'Birth in Harmony' by Cheroona Sievey

As the rate of voluntary and involuntary caesarean sections continues to rise, women are awakening 
to a global movement of deeper consciousness, the natural movement from womb to world. They are taking back the power and saving the very essence of birth. This is happening because women are listening to their unborn children and hearing how they would like to be received.

We heard our baby’s voice and she told us that she wanted to be born to the people she had chosen to be her parents, the people she had imagined waking up to and being embraced by, in a safe and loving environment. We had planted the seed which we had been nurturing and protecting and now at almost full bloom we understood our responsibility to our baby to give her the start in life she was calling for. 



Staying centred

When I was 37 weeks pregnant, my partner William and I looked over our birth plan with our midwife and she sadly wasn’t supportive of our request to deliver our baby ourselves. We felt at a loss because we knew this was what we wanted. I was seeing an osteopath for acute pelvic pain, a wonderful man named Nuno Bento and told him about our dilemma. As he treated me and my unborn baby he voiced to me something very powerful. He said, ‘Don’t let the midwife allow you to lose your centre’. That evening the words continued to circle around my mind and I realized what those words meant to me. It was simple, just take the midwife out of the equation. We conceived our baby ourselves, grew our baby ourselves and now we wanted to birth our baby on our own too!

Lotus birth

I started to research Unassisted Childbirth on the net and discovered Bornfree. This is a website run by Laura Shanley in Boulder, Colorado, USA. Laura gave birth to all four of her children unassisted at home and now shares her experiences with people all over the world, empowering women and men alike to make informed choices so they can give birth the way they want to, without unnecessary intervention and simply alone. William and I were so thrilled that we had found our solution, one that just felt so natural. I emailed Laura to ask her about how to cut the umbilical cord but before I had a response back I had already begun to look into it and found out about Lotus Birth. This is the practice of leaving the cord to detach naturally so the baby gets all of their blood volume and has the opportunity to ‘let go of the mother’s body’ in their own time. There is a process of embalming the placenta with herbs, spices and oils so as to preserve it until detachment, which usually takes less time than a cut cord does to heal.

Freebirthing

So at 40 weeks I informed our midwife that we had ‘revised’ the birth plan and that we were going to have a Freebirth! She said, unsurprisingly, that she thought it wasn’t a good idea and that she was going to inform her supervisor at the maternity unit. I felt confident to meet with her and to sign myself off from their care. I wanted to hear more from Laura so we arranged a good time to talk over the phone. I gave her a brief run through of my birth history with our first born Aurora (now 5 years) and our new found intentions to Freebirth. We both agreed how easy it can be to hand over your power to ‘the professionals’ when you are not being made aware of your rights.

Midwife within

Aurora was born naturally at the maternity unit and although it was not ideal in many ways, we accepted the birth as a rewarding and positive experience. I told Laura that since making the decision to Freebirth, William and I felt empowered and we were stronger than ever. I wanted William to play an active part in the birth process, to share the experience and not just sit on the sidelines feeling helpless. Laura’s main piece of advice was ‘Move out of the way!’; simply saying let your baby and your body do the work, don’t even let the mind enter into it. When we got off the phone I was feeling truly inspired with the insight that the only midwife I needed was within me.

Preparing for birth

My ‘due date’ was April 30th and on Saturday May 3rd my waters sprang a leak and the contractions began. On Sunday, William did some all important preparations and set up our La Bassine birthing pool, then we had fun mixing up lots of fruits and vegetables in our juicer for an energy boost. I painted Aurora’s face and we went on a magical walk together, she held my hand through every contraction. I went to bed for a few hours in the afternoon, having strong sensual dreams that felt literally orgasmic and awoke to the wholesome smell of supper. We put Aurora to bed and she hoped that we would have our baby by morning. I had a bath and washed my hair. William and I went to bed to rest and an hour later I awoke him with the all important words, ‘It’s time!”. As we filled the pool, we started to program crystals with each crystal being placed on my belly.

Letting go of fear

Essential oils and candles were burning as I received a massage from William and soon I immersed myself into the warm water. William and I became vocal, using the vowel sound Ay, which
is the most stimulating of vowel sounds and helps with concentration, releasing pain and anger. At the beginning of each contraction I was fighting the surge and sounding out with fear in my voice, but by the end of the contraction I would be softly yet strongly harmonizing with William’s wonderfully low tones. We were doing it together and it was working really well!

Powerful affirmation

William entered the water and we sank into a deep state of relaxation until I felt my body temperature cooling down, so we got out. This is when I felt the sudden pull of gravity and called out ‘NO!’. I immediately recognized what I had said and called out ‘YES’! I was amazed by the power of such a simple affirmation, as it made me feel strong and capable. I went up to the bathroom and sat down on the toilet and read the affirmation that I had taped to the wall in preparation, it read, ‘I am an empowered mama’, and I was.

The rain was pouring down outside, it sounded so wonderfully refreshing. My temperature had soon risen again so I suggested to William that I go outside to cool off, he laughed at me and I laughed too which seemed to trigger a reflex within and a bearing down sensation came about. I didn’t need to push at all, I could feel the baby coming down naturally. William urged me off the toilet and into the bedroom where, in excitement, I did an internal examination to feel for the baby but felt nothing, then all of a sudden a powerful surge came and her head crowned. It was blissful to know she was seconds away from joining us! Then, with one more incredibly intense surge, out came our baby into William’s warm and loving arms and straight onto my warm and loving belly.

Blessed with a daughter

The immense sense of achievement was overwhelming and we cried with joy. Minutes later the placenta came and we placed it into a special bowl. We didn’t look to see our baby’s sex immediately as we were bound together in skin to skin, but soon found it hard to resist looking and saw that we had been blessed with another beautiful baby girl. We named her Ophelia, which means ‘helper’. Ophelia was so content and immediately took to breastfeeding. I felt so proud of us all. Aurora woke up in the morning and called across the hall from her room where she had slept soundly the whole night through. “Have I got a baby brother or sister yet, mama?” “Yes,” I cried. “A sister, come and meet your baby sister!” Aurora was exactly four and a half that day and what a wonderful gift she received.

Placenta care

We later embalmed Ophelia’s placenta which was a truly enlightening experience. Our osteopath Nuno had said he would come to our home after the birth to treat Ophelia. On Thursday he dropped in and I told him our birth story. He talked of his own birth and
of a reoccurring dream he has had throughout his life, perhaps even sparked from his earliest memory in utero, of the ‘baddies’ coming to get him; referring to the doctors in the hospital. He said he was crying out for his mother to save him but she couldn’t hear him. He said that Ophelia was very lucky because I heard her. Nuno was intrigued by the Lotus Birth as he had not encountered it before. When he treated Ophelia for the first time out of the womb he rested his hand on her and she told him her birth story through a sequence of head movements describing how she had moved her way down the birth canal. He spent the majority of the time treating her placenta and after he had finished she slept throughout the day.

A sense of wholeness

That night without a peep from Ophelia her cord detached itself naturally. It had travelled over Ophelia and William and onto the floor beside the bed. I noticed that at the end of the cord was a little root and at Ophelia’s belly button a little slit where it had come out from. Nuno came to visit Ophelia again and told us that he wanted to select Ophelia to do his MA on, as her case was of interest to him. After treating her as a ‘whole’ with her placenta, he was then able to recognize that some of his patients were suffering from Phantom Placenta, similar to people who experience phantom limbs! They had serious issues around their umbilicals and were years later still carrying the grief and loss of an early severance from their mother’s body and their emotional detachment. After being able to recognize and treat these patients, Nuno felt that he had had a breakthrough and healing came about. Nuno found that Ophelia had a real sense of ‘wholeness’ about her and absolutely no issues whatsoever around her navel! 



The babymoon

Time seemed to stand still in those early weeks after the birth. We immensely enjoyed our babymoon period and Ophelia has not had any sleep or breastfeeding difficulties to date. Since Ophelia’s birth our ability to communicate with each other has improved tremendously as we now have a profound sense of trust and belief in each other and our abilities. We have learned a lot from the births of our daughters, the ‘light’ shed from Aurora and the guidance we received from our little ‘helper’ Ophelia. 



During the pregnancy I didn’t actually ever hear a little voice telling me to give birth alone, it was more like tuning in to the right channel until all the fuzz and static had gone away and then I was able to find a balance within. I feel that the pelvic pain was a continuing physical reminder to slow down and to give my pregnancy the love and respect it deserved, to treat my body as a sacred vessel, carrying a little person with feelings of her own.