Being Born Blessed (born in the rain)
-by Leilah McCracken
If I were a baby being born today- I'd want to be born
in the rain. It is a
warm summer day, and the rain would feel lovely to
be born into. I would
want my mother to dance in the trees, holding onto
them for anchoring and
power- I would want her to swing her hips while holding
onto monolithic
boughs and trunks. I would want her to bellow and
roar, fill the forest with
her wild animal noises and passion.
If I were being born today, I would want my mother
to eat wild berries. The
forest here is filled with salal and evergreen huckleberries-
I would want
her to have her fill, and paint her belly blue with
salal juice- make her
big round tummy blue and connected with the forest
floor- and the forest
with her pelvic floor- all floors together are rich
and beautiful,
life-giving and lovely. If my mother were giving birth
to me today, I would
want her to be blue with the forest, and brown and
green with it- I can see
her with leaves in her hair, and moss under her fingers
as she hugs and
caresses trees for strength.
I can see her in the forest, in the rain- I can see
her alone, and I can see
her with a man, too. My father of course. (Now I'm
not imagining my real
mother and father. My own mother would never dance
naked in the forest, and
my father wouldn't either. My mother would never give
birth without drugs
and medical steel, and my dream to her would be bizarre,
remote, and
threatening. So I will leave her out of it- and imagine
me giving birth to
myself.)
There is my mother- her face is in the rain, her expression
is of simple joy
and rapture- her belly is huge and straining, and
pressed up against a
massive, lovely tree. Long low branches are in my
mother's hair- they caress
her and make her sigh- then another birth wave comes
and she roars with it,
moans and swings her hips. She's thirsty, she opens
her mouth to the rain-
my father comes up behind her and pours water into
her mouth from his cupped
hand (a clean stream runs nearby). She turns to him,
puts her face in his
brood, smooth chest and finds comfort by sucking his
hair. He touches her
back, cries softly into her hair, and tells her that
he loves her. Then
another wave comes- she crouches up into him- she
clings onto him- then they
start swinging their hips together.
"Anhh... annhh... annnhh... annhhŠ" She begins to be
guttural and grunts
with the heightening sensations. He senses her cadence
of pain increasing,
and he leaves himself behind himself and he curves
into her. He grunts with
her, and swings his hips as she does- they are dancing
naked in the forest,
under lovely blowing trees- the rain caresses their
hair, faces and bodies,
the water seals them up tight as they embrace- their
skin sticks and slides.
The pain, it gets richer, deeper, more profound- her
hips open wider, she
wants to bear down but senses it is not time. In her
heat she leaves him
behind, goes off alone- finds the stream and puts
her head in it while
feeling the water lashing at her from behind- the
rain is increasing in
tempo and rhythm. She puts her face into it, delighting
in a brief reprise-
and then- hannh! Hannh! Hannh! Hannh! The pain increases,
she redoubles into
herself- she moans and she cries for her lover. He
comes running up from
behind, he had been watching her all the while. She
turns to him, clings
onto him then collapses into him when the pain dies
away. She is sobbing and
shaking, panting and gasping- he resists the impulse
to do this too, sensing
she needs him to be a rock right now.
Him... in his mind is light and beauty, fear and wonder-
he sees her opening
up like a ripe, beautiful flower- he senses in her
Beauty- endless divine
loveliness- and soon, his little child will be born.
His first child, he
cannot wait, he has dreamed his whole life of his
own little child... he
touches her hair in wonder, looks in her eyes, feels
himself start to cry,
he can't help it... she looks up at him, her eyes
are lost-looking, dreamy,
afraid. Then another one comes... another one hits-
she pants and moans,
starts shrieking in rhythm with the rain, with her
own pain- it crescendos,
she roars- her waters break, releasing all over them
both. He laughs and
cries, and in wonder he touches it- the water from
the stream, the water
from the rain, the water from her beautiful body covers
him- he laughs and
sighs, smiles and cries- he loves her more by the
moment- in the birth, in
the rain.
She clutches onto him, then gets up, frantically trying
to find a place to
lie down. She won't have time, she senses it, she
runs back to the tree that
she had been anchored in. Another one hits while she's
running- she stops,
drops to all four and rocks her hips through it. He
comes up behind her and
holds her hips from behind, resisting the impulse
to love her by ravaging
her, she's that beautiful to him. She clutches the
earth, panting and
sighing, and to her wonder she finds that she draws
strength from the earth-
through her hands and knees, through her feet and
her face as she touches
the earth- she draws power from all of creation, from
all that her body is
made of- and from the rain- of course from the rain.
Then it's over, she stands up and goes to the tree.
She looks to the ground
and finds a soft bed of moss under the next tree-
she goes to it, lies down
in it, blesses the warmth and love all around her
silently, and is grateful
for the gift of birth in the forest. He comes up beside
her, caresses her
curves, tells her he loves her, she turns to kiss
his chest- then it comes-
the biggest one of all- she pants, shrieks, cries
out, then remembers to
draw her strength from the earth. She goes on all
fours, clutches the ground
with her hands and toes and feels the loveliness descending
down into her.
(I am the baby. I am swimming and happy, the love I
have felt is amazing- my
walls around me have hugged and squeezed me, I am
giddy with excitement and
joy- soon I will see her- him- the gentle others I
have sensed all along. In
my darkness all around has always been Light- the
light of their love- and
soon I will be free. Free of my walls, and free with
them- I sense this- I
know this- I am wiser than they know. I feel her body
hold me, hug me one
last time- I cry in my soul- I will miss my warm blackness,
the roaring
noise of her body all around. But I will have her.
And him. My others... I
will be complete.)
She smiles in the height of her pain as she feels her
body split open. He is
shaking and crying, he sees her body open like a massive
overripe flower-
she shakes, he sees sweat break out all over her body,
despite the onslaught
of the rain- the rain is their passion, it is the
driving wetness of Life-
the rain is their symbol of love and ripe procreation.
It wets them both, it
wets her birth- it waters it and nurtures it, encourages
fresh life to grow.
And it does... I come down... he sees my head emerge
from her sacred place
and he kisses my face in wonder- right on my little
mouth- he doesn't mind
the fluids and smells, he loves them, he thinks they
smell like her- and
he's loved her and kissed her there so often before.
My eyes open... I see his face... he weeps openly,
says "hi baby" in hushed
wonder, then he cries some more, kisses me some more,
my mother wants to see
me too so she RAOOOAAAARS me out. I come out, he catches
me in his hands- he
cradles me to his neck and chest as she collapses
into herself, exhausted,
spent- she collects herself then slowly turns around,
to see me, to receive
me.
He is shaking and weeping, she is trembling and filled
with hormones. He
hands me up to her- his face is wet with tears and
rain- and she holds me
under her chin... she nuzzles my hair, starts to shudder
and sob- he come up
behind her and he clutches her shoulders, tells her
he loves her over and
over again. He touches my face- says he can kiss me
forever- and I look in
his eyes- in her eyes- and know I am loved.
He covers us in his warmth, but my mother needs to
lie down. Our tent is not
far away, and he helps us to get to it. She pauses
on the way- asks him to
hold me- then she sways, grunts and moans and our
placenta is born. She
carries it, then takes me back in her arms and rests
me against it. "Hello
sister" I say.
We are home; he helps us get settled in. We lie down
together and I begin
nursing. They laugh and softly cry, such a busy nurser
I am! My mouth works
sweetly and furiously. Then my mother gets a little
chilled, he covers her
with blankets. He gets her apple juice to drink, and
brings her food. She
eats and drinks gratefully, and then he crawls into
the covers behind her
and covers her with his skin. She feels better immediately.
Hours pass like this- my parents don't cut the cord-
we rest and are
comfortable- the night is filled with stars- the next
day is bright and
sunny, my parents don't take me into the sunshine-
my father collects salal
berries and he paints me blue too. We are blessed
under the stars.
* * *
For a huge amount of unassisted birth information and
stories, see
BirthLove's unassisted birth index:
<http://www.birthlove.com/pages/stories/unassisted.html>
For information and stories about Lotus birth, see
BirthLove's Lotus birth
page- <http://www.birthlove.com/pages/stories/lotus.html>
For fathers' stories BirthLove go here-
<http://www.birthlove.com/pages/stories/fathers.html>
Copyright © Leilah McCracken/BirthLove. www.birthlove.com
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