I woke to this incredible knock or thump to my pelvic floor, like someone tapping me hard with a stick. It was kind of imperative and blind and seemed to act like a catalyst because the pain started straight away. They were very intense and agonising but I felt in control and basically comfortable. I was naked on the double bed, and that in itself felt good – Danny beside me putting up with my nastiness. It all happened so fast that when Caroline arrived, she just had to touch my brow and it calmed me down. I will always remember the touch of her soft cool hands relaxing me. It was really nice having Jo too – luckily they all arrived quickly because pretty soon the pains came every minute.

The transition stage came and it was unbearable. Then lying on the bed, I started to feel the sensation I missed out on with Josie – the most extraordinary splitting sensation – my whole stomach was being stretched and pulled, it kept coming and receding as the baby passed slowly down my vagina. I felt as if I would never get her out without breaking in two. Jo and Danny were supporting me on either side telling me to push, and then the head crowned and Caroline told me to pant and I just did. I was so proud of that, that I didn’t push her head out but just panted it through. They held up a mirror for me, I was so busy panting I didn’t see, until suddenly this great sleeping head came out all covered in white vernix, sticking between my legs. I leaned over and slid her out of my own body and had her beautiful little soft form lying there all warm and wet and pulsating between my breasts. The feel of her body was incredibly sensuous, a big sigh of relief. Danny in tears of joy and cutting the cord. Caroline showing us the placenta, Jo such a nice presence, and Bella herself with only one little cry breathing immediately, such was the ease and joy of her birth. She sucked with incredible force straightaway, her tiny face all swollen, her little soft blood and mucus-streaked body so perfect.

The dawn was just coming – a beautiful confusion with cups of tea, Dick’s incredulous face, peering in at the small baby on my breast, her birth so gentle it had not even woken him. Everyone bustling about and me with my sweet Bella cuddled up on me feeling such relief and release. To me it was the perfect birth – no stitches or drugs or lack of control. It just happened, the clichéd natural birth became real to me when I realised how natural if is if all is well. Four hours of labour, our baby born and breathing and sucking and immediately loved and cuddled. Little Bella arrived like a gift, and the grey early dawn and the birth of our child on the high bed will always be a happy memory.

Now at home her back on the island, moving through the day in a kind of haze, beautiful blue February days, my body already feels back to normal again. Cuddling my little wrinkled wise Bella all pink and passive and lolling with her tiny blue considering eyes peering around with an air of ancient resigned wisdom, her hands fluttering in ceaseless motion.

Bella with her two-days-old smile, a floppy toothless affair, infinitely endearing. Sitting in the sun with her, both of us dozing in the warmth, her soft little head all drooping, whorled with soft fine mousy hair. While I was feeding her I caught her looking at me with a really quizzical expression, a faint frown on her face. As if she were seeing me for the first time, as opposed to the breast she had just been sucking. She is wearing her little purple cardigan, her blue eyes bright. She smiles up eagerly at me, her whole self animated as if I were the world to her – my presence alone brings her to life. Cuddling her is a warm electric thing – she still feels part of me to the point where I cannot leave her crying. Just now hanging up the nappies I left her for a few minutes in her cot. Her crying was like an ache. I had to run back and when I bent over her and she saw me, the relief in what incredibly human knowing little face shone out in her beautiful gummy smile – I couldn’t hug her beloved sturdy little body hard enough. She is so beautiful, with a little domed forehead, wide apart blue eyes and curly little lips. She is bigger than Josie was with soft little fat arms and an incredibly gentle demeanour. Sleeping in her cradle she looks like a tiny perfect doll. She has long thin tapering fingers which move like anemones, and a very serious expression. When she is lying in her yellow bath she is like a Buddha, all smiling, loving, calm, her body glistening in the water. She always trusts us.

Her time of birth primal, with the candlelight giving way to the dawn coming through the high windows. She arrived at dawn, her serene presence immediately felt because she didn’t even cry, just make this little sound, her body sliding out, that incredible closeness as I held her to my naked skin, surrounded by my husband, sister and our wonderful midwife – later my father and Josie peeping into the room in surprise. But holding Bella so lovely, Danny and I in tears of joy in the high bed in familiar surroundings, without drugs or tense hospital feeling. Bella not made to cry, but snuggling into me as if she had always been there, her own father cutting the cord, and holding her too, minutes after her birth. Bella arriving on earth with such style, a kind of quiet mirth in her as if she immediately liked what she saw. Received into the world in the quiet old-fashioned upstairs room facing towards Maungawhau, the extinct volcano, in her grandfather’s house.

Nestled in amongst us all a few hours after her arrival: father, mother, sister, aunt, grandmother and grandfather there to receive and love her, celebrate her birth. It felt like an age-old, primal ritual, far older than the one now played out in sterile while hospital rooms, exactly right for our beautiful Bella’s arrival.

To My Daughters

Your heartbeats come strongly through my skin
At this mysterious time, when all around you
Blood and darkness, the terrible beating of my heart.
My secret, silent child drowned in the dark
Tiny astronaut weaving and plunging in my inner space.

Small, exhausted, elderly, you dream of unknown lands,
and wait your turn. You sigh and move -
Perhaps you know I love you already.