Maira and Geoffrey, with their 16 month old daughter Nina and their newborn son, live in the spiritual community and ecovillage of Findhorn, in the North of Scotland. Maira is originally from Barcelona, and Geoffrey from Australia. Maira’s mother is a midwife and has been present at the births of Nina and Aron, which were both home water births.

We came back from the ceilidih happy and tired. I had only managed the three slowest dances, but it had been lovely. I had had a long nap in the afternoon, so I didn’t feel sleepy. As it was only 10pm, early for Spanish timing, we decided to make a cup of herbal tea. We sat in the living room for about an hour, chatting of this and that… it was so nice to have mum and sister around! A real treat when I usually only see them twice a year.

When I finally settled in bed it was 11.30, and the contractions, that I had been experiencing all day, kept on coming strong. For what felt the thousandth time in the last three weeks, I wondered if “this was it” (it was only 7 days after the due date, but I had been so sure that he would come early…). Then the baby wriggled and gave a couple of very strong and funny feeling kicks. “Strange”, I thought, “I wonder how he did that”. I felt a wetness down my leg. I touched it. “Yes, it’s definitely wet! Mmmm!, is this the waters breaking?! Did he break the bag???” I could still feel it gently coming out. It didn’t feel like pee, and I knew I’d emptied my bladder before going to bed. After a while, I decided to go and put a pad on; I had read somewhere: if the pad is wet within an hour, it’s probably your waters. You can smell it then: pee smells, amniotic fluid doesn’t. So I settled back into bed with it, trying not to get too excited. If this was labour, I could do with as much sleep as possible!

Geoffrey turned over wondering what all this up and down was about. “I think my waters have broken”, I said with a smile. “Oh! What do we need to do?” he asked sleepily. “Nothing at the moment”, I replied “it might take a while. I’ll try to get some sleep. I’ll let you know when I need you”. “OK”

I dosed off between contractions. At 1.30, I went to check on the pad. It was pretty soggy, and it didn’t smell… Yes!, finally the baby was coming!!! “OK, back to bed!”, I said to myself firmly, “now I definitely need some rest”. I tried to switch off my brain from imagining all the possible scenarios: “how long will it take?, at which point will I be when Nina wakes up?, is everything ready?, gosh!, I haven’t put out the first clothes I want him to wear!” Again I managed to dose off between contractions. Nearing 4am, I was beginning to hold on to the pillow with tight fists every time they came. They were 6-8 minutes apart. I was hungry but I didn’t feel like getting up to get something to eat. I pondered for a while if I should be waking up someone. “I could keep on going on my own. This could take a long while (my previous labour had been about 20 hours), and I want my helpers to be as rested as possible…” A contraction came and went. “No, I definitely want a banana, and I am not prepared to go fetch it myself. And I need to keep my energy up!” I squeezed Geoffrey’s arm gently.

While I munched my banana we talked about what to do next. Every time a contraction came, I had to stop talking, kneel upright on the bed, and focus. This, for me, is the point when labour has really begun: when I can’t talk while having a contraction. Geoffrey timed them: every 4-6 minutes, lasting 30 seconds but pretty strong. Now we couldn’t help but to get really excited. Geoffrey rang the midwife and I woke up my mum and sister Neus. Everybody got going quietly so as not to wake up Nina. Neus helped Geoffrey set up the birthing pool in the living room upstairs, while my mum sat with me in the bedroom downstairs. I laid on the bed and, with the contractions, I’d kneel on the floor, rest my arms on the mattress, swing my hips and moan gently, a big engine sound coming from very deep.

Then, all of a sudden, l felt sick. How reassuring to have mum there, holding my forehead… It was only the banana, but I got scared. In my previous labour, I had been sick repeatedly and became so weak we all got worried. I feared this time it was going to be the same. “If I can just keep up the liquid intake, I’ll be all right”, I thought. So I asked mum to bring me some warm rice milk. One of the things I like about labour is that I feel like a real queen, with everybody taking my wishes as commands… ?.

Meanwhile, Silvia the NHS midwife, had arrived. “You’re doing some hard work”, she said after watching me for a while. “Yes, you’re right”, I replied with a smile. She checked how dilated I was. The few seconds she took to do it were the only time I lay on my back throughout the whole birthing process, and it was the only time I felt like I was going against my body. I really don’t understand how women can labour lying on their back! I guess we are all different. Anyway, I was 3-4 cm dilated, which felt like really good news after only an hour of strong contractions. In my previous labour, dilation had been painstakingly slow… (I couldn’t help it but to compare!)

Then I had a bit of the rice milk and it felt like a punch in the stomach. A minute later I was sick again. I felt a rush of panic coming from the same place as the milk. For a moment I thought about the homeopathic remedy for fear I had in my “labour kit”. But the contractions got stronger, and I forgot about it. When I remembered again, I was having a sip of sparkling water with apple juice concentrate after each contraction, which felt good and stayed down.

The contractions got stronger again. My gentle moaning had become a more powerful “aaahhh!” sound. I remembered Monika, my friend and doula in my previous labour, explaining how the mouth on the face connects with “the mouth” of the womb, the cervix, so I very consciously kept my mouth and cheeks open and relaxed. Sometimes I even shook my head and blew raspberries to make sure I wasn’t holding on to any tension. By then, kneeling wasn’t good enough; I had to stand. I turned around the arm chair to stand behind it and, with every contraction, I squeezed the head rest while visualizing the energy flowing down my legs and on to the Earth. A couple of times I caught myself standing on tiptoes, unconsciously wanting to get away from the sensation. Every time I consciously grounded and went fully into it. “Yes!, give me more of that!” I repeated, as if I was making love, “I am looking forward to meeting you, baby, I want to hold you in my arms.” “I want to open up, I am opening the way for you to come.” “Come on, baby, we are ready for you”, I said these to myself over and over. And “We are doing well, little one, we are doing this together and are doing very well”. It was great. I felt strong and empowered.

I had my low moments too, were I only wished I could just go to sleep and wake up with the baby lying next to me. But then I would catch myself in that victim mode and would snap out of it: “No, I don’t want it to stop, I really want you to be born, baby, and you can take as long as you need, I’ll manage!”. I don’t know how often the contractions came or how regular they were, but sometimes I did sit down on the floor against a pile of cushions and duvets and dosed off. That was really helpful, because when the next contraction came I felt I had more energy to cope.

At 6 am everything was ready upstairs and Nina woke up. Perfect timing! Geoffrey and Neus dressed her and Neus took her to a friend’s house, as pre-arranged. Then I was ready to go upstairs. The living room felt beautiful, cosy and welcoming, with the soft light of the morning filtering through the curtains, the warmth of the water in the pool and the little altar with my pregnant goddess candle on top of the piano. Everything was as I had asked for, and that felt like a little miracle. It was good to reconnect with Geoffrey too, whom I hadn’t seen for the last two and a half very intense hours. During the next few contractions I held on to his forearms, sounded my powerful “aaaahhh!” and looked deeply into his brown eyes. I could feel his love pouring into me; it was great to have him next to me again.

I was uncertain whether I wanted to get into the water. Gravity had been a strong help for opening up outside the pool, but getting in might be quite soothing. I felt pushed by the comments around me: mum saying it would be helpful, Silvia asking if I was getting in, Geoffrey saying I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to… “I don’t know!, I don’t know what I want to do!, just let me be!”, I almost shouted. Then I realised the urge I had felt in the last few contractions was to push! “I’m pushing, oh! my God, I’m pushing!!” I cried with the next contraction. I couldn’t believe I was ready so quickly, I worried I wasn’t dilated enough. “OK, go ahead”, encouraged Silvia. So I went for it. “Right. Now I want to get into the pool”, I said when the contraction had faded off. “Do you want to check me first?”, I asked the midwife. “No, I think you are ready”, she replied. Amazing! So in I went.

Ah! bliss! I felt my muscles relax deeply as soon as I was surrounded by the warmth of the water, and the weightlessness was a big relief to my tired body. So different from the previous labour, when going into the pool had just felt nice! Geoffrey got in with me, sat down and leaned his back against the pool wall. I knelt in front of him, held on to his arms and squeezed them with all my strength at every push. It felt like a slow process. I was told later it took half an hour, but Aron was a stargazer, so I guess if he had come face down it would have been faster. I was just glad nobody told me he was in the anterior position, because I would have worried. It was hard enough as it was. “He is stuck!”, I cried at one point. “No, he is not” assured the midwifes. I trusted them.

The second stage is the part of labour where I do feel pain. I’m glad it is also the time when I can do something, and I get so busy with pushing that it helps take my mind off it. “Why is it so painful?”, I whimpered once or twice. But at the same time, I was aware that this was a human being coming into Earth, choosing to be born, travelling through my body. And in between contractions I had the time and awareness to marvel at it all. What a miracle.

Silvia kept on checking to see if the head was coming out. Her fingers in my vagina bothered me: “It’s all right, just leave it! I picked Nina up when she was born, I’ll pick this one up too!” So she left me alone. I pushed with all my might. “Come on, baby, we are ready for you, we are waiting”, I encouraged the little one. The head crowned and I remembered to blow raspberries to help it come out gently, which I suppose helped me not to tear this time. I knelt upright, looked down and saw the top half of his body floating in the water. His eyes were closed, his skin bluish. He looked almost surreal, peacefully hanging there, between two worlds. “Oh!, my God!, Geoffrey, look at it!”

We watched him for a short while in wonder. Then his face contracted into a painful expression; “oh!, baby, what’s wrong?”, I thought. Silvia asked if the cord was stuck somewhere. Yes, over his shoulders, that’s why the bottom half of his body wasn’t coming out. She told us how to free him and encouraged me to bring him up.

“It’s a boy!”, I exclaimed triumphantly. It was 7:07 am. I held him gently while tears welled up in my eyes: “We’ve done it, Geoffrey, he is here, our son!” I was so ecstatic that I didn’t realise he was blue and not breathing. The midwifes waited for a few seconds and then asked Geoffrey if the cord was still pulsating. “I can’t tell”, he replied. Very quickly, Sue clamped the cord and asked Geoffrey to cut it. Even in an emergency she was respecting our wishes! As the cord was being cut, Aron started to breathe noisily. Silvia rubbed him with a towel and his colour began to change. We all sighted with relief. Then he begun to cry. I wondered again what was wrong, as Nina hadn’t cried at all when she was born. In retrospect, I suppose he was releasing the bit of trauma caused by the stuck cord. Geoffrey and I begun to sing a lullaby he had heard us singing to Nina very often, while we poured water over his body to keep him warm. “It’s over, he’s here!” I kept on telling myself.

I quickly got restless. I wanted to get out of the water. I passed Aron on to Geoffrey and he stopped crying. “Well, that’s a good start for the two of them!”, I thought. I sat on the futon, but I felt uncomfortable. After a while they passed me the baby to see if he wanted to suck. He latched on after a while but didn’t seem too interested. Finally I got up and pushed again. Silvia told me to blow into my fist, as if blowing up a balloon, and the placenta came out in a huge splash. Vibrant red droplets spread everywhere. “Mmmm!, that wasn’t the decoration I would have chosen for the wall!”, I thought. But then, that was of course, the least important thing at that time. I had just birthed a baby boy!

Six days later, we went to the near by forest, to an area known as “Placenta Park”, where the community families that choose to, bury the placenta of their babies. It was a drizzly morning, so we all set off under umbrellas and waterproofs. There was Geoffrey and I, Aron in the sling, Nina on the pram, my parents, my sister Neus, and our friend Graham.

We chose a place near the place where Nina’s placenta had been buried. A little rowan tree was growing happily over that spot. Geoffrey dug a hole, I put the placenta in, we covered it with some soil and planted a birch sapling. We all trod in the ground around it to make it really firm. Then we stood in a circle and Geoffrey led us in a song: “The river is flowing, flowing and growing, the river is flowing down to the sea. Mother Earth carry me, a child I will always be. Mother Earth carry me down to the sea”. Blessings were said in English and Catalan (my mother tongue) on the life of Aron, and we thanked the placenta for the role it had played in his life so far. We finished by singing “Tall tree, warm fire, strong wind, deep water. I feel it in my body, I feel it in my soul”. It felt good and complete, the gentle rain blessing the ceremony. We returned home talking joyfully. The next phase of our lives together had begun.