Love

We’ve just enacted our shivery skinned, soft lipped, sensual supplication to love…….love that leaves a big hole when it goes on vacation, and fills the house to overflowing when it returns.  Love that turns a potentially tragic life into a dream.  Love that makes sense of everything, imbues with meaning, and can turn every action into purpose.  Love that reminds that everything is everything, connected and created, following the slip threads of every other thing into love……..

Kids safely bribed with cups of tea and a cartoon, we close the doors and settle into each other again.  Hello eyes, and lips, and that strong band of arm, and our hair entangling, and that warm, moist place where only we connect……the electrical touch, the building friction of warm soft skin.  Hello again my love, wrapped in this cocoon of us for a snatched moment in a life surrounded by younglings and small limbs and fractious cries and nappies and feeding frenzies and tiny fingers and border disputes and infectious giggles and the elephant stampede of small feet bounding and rebounding over bouncy wooden floors.  Hello again to the pull of our bodies that created so much life shimmering through the corridors around us.  That unrelenting sinking into each other that never seems to have an end.  The plummet into eyes and skin and lips and limbs and soft hair and hard man…….  The ancient magnet of mammals to create life in the cycle of birth life and rebirth, ever rounding circle of life through it’s stages, the young, the fertile, and the diminishing.  And then bodies sated and satisfied fit together so snug that there’s no beginning or end, limbs draped gracefully and sharp shoulders so soft a pillow, no slight movement is required to make it more comfortable.  Everything slows to minute detail, the blood gently lifting a pulse in a wrist, cool breeze drifting through the window, bird calls clear as a bell ringing outside, body’s sanguine reposing in layers, the slow drift of a dust mote, resting in that endless moment.  All of it makes sense, all of it has meaning, all of it is perfect if it led us to right here and now.  Of course we love, and we love so deep, and there is no end, and there can be no withholding of the great big love that we have for each other and our lives and our children and our friends.  Nothing can damage or stop the strong driving river of our shared experiences and lessons of each other and our places in the world. 

Which isn’t at all how it felt only a few days ago.  Stopping still in a home at last, after a long and arduous journey through fear and betrayal, judgement and heartache, jealousies and intrigue, threat and defensiveness, deep and gnarly patterns surfacing due to the stress.  Ugly bits of ourselves that we didn’t want to show, dragged out by excruciating circumstances.  Long hauls of personal strength and heroic efforts done alone.  Isolated feelings of being unappreciated.  Unloved down in the marrow of childhood aloneness.  Hiding behind the barricade of our battered love, till great tidal waves swept over them, and split us apart to battle the waves on our own.  Enacting the rituals of the love that felt faded, hoping that pretending would bring back the strength.  Pushing and striving and hurting to leave the place where all the pain focalised.  To leave the people that looked at us with grim eyes and snappy mouths.  To leave the arched eyebrows and slimly disguised taunts.  Pushing against invisible and seemingly insurmountable barriers that constantly seemed to be in front of us, blocking our escape. 

Till we did.  Escape.  Run fleeing from the harsh and lonely desert that was aching all around us.  We ran and we stumbled and we fled through the bitter cold and the sultry heat.  Cloaked in a magic tent that shipped us through the salty rocking waters.  Bits of our love bumped back into each other, and we started remembering who we were before the heartache, but the moments retracted like eyes on a snail, whenever the rigours of the journey became too taxing.  Easy to take it out on each other.  Easy to blame one another.  Easy to think that without that other, life may be easier.  Wouldn’t have to remember so much.  Wouldn’t have to try and keep healing those wounds.  Wouldn’t have to be surrounded by children full time.  Staying in other people’s houses, and on other people’s floors, and in other people’s camp sites, and on other people’s land, and in other people’s headspaces…….quiet kids, and don’t swear in public, and stop hurting him, and don’t ask for food, and stop playing with their special things, and don’t keep asking questions, and stop stop stop and squeeze yourself in so you don’t……take…..up…….too…….much………space.   Dreaming of a sanctuary and a private space, and blaming ourselves and each other for being this old, and still not having all the ticks and ribbons that we’re meant to have as grown ups in our culture.  Still not having a home.  A safe place to be who we are and take off the masks.  Let the kids swear.  Let them make mess.  Let them yell and scream and bounce all the floorboards.  Let them sound like harpies at each other, let them eat with their hands, let them, let them smile. 

Then we finally get here.  Our home.  Snuggled in by the owner of our home, who hugs us and kisses us, and thanks us for being here, and has left fragrant snippets of her life to surround us, and seat us, and feed us, and clean us, and keep our food cool.  A sweet wooden sanctuary, perched on a hill, surrounded by colourful folk and rainforest, tree’s dripping with life and surging green.  A home and private space at last.  The journey from heartache has finally completed, and found it’s solution in a place to finally let….it…..all……go……  Now that the fleeing and survival is over, there’s time to lick wounds again, and to finally feel into the new one we created, that’s been sitting inside quietly, silently promising to be no problem.  Our new child cradled and biding it’s time, the time that’s drawing nearer with every breath.  We finally have the time to turn our attention inward.  To redress what we can, and let all the ragged bits of skin that had to be pushed down unfurl, and set about soothing them.  And then all should be better shouldn’t it?  All should magically fix itself when the home’s been found? And it is and does…….to a certain point.  We know that we’re lucky, and we know that we’re doing the right thing, and we know that it will start to get better.  But unnoticed by us the heat keeps rising, and the humidity sweats on our lips and drops from our brows, and feels like walking through water.  Our internal temperature gauges start to boil.  Insides feel like they’re slowly cooking.  And it feels like I have a heavy hot water bottle strapped to my middle.  For weeks on end it builds.  And builds.  The heat.  The sweat.  Unrelenting apart from brief downpours of sub-tropical intensity, and then the continued build up of heat.   

And unnoticed by us the rise in temperature mirrors the rise in our unease with each other.  I remember things that hurt.  I spend hours in tears.  All the hurts and pains come bubbling up simmering to the surface, feeling so so alone and betrayed and wondering how to forgive.  Can I forgive?  Has something been broken?  An unbroachable gulf between us?  And with the bleaching of love, the children seem harder, and more difficult to deal with, and the reality of another one popping into our nest starts to seem silly.  Like we’ve gone too far.  Gone over the edge of practicality and manageability.  Everything seems difficult, in the sweaty reality of a beautiful home that’s void of all of our personal treasures that we left behind in our dash to get away.  Taking love out of the equation leaves a dusty, slightly macabre and messy life between two former colleagues.  Two ex best friends.  Two comrades who lost faith with each other in the battle’s dying glow.  Love leaves a sad ship wreck on the sandy desert floor. 

On the last night of heat, I slip away into town on my own.  To a women’s dinner.  He’s been trying hard to mend the gaps and spaces between us.  Asks me if I’m going to be swept away by a long haired lovely and back into the arms of a woman.  And I throw a “I wouldn’t leave the children” over my shoulder, as I shimmy out the door in my red velvet pants and drive through the cool evening breeze and thank everything I can think of for this break in the sultry heat.  Driving on my own feeling sad for my hurt bits, and glad to have this moment of my well known company all to myself.  I remember me.  I’m always there.  Always willing to make the best out of everything.  Always wryly observing myself and loving all my bits.  Loving the sense of me.  Driving through the uber green I feel a sense of peace and ease.  Forthcoming adventure.  Sliding down the road into town I slip into the hall and haunt around, looking for a familiar face.  A few women who have met me take notice and introduce me around, seat me with them, wrap me in friendship, touch my burgeoning belly.  A string of talented and passionate women perform for us, sitting sweating in our seats, by our tables, with our plates of food and glasses of wine and water.  Poems and songs and words of women and their places and their skills and desires and attempts at finding….love.  And stories float round me from the tables nearby, and faces speak tomes of love held and lost, and optimistic love spreads it’s wings over couples, and all seems to be a promise and faint hope to the potential of love.  I listen to women talk about how they’ve been loved for a year and it still keeps burning!  I listen to how they’ve decided that love has become a worthwhile and surmountable path to follow.  I hear the reasons why they think love is worth the gamble.  And the hollow ache that sits beneath the surface for the ones that have given up the challenge.  Decided the odds are too great.  And I sit, hiding the blood red heart of a love that’s been burning hard and singing our skin regularly with lust for a full blooded 12 years of lovemaking and yearning and babies and birthing and erotic dreams and fantasies lacing each other in the quiet unobserved moments between child interruptions.  Knowing that I have it.  I have that love that gets songs and poems and yearnings aching for it.  A bit of perspective is always a good thing…….

And the next day, the heat breaks, and clouds hover, and suddenly everything seems better.  I hear mention of how people go troppo in the buildup to the wet, and how extreme behaviours come bursting out in the heat.  And I wonder how much a part that heat played in our drama.  And with my newfound perspective, and remembrance of how lonely and desolate life can be without our love……………we bribe the kids with cups of tea and cartoons, and submerge ourselves in our love renewed.  As it always will be.  As it always has to be.  As I will ever keep it.  Untattered.  Unbroken.  Bouyed by the long distance haul of shared experiences and traumas and birthing and babies and walls scaled and hurts healed.  Love is.  And always will be.  Even if sometimes it seems to go on holiday.  Love wont let us down.  We wont let love down.  It’s ours for life.

Trust birth? Well mostly..........

A little while ago on Facebook, when I was talking about the search for a home, a midwife, and a doula, a woman asked me why I wasn’t considering freebirthing.  As she pointed out, I’ve got more experience in birthing than a lot of other folks around, and have thought very deeply about it all, so why do I feel the need to have a midwife?  The question really sat with me, and I wondered why myself.  I’ve always had a tremendous respect for women and families that freebirth, and for the last 4 births Currawong and I have tossed around the possibility of freebirthing……..but it never really materialised into a realistic proposition for me.  But I’m really glad the question was asked, as ever since it’s been sitting at the back of my brain pan, tumbling around with all my other thoughts, and it’s been an interesting journey following all the threads that come from it. 

In my toolkit of experiences, I’ve had a few run in’s with homebirthing midwives that were less than empowering, and a few with doctors and hospitals as well.  I’ve read books from the Christian fundamentalist right wing about unassisted birth, and how midwives, doctors and all other birth workers just get in the way of what should naturally be a magical experience shared by the mum and dad alone.  And I really related to what was written.  When the books drew attention to the observation that many women focused their oxytocic love, thanks and bonding on the midwife, rather than their mate, I could really see what they were talking about.  There’s so many birth stories I’ve read, where women talk in loving and glowing terms about their midwives, and all their other family members kinda take a back seat to the show.  And there’s a lot of intervention that some midwives get into that is totally unnecessary and just gets in the way, like giving internals, and cutting cords quickly, and catching the baby and ‘giving’ it to the mamma.  And after having a less than positive experience with homebirthing midwives, I really got into this way of looking at midwife led births for a while…….only to get pregnant again, cleanse a lot of my negative juju about midwives by meeting one who listened to me rant and agreed with me, and then was present at our birth in the most unobtrusive way possible, and gave me the gift of ‘catching’ my own baby.  I then went on to become a bit of a homebirthing and midwife advocate, till Balthazar came a long and introduced me to the blessings of western medicine.  And of course in my most recent and publicised birth of twins, Lisa was an integral, necessary, and much loved part of the process, and I definitely had a lot to say about her in my writings.

And while I know the statistics of caesareans in hospitals is incredibly alarming, and I get the whole interventionist dance that often leads to caesareans, as well as the scare mongering that happens from doctor folks when homebirth or natural birth is suggested…..I’ve had some really empowering, respectful, and peaceful births in hospitals too.  My main beef with hospitals has been their overwhelming attitude that birth is fraught with danger, and that birth belongs in the same corridors as deathly illnesses, physical trauma, great sickness and slow death.  I’ve got a bit of a problem too, with how the trend in hospitals at the moment is to separate mamma’s and babies, and that whole invasive separation they do with cleaning, testing, jabbing needles etc.  Kinda doesn’t really aid in a gentle welcome, compassion for a little being who’s been living in a controlled, peaceful and watery womb, and bonding.  Also, how it’s really hard to feel safe and cave like, and tap into a woman’s mammalian brain, in the sterile and bright environment of a hospital ward.   But then again, if a woman is really afraid of birth and what might happen, maybe for her a hospital is the safe place that she needs to be able to fully relax into the birthing process?  Afterall, even though much ado is made of interventionist practices in hospital, there are still a huge amount of women who birth naturally and without drugs in them.

To be brutally honest, I don’t think either camp has all the answers, or even all the questions, and I think that both homebirthing midwives and their supporters, and hospital birth workers and their supporters are two halves of the same whole.  Very antagonistic and despising of each other halves, but halves nonetheless.  And while they’re stuck in this anti each other and polarising dance for the soul of birth, a lot of women, children, families and individuals on both sides of the track are being overlooked, seriously neglected, and damaged in the process.  On the one side we have the birth trusting, all women have been beautifully designed to birth naturally, and by the way we’ve been doing it for thousands of years, so hospitals and doctors should just get back in their boxes, and take their hands off birth, and leave us all to do it peacefully at home approach, that also makes a fair deal about the scaremongering of doctors and obstetricians, and how a lot of their ‘facts’ are lies.  And then on the other side we have the medical approach that points to the harm that can come to unprepared women and families facing an emergency situation at home, and perhaps a long way from a hospital, as well as some of the dangers that can be faced when there’s an un-regulated body of birth workers attending births at home.  There’s also the body of information they hold about the dangers of birth, and how fraught birth HAS been in our history.  Yes many women pushed out babes on the fields and kept going, but a lot of them experienced babies getting stuck, and dying, and cords around necks stopping them from being born, and a hundred other possibilities that can and do happen even in these days of improved diet and hygiene and birth trusting.  But unfortunately, it’s the mainstream medical model that has the weight of the government and legal practitioners behind them, willing to send the horses of the apocalypse after homebirthers, and resulting in an unfairly balanced war effort on behalf of the hospital birthing scene.    

And the result of this antagonistic polarising dance in my opinion anyway, is causing many a casualty in the self esteem and bonding of families and birthing women across the board.  Unsuprisingly, with the amount of kids bounding around us every time we’re in public, a lot of my conversations with people we come across revolve around birth and kids.  And I’m really saddened that a lot of women respond to my stories with half ashamed accounts of how they weren’t brave enough to try birthing at home, or they tried and just couldn’t cut it, or they used every drug they possibly could because they were so afraid, or they didn’t have any option because their pelvis was too small, or they had health complications, or they had a natural birth and it traumatised them, or they suffered post natal depression, or a million other reasons why they didn’t give birth in either the wholistic, alternative accepted manner, or the hospital, mainstream accepted manner.  And these women all take it onto themselves, as their own fault, as their own body failing them in birth, as their inability to birth ‘properly’ being all their own doing, as an experience that happened to them that was less than they hoped, the result of which, can put some serious bricks in the wall of their lack of self esteem and body confidence, which then leeches from their parenting confidence, and sense of connection with their families, and becomes part of the general body of stories around birth that go unacknowledged from either side of the polarised fence, as it doesn’t fit appropriately into their accepted picture of what birth is.

I see so many women and families in pain around their birthing experiences, that I’ve taken to saying something like this to them….. 

“Ya know what darlin?  There is no ‘perfect’ birth, birth just is what it is.  Every one is different, and every birth is perfect if you let it be, no matter whether it was at home or in the hospital.  And we haven’t been designed perfectly to give birth, cause we CHANGED OUR DESIGN!!  When we decided to grow our frontal lobes and walk upright we changed our design from the less problematic mammalian birth canals that were straight, and we turned them into this twisty birth canal that can really cause problems.    And babies had to be born a year premature, which meant they couldn’t walk like all the other mammal babies, so mother nature had to create a tricksy system of oxytocic rewards if we held them to us and fed them when they were hungry, so they weren’t eaten by dogs or stolen by other tribes.  You just need to be true to yourself and do what feels good for you, cause that’s all that counts really.  Trying to birth or parent in any kind of way because that’s what you’ve been told is ‘right’ is never gonna work, cause it doesn’t carry the weight of your belief and life experience.  Don’t let anyone tell you what to do, and listen to yourself and your new baby whose instincts haven’t been convinced otherwise yet, and all will be fine…”

Or something like that anyway. 

Cause the biggest casualty in the war over birth is birth itself.  And it is a war, and quite a vicious one at times.  Nastiness and personal attacks are hurled by both sides, personalities especially associated with either camp singled out for horrific attention, and it seems that no-one’s getting the law of attraction proven by quantum physics, that you get more of what you focus on!  And my own personal experience that you become what you hate is also coming into this equation.  No one is winning anything, except for long drawn out battle plans being enacted, and a lot of energy being spent on the fight.  And a whole lot of people are losing, their integrity, their passions, their experiences being validated, and their sense of self worth.  Sometimes it seems to me that the fight just takes up too much space.

In an ideal world, both halves of birth would come together and hold hands instead.  Doctors and obstetricians would study their own sciences, especially that of Ethnopaediatrics and the beautiful works of Dr Sarah Buckley, Leboyer, Michel Odent, and all the others who’ve championed gentle and welcoming births, and provide birthing centres all over the world that allowed lesser and greater influences of homebirth and hospital birth depending on the blend required by the families that use them.  And homebirthing midwives who feel drawn to the trade, will work co-operatively with them in partnership and backup, so that all the potentialities of birth can be dealt with effectively and cohesively.  And the women and families entering the mysterious world of birth will have equal access to all the different perspectives and possibilities available, and have free access to whatever option works for them, based on their life experience and deeply held beliefs.  And imagine what we could do with all the energy focused on this war if the war dissolved!!  If the polarity that exists melted into a whole, there would be no ‘taboo’ subjects left anymore, so women walking into birth for the first time could explore the possibilities of natural caesareans for example, and alternative forms of pain relief, and maybe, just maybe, we could also focus our attention on what happens AFTER birth, a largely ignored realm in many birthing circles.  We focus on the conception, the pregnancy, the hormones, the birth and all it’s possibilities, but what happens after?  What about the importance of bonding?  The exhaustion many women feel after entertaining family hours after birthing? How to fold cloth nappies?  How to deal with sibling rivalry?  How to deal with the issues of step parenting?  How to address problems that occurred during the birth and set up patterns that aren’t life enhancing?  How to ‘unlearn’ survival skills that we’ve been taught by our parents that don’t help us survive, and in fact may be really stuffing us up?  I can think of worlds that we could be spending our collective energy on that would be far more rewarding than the argy bargy between hospital and home birthing.

So to get back to the original question, I guess that on deep contemplation, I’d have to say that I trust birth implicitly metaphysically, but not completely physically.  I’m aware of the things that can go wrong, and that HAVE gone sideways for me in my experiences, and when I’m in that intensely vulnerable and ‘elsewhere’ state of engaging in the age old dance of birth, I really like someone around to hold my hand, and who I know will cover my back.  Someone who isn’t Currawong and my family, who are caught up with their own experience, but who is there to just focus on me and the baby inside me coming out safely.  Someone who knows enough about the intricacies of birth to be able to fix any solvable problems at home, and also to get us the hell out of there and to a hospital on time if that’s what is needed.  And I’m so greatful for the folk that spend years in university learning how to help me and others when we really need them in hospitals, as well as the midwives who dig into the past to find old ways of birthing, as well as making alternative information available as well.  I’m greatful for all birthworkers really, and see the value in all their work and ideas.  I just wish it was something that they and others could see mutually and in themselves as well.

But that’s just my perception of birth, and the best way to do it, and when it comes down to it, I’d argue for anyone else’s perceptions till I’m blue in the face, cause that’s what it’s all about to me.  The combination of all our experiences and perceptions are equally valid and enhancing if taken that way, to the whole.  And if we put em all together and respect them all, we have a really healthy blueprint for the evolution of us all and our consciousness so we can USE those frontal lobes we traded easier births for, to help our planet and ourselves move beyond this warring and fighting over who’s right and wrong that happens in every sector, and move into an evolution of love, respect, peace and freedom for every single thing in the universe.  I’ll keep dreaming it up………

On having a big family.....

So now that we’re expecting our 7th child together, and my 8th child all up, I’m really starting to notice the big balls of juicy judgement that come bouncing down the street towards us from folks eyes, as well as getting reactions from people when we tell them like “Oh, I’m so sorry” (?????????), and similar sentiments from people who look like we’ve just announced one of us is dying. Not to mention the odd snide comments from acquaintances about how many we have already, and the direct approach from ‘friends’ like I talked about in my last blog post.

As it is, I’ve developed a radar over the years for all sorts of reasons, for people on the street to look at and smile with, and people to avoid looking at, especially not making eye contact with, cause it’s likely to not be pretty. And basically, that radar picks out all indigenous folk from the world around, any ‘differently abled’ folk, any kooky folk, and people who look like refugee’s, as being safe to look at and smile with – essentially the other fringe dwellers in the world – and any mainstream looking one’s are the one’s my radar avoids. More often than not, these are the folk looking at me with ‘deadbeat parents’ and ‘she must do that for the baby bonus’ and ‘those poor grubby children’ and the like coming like daggers from their eyes.

And after spending a day sewing and constructing arguments for the rabidly anti-big-family-people who have already made their opinions clear in my life……..I figure it’s time for me to tell you, the universe, and anyone who cares to listen, our reasons for having so many children.

• First and foremost is that they’re utterly gorgeous, vibrant, envigorating, life enhancing, funny, cuddly, and the best people I’ve ever known, and we’re both honoured that they live in our family, and we get to know them for the rest of our lives. Every day is an adventure, and their unique takes on the world are pure gold. They teach us more than anything in our lives has ever done before. They are the reason to constantly strive to be better, and to make the world a better place. They are the motivation for nearly everything we do. They are friends and teachers and people that bring out our fierce protective and guiding instincts, and mirror ourselves and our behaviours in a way that means we have to deal with them, to make our combined world a better and healthier place to be.

• It took me three babies to realize that they’re nothing to do with me. Apart from the obvious of course, they’re completely their own people, born with their internal natures and distinct fate and destiny intact. With my first baby, I was convinced that my continuum parenting was the reason she was so funky, and if anything, my judgement about other parents increased……”If I can produce such perfect progeny, then it’s obvious that if everyone in the world would just do like I said, we’d have perfect people and perfect harmony forevermore….” My second baby perfomed just as well, as well as the third, but the fourth and fifth have blown that theory completely out of the water. All my tried and tested tricks and parental lore completely failed with these two. They are the ungovernable forces of nature that are best just to leave alone. And not take personally. And appreciate for their own unique contributions to the world. (We were warned about lotus babies…) And then there were the sixth and seventh that provided a whopper of a birth story, and rolled on just about all the other tried and true methods I had left for my parenting approach. All my other smug assumptions and judgements have been thoroughly discarded after they came into my life. Children, (people), are who they are, and can’t be expected to be certain things just because of who their parents are. I reckon Kahil Gibran puts it best…….

”Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love, but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday.

--Kahlil Gibran

It’s taken me this many kids and pregnancies to really get the great mystery of conception, birth, and the individual journey of the soul. And to just get out of the way and surrender into trust for my own life as well as theirs. I reckon I’m lucky, cause I’ve been enabled to discover that birth and all of it’s surrounding energies can truly be a path of spiritual transformation and enlightenment.

• Between all my births, (and there’s still one to come) I’ve experienced just about everything. I’ve had a disempowered, interventionist hospital birth, an empowered, almost unassisted hospital birth, a beautiful homebirth with disempowering after experiences and mismanaged bonding, an almost unassisted homebirth (with a sage, midwife observer) with a hugely empowering and transformative bonding experience, an attempt at a homebirth that became an emergency caesarean, that was respectful, empowering, and positive, an amazing homebirth of twins two days apart, and the intense experience of early life with twins, and the story is yet unwritten for the next one. I’ve learnt so much about birth. And have developed a healthy love and respect for both homebirthing and hospital birthing, and how important both of them are. And also have a unique perspective on how you can transform your birthing self, and are not just lumbered with a birthing self that can’t change. And I’ve borne witness to many other birthing women, who have had the great rewards of birth kept from them, by disempowerment by both the hospital birthing scene and the homebirthing one. I believe I have a valuable contribution to make to birthing lore from all of my experiences, and some suggestions about how we can all approach birth in a more empowered way. I really like having such a wholistic toolkit about birth within me.

• Contraception sucks, and in my experience anyway, babies are made from great orgasms. I refuse to do the pill, (synthetic bleeding? You’ve got to be kidding!) because I love my bleeding and what it brings, and IUD’s have problems, and I honestly don’t have the internal discipline to do the mini-pill or a diaphragm, and I’ve never been good at condoms (surprisingly, neither is Currawong). As far as I’m concerned, you don’t have a monogamous, loving relationship for 12 years, and have sex with plastic between you. But more than that, our sex and smell is one of the most important aspects of our relationship. Our deep trust and honesty have led us on a sexual journey that has never yet stopped….it keeps getting better and better, as we keep getting further into each other and deeper into our sexual experience. And there’s a certain animalistic nature to the procreation dance that is absolutely exhilarating. When the time is right in my cycle, and the smell’s align, and the planets with them, sex can become a mind blowing, transformative, and conceptual experience that is the equal to any great spiritual experience or great mystery of life. This is why we’re both loathe to get a vasectomy, and mess with our alchemy. But at some time we may have to face this one…. Other people may remember great holidays, or dance parties, or trips, but we remember our great sexual adventures. And we remember every great session we had that created life. We’re addicted to the danger zone, and prepared to take responsibility for the consequences. As many mystics and spiritual folk have noted during the ages, babies born from and into great love are very special……and we seem to have this particular magic DOWN PAT!!

• And now that I’ve mentioned responsibility……we consider that we take a huge amount of it with our children. We may be income challenged at times, but we always eat mostly local and organic foods gorgeously prepared by the wonderful Currawong, as well as enough sweets to make sure they wont grow up sugar addicts. We give them enough media to do the same thing, but none of the really damaging (in our eyes) stuff that will mess with their unlimited imaginations and natures. You know how lots of adults spend their whole adulthoods trying to unlearn a lot of the shit they learnt from their childhood conditioning, and trying to become themselves?? We’re trying to short track that process, by giving them the freedom and confidence to be who they are from the start…..so maybe they can spend their adult lives doing something else!! And we’re doing our best to give them as many stories and experiences we possibly can, about all the varied ways that a person can do life. As well as having as many adventures as we can along the way. A friend told me there was an article in the local newspaper about a woman who’d reached her 100th year, and was asked about the biggest differences she saw around her now, compared to when she was growing up. And what she said, was that the children today had lost all their freedom. That really sat with me. And on our forays into the city, and to parks, and libraries, and museums, and all the places that children used to inhabit, I notice more and more the great disappearance of unruly kid energy and laughter…… And where have they all gone?? Poor little buggers are stuck in front of televisions, the internet, and DS9’s, getting madly advertised at and conditioned, and desensitized to death and destruction, while losing their freedom to be just what they are…..children. To play, and ride bikes without helmets, and sit on swings without hovering parents, and make up imaginary worlds, and build cubbies, and play dress ups and all the other kooky and possibly dangerous things that the kids of today are being kept from. Our kids are still free…..very free…..in fact I’d have to call them all free range kids. And as we roam around and find people increasingly impatient with their noise and childlike abandon, I feel sad for a generation of kids that are so quiet and entranced by media and the need for ‘stuff’, that they’ve stopped training the adults around them how to accommodate the needs of the free kid.

• As for practicalities…….I’ve got two siblings that never had children, so I figure I can take their quota of two children each, which means I’ve got ‘permission’ for 4 of my kids, and I’ve come across many folk in our travels that have told me directly that they’re not going to have children, so I can have the one’s they never will. So I have obtained enough sanction from the world around me for my liking anyway, about the amount of children we have. And for those people who think that the poor little mites are missing out on the valuable one on one attention that every child deserves……let me tell you a story. For years I’ve been saying that my first and second born babies got the best out of us, and the most attention, and felt slightly guilty at the moments that I don’t have for the young ones, ( which isn’t as much as you may suspect, as I’m rather proud of my recent effort of giving the same amount of attachment parenting care to my twin babies as I did to my single babies )……until Griff, my second born, pulled me up the other day. He reckons, that the young ones actually get MORE attention than he did, because they’ve got all their older siblings to play with, be smiled at by, and to take care of them, as WELL as us big people that try real hard to make sure they all get equal amounts of our love and time. And when I look at my twin boys, and the difference between them hanging out on their own, and the joy and how much they light up when they join the rest of the gang, I reckon he may be right. And Jess, my firstborn, reckons from her perspective, we’re much better parents, and much more patient, and just better at it all the more we have, so this is nice to hear too. I also think there’s a case to be made for the fact that children who are only one or two in a family, feel the weight of expectations from their families far more than kids who can share it with a big mob.

• If you want to talk about the impact on the environment, I’ll paraphrase Currawong, (without the swearwords). Look at the ridiculous amount of money we spend on warfare and western society in general, (V8 super cars, rampant consumerism, housing estates, mass media, tabloids, etc, etc, etc, etc,) and just try and tell us that our children are going to harm the planet. In the time it’s taken you to read this, there have been millions of dollars spent on weaponry and earth destroying practices. I’ve often thought that all those conscious and earth aware people that vow not to have children for the sake of the planet, are the very one’s who SHOULD be having them. Our kids are amazing people that are going to do amazing things with their lives, and the one thing they all have in common, is a deep love and respect for the natural world and it’s creatures. They pick up rubbish wherever we go, and we can all be stopped in our tracks on busy streets by an amazing spider, or bird, or cloud formation. They may not have Santa Clause and the Bunny Rabbit and all the other trappings of western capitalist life, but they have huge imaginations and a vast repository of knowledge about animals and the natural world. We all value handmade with love creations above that of two dollar shops. And our kids are aware of the impact on the planet that many of our consumables take. Which is not to say that it’s not possible that one of them will become the CEO of Coca Cola one day, but if they do, they’ll do it with style. And we’ll still love em.

• And quite simply…..I came from a big family and loved it, and due to great sadnesses and misunderstandings we none of us talk to each other anymore, and I’m really glad to be part of another big family in this lifetime. Which will hopefully and most likely be a big family that I get to keep, and holiday with, and love for the rest of my life. The hubbub of a big family is awesome. Going out with the family pack is a hoot. Watching them stream along through the central markets, and leap and bound and skip, and the amazement of people as they wonder when the stream of kids will end, is a real crack up. Having endless energy, and ideas, and playfulness, and kid aura’s all around us is just one of the most amazing, liberating, funny, and loving things I’ve ever done in my life. Birth and all it’s inherent attendants can truly be a transformative and enlightening journey worthy of any spiritual quest. I’m doing so much more with my life with them than I ever did without them. The lessons I’m learning about tolerance, compassion, selflessness, and destiny are incomparable. And I wouldn’t give any of it or them up for quids.

So next time you see us on the streets, and maybe next time you see a big family, CELEBRATE with us!! Don’t think about how we do it, and how you couldn’t do it, and put a whole heap of judgements on us about our choices……if we weren’t coping and didn’t like it, we wouldn’t be doing it!! Just say ‘yee ha!!’ and soak up some of that increasingly rare big family energy. And give the parents a shock by giving them a really positive reaction to the way they’ve chosen to do their lives.

Birthing Choices

Just as a lawyer can be excused for believing that most people sort out their problems with litigation, and a police person could be excused for believing that most people have criminal motivations, a hospital midwife or medical body can be excused for believing that most women and babies are safer if birthed in a hospital. As the British Obstetrician and father of the 'natural childbirth' movement, Dr Grantly Dick-Read eloquently argued, it's often our fear in general and fear of pain that causes the most constrictions in childbirth, and fear is often present in hospital births. People within this system often come across the worst case scenarios on a regular basis. But what they often don't come into contact with is the silent but usually incredibly happy and empowered body of women and families that have birthed safely and without fear at home, with trusted fellow travellers. Just as police folk don't often come into contact with the peacefull and law abiding community members, and lawyers don't often come across the peacemakers who work with hard situations in compromise and compassion, taking personal responsibility.

How do we avoid fear in childbirth? As Dr Sarah J. Buckley M.D from Queensland has extensively researched, the best way to avoid fear and pain is to let go into our mammalian instincts, (there's a lot of mammals on the planet, and we all birth very successfully, and usually outdoors...) and allow the natural rollercoaster of internal oxytocins, adrenalins, and other hormones take us on an age old journey. A large part of creating a successful mammalian birth is to ensure the birthing mother is talked to little, and in a gentle manner, left unobserved as much as possible, and given dim lighting. And Dr Grantly Dick-Read's conclusions on joyous birthing was to understand the way the body and the womb in particular works, and relax into contractions, rather than tense against them. Keeping your mouth open and muscles relaxed is a proven technique to transcend a potentially painfull experience. Not to mention ancient practices and cultural diversities presently and in the past, of a variety of different ways to treat the pregnant woman, the birthing woman, the umbilical cord and placenta, the post natal period, healing afterwards, breastfeeding, and early childhood techniques. Sometimes us western colonialists forget to honour the wisdom of the ages and different cultures. But even now, there are many advocates of gentle home and water births, from Deepak Chopra and Ina May Gaskin to Michel Odent and birthing practices in Holland.

As a mother of five children, I've experienced a beautifully diverse range of births, all of which have taught me more about myself and my body, and my place in the world. For my 4th birth I had the penultimate homebirth, water birth, and lotus birth in a remote northern town, where my homebirthing midwife travelled 250 kilometers to be with our family and the birth of my daughter, providing all the safety and expertise of a registered midwife of over 30 years, in the candlelit, sweetly smelling birthing room in our own house, with photo's of all my other births, children and extended family on the walls around me. In transition, I was reclined in the birthing pool, holding onto my partners arms , staring into his eyes and telling him I loved him. I sung, hummed, and toned her out of my body, with my awestruck family welcoming her in the dawns gentle light. We performed a lotus birth, had a 'baby moon' of 4 weeks where we didn't leave the house, had a real 'birth' day party for her within a couple of days of being born, where we all ate pink cake representing the placenta, and the other kids got presents from their new baby sister, to honour the fact that they were moving over to give her the room to be at my breast. We also got post natal visits from my long distance midwife, and advice and support with all and any of our needs.

And for my 5th birth I had the penultimate ceasarean. I must admit that transferring to hospital, dry birthing, having a spinal and a ceasarean were my personal worst birthing fears before the experience, but having faced my fears, I can highly recommend the journey to anyone, especially if your baby is 10 pound 7, with a cord around his neck, and sure to die by any other birthing method.

After preparing for a potential breech birth or birth of twins at home, ( I'd chosen to be surprised after past experiences and ensuing trust in my body), my treasured midwife from the previous birth brought another valued and registered homebirthing midwife along just in case it was twins, to provide back up, and for added safety. After labouring long and sweetly during the night in the birthing pool, getting to a point and realizing I couldn't go any further, getting out of the pool and walking the labyrinth out the back, I realised that the birth wasn't going to happen at home, and we had to transfer to hospital. Both midwifes checked me and the baby regularly to ensure we were both healthy at all times,and I'm greatful to them both that they let me make up my own mind, in my own time, within safe boundaries. Transferring from home to hospital was the worst bit, as I was travelling into my fears and the unknown. At no point were I or my baby in any danger whatsoever.

And from the moment I got there, everyone smiled at me. The medical staff were gentle and efficient, streamlining me through the hospital process to ease my pain as quickly as possible. They informed me fully of all my options and respected my choices. They also honoured and respected my homebirthing midwife and partner as they attended me, and she provided a valued continuum of midwifery care. The head obstetrician headed straight to the computer in the room where he googled lotus birth and placenta, so he could respect my wish for a lotus birth. The pediatrician introduced himself and his colleague, and said if everything went well, he wouldn't be touching me or my baby at all, respecting my desire for as much of a hands off approach as possible in the eventuality of a hospital birth, as I'd stated in my orange book on the suggestion of my midwife. They'd all read my birthing plan in the very short time between me getting there, and having my pain and fear relieved by their professional, gentle, and respectful conduct. I thanked them all to the point that I think they might have been a bit surprised, that this earth mother homebirthing type was so effusively greatfull...

After this major surgery, my partner and I stayed in hospital for 2 nights, holding our new baby constantly in a 'Continuum Concept' inspired approach to early childhood. We also performed a lotus birth, and many of the hospital midwives commented on how peacefull and quiet he was. This period was also the first time our other children had ever been away from us, so bonding didn't happen as beautifully as with my previous birth. But because I had a registered midwife as my carer, I got to rejoin the rest of my family a lot quicker than usual, and was enabled to convalesce at home, attended by daily visits from our midwife, to help with healing my scar and body. All illusions that caesareans were an 'easy option' were completely dispelled. It took over 6 weeks before I felt physically able again, compared to the relatively quick bounce back from my previous vaginal births.

But even the best care in the world can't prevent post natal depression when it comes, and a couple of months down the track I started to feel it's tendrils. And during my time of dealing with this hormonally and spiritually bleak process, I've discovered some interesting things. For example the caesarean scar directly cuts a major energy meridian in your body (no blame intended, it's the only place to cut) and a registered accupuncturist can attend you in hospital to mend the meridian and help with scar tissue now that they are accepted by the board of health. An ayuvedic masseuse can also help mend the meridian that's been severed, and Body Talk also assists beautifully in healing. As well, my visits with a psychologist have shown me the triggers within me and helpful areas on which to focus, when it comes to the depression side of PND.

And through this whole process I'm joined by family and two beautiful midwives, who might soon be made to face serious litigation if they continue their ancient craft, and provide other women with the invaluable assistance of the bodies of information and knowledge they hold around birthing, and specifically birthing at home. It seems surreal and ridiculous that if the current issues around homebirthing don't resolve positively, that I could have access to an accupuncturist in hospital, but not a homebirthing midwife!!

As my eldest daughter rapidly approaches her birthing years, my deepest hope and wish for her and all our future daughters, is that she too has access to all the birthing choices that I have had. And like the example set by Holland whereby the first option is homebirthing with hospitals as a valued backup, we can all experience the transformation available from all sorts of births, with a wholistic and wide range of options whithin which to perform them, and health proffessionals with which to work.

Regardless of law, a previous caesarean and the current debate around homebirthing, my family and I will have a homebirth if we get pregnant again. I have full and complete faith in my intuition, body, and the health proffessionals I've collected around me to take that journey if it happens in good faith and with joy. Knowing that I'm fortunate to live in a country where so many birthing options are possible and supported.