in some way. A boundary-setter.

As I laid back down on the sand and closed my eyes again, I thought about how – as a midwife – I had this deep innate feeling that I was doing God’s work, and honoring the Divine, and by “shaking my rattles” - protecting the energy of the birth space and paying homage to the ceremony that is birth, trusting in every little detail of it, I could avoid holding space for a baby’s death while also holding space for birth.

I thought by holding space for births unfolding naturally and without intervention, I could just breeze through my midwifery career without witnessing many complications, without witnessing death of a mother or a baby, especially.

After all, I learned from an independent midwife during my apprenticeship, one who was very non-interventive and believed so deeply in undisturbed birth and in the power of women and babies to do the thing, and SHE never saw a baby born still. Of course I thought I would follow in her footsteps and that it was the WAY that I was practicing that would pave the way for my clients to have excellent outcomes.

As someone who has always talked about the importance of acknowledging that death is sometimes a part of birth, there was a dichotomy there. Yes, death is a part of birth sometimes but did I really believe that? Did I believe I was above that experience? Based on the way that I practiced and the things I did and did not “do” to and with women during their pregnancies and births?

In spite of all of my “knowing,” I really had a lot of attachment to release that birth = LIFE, and happiness and warm fuzzies and oxytocin, all the time.

As I packed up my blanket and got ready to leave the beach, I noticed that I was completely surrounded by broken off branches from the tree I had been laying under. Each branch sprouted those long dagger-like spikes. How I had gotten to this oasis of spike-free sand without noticing all of the spikes on the way TO my blanket spot, boggled my mind … and even with the awareness that they were all around me, I still managed to step on one as I gingerly made my way off the beach and back to the car.

Hmm… my brain tried to interpret this as more of a metaphor about the birth world. Should I just assume that there is danger always lurking around the edges of the safe containers that I help hold during births? Is there no real way to avoid bad outcomes, like stepping on a spikey branch buried in the sand, regardless of how much awareness I have and how “good” of a job I do at holding the space and trusting in the process and in my clients?

Let me go back a little bit, and explain more of this story.

I had a client and friend named Stephanie, and her partner is Aaron. Oh, how I love them, so much. :)

Originally they asked me to be their doula at their home birth, but my role changed over the course of their pregnancy to work collaboratively as a midwife with their nurse midwife they had also hired to attend their home birth.

Sometime in the weeks leading up to Stephanie and Aaron’s birth, their nurse midwife called and asked me to attend another client’s (who I had never met) home birth with her, which of course I was excited and happy to do!

To make a long story shorter, that baby came out and didn’t breathe on his own for over an hour after his birth. We resuscitated him at home until he was transported with the nurse midwife, his dad, and the paramedics to the hospital.

Ultimately, he didn’t make it and left his body for good while at the children’s hospital about two hours from here.

In the hours and days following that birth and death, I felt alternatingly depressed, nauseated, and I think a part of myself died, too, to be honest. I felt like part of this sacred bubble of peace and trust about birth that I had erected around myself had gotten a puncture wound, and now the air was leaking out and my bubble was not as strong.

Underneath it all, though, I felt an intense sensation of rage.

I was mistakenly judgemental of the nurse midwife, her energy, how she had practiced, and the choices she made at that birth I attended with her. I am not proud of these emotions of judgment against another midwife and friend. But I think that since it was very different than the way that I had seen midwives practicing up to that point, I assumed that the way she was practicing was the reason this baby had such a bad outcome. That must have been the X factor.

Of course that has been a major part of my learning experience through all of this. Releasing judgment. Releasing false expectations.

That was my first experience with a baby dying after or during birth. But after the second loss of life that I experienced a couple of weeks later, many folks reached out to me in judgment.

Of course I needed to receive that medicine in that way. Of course I needed to judge, so I could subsequently receive judgement and see how clearly I needed to release that.

Over the next few weeks after that initial experience of loss, Stephanie and Aaron decided to not have this nurse midwife at their birth, and just have myself and the nurse midwife’s assistant at their birth. They felt this would help them achieve their dream birth in an aligned way.

The day that I went to their home as Stephanie was in labor was so beautiful. The sun was setting, and their birth tub was set up in the middle of their living room, with panoramic views of the shining golden light over the red rocks through the floor to ceiling windows.

Over the course of that evening and the next handful of days, Stephanie went in and out of labor, without any dilation of her cervix. Because of the lack of dilation, I assumed she was experiencing prodromal labor and I was in and out of their home as they were in and out of experiencing contractions.

We checked in on all levels, how she was feeling emotionally, physically, spiritually.. If she was keeping up with food and hydration (which she was, beautifully), and noted that the baby was doing great the whole time, based on my assessment of his heart rate and movement patterns.

Whenever we checked her cervix, there was little or no change with the contractions, so I assumed she might be in a prodromal labor pattern like this for days or weeks before it was actually time to open completely and birth her baby. Which was all so normal and has happened so often with other women before.

Ultimately, after more than 5 days of this pattern, they called me and told me they were having a hard time finding baby Ahraya’s heart with the fetoscope I had left there at their home. I drove over right away and I couldn’t find it either, with the fetoscope or the doppler.

We quickly decided that it was best for them to drive to the hospital to get an ultrasound and see what was going on. It really didn’t settle in for any of us that Ahraya had left his body and wasn’t going to come back.

What transpired at the hospital was an emotional rollercoaster for all involved, including the hospital staff. And ultimately we all realized the baby was not able to come back into his body and that he was gone forever. His heart had stopped beating and there was no way to restart it.

Stephanie was admitted to the hospital, checked and found to be completely dilated at that point, and tried to give birth that night. Ultimately, though, she was understandably exhausted on all levels, decided to get an epidural, sleep, and then gave birth to the baby the next day.

Phew! That is a lot to take in. If you’re still reading this, I invite you to pause here, take a deep breath or three, and release whatever tension or emotion that may have built in your body, if it feels right to do so.

I’m sure it doesn’t really need to be said that since this has happened, my emotional process has been all over the place. From denial to bypassing, to checking out, to diving in and feeling it all and wading through the depths of my own soul, the way I practice, and my path in this life.

I’ve questioned my path before, but that was because I didn’t have external approval of it.

I never imagined, once I got through that initial questioning, I would have to face another deeper layer of questioning based on my denial of the reality of what birth really truly is, blowing up in my face.

Seriously, if you search the statistics of birth, search how many births have complications or issues, how many deaths there are in birth or in pregnancy (death of the mother and/or the baby), it really is quite a miracle that there are babies who make it and thrive the way they do!

I had no real awareness of any of that. In reality.

In theory, of course I knew all of that.

But in practice I had no real deep understanding that I was not immune to those statistics.

Well, now I do. Hard.

I still have some parts of myself that want to go back to that perfect state of bliss, that bubble of naïveté.

I feel that is one of the major downsides to the New Age movement: this idea that everything is always bliss and sparkles and unicorns if you just do the work and think your way there.

But I digress.

With all the craziness of the world in general recently, and the field of birth shifting and changing in pretty majorly observable ways very quickly, it’s been such a time of losing illusions and facing reality for so many people, myself included.

We NEED to have our bubbles popped in this way so we are able to move through the intensity of what is coming in our 3D world from a grounded place of true awareness.

With tools and clean energy fields.

That’s definitely something I feel I’ve gained through all of this. Tools with which to walk with women through ALL processes of life and death, a depth of knowing and experience that I never had before, and never knew I needed.

To circle back to death and birth (sorry, but there is one more part of this story to tell), after the first two deaths, after coming home from the medicine that was my trip to Maui, I settled on the idea that yes, it WAS time to change everything.

I reformulated the way I wanted to practice midwifery. I decided I wanted to truly walk with one woman at a time in the form of a soul sister friendship type of relationship, over the course of her entire pregnancy and postpartum, instead of having to split my focus and attention between 6-8+ women in different stages of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum like I had been doing.

And the woman who I wanted to focus on in this way, to share space with and exchange downloads with synergistically, was Brie.

I love her so much. :)

I was really looking forward to having this conversation with her about my shift in focus and to ask her how she felt about potentially having this soul sister friendship experience over the remainder of her 15-some-odd weeks of pregnancy, when she came over for a prenatal appointment and told me she felt crazy and like she wasn’t pregnant anymore.

My heart fell down into my feet hearing the echo of something strikingly similar to what Stephanie had said after she felt her baby’s soul leave his body, while he was still inside hers.

This was only slightly different because I had not felt a baby inside Brie’s belly with my own hands her entire pregnancy. She was about 20 weeks last time I met with her and she has a retroverted uterus so, I figured it would just be a while before we heard a heart beat with the fetoscope or she felt much movement.

She had been growing and growing, experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions, and other pregnancy symptoms the entire time I had been interacting with her.

The only “weird” thing had been that the first time I met her, at a pregnancy circle I hosted in early March, she was experiencing some bleeding, which can be super normal at that point in pregnancy, around 8 weeks.

But fast forward back to the present, and Brie laid down on my couch and we listened with the fetoscope and the Doppler, no heartbeat to be found.

I had a feeling, throughout all of the last two months, that everything happens in threes. I had been anxiously hoping that was NOT correct, and that I WOULDN’T experience any other death energy anytime soon… but.. here we were.

The third instance of death energy. It felt like the other shoe had finally dropped.

Brie’s guess was that she miscarried way back then in early March, but her mind and heart had willed herself to remain pregnant so hard that her body listened.

Her body grew, her pregnancy symptoms continued, she had no more bleeding, no periods, no nothing.

In almost all ways, she was pregnant. Her body actually did a really amazing job remaining pregnant, in spite of the fact that the baby was no longer there.

How magical are our bodies, our powerful minds, and the desperate ache of love we carry in our hearts for our children?

So now, here I am. Here we are.

have no future clients. I do have a friend who is due any day now who may or may not call me while in labor to attend her birth. I have no egoic attachment to needing to be there to witness her give birth (though I do love witnessing women in their power in that way).. and as part of this community and a witness to MY process recently, I would totally not be surprised if she did not want my energy at the sacred ceremony of her birth.

[Edit! She gave birth last night and no, I didn’t attend her birth but it was beautiful and perfect and such a gift for me to hear about. Like a palate-cleanser birth :).]

So, I have nothing but TIME and ENERGY. To spend on… myself.. my family… my partnership.. on nature, on my friends, in this community.

This is another aspect of my learning throughout these experiences: I must value myself over anyone else, and care for myself before anyone else, pour the same or more energy into my own well-being as I do for my clients, family, and friends… in order to really be of service in the highest way for my community.

Balancing against this independence and individualistic energy, is the death of my ego and the growth of my feeling of smallness.

Big realizations that my power is not in my individuality.

There’s nothing I can do as an individual that is anywhere close to the power of the Divine and of the Divine Plan.

I had to learn that.. hard.

No amount of wishing, praying, or thinking my ideal birth outcomes into existence could trump the true power of God/Goddess and their higher perspective and plan.

My power isn’t my own.

I can co-create with the Divine, yes, and hold space for the Divine plan to unfold, yes…

But I can no longer have an attachment to what *I* feel is best for all involved.

It’s just not up to me.

And that is the power that I had to learn and unlearn, through these moments, these challenges, this whitewater rafting trip of bends in the proverbial river.

I almost want to put it out there to the Universe that I no longer need to learn lessons this way… I don’t need to almost die in the ocean or on a mountain road or to witness the death of the hopes and dreams of three first time mothers, in order to learn the ways of the Universe.

But I know better than that by now :)

What I resist becomes stronger. And becomes a lesson I need to learn.

So, now I’m trying to flow.

And this is not me bypassing my potential responsibility in any of these deaths, by the way. Because I have done a LOT of self inquiry about what I could have or potentially should have done differently with all of these cases. In addition to sharing these cases with other elders and senior midwives and a doctor as well.

And we all came up with: sometimes death happens in birth. And there’s nothing we can do to change that outcome.

And it happens all the time, in the hospital and at home and in birth centers and everywhere in between. But none of us really talk about it much.

But I have to. So here we are.

And… So, now what? What is next for me, specifically?

I’m trying to focus on myself and prioritize mySELF first for the first time in my life, truly.

It feels weird to have this be one of the outcomes of all this, but here we are.

No judgement, just flow.

I am thankful for these lessons. I am thankful to have a clear picture of what birth, death and life are.

I wouldn’t wish this on anyone else, but I understand that it is for me and these families to experience together.

And over time the big picture will become more clear.

Midwifery is one of the oldest professions. Throughout all of time there have been births, deaths, and midwives to hold space for it all.

Now I can sense that this is my role in the full complexity of what life has to offer.

It’s still my calling, it’s still my role, but now I have a clearer picture of what exactly it entails.

In that sense, the Universe did me a solid. Clarity.

This writing is dedicated to the families I have witnessed go through so much hardship over the last two months.

The strength, love, and resilience I have felt from these families is unlike anything I have ever experienced before in my life.

I’m in awe, humbled, and at the feet of these families and the Divine, more than I ever have been before.

My sense of wonder and amazement at the absolute fucking MIRACLE that is life, birth, and the lessons we learn from death has grown exponentially.

Together, we are navigating this. Together we will move into the future and offer whatever medicine we can glean from this to other community members. And together, all of us, will rise and grow and deepen with each other, in interdependence and support, and with reverence to Nature, the Divine, and the bliss and heartache of true perspective of what Life does look and feel like for us human beings.