About Bonding......again....

I’ve lived in a house on the edge of an escarpment in the Blue Mountains, where the wind would rush up from the valley, and push the door closed, and whip through your skin to tickle your bones.  Where mist would sit like a waveless ocean in the deep blue valleys, and the cliffs would shine in the sun.

In an old terrace house, with a huge and elegant bedroom, that had a quaint fireplace and balcony, overlooking a busy country street in Bathurst.

In a caravan, on the bend of a river through an Arab horse stud, where I spent all my days looking after horses and riding.

In a student house in Strassbourg with Canadian art students, creating exhibitions in deserted warehouses.

Above a pub in Islington.

In the bottom storey of a massive sandstone manor called Wadi Shaifa, looking over another valley in the Blue Mountains, with massive windows where the moon shone in, and an enchanting park down through the front yard.

In a share house in Lane Cove, with bright lights and a beautifully glittering harbour.

In a witches cottage in Katoomba, set behind the street, where magic seemed to shimmer on the walls, and I painted it cream and crimson as soon as I moved in.

In a two storey cottage on Cliff Drive near the Three Sisters, with an overgrown garden that my girlfriend and I reverently uncovered like archaeologists, in a cute and artfully painted home.

In a stunning three storey tower with floor to ceiling windows, and carved bookshelves, looking out on another valley in the mountains.

In a bluestone mansion, set into a disused sandstone quarry in Stirling, with a spa bath, and paved verandahs, and luxury living.

In a three story rammed earth squat, with wooden balconies, in a country town in Adelaide.

In a disused Uniting Church Camp, where we hung out in a massive Mess Hall with a huge stone fireplace, and I had one of the oldest churches in Adelaide, as my first ever studio.

In a quirky, greek style, 4 brick thick home in the Adelaide Hills, on beautiful land, with massive gum trees, and a sacred spot where three creeks met.  We lived in a meditation studio, and witnessed epic night skies, and one night we even saw a Moonbow.

On a community in the Adelaide Hills in a true hippy home, where all the houses were joined by the roof to stay on one title.  Living on redgum regeneration land on the Meadows creek, and right next door to pristine indigenous bush, and stately pine forests.

In a bizarre little self organized shared household in Mt Barker Springs, where we lived in an unlined shed that I hung with material. With an indoor/outdoor fire pit, that we sat around a lot. 

In a little shack on the side of Mount Donna Buang in Victoria, in breathtaking mountain ash forests.

We’ve slept in a river bed outside Alice Springs, where you can see the Emu in the sky most perfectly.  Red earth and wide skies, and the brilliant aliveness of the desert.

And in and around all of these homes, our deep and abiding hearts home, was our ex army Toyota Commuter van, that I crocheted the seat covers of, and made cargo nets and beds in, and crafted hand made swags for.  In which we drove everywhere, could be ourselves and unobserved more than anywhere else, and had a mobile environment that we took with us everywhere we went, as a permanent sanctuary.  Where we could wake up at any place in the country, and have a cuddle before a strong cup of coffee. 

We’ve lived in two beautiful houses, on the picturesque and diverse community of Billen Cliffs, in Northern NSW. 

And I’ve never loved a home and parcel of land as much as I love it here.

Living here has fit a final piece to a puzzle that I’ve been working on, researching, and personally experimenting with for decades.  That puzzle being the full capacity and breadth and wealth of bonding in it’s extreme.  And through beginning to know the ocean of it…….maybe more to the point learning in the extreme what bonding ISN’T, along the way. 

And to be brutally honest, from my perspective as a bonded lover, mother, crafter, and now home dweller and animal herd……..virtually every facet of western civilization, is more of a lesson on how to unbond, disunite, disconnect, and separate, than any kind of bonding and love leading to community, self organization and empowerment. 

I’ve written so much about bonding over the years, from many perspectives, it’s been an almost obsession in my life and blog.  All the lessons  I’ve learnt from unparalleled honesty and trust, in an intimate and loving releationship, and from my larger amount of birthing experiences than the average bear, have led to very similar whole body learnings about love and bonding.  Those lessons now extend into home, land, and animals – all universes on their own.

Before I started my interior journey through loving Currawong and birthing babies, I thought of bonding as some vague cliché thrown around in ways like ‘male bonding’ and ‘female bonding,’ to do with sports or business.  The most I really heard about it was in nature documentaries and zoo stories around bonding, and farming stories of bonding to other species.  If this kind of inter species bonding and it's potential power interests you, watch this documentary about Animal Odd Couples.

But through living all my different experiences, I’ve learnt how integral bonding really is, in our mammalian journeys, and through our ancestral and evolved consciousnesses.  I believe, through truly living my life and following my own path, I’ve stumbled onto enlightenment through all the stuff that most people like to transcend.  I’ve deeply bonded with my mate, with my children, with my home, with the land around me, and with the animals we share the land with, both domesticated and wild.  I’ve bonded with the world around me, through my focus and unbinding into the bonding of birth, sex and death.

And this is the kind of bonding, love, community and connection that my ancestors went to war for.  Defended their lands with their lives for.  And had many stories and different ways to access the divinity within them, and through them, their land and connections. 

Living as we are presently, in Western Culture, or maybe more accurately, as the most educated Roman Slaves on the planet………..it’s not surprising that virtually all aspects of our society, are about how to disconnect us from each other, to prevent that bonding and community from forming.  From my perspective anyway.

Why is homebirth and homeschooling so roundly and solidly attacked?  Have you ever wondered about that?  Such a tiny minority of people?  Who affect hardly anyone?  With virtually no damage to the average person? Why is homeschooling illegal in virtually every western nation except America and Australia?  And why is homebirthing so intensely vilified?  Could it be, that these very events can potentially create greater bonding, and thereby increase the capacity for community?  Why are the genders set up in war against each other?  Why have sensible wholes been split into dualities that are foolish without each other?  God and Science belong to each other, as a dynamic, cyclic whole.  Home birthing and Hospital birthing the same.  Cultural education and Home education as well.

When you truly look at most indigenous lifestyles in our ancestries, in which we’ve lived in for the majority of our evolution, how did we get here?  Where we send our children off there, to bond with strangers that change regularly, and a bunch of other scared and emotionally undeveloped younglings, to bond with each other?  Behind fences?  And our men off there, to work with other men usually, in work unrelated to their immediate survival, clothing or food.  And our women off elsewhere, be it to groups or services or jobs or home duties, bonding with others in other ways.  And all of this bonding and unbonding of families, is all happening elsewhere, other than our homes.  Our homes have largely become the places we eat and sleep, and nowadays watch screens.  All the important stuff we do is somewhere else.  Our jobs, our passions, our crafts, our trades, all usually happen somewhere other than our homes.  And our relationship to animals has gone from co-dependant relationships that include the land we all live on, working out how to help each other birth, survive, thrive and die with dignity, to a bizarre pet relationship where those without children of their own, or a lack of community love, can translate that bonding instead to a pet, who they love and bond with in the same intensity.  Or we have a complete disregard for any other sentience at all, in the form of factory farming.

We’ve all got a honing instinct as wide as our hearts towards bonding.  And whether it’s with an animal, partner, child, craft, home, land, trade, community, sport, religion, or spirituality, we’ll have it in our lives in some way.  And I’m suggesting that our humanimal potential is to experience bonded love in all those areas.  Or at least a lot more than just one.  If that’s our yen and destiny.  A love to family, home, animals, land, and community, that is bonded and deep, intensely intricate, and eternally interesting.  A love that is as scary as exhilarating, and deep as potentially shattering.  We waft through life with a hundred breathing hearts, connected to our beings with yarns.

And that bonding creates the oxytocic bubbles, that mirror the intense moments of birth, sex, and death, and echo through our existences.  When we connect and truly bond as families, and communities, and at markets and events, we generate a vibration that truly attracts others, hungry for that love and connection.

I’m not sure if there’s a point to all this, except that this is all deeply on my mind and in my heart at the moment.  As we experience awesome bonding with the home where we live.  The animals we live with.  Our journeys together and how attractive they are to the most interesting people.  How through deep bonding to all aspects around us, we’re experiencing self organization on a profound level.  All the aspects we need to continue our bonded and self organized flow together, and around each other, just come.  Without any effort.  The right people and events spill around like pebbles on the creek floor, effortlessly going with the flow or staying put, depending on what’s needed at the time.  Every animal, child, tree or wild animal experience, relates to other things on many different levels.  Taking the steps  towards each other, working out how to mutually benefit from each others existence, rather than harm the co-existant whole. 

Each morning we wake, with a whiff of the potential of just about anything whispering on the wind.  Any person or entity could rock up and we most likely wouldn’t be surprised.  As we sink into our self organized, bonded family, chaotic harmony, a bright buzz whirrs around us.  We’ve got more visitors coming to swing through our realities, than we ever have in our entire relationship.  One tent comes down, and another one goes up!  Things are learnt effortlessly, as valuable mentor relationships spring up all around, our vibrant and authentic children.  So much is packed into our days, that we barely get time to recognize it, before another wild event comes galloping down the road.  So much learning is fast tracked and hacked into, by so many people and lessons on our doorstep. 

We’re learning about each other, and who we really are, and other people, and how they live, and animals, and what they need to thrive, and eat, and how it’s best to be eaten, and personalities, and how deep they root, and the re-spelling of the spells that our great western culture has spelled on our souls.   

And coming across so many other people wanting to travel the same authentic paths.  Into themselves, each other, their homes and land, and other animals.

We live in one of the most diverse communities I’ve ever lived, where the main tenet is respect for every living thing, except for violence or cruelty, which is dealt with in person and directly.  There are so many people with so many philosophies trying so many different ways to live.  So many directives, inspirations, and dreams being striven for.  Nobody really knows how many communities there are in the hills of the Rainbow Region, but there are hundreds, and they’re all different.  I’ve heard tell of communities focused around medieval sword fighting and knightliness, around unschooling, christianity,  womens land, fairy land for men, permaculture, survival anarchy, the desire to share no community at all, solar power, low income earners, activists, and more exotic possibilites of this sort than you could possibly imagine. 

And all these people shop in Nimbin and Lismore, and get together at markets and events, and swap stories and experiences, and I know that it’s a world that could be endlessly explored, and never fully known.  And the experiment is a huge success from everything I’ve seen.  People have learnt compassion and acceptance from their lived experiences. 

It’s fast tracked our family community experience, as a mirror showing it’s face to a world full of mirrors. 

I think the point of all of this is to ask you to jump in.  Wherever you find it, however it moves you, find yourself a community to bond with, with your family if you have one, or if not find a family that needs you.  And dive in!  Experiment!  Realise that the hurts and pains are the equal and opposite on the way to learning how to navigate the stormy waters, leading to the gentle bay of bonded community. 

It’s the only way we’re gonna save ourselves and our planet.  To bond with it and our families and our homes and our lives and care for each other.  Because we’ve recognized our dependance on each other and everything.

Or something like that anyway :)

A day in the life of us....

We wake up in the morning about an hour before dawn, Zarra having a feed and a nappy change, in the process waking the twins who climb into bed next to dad.  As dawn’s tendrils feel into the window in our bedroom, the other kids get in as well, so there’s nine in the bed, and Balthazar says ‘roll over…..roll over’, so we all roll over and Griffyn and Lilly fall out……to go and collect up cups and bottles, and put on the hot water to boil, and start the process of our greatest family ritual, the cup of tea, ecco, or hot chocolate in the morning.  Then there’s seven in the bed and little Max says ‘roll over…..roll over’, so we all roll over and Spiral fall’s out……..to hop back in her bed in the loungeroom where the three big kids have been sleeping so they can tell each other stories as they go to sleep at night and hang out together.  Despite many people disbelieving us, we all really like each other, and feel most supported and ourselves when we’re all together, either hanging out at home or going on an adventure.   Then there’s six in the bed and no-one says ‘roll over……roll over’, cause it’s cold outside and Max and Zarra are asleep.  A bit later there’s six in the bed, and mummy says ‘roll over…..roll over’, so we all roll over and Balthazar falls out to go and see what all the others are up to.  Then there’s five in the bed and Merlin says ‘roll over……roll over’, but nobody does so he gets out.  And we hear later on that he’s got a full nappy so Currawong gets out to change his nappy and pour the hot water.   (With a slight detour to make sure that Merlin’s not beating the crap out of my laptop)  So there’s three in the bed and Max wakes up and rolls over……rolls over, and gets out of bed to see where everyone is.  And a bit later I hear that Max has a nappy that needs dealing with too, so I roll over…..roll over, and get out of bed to leave Zarra asleep on his own for a bit. 

Babie’s are changed and climbing into the big bed in the loungeroom with the other kids to consume their ‘hot juices’, ( another bizarre family ritual, dating back to when Griffyn was about three and a total apple juice nut, so everything to drink was ‘juice’, and cups of tea were ‘hot juices’ ) Currawong and I take turns in the shower (swapping saucy comments as we pass) to warm up and start the day fresh, while the kids are watching Saddle Club from the library.  I jump out, dress warm, and mix up corn and rice puffs with honey and milk to feed the boys as Zarra is still asleep.  All the other kids are in various states of consuming breakfast and a big discussion is going on about how they hate the snobby girl in Saddle Club.  I tell em I reckon she’s the best character cause she’s got spunk and imagination, and the other girls are all a bit too nice for my liking, and this starts up a conversation about how there’s always goodies and baddies in movies, and the baddies never win, and then I ask them if that’s the way it happens in real life.  And it’s not hard to think that the baddies win far more often than happens in movies, cause they’re running our corporations and governments and militaries and all the other institutions that are messing with our planet and it’s future.  Zarra wakes up.

Then us big people say ‘let’s do a big clean up, and we can get it all done and then just hang out for the rest of the day’, and between us all we whip around and get everything ship shape.  I get a bit big animal growly with the kids when one of them is wandering in a circuitous fashion to the bathroom carrying one sock for the washing, but we get beyond all that and get the space sparkly.   Lilly does benches, lots of compost and some general tidying, Griffyn does the floors and a whip around which he’s a bit of a legend at, Currawong does the recycling in the bathroom, and I sweep the floors.  While Spiral’s holding Zarra, Balthazar is wandering round having sporadic bursts of a tantrum about something or another (he’s three…..no more needs be said), and the twins are doing their best to merrily get in the way.  Max’s favourite trick is standing in the sweeping up pile, treading it under his feet, and spreading it in pretty patterns.  We get a surprisingly large amount done really quickly when we do it all together.

For a while there’s general grazing going on, a few rice cakes here, a few apples there, as the big kids go off for a walk down to the Coffee Club, and the twins mill around doing cute twin things.  Like sitting on the verandah hanging on the rail and looking out at the sky and the birds and hoping to spot a Bush Turkey.  And watching the neighbours cows who often free range on our grass. I take a moment to hang out with Zarra, stare in each others eyes and smile lots.  The big kids go off on walks often, and adventure round Billen or just make their own fun.  Just lately they’ve been getting into slapping foam pool noodles on the ground in a way that makes a huge ricochet like a gun shot, they like listening to the echo, and for a few days they filmed each other pretending to have huge punch ups, and someone out of the shot slapping the noodle in time with the punches.  Maybe a touch violent, but a fair call too in a culture where the media is often about aggression, fighting, and the eternal good versus bad. 

When they’re back from the walk, we all move around between housey pursuits.  Merlin falls asleep on the lounge.  I spend some time sitting on the computer replying to messages on facebook whilst feeding Zarra, and then hand it on to Griff searching on the internet for nerf guns ( another huge conversation that we all have about why he likes them, what they mean to him, why we don’t like them, what they mean to us, how we respect his right to like what he likes, how he can respect our opinions by using guns responsibly around us, what the rules are for gun possession – even toys need to be treated as the real thing if you want to develop a healthy relationship with them).  Lilly sits on the bed on the verandah drawing pictures, and Currawong reads Paul Jennings stories on the couch, while Balthazar, Max and Merlin take turns bike riding the circuit round the verandah and house.  Lilly helps me write this, giving me tips on the ‘roll over’ bit, and reminding me of stuff.  Meanwhile Max goes to sleep now that Merlin’s awake, as they often co-ordinate sleeping at different times these days.  Currawong gets a phone call from a phone company and ends up talking about how he drums and I crochet and write, and about homeschooling……as you do…….and a myriad other little things and dynamics go on all the while.

A lot of people ask me about what we do with our kids, if we do any formal schooling, are they socialised?, how are they learning?............... 

And it’s hard to say exactly what we do.  It varies.  And changes.  And most of our collective learning is what’s going on as we tumble through our days.  The conversations we have about things that are going on and different ways of looking at them.  The discussions inspired by the science that Currawong is consuming with an insatiable hunger about our universe, and our earth, and it’s animals, and geology, and all the rest of it.  The answers to questions that we all come up with together, consulting each other about how else it could be approached.  Like what colour dinosaurs are, and what the biggest horses, dogs, and cats are, and micro chips, and google glasses, and plasma.   And it’s amazing how much maths, science, geography, English, art, philosophy, history, and music can be learnt about through interesting conversations that the kids actually remember.  The explaining and demonstrating needed to translate between the little kids and the big kids and what they are teaching each other by example.  The talks me and Currawong have about what we’ve taught them with our functional and dysfunctional family patterns, and how to change them all if we need.  The depth to which we know our children, and their special needs and strengths and areas in which we realise we have to really caretake them.  The way how all of us reference and cross reference our experiences and favourite learnings to each other.  Adding layers to our combined stories that bring a new lesson with it.  The differing measures of love and respect, and disregard and grumpiness that we all treat each other with, and the working out between us all how to always do it better. 

And our adventures into the outside world!  We go and hang out at the Bush Theatre in Nimbin sometimes on a Wednesday for basketweaving, and there are other homeschooled kids and parents, and lots of other women making fantastic fibre artworks, and gorgeous crones and artisans teaching and showing how to weave magical baskets.  They’re all colourfully and uniquely dressed, and bring rare and beautiful instruments, and now and again at an unappointed time, everyone will draw close and break out the music, as Currawong sits on his drums and gently keeps his drum song steady within it.   If we’re ever craving company or conversation from others, we just drive into Nimbin and park our home away from home – our van – on the main street.  And that’s all we have to do really.  By the time the kids have erupted from the van and instantaneously decided they need a lolly or a walk or have seen a friend or want to pat a dog, I sit next to Zarra where I stay for the first 6 months or so of my baby’s journey in vehicles, and someone is bound to come up and chat to me as I pull him out of his baby seat and give him a feed in my comfy velvet bound spot.  I don’t even have to leave the van to have deep and meaningfuls, and Currawong often just pulls his drums out and drops some rhythms in the park, while we catch up or have chats or co-ordinate who’s going where.  There’s all these gorgeous teenager girls in town who love our kids, and anytime we rock up will pick up a baby and take them off for a walk, or let a whole mob of them straggle along behind them as they do their thing on the street.  We seem to have some seriously magical parking karma in Nimbin.  We always manage to be able to pull up just where the action is.  Like Michael Lusty’s wake, when we were parked virtually on top of the drumming circle, all our friends and loved ones standing round our van and hanging out with our little people while Currawong drummed and I danced. 

I read a quote on facebook the other day, that was written in chalk on a blackboard that said “Forced Association is NOT Socialisation”  And it made me think.  Throughout the course of our days, we come across anyone from brand new babies to grandparents and crones, and our kids can slide along the age scale as easy as swinging on a see saw with anyone our paths cross.  Nobody scares them, and they’re always willing to talk to anyone, respectfully and honestly, like us, their role models, try to be with everyone we meet.   I know where they are and am personally connected with the people they hang out with.  We all learn together and approach everything in life with curiosity and imagination.

And when it all comes down to it, and after much reflection about our children, society, and our choice to keep them at home, what’s most important to me is that we protect our kids as much as we possibly can from any external force that wishes to control, shape, or teach them how to ‘be’ in any other way than they naturally are.  It’s taken me till the ripe old age of 41 to know who I am, what I’m here for, and to have the confidence to be it in the world.  I want my kids to be at this point a helluva lot earlier than me!!  All I want really is that they simply have the confidence to be themselves.   

Anyway, I got a bit off course.  Back to our day.

Over the course of our day we’ve had three visitors, folks from the community that just randomly pop in.  One of the funkiest grandma’s there ever was, and the fella who lives in her caravan in return for helping round her property.  He gets by doing gardening for a cheap rate, and joins with many of the other folk round here carving unique lifestyles and paths towards income.   People drop in all the time at our joint, for a quick and inspirational chat, or to give us clothes, shoes, veggies, or other random generous gifts.  And we’re always open for people in need.  Who need somewhere to stay, or some food, or some company……after Michael Lusty’s death, the pact we made to not let anyone slip through our net who is in need, has been regularly taken up.  Our kids love visitors.

About this time is when we start getting ready for dinner, another quick clean up happens (you’ve got no idea how much dross can be scattered on the floor by twin toddlers and a three year old, especially when one of their favourite games that’s almost impossible to stop them from doing, is playing with the cold ash from the fire and making roads and railways in it….) 

And tonight is the first night that it’s cold enough to have a fire, so the lounges get moved close, and the little kids watch enraptured, as we’ve not had an open fire in our living space before, and when it’s lit, the kids all go a little hazy and dreamy as they gaze into the fire.  But Max and Merlin being Max and Merlin, it’s not long before they realise that putting the lounges close to the fire means they can jump up on the bench, so of course they do, and give dad a bit of help cooking dinner. 

Then after dinner it’s the time when we’ll sit around and watch something – a documentary, or a kids movie, or a series that we’ve gotten into (Darling Buds of May was a big hit, and so was My Favourite Martian and Get Smart).  Then it’s time for some books before bed, and nappies are changed again, pyjama’s put on, beds made, hot juices for the night furnished, and all the little sleepy babies go to sleep nicely around 8…..we’ve trained them well……and Currawong and I get to spend a little time conversing without interruptions, gazing in the fire, and remembering all the love we have between each other that’s created such a wonderful full life.

Future Visions

Many moons ago, we were living in a sleepy village of the Adelaide Hills, and we’d just started our market.  The war had broken out in Iraq, and we drove our old Ford with hundreds of statements of peace written on it as a mobile petition to Canberra…………  And that time was almost like a mini Summer of Love.  All sorts of folk from all the stratospheres of our culture came to our market and got loved.  It almost became a cult how loving our market was.  It was a standard of care that we had for everyone who chanced upon us on sunny or stormy Sundays, no matter who they were or how they looked. As the top of the supposed hierarchy of the market, Currawong and I had a unique opportunity to give the power to everybody.  And turn it into a circle, where everyone was loved and appreciated no matter how obnoxious they were.  People came and attacked us, and died with us, and sneered at us, and fought in front of us, and generally brought some of their worst behaviours to the commons, and we all just loved them and us and it, and did our best to treat everyone as equals.  People also came with their best and their most eccentric and generous and trippy and vulnerable behaviours and we loved them even more.  And I’d love to keep going as I’m sure you can tell, but the market is not really part of the story I want to tell.  It was an amazing time and I’ll write about that another day, but for the purposes of this story, there was a particular event that really changed and challenged my perception of the world. 

There was this fella who’d been a hermit for about 15 years.  And he chose the market as the place to come out and play with people again, and he decided to organise a meeting for peace.  Because he’d been a hermit for 15 years he really didn’t have a huge social network, and as it was a small town, not many people turned up.  So there we were early one evening, Currawong and I, the ex-hermit and another friend, sitting in a chilly hall to talk about peace.  The first thing he asked was what peace was.  And we very quickly realised that all we knew about peace, was what was absent from it. We knew all the things that peace wasn’t, and when there weren’t any of them around, then that would have to be peace.  We were looking at the photo negatives of peace, rather than looking at the colour photo. And then we started wondering……..if we didn’t know what peace WAS…….then how the hell could we create it?  And how much have we collectively created all our own hell and strife, with our focus on all the things that peace isn’t, so that we can have it?

So many of us spend our precious creative energy on all the things that are wrong with the world, and each other, and the government, and corporations, and Monsanto, and our modern day diets, and the list is endless of all the things that we’re trying to stop for the good of us, and the planet, and those poor children, and the people over there, and if we all just do the right things and stop doing the wrong things, then it will all get better and we’ll all be happy……………..  In fact we’re so focused on educating ourselves and each other about all the wrong things with the world, that we’ve forgotten that we’re creating it all with our thoughts, and forgotten too, that maybe one of the most liberating, enlightened, revolutionary and loving acts we can ever perform, is that of creating magic with our thoughts and our minds, and in the creative energy of dreaming a positive, peaceful, respectful, honourable, honest and healthy future.  And present reality. 

Now I really got into the more creative aspect as environmental activism, after watching The Secret, and feeling despairing and disempowered after watching An Inconvenient Truth.  I came up with all sorts of ideas to create a more positive focus for our collective futures.  Planting hemp along the roads, and in any spare place, to soak up carbon dioxide and be turned into paper, neo plastic, and all the gazillions of things hemp can be made into.  Creating public focus walls, with folk and groups and schools doing tiles of all the wonderful things they wanted in the future world. When we were school shopping years ago, we spent time at a Maharishi school, where they had a whole wall dedicated to what the kids wanted to see more of in the world, and they meditated on it every morning.  There was more rain, reforestation, safe biosphere, and all the other sorts of things that make a person feel good thinking about.  I also wanted to try and write about it, and create a positive future vision rather than the more easily available apocalyptic horror stories, that are put about in mainstream media as possible futures. 

Growing up in an apocalyptic fundamentalist cult, I’ve been thinking about ‘the end days’ for most of my life.  Even after leaving my childhood religion, I came across channellers, and mystics, and talk about the ‘great wave of consciousness’ and all the 2012 conspiracies.  And now we’re here.  And the most curious thing has happened!  I’ve always contemplated a future after ‘the shit hit the fan’ as being mostly agrarian based.  Primitive.  No electricity or technology.  Hard work.  And Currawong’s been having this love affair with science, and in the last couple of months, for the first time ever in my life, I’ve been dreaming of a future after whatever shift is on it’s way has happened, with science and technology and a quasi mystical science, that creates things based on cohesion and harmony with the environment rather than money.  Sustainability rather than greed. 

And I wrote this thing years ago in the period I was just talking about, and revisited it lately, and found myself adding technical bits to it, and it felt goodJ  I want to keep having my internet love affairs after ‘the shift’.  I want to keep being able to travel in freedom.  I want abundance and gardens and flying machines and funky earthship style homes and little pockets of communities where anything that people can dream up as a lifestyle can be lived respectfully.

So here’s what I wrote years ago with some added bits……

The earth is me.  Microcosm’s of macrocosm’s abound.  Remember that model in the 60’s who asphyxiated slowly to death when they painted her skin?  We were doing that to the earth before.  Before we realised that we’d created it through our fear and pain that we really were seperated from all that we saw.  Before we realised that we were creating it all, and could simply take our attention away from our complete and total destruction, and instead create a happy, joyful, peaceful, greatfull reality with our thoughts.  Pull up the concrete and the hard building scabs on our skin and let our skin breathe.  Isn’t it funny that most of the most watered and fertile land on the planet was covered with concrete and bitumen.  Before we realised.  Before we pulled it up and travelled back along the yarn to the times when we moved around a lot, owned few and well loved things, took care of the earths skin like our own.  Before we realised that all the gentle metaphors the many prophets, seers and poetesses had given us were literal advice stories and instructions to living a better life.  Isn’t it wonderous and lushsome that we all collectively got it.  Got our oneness. 

Flowmads made their artistic ways throughout the countryside and cityscape, pulling some of the scabs off our skin, letting the white and shriveled parts of our flesh see the sunlight again, breathe the blue skies, grow weeds then flowers then fruits in our flesh again.  Wherever they went they left green ground and tent sites, sunbreathing shelters and coloured flags, lush gardens and freebreathing trees.  They also left life enhancing sculptures and weavings and sounding pieces that aged along with everything else. 

When all the human animals remembered their animal selves and stopped being tamed lions pacing round their cages, they took up the artistic, shamanic, and percussive arts, telling stories and leaving inspirations.  They all started pulling up the scabs in whichever ways they could.  Peeling back the hard encrusted beliefs and bitumens and crumbling ways. 

They started birthing in colourful tents and underground grottoes, cool river pools and warm salty baths.  Their births became ecstatic and orgasmic, private moments of a families deep connection and love for each other.  Babies were welcomed into the world gently and quietly, being left to acclimatise in whatever way they needed and their families felt drawn to.  A soft lit, easy slide into life and awareness outside the womb.  A simple instruction into the arts of birthing human animals. And safe and respectful medicines and procedures sat quietly in the wings, in case they were needed.

Their sexuality was allowed to express the myriad of ways and paths imagined by the unique collective consciousness, and understood as ways that the universe had found to express itself.  Everyone’s sexual journey was seen as increasing and improving compassion and empathy for the vast sea of possibility that is sex. 

Death became far less traumatic, as we made it more part of life.  We formed elaborate and soulful rituals around letting go, washing and dressing the body, singing and playing music and telling final stories.  Carrying the dead around the places at home they liked best, and then burying them in the gentle folds of the earth, and planting tree’s on them, so we could always eat fruit from the tree and know that we were eating of the essence of our loved ones. 

We realised we were all one literally with the cosmos, our planet, other animals, each other, and ourselves.  Everything we did, we did to ourselves.  And we created it all with our thoughts.  We started creating a beautiful, unified, loving, greatful, diverse, respectful wholeness.  A healing for us all as a planet and everything.  Letting the waters and ourselves flow.

Because we’re all made up of mostly water, and we drink it, swim in it, bathe in it, eat it, use it and love it, as it carries memories of all the places it’s been. Water and energy, that moves and flows constantly.  For whom stagnation is death.  Water and energy that is affected, changed by, and remembers thoughts and where it’s been.    Water and energy that’s melted into our atmosphere from interstellar journeys, bringing knowledge and memories and connectings with us and our water already flowing.  Water and energy that travels an 8 million year cycle of plunging into the depths of our earths heart, and then floating up to the seabed again through hydrothermic vents.  Water and energy that remember being locked in rooms to make bargain goodies.  Water and energy that are a constant flow of stories and memories and learnings to be heard whenever we want.  Water and energy that contain the ingredients for everything.  And who respond most of all to love and gratitude. 

We became flowmads and caretakers, and whatever else we wanted, and we lost all the baggage that politer religions suggested we leave behind, as we started living the reality that everything around us is us.  What constructions did we like on our skin?  What elements did we want in our water and blood?  What did we want to do with our fertile valleys and shores that begged to have food grown from them?  How did we thank and love the other animals, our brothers and sisters and diverse parts of self, who provided so much for us? 

We told ourselves the truth about how our ownership had become a burden, and we relinquished our burdens for the flow.  We strived to retrieve our animal natures, our noble sovereign natures, and placed ourselves back in the wheel of equals.  We set up Human Animal Wildlife Sanctuaries…….where human animals can just be.  Can remember what it feels, looks, sounds and tastes like when life is lived in bliss, being simply who we are.  Putting love, thanks and respect into our food, our clothing, our habitats, our water, our families, our lovers, our children.  All of us animals living cohesively, respectfully, co-operatively, lovingly together. 

And then we met together with all the other animals and traded, and played, and danced, and sung, and created community together.  Created the magic of community that gave form to our glimmering dreams of sharing tasks and learnings.  Community where there was room for everyone, and everyone was loved and thanked for the unique magic they brought to the whole.  Where we understand that what we focused on we got more of.  And the best and most fertile ground for this community to grow in was the bed of a market.  Spontaneous, fertile markets that erupted from daily living and life around the areas we cohabitated, or on the trails of flowmads. 

Technology exploded into radical places when we got rid of the money god from our psyches and explored and invented for the good of all.  We searched the depths of the deep deep seas and found the secrets down below.  We sent off crafts to the outer reaches of our galaxy and beyond, exploring our neighbouring life forms.  Sky craft became our motorized mode of travel, avoiding the need for highways, cutting out completely the toll of dead animals taken by roads, and freeing up our means of travel.    Run on water and built with hemp and recycled parts, they revolutionized the way we move.  Solar, wind and water power became the standard, and our esteemed spiritual scientists worked out myriad ways of cleaning up the messes our ancestors created.  Our homes became far more natural, nestled into hills for insulation, passively solar and well placed for growing gardens within, on top, and without.  

And we collectively grew up, married the matrifocal mother to the patrifocal father and welcomed their learnings from the lengths and breadths of where we’d been in our evolution.  We all woke up from our self induced coma, and recognised that the time for change was now, and we really were the ones that we were waiting for all along.  We’ve explored the far reaches of human potential, and now it’s time to meet up again, take notes, and put it all into perspective as we evolve into an age of enlightenment, love, thanks, and consciousness.  We all knew the toll, deep down, that our greed and hungry culture has taken on ourselves and our earth.  And we made the changes necessary to make it a whole lot easier not only for ourselves, but for all of our brothers and sisters. We take responsibility for shaping the world as we want it and need it to be for a long, healthy and happy future for us and many many generations to come. 

Do pictures really speak a thousand words??

So the photos.....

Here are the ones we took, of which there really weren't many at all.

I figure that after the photo bonanza of the twins birth, you can just imagine

that it was all very similar...

minus the water of course

This is later on the morning he was born, trying to make sure to keep spending time with the other babies so  they don't feel too left out.....and the others are getting eyefulls of their new brother



A very brand new Zarrathustra Cyrus Wildcat

And one of the only photos we've got of the beautiful Annetta.....love Currawong in the mirror :)

Most of us sitting round adoring him...

Can you spot the baby??

A happy Currawong and Max with a stethoscope

Beautiful little Zarra with the vest I crocheted just for him. 

The white spiral is handspun bunny fluff.....the softest thing in the universe!!

Looking very regal

Beautiful boy

I know it's probably overkill, but what the hey :)

Three little angels....especially when they're asleep!!

The thinker.....I think his name is apt!

Beautiful big sister Tiger Lilly

Meanwhile, out on the verandah.....

Looking a bit serious....

Ah no!!!!  Call off the hounds!!!

The magical Currawong multi-tasking....reading the big kids Harry Potter,

whilst also being a bed for the two babies that he got to sleep at the same time.....

What a man! :)

Hope you enjoyed!



The baby that came bearing gifts - Part 2

So I've made a bit of an executive decision........due to flooding and my crappy satellite connection, getting it together to upload photos is proving too tricky.  And I know there's people itching for the rest of the story, ( and there's no photos of this birth anyway, just the afterwards ) soooooo, I'm gonna post the rest of the story, and then when I get near a computer that uploads again, I'll post a stack of photos.  Happy with that?  Good. 

A bit of a recap…

After a day long but empowering trip to the hospital, to find out that my dating of the birth had given us the gift of two extra weeks when we thought our baby was premature, then flying emancipated from the hospital back home, birth was progressing all stately and graceful towards a conclusion, then stalled completely.  After another empowering act of creating the birth space that I needed surrounded by the people I needed to be there, a deep spell of sex magic with my Currawong, and another serious chat with my birth helper Annetta, I headed into the second night of this birthing drama slightly oppressed with worries about future possibilities, but feeling like I at least had a clearer idea about what was going on.  I climbed into bed and cuddled up with Currawong, glad that I could finally sleep.   

And then woke up again at quarter to 12 that night.  Yes, this was a good time to start labouring I thought, as I had an intense contraction.  I went out into the lounge and gently cleaned the space between tightenings, and lit some candles, and thought they were coming closer.  I woke Currawong, who was in an intensely grumpy mood having been woken after so little sleep, and we sat and grumped at each other about how little sleep we’d had and how grumpy and unready we were, as the contractions slowed down again…..  Then we both pulled each other back on track, and shook off our grumpiness, and decided that if the time was now then of course it was perfect!  Till we were sitting in a lovely, dusky, candle lit room, with nothing happening again, and decided we’d go back to bed and sleep while we could.  The rest of the night was a strange world where I had strong uterine contractions every hour or so, and would jump out of bed to stand knees bent, in the position that I’d worked out relieved them, while Currawong jumped up equally quick and rubbed my lower back.  Surprisingly enough we woke up well rested, and I at last had made up for my sleep deficit over the past few days, and was feeling unexpectedly fresh and optimistic.

A sleepy Annetta, and a Currawong expecting the worst but trying to be positive, both looked at me to see what the mood was, and maybe both were thinking that now was the time for the dreaded talk about transferring into hospital again, to see what was going on.  And I surprised both them and me, with a Pollyanna-esque proclamation about how regardless of what else was going on and happening around me, I couldn’t help but think that there was nothing wrong with me or my baby, and that it was a normal birth, though strung out over a few more days than is usually expected, and the time just wasn’t right for my body and baby to engage in the birthing dance, and I really wanted to give them the opportunity to get there in their own time.  Any drugs that they gave me in hospital most likely wouldn’t work, as they are designed for healthy women giving ‘normal’ birth and to quicken the process up, not at all likely to work well on a ‘grand multiparous’ woman (which means a woman who’s birthed more than 5 times) whose uterus needed a bit of a help to contract enough to birth, or to create that unidentifiable spark from a baby that triggers off the birthing process from within.  I would be likely to be unresponsive to intervention, and maybe even become part of that cascade of intervention drama that folk talk about.  Again it’s likely that most roads in hospital would have led to another caesarean, considering the ‘risks’ that surrounded me, and I would probably have been best off to just request a caesarean straight off, rather than mess around getting tired again.  And I was fully prepared for all of this, and had thought my way and approach through it, and would be totally into engaging that path………..if I could have shaken the feeling that this was a normal, healthy birth that was drawn out because of the plug leaving a bit early, and having an overwhelming and compelling feeling that I really wanted to give my body and this baby every chance to come into birth in their own timing…………..and that it would all be allright.

“Fine! fine….” Said Annetta, and Currawong had a look of delighted surprise on his face, as we all felt this birth swing along a positive road again, and we could all leave behind the dire possibilities and worries for a little bit longer.  “If that’s how you feel, then that’s what we do, and if you’re feeling okay with it and the baby’s doing well, we can take a week if you need to!”  Bless her heart, and her intuition, and her experience, our Annetta was totally into acknowledging how I felt and regarding that as important, and heading down the groove we were laying out.  She asked me if I’d be into going to see an acupuncturist friend of hers who was known for helping birth along, and who did home visits, but we could also go and see her if all was well.  I jumped at the idea, greatful for any external stimuli that could help us along.  So we organised for Currawong to take all the kids into Nimbin for supplies, while Annetta and I went to visit Ingrid in her home on a community. 

I got to have a drive in the 4WD home on wheels, and chatted with Annetta, as we drove up to a tranquil garden, with tropical plants looking loved, and a small wooden studio with pot plants, garden, artworks, and raw wooden beams spilling round.  One of the first things Ingrid said when told about how many births and babies I had, was how she thought the world was overpopulated. I really love that kind of honesty.  Gave me the opportunity to try out some of the justifications that sit in my head as a result of copping criticism in the past, and she laughed when I told her my kids were here to help wake us all up so we could share and respect our planet again, as there’s more than enough for all of us if we lose our greed and materialism and stop spending all our resources on war.  And then the three of us proceeded to spend a divine time together, chatting about art, and life journeys and children.  I could feel the needles working on the energy in my body, and then she hooked up these little electrodes to make them ‘zing’.  And at one point, as I lay there with these two gorgeous, vital, compassionate and loving, wise German women on either side of me, chatting about this little baby inside me, and Annetta telling Ingrid how she’d noticed that when she laid a palm on my belly, the little one inside kicked her hand to let her know it was there, and the wonderful warm smiles on their faces as they indulged in a moment about the wonder of birth with their hands on my belly………I felt like the luckiest woman in the world.   When Annetta and I told Ingrid how we thought this baby was a girl, and that she’d be called Batsheva, the little one inside kicked Ingrid’s hand, and we all took that as another positive sign, and an acceptance of the name.  ( HA! )  The treatment over, Ingrid invited us into her haven, and we sat drinking herbal tea and eating German sweet breads.  All around was an orderly, organic, sweet scented arbour of grape vines and plants and a large indoor outdoor deck.  Artworks and amazing gifts from nature displayed on warm wooden walls and a sweet little kitchen sat at the back with the sitting room and bedroom, as the only walled rooms in this gorgeous home.  I felt like I’d been plucked out of a busy and noisy existence to spend a sacred and precious little rip in the time space continuum with these two stunning and graceful women, and a bit like the kid who’s been allowed to stay up late all on their own, to sip tea with the grown ups.  We chatted, and snacked, and I was full to overbrimming with love for the creativity around me that keeps throwing such beautiful moments at me, and my extreme fortune with the wondrous people that keep coming into my life. 

And it came to me.  With a bit of help by Annetta and the conversation and the period of grace in the middle of our birthing proceedings.  I felt like I understood why it had all happened this way.  As an excuse and reason for empowering events first up, but also, as a chance for me to finally be pregnant……for a moment.  What with dealing with our collective past, and then fleeing to the warmer climes of the sub-tropical north, and then finding a home and setting it up and then getting visitors……I hadn’t even had a moment to really sit in myself, and with my body, and say ‘yes, we’re pregnant again aren’t we.  And who do we have inside?  And which particular fears are we going to face this time?  And how is this baby going to come into our lives, and what are the stories going to be around this birth?’  Hadn’t quite caught my breath again since the plug came away either.  Hadn’t really got to the point of knowing that the time was NOW!  Annetta drove me a large bit of the way home, while we continued to talk, and I was blown away by the big heart of this amazing woman.  Over the last two days she’d observed, and asked perceptive questions, and was piecing us all together in a rather intricate amount of depth.  She was telling me all the pertinent stories she had in her birthing tool box, and suggested I go home, clear myself a birthing space, and just focus on me and who was in my belly for as long as I could when I got home.  Lock all the kids out for a bit, and just really sit in my experience. 

So I did.  I cleaned the room, and layed all the (all three of them!!) clothes that I’d collected for this baby out on a space in the studio, and cut up some cotton material that would work as wrapping cloths till later.  And the other blankets I could use.  And the nappies that I’d bought earlier.   And I’d been worried for a while about where this new baby was going to sleep, as the twins slept next to my side of the bed, and Balthazar slept next to Currawong’s side of the bed…..that was until we’d got our new beds, and scored a king sized bed for me and Currawong, and through serendipity and experimentation, worked out that with the crates we had, we could arrange a bed next to Currawong’s side of the bed that was the perfect height, and had room for all three little boys to lay sideways instead of longways.  So on a wooden table, and tucked in by walls and the door, I made another little bed with a stuffed alpaca mattress next to my side of the bed.  A little nest by my side for our new baby to land in.  Currawong made a bed for Max, Merlin and Balthazar in Griffyn’s room, between him and Jess on a mattress on the floor, so that if birthing did happen, I could do it undisturbed by babies in our bedroom.  It’s the most comfortable, sacred, and cave like space in the house.  I figured if babies like best coming out in the same conditions as they went in……there was no better place to birth on land than in our great big bed.  And I was going to sit in my clean bedroom baby space, with my baby altar all set up, and crochet a pair of pants to go with the vest, and the hooded sleeves that I’d made for this baby for winter.  When I was worried about where and when we were gonna find a house, and worried about dire predictions, and just worried because I was pregnant, I’d been making a vest and a cute little pair of sleeves with a hood, and it was almost like I was crocheting this baby into a healthy existence.  All that was needed to complete the outfit was a pair of pants, and I was imagining that I’d finish them, and this baby would come, but it wasn't to happen that way.  During my nesting, I’d had a few more intense uterine contractions, and then some light, moving, dancing contractions started to come, that felt completely different to the expansions I’d had before. 

And then I remembered my previous twin birth, and how after Max had come, and we were waiting for Merlin, I had a visit from Russel the Ayurvedic Masseuse and Alison to help us along.  And after Russel had left, I’d had some really intense uterine contractions, that were a case of trying to stand still and in a certain position to make bearable, and then when the uterine contractions had finished, I’d moved into birthing contractions, which were different positions and movement was needed to assist with them.  I recognised the difference, and on feeling the change, and needing to move about when they happened, I realised that birth might finally be on the way.  No time to crochet pants.....

So I danced and I moved and I breathed and a smile didn’t leave my face, and I felt like we were actually getting to the space where we’d soon be meeting our new one. (again…)   Steady as a creek heading into a river it started flowing towards the evening, till the magical time when our babies go to sleep and dark and peace descend.  It was all green lights this time, with no hitches in the proceedings, and we all knew that this time it was really going on.  Children had been well fed and peacefully went off to sleep, the three little boys in with the two biggest.  And I rang Annetta to tell her that we were on again……….and how the contractions had changed.  She got here and we all settled into the birthing space.  Stories had to be told about the artworks in our bedroom, and birth expansion stations had to be set up.  Positions tried out and suggestions given.  Instead of moving about the space between contractions and standing still to have them, I was resting between contractions and moving with them. And then it just happened.

I settled into one of the most amazing birthing places I’ve ever been in.  Dim candlelight and tranquillity sat in the background with initial panic turning into delighted knowledge in front of them.  Birth expansions out of water were fun.  I found myself in all these intensely sexual positions, totally unashamedly, as they all decreased the levels of intensity.  Stances I’d only ever seen other people do, far too self conscious to do them myself, were all of a sudden the most comfortable ways to be.  And having Currawong, or Annetta rub my lower back was just incredible.  It was stronger and more intense all at the same time as being quicker and somehow more complete.  All consuming and all internal……..juxtaposed with deep perspective and external conversations between.  So many things were making sense.  Fears were being explained, and understandings were being had.  Legs spread, and back arched, and bum out and off we went.  Currawong really loved standing behind me, getting wafts of birth, that was a smell he was really getting to know well, and rubbing my back while I rocked through contractions.  And we were kissing lots in between expansions, and all of it felt like a prolonged love making session.

Then Max woke up.  Currawong was the only one who could calm him, and he was getting progressively more pissed off the more time it took, and at how he couldn’t leave Max without him crying again.  Annetta was giving me amazing massages and catching the expansions with me, but it wasn’t the same.  I wanted my Currawong with me.  So in an inbetween moment I stormed in the other room and informed him that Max was just going to have to cry, or maybe Jess could take him for a walk, but he wasn’t missing out on this birth, and I NEEDED him with me.  Empowering moment no. 42……..  Jess got him quiet and sleeping, that also kept her occupied, which was kinda good, as it was hotting up on all sorts of levels.  And I had my Currawong back, who was delighted with how different this birth was progressing.  On all fours on the bed it really started to get intense. 

How can one truly express the intense land that is transition?  And what would a more human friendly term for it be?  The world between worlds where I'm shocked out of and into my body all at the same time.  No room exists for anything else to be happening, heard, seen, felt or any other bloody thing at all, to have any sense of solidity or reality.  A place where if I could turn my torso one way, and my legs another to escape the crunch I would.  A place where what’s happening in my body is so incredibly huge and real and full on, that if I could climb out of my body  I would.  A place where I feel like every nerve ending is being pushed to its extreme limits of coping.  A place where I say ‘oh my gawd, we’re HERE again, and how did I knowingly as a mother make a conscious decision that would bring me HERE again, didn’t I remember how it was last time, and how I didn’t think I could cope anymore when I was HERE again???’  It’s not exactly painful in an ‘ow I’m hurt right here and the rest of me is okay’ kind of ache, as in a whole body calling on all it’s resources to manage and sustain and survive.  But also a place where I can feel like a viking valkerie, or a screaming banshee in the wind, or any other mythical goddess or woman role model I care to create for myself.  Standing on the otherworldly battleground in an ancient tryst for my soul, and the continuation of the flow of evolution towards a magical future.  And a place that I've got to know quite well having lottsa babies.  The pinnacle of the experience, is also the breaking of the wave, as I've learnt that HERE is also when it’s nearly over……….

Or at least should be, if you don’t have something like a lip of your cervix, just holding back a little on the head, and just enough to keep that head behind skin……..which I had.  And that little lip was just enough to stall the whole show at that intense transitionary, initiatory space.  'Oh fuckitall' I thought, I remembered that feeling when birthing Merlin, and how it went on for hours, and was the hardest and loneliest work I’ve ever done in my whole life.  ’Ohshit, not here again’.   I rolled over on my back and Annetta just knew what was going on.  ‘I think  you have a lip…..would you like me to move it?’  she asked.  I couldn’t believe it, and I straight away said yes, and I lay on my back for a moment, and she moved her fingers into me as I had a contraction.  She warned me it might hurt, but it didn’t, and within seconds I had to get off my back and turn around onto all fours again on the bed.  One almighty push and his head was moving towards the world, opening me in that gorgeous vulvic, yoni like, curved and angled oval shape of a head coming outside.        Annetta grabbed Currawong’s hand and put it over me, and over the soft soft head of our baby coming through.  And for weeks after, and to this day if he ever tells that story he cries…..and notes it as one of the most amazing moments in our birthing together. 

Two more pushes and our baby was out at five minutes to one in the morning, and Annetta guided Currawong’s hand again, as they both swooshed the little person under me, Annetta saying ‘here is your baby girl!’  ‘Are you sure?’ I drawled, as I moved the umbilical cord away to see a little penis and testicles…….got the gender wrong againJ  I sat up and hugged him to me, and Currawong laughed, and even though now we didn’t have any clue of a name, I didn’t feel disappointed for one second.  Instead I got a rush of a rememberance of sitting with my 4 big strong brothers either side of me at church, and looking at them all and being so proud of my  beautiful brothers.  And realised that one day I’d be standing looking at my big strong and beautiful sons, and hopefully in a functional enough relationship with them all, that I’d get to be with them for life!  And share their lives and loves and experiences, and be with them through their trials, and for the births of their babies if that’s what they want.  How could I be disappointed when this little boy had given me such an easy pregnancy, given me the impression that if we just let him be, and come into the world, he wouldn’t be any problem…..’promise!’.  Had given me a real rush when I laid my hands on my belly, like he was charging me up from an incredibly strong internal battery.  Had lain inside so quiet and peacefull…… And had just come out in the quickest, most sexual birth I’ve ever had.   A few days afterwards, Annetta said that I was ‘the epitome of the volutptuous, sexual, birthing feminine’………and you know what?  It really felt that way from my perspective as wellJ  And Currawong’s……….

Meanwhile, I was losing a lot of blood.  One of the risks for which the doctor suggested I stay in hospital for.  There is a tendancy for a woman to bleed a lot after having had twins, especially a ‘grand multiparous’ woman like me.  Annetta quickly helped me push the placenta out, to aid the uterus in contracting to control my bleeding, and Currawong cut the cord, as we’d all decided this time, with the newness and the weather and the cuddling factor, that this time we’d forgo the lotus birthing……which was just as well now looking back on it.  Cause a lot of bleeding was a full on thing for my body to cope with, without having to deal with washing and salting a placenta as well.  As it was, when I’d tried feeding our beautiful little boy, and then sat up, I was feeling a bit woozy, and all the family were awake now, as they all realised that our newest member of the clan had arrived.  They all gathered round to oooh and aaaah, and stroke his little head, and giggle about how another boy had been born.  Griffyn smilingly admitted that he’d never really thought it was going to be another boy, but had been saying it the whole way through the pregnancy just to be different to everyone else.  But he was glad nonetheless.  Annetta pulled out a turquoise blue cloth, and weighed him – seven and a half pounds of baby flesh.  We all sniffed and watched him up, and I was surrounded by eight bodies that had all come out of my belly.  Always trips me out when I have those moments of realisation!

And then Max spewed all over the boys bed.  Which made sense of why he’d been so awake and unsettled earlier in the night.  Poor little cherub had a sore belly.  So Currawong and Annetta cleaned up, and Currawong went off for a shower to clean it off him and Max, and in the process realised he had a paralysis tick in his groin.  Swearing lilted from the bathroom, and he removed the little parasite, whilst still cleaning him and Max.  Meanwhile, it was important for me to get off to the shower, and I found myself very dizzy on the walk there.  I had to stop halfway and have a lay down on the lounge, with my new baby nestled into me, and as I heard a buzzing in my ears that wasn’t the vociferous nearby frogs, and my vision started to blur, I thought ‘oh no, don’t make me have to go to hospital after all this!!’, but didn’t faint.  Laid for a bit and ate some toast and had a drink, and then Currawong held our new baby while I crawled to the shower. 

First thing when I got in there was a big release of blood clots, and then an instant feeling of getting better.  My uterus had contracted down nicely, (Annetta said later it contracted back into place as good as a twenty year olds!) and the worst was over.  I got clean, and felt more human, and rather than over exert, I got to kneel on a rug and get a magic carpet ride back to the bedroom, as Annetta and Jess pulled and pushed me down the hallway.  I got my baby back and snuggled him between me and Currawong, all the other babies were back asleep, everything was cleaned up and orderly, and we all went off to blissful sleep, while Annetta went off to her magical 4WD home outside the house, so she’d be there as soon as we woke up. 

And now a little aside.  I’ve been rather vocal in the past about the need for internals, of which I was positive there wasn’t any.  One of the only things that freaked Jess out in her witness of all the births I had after her, was me being given internals.  Despite the blood, and the yells and screams, she had a big problem with someone putting their fingers inside me.  And I agreed with her.  It had never felt nice, and always a bit odd, and like the information gained from it wasn’t really necessary either, if you were just gonna take the birth path and trust the timing, rather than over-medicalising your experience anyway.  Other midwives I’d birthed with had to be almost begged to check me out internally, as they really didn’t like to interfere in any way, an approach that I was completely in approval of.  But I’m here to tell you sisters and brothers, that a sensitively performed internal, from an empathetic birth helper, is a whole other kettle of fish.  A birth helper with midwife skills, who can do such a thing as push a lip back so your babe can be born in minutes rather than hours…….can be a real gift. 

Morning came and we all awoke to being well rested, with a new family member, and me feeling tremendously better after my blood loss situation. But I stayed indoors and quiet with my new baby boy for 2 weeks just to make sure that his entry to the world stayed healthy and wholesome.  And to keep him safe from the twins.  Max’s welcome was an attempted gouge to the eyes, while Merlin just wanted to cover him with kisses and pat his head.  A bit later on the day he was born, our guest with two girls who’d been staying elsewhere came to pick up the rest of her stuff, and delivered a few packages from the women of Nimbin.  When I’d gone to hospital I rang the dear friend who put up our guest so we could have our birth space, and she’d asked me if there was anything I needed.  I told her that I had no clothes or wraps or anything like that for a new baby yet, and unbeknownst to me, while all my other birthing events were evolving, she’d sent an email around to her friends, and was busy picking up donations from all around the area.  Touched and feeling special doesn’t do the awareness justice, when I realised how family like our new home was. 

And there’s more to tell, but that can come a bit later.  This is the bare bones of the story of the birth of Zarathustra Cyrus Wildcat.  Born on the 19^th of December 2011, at 5 minutes to 1 in the morning.  The baby that came bearing gifts……..