BIRTHDAY

My birth story of miracles, mystery, grief, longing, curveballs, and initiation.

Preface

Malakhai Nefertum Zailckas was born on the Mayan Day Out of Time, July 25, 2023. 

I began to write our birth story on his sixth day earthside as I settled into my sixth day in the seat of Mother. I could only scribble a few sentences then, it was so raw and tender inside the transfiguration of the birth portal. With each piece that landed, I wrote, and each visit to each draft became a bead I would string to make sense and make peace. Some weeks, and then some months went by, and Life happened, and our rhythms set and changed and set and changed, and we became devotees of what I call, the dance — radical presence with the Great Mystery. I put our birth story away while fortifying a deeper well of Truth that speaks from the same place within me where my son landed from the Great Beyond to gestate and to passage into his life on Earth. Today my little ferocious Leo sun is one year old, and I as Mother am, too.

Intro

I did not have the birth I hoped I would. When I say “that I hoped I would,” I did not attach to any expectations, but I did hold a strong vision with strong conviction and knowing: to birth wildly, freely, at home, uninterrupted, in deep communion with my body, with my baby, with God, and to the ancient pulse of life that has informed the cycles of gestation, birth, and death since the beginning of time.

I hoped that I would catch my baby in my arms. I hoped I’d embrace my baby on my chest for their very first breaths, for our bodies to make tender communion through our now physically separate selves. I hoped to birth my baby’s life-nourishing womb companion, first mother, tree of life placenta and to ceremoniously burn the cord after my baby slowly weaned from receiving from her, when my baby would be steadily transitioned to receiving from life outside the womb, from my breast, from my skin, from my touch, from my love.

I envisioned we’d be resting in the bliss of the miracle, in the divine power of in-tact birth, an organic occurrence of nature that I trust and believe in so very deeply.

Whatever I signed up for in my earth-contract, it seems I receive my initiations through a pendulation of polarities. This energy of extremes is depicted in my astrological chart as well, and though I don’t believe I’m attached to this karma — at least not in my conscious awareness — and whether it’s Divine will, personal unconscious will, my baby’s soul contract and/or a collaboration of all, which I believe it is, I am certainly granted the opportunities to live through a wide range of experiences that expand me. I’ve learned to orient toward this as a gift that allows me to embody a full spectrum of wisdom, and stand as an integrated resource for my community and clients. 

And so, the Forces that Be orchestrated a birth that allowed me and my baby to traverse a multidimensionality of range, swinging from one end to its opposite, in a humbling that had me bowing more deeply to the Great Mystery than ever before. After all, birth and death are quite literally the most visceral gates we have to touching the Great Mystery…

It took this long — a year — to share our birth story. In respect to the perfect timing of my integration process, I meticulously gathered the pieces together through twists and turns of questioning, grief, celebration, rage, humility, levity, and acceptance. I came back to edit this, pouring out words in phases, gaining more coherence with each stage and through each scope and perspective that I metabolized over this year. I don’t claim to be complete in my integration, and may not be for a long, long time, or ever, but at this point it is ready to release from the sanctuary of my inner world and share it with you.

I treat my life as an altar, and I hope that in you coming to sit at it for this next little while, that the reflections bring new angles of light into your own Truth.

July 23, 2023 

After the most powerful, stunning, sacred Blessingway ceremony created by a mandala of my dearest sisters where Baby and I were prayed over, sung to, honored with gifts, a crown of roses and a bath of milk and sacred plants, we were joined in a celebration and feast with our medicine community, family and friends.

I lost my mucus plug two days prior to the festivities, and we thought we might have to call the whole thing off. We had no problem pulling the plug (the other kind) if Baby chose, but contractions weren’t consistent yet, and this Leo child, whose big energy had been very expressive throughout my whole pregnancy wanted a party, and a party Baby got!

Throughout the gorgeous gathering, among smiles, hugs, music and the delicious kebab smoke from the grill, I began contracting more consistently and more intensely. Sitting in the middle of the ceremonious circle, wrapped in the blessings of our community, I turned to my partner, Patrick and mouthed, “as soon as the last person leaves tomorrow, it’s on.” 

As my knowing would have it, the moment the last family member’s final foot stepped past the doorway of our home the next evening, my contractions started to come on 18ish to 12ish minutes apart in 7-10 second long pauses of everything in my world stopping, an “ooooh,” an exhale and an “okay”…

We made our way to the great room to open gifts and I seated myself and my big round belly on the big round yoga ball, gently bouncing and circling my hips with pauses for the intensity that got increasingly longer with each one that came. Sharing the note on Patrick’s phone of who got us what, he recorded contraction times.

10, then 8, then 5 minutes apart.

“We gotta go upstairs”

Patrick swiftly set the birth temple.

Pads on the bed and on the sheepskin, a stack of towels, a placenta bowl, water, honey from our bees, power snacks on hand. He lit sacred smoke and candles, drew a bath garnished with blue lotus flowers, cued the music, and the Birth Ceremony opened.

Our beautiful plant medicine sister, Madrona who is a long-experienced midwife and mama holding integrous traditional midwifery values —meaning holding the field for birth to happen, as nature designed— joined us in the sacred portal.

The air was woven with mantras to the Divine Mother who depicted herself in her many forms on long white pillars of wax, scattering her firelight on every inch of the room. We were protected in the warm glow of the Great Mother, guides and guardian angels.

Through a symphony of groans and moans and sounds I’d never heard my vessel produce, I migrated from the tub, to the bed, to the sheepskin, in a rotation, following the compass of my wise animal body. 

I honored the pulse of Life coursing through me and became possessed by the current, fully surrendering into contractions and leaning into rest in between, trusting that my body knows the way. I moved with how Life was moving me, being moved by Life, yielding fully to the intelligence. It was the most intimate communion I had ever made with my physical vessel, with my energetic and astral bodies, with the infinite, with all of Creation.

My consciousness oscillated through every dimension, opening visions and communing with spirits, angels and guides at each gate of my travels. I became a fractal of a fractal, micro to macro to meta, I was everything, everywhere, all at once (isn’t that the name of a film?) I was the embodiment of the Creator of all things, and simultaneously being created by the All.

I’m no stranger to these travels and frequent these realms often as a shamanic practitioner and initiated curandera training for the past eleven years with Ayahuasca and master plants in the Amazon Jungle with my Shipibo teachers. The plant realms are the perfect practice for traversing the ceremony of birth, for yielding to the mystery, for riding the currents of phenomena and range of feeling. There are truly many similarities, and yet, nothing compared to this moment.

From bed, to tub, to floor my body pulsated and writhed and reeled and bent and opened and breathed and pushed, and pushed, and pushed. I went all night long maneuvering the choreography of my impulse. The sun’s light started to peak through the black night sky. “Thank god the sun is coming up,” I said through an exhale in a primal knowing that it would mean a pause. The roaring waves slowed into a calm ocean as morning came.

July 24, 2023

Everything stopped and I got a few hours of deep sleep. Bless.

In the early afternoon, I was awakened again by a volcanic eruption coursing through my womb and rippling through every cell of me. We were back on. The tango with my animal body and the cosmos continued all through the day and all through the second night. From bed to tub to floor again, my body pulsated and writhed and reeled and bent and opened and breathed and pushed and pushed.

July 25, 2023

By the second morning, at around hour 38, Baby had dropped and made it toward the great gate, the ring of fire, the passage, the threshold to the outer world.

I finally began to feel the emergence of another body from my body. My heart burst as my hand made the first contact with the waxy white-covered something that was peaking. A renewed vigor and life-force electrified me like a bolt of lightning to bring my baby through.

The current carried me in an even more precise choreography with more immediacy. Back into the tub I went, pushing with every fiber of my being, then onto the toilet, pushing and pushing, I could feel my baby, they were right there. 

I needed to be on the bed now. I got on all fours, and my god, the fetal ejection reflex is an amazing thing. I leaned into the fire with all of me. There was nothing to do but to let it happen. My face was became freckled with blood vessels while primal ancient roars from the nexus of creation echoed through my voice and resonated the universe.

And there was little movement…

My body pushed and pushed more and still, no more movement.

The little waxy white body part would emerge only to a point, no matter how hard the pushing happened for a few more hours. It felt at a certain moment like my pushing was pushing against an immovable brick wall.

I felt stuck. 

I had spent my whole wild pregnancy —that means absolutely zero medical intervention— in the deepest surrender, trust and respect to life. To how life wants to happen. I had no fear, no question. I was committed in my deep knowing that birth happens. It happens in monkeys, and dogs, and bears, and giraffes, and elephants, and dogs, and rabbits, and it happens in us. It’s not a pathology, it’s not a medical emergency, it’s not a problem. It’s LIFE, and almost never actually needs intervention. We’re literally built to procreate.

((Tangent continuation …))

The organic event of birth is usually interrupted and sabotaged by intervention of any kind, from obvious intervention like medicalization, to even subtle intervention of influence from anyone around the birthing woman.

This happens due to unconscious power dynamics.

The voices of influence, whether it be the programming of the normalized fear-based birth paradigm, the white coat, the doctor, the nurse, the midwife, the doula, the friend, or even the partner, will hold more power over a woman who is not connected to herself and her deep knowing. 

I have so much more to say on this, but perhaps it’s for another post… I digress...

The only moment our medicine sister midwife was invited to feel into my body was now. She felt around my opening and the little waxy white body part emerging from me. 

“Hmm.. this does not feel like a head…”

We determined that what was peeking out of me only to a point for all these hours was my baby’s butt cheek or hip. In this moment, it felt like something else needed to happen, like it wasn’t working this way… Life wanted to happen another way.

In an embodied humbling, I said, “I need help.”

As I reflect on this pivotal moment of my birth story, I have more questions than answers, and have found a deeply settled peace and acceptance in the inquiry.

Was my needing help entirely true? Did Baby need even more time? Did I get scared? Did I give up? Could I have gone upside down to change baby’s position? Did I lose trust in the most natural process available to a human being? Would it have hurt the baby? Or me? 

Was this actually a very, very rare circumstance where intervention was actually necessary? 

Maybe. Maybe it’s all true or untrue from different facets of the story and maybe what was true for me then, with the capacity I had, is not true now. Maybe I can justify my ego in one way or another with an answer, and maybe I don’t need to. Maybe I can’t ever really know, and that’s exactly what being ass-whooped by the Great Mystery is all about.

Patrick packed our bags and got the car ready in seconds. I swiftly penguin hobbled downstairs holding this little body part that was peeking out of me and maneuvered my way into the back seat. I lied on my back with my legs on the ceiling, trying to be as upside down as possible so the baby would move up again while every ounce of might in my body was impulsively pushing Baby out. It was like trying to dam a tsunami. We got slowed down by a massive truck in front of us who was in the lane we needed to make a turn from. Patrick caught up beside him and rolled down the window in a classic cinematic moment yelling “let me pass, my wife is in labor!” Thank you, kind truck driver man who let us pass. I got a laugh.

We arrived to the hospital —the establishment I was hellbent on not birthing in.

I was met with a wheelchair in the parking lot of the emergency entrance by a team of people in scrubs who rushed me into sterile fluorescent lights and air laced with isopropyl alcohol, and latex —the exact opposite of my home birthing sanctuary.

They asked questions in rapid fire while wheeling me in, and my croaking voice somehow answered between rapid breaths while my body was reflexively pushing with so much force. 

I was being undressed now and having gel squeezed over my belly so that they could heat mine and my baby’s tissues under an ultrasound —also a practice I am not in agreement with.

“Yep, it’s a breech. Heart rate is strong, baby looks great. We don’t deliver breech vaginally here, so we’ll have to do a cesarian.” 

Neither delivering vaginally in a building meant for sickness in the unnatural position of lying on my back under bright lights, hooked up to machines, with people touching me or telling me what to do, nor a surgery where I’d be sliced into felt like preferred choices, but in this moment, I was submitted and surrendered to this scenario and to the potentiality that my birth might just be an extremely rare circumstance where intervention of this kind is actually necessary.

“Okay”

I was quickly rushed to surgery.

My body continued pushing while I was being wheeled through the hallways, and into the elevator.  “Breathe” I was told, to push the pushing away. Nature was making her final attempt to follow through with her organic process to birth in the impending halt that was soon to transpire.

I was now in a stark white room on a table under even brighter fluorescent lights, surrounded by a fast moving gaggle of even more people in scrubs. They were kind. They told me everything they were going to do, looking me in the eyes with sweetness and compassion. It could have been worse…

Sitting on the operating table with my legs hung off the side, one of the nurses told me to round my back and hug her. I became a little girl in that moment. My flailing legs, the rounding of my spine, my head hung low on this woman’s shoulder was my final white flag. I now fully submitted my bodily autonomy to a team of strangers trained and indoctrinated in a paradigm that is so fundamentally opposite from my own, to do what they deemed necessary, and what might have been.

In this very moment, one final push came, one final primal scream, one final volcanic eruption coursed through me. Nature roared in attempt to complete her task and was met with a needle to the spine that shut her down.

The Wild was sedated.

They laid me down. A large sheet was put up to shield my eyes from my now numb body where I’d be cut into.

“Please don’t scrub the baby, please leave the vernix on, please keep the baby connected to the placenta” I pled, in hopes that something about this process could preserve my autonomy and respect for nature’s ways.

“Okay” someone said, which was probably to keep me quiet and compliant… what else was there to say? I was now in the machine and had no choice in my choice.

I looked to my left to see Patrick in scrubs and a hair net outside a slit of a window who gazed with power into my eyes, nodding, and mouthing the word “TRUST.” He pointed me back to the overcurrent of the perfection of Divine Will that was holding the orchestration of this whole thing.

I nodded back with rivers in my eyes and with no other option but to completely release myself into the moment.

They prepared, and then Patrick was allowed into the room to be beside me and hold my hand.

I felt the pressure of gloved hands and cold metal tools enter through my skin barrier, then the yanking on layers of skin, tissue and muscle. Then I felt a larger yank.

An immediate sound, the most beautiful and painful sound I’d ever heard.

In my shielded numbness, and non-involvement in birthing my baby, it took me a few seconds to register, this sound was my baby’s cry.

I looked at Patrick as he witnessed the emergence of our baby beyond the blue paper veil. He was my bridge, he was my eyes, he was my witness in this moment when I couldn’t be. He looked down at me with his glistening crystal eyes and a smile of wonder that just witnessed a miracle. 

“Boy.”

“Oh my god,” I wept to the song of my baby’s continued cries.

Now with my own eyes, in the first seconds of witnessing him earthside, I watched my baby in the hands of strangers as he was placed into a plastic box under a screen with neon numbers while I lied helpless and numb, far away from him on the surgery table. His first contact was a gloved army hastily scrubbing him off as if blood and vernix and amniotic fluid be vile substances that require immediate removal. No, they did not honor my asks. In the medical industrial birth paradigm, a squeaky-clean package devoid of any evidence of humanness and numeric metrics are higher on the priority list than honoring Life in its raw perfection and preserving the essential moments that a baby and their mother are wired for. My primal instinct to grab my baby and bring him to my skin, to take in his scent, to establish our bond, and to warmly welcome him in his first moments after his arduous journey felt robbed from me and from him. This cut me deeper than the scalpel.

The Motherbaby unit felt infiltrated. I felt severed. All of our natural processes and instincts felt interrupted. I could hear it in his screams, he needed me, we needed each other, it overwhelmed me.

The huge hormonal shift surely induces shaking post-op, but this was more than that. I was flooded with the intensity of it all. My teeth chattered, my body convulsed, my vision blurred, I was in full shutdown.

Patrick finally held our baby now and brought him close to my head. This was our first earth-side contact and I was barely present, drifting away, fainting on the table, almost blacked out by now, and none of my somatic and nervous system regulation tools I had spent years cultivating were available to me. It felt like I was defeated by the moment and had nothing left.

I somehow murmured a request for “something for my nerves” —I so badly wanted to be present with my baby.

This “something” they gave me may have stopped the shutdown/collapse stress response, but just shut me down in another way. Now, not only was half my body numb, but my capacity to feel into the miracle of holding my baby was, too. Devastating.

Now, this type of baby delivery happens every day and far, far too often for women in the modern world. It is totally normalized, but no, it is not normal. For someone who has dedicated my life to healing and waking up, this means re-sensitizing myself and living deeply embodied in a de-sensitised and disembodied world. This means I am online, awake, and fully present in my experience and feel deeply. An awakened woman will find resonance with my experience, and a woman who is on her way to her awakening may feel reminded of her ancient inner-knowing in my story. Wherever you are, thank you for being here.

Patrick and our baby were just ahead of me as I hazily floated on wheels to the recovery room. 

I was parked in the room and Patrick placed our beautiful baby boy on my skin. My higher awareness was online while my emotional body was offline. I cognitively knew there was an infinite range of the most powerful emotions available to a human being that this moment would have aroused in me. I was too numb to feel the devastation of not being able to feel, but mustered every available morsel of my awareness to be as present as possible while I gazed down at this tender, tiny pink beautiful baby boy with sparkling marbles for eyes that pierced through mine as he latched onto my breast for the first time.

Through all the somatic, nervous system, and trauma integration work that I practice, train in and facilitate, I knew I would return to this moment and integrate every piece that was disconnected and fractured. Trust, the pillar that carried me through. I trusted the overcurrent of the Higher Hand. In the higher levels, everything was perfect.

My older sister soon arrived. As she entered the room, her familiarity reconnected some wiring in me. She looked at our son, and as I looked at her beaming, tear-streamed face, the mirroring turned on my emotional body again like a light switch. I was back. Oh, my baby, I could feel him now. I could feel the miracle swell my heart into new expanses of love that would transform me forever.

The infinity of his eyes permeating every cell of me in a recognition beyond lifetimes, across time and space. We were together again, interwoven, interdependent and connected, repairing the ruptures that separated us, becoming whole together again.

I won’t bore you or myself with all the entirely unnecessary, normalized, and insane bodily violations to me and my son that transpired in the two recovery days spent in the hospital, nor will I bore you with being treated like a vile and dangerous threat to my son for declining the routine injections to our perfectly healthy baby boy.

What I will share is that Malakhai Nefertum, who whispered his name to me while he lied in the curve of my arm after our first sunrise together is the greatest master I’ve ever known. His birth, which I believe his soul chose precisely, birthed me in ways I believe my soul chose precisely, in ways I could have never imagined, and in many ways, I feel like my life has just begun.

So, my birth story was not what I wanted it to be…

I don’t have the gorgeous bloody raw home photos and videos of the moment I catch my baby in my primal mamalian power.

But it was perfect.

I am eternally grateful for my healthy, strong, sensitive, beautiful boy, for a love that is immeasurable in vastness. I am grateful for our story, and for the humbling of the journey. Over this year, I have learned, I have grown in capacity, in maturity, and rooted deeply in my inner-knowing. And because of this, I get to make choices with a widened scope, in a deeper embodiment, and I get to humbly honor and respect how Life wants to unfold…

As I wrap up this story, I hold a deep sense of peace with questions that have become intimately known friends:

Was the circular bruising on his right hip and crooked body position proof that he was indeed stuck and we did need medical intervention? 

Could I have just gone upside down at home and would his body have repositioned to birth physiologically? 

I had months of replaying the story over and over again like one of those choose your own ending books, crafting “what if” scenarios. They have played out in my dreams in every possible outcome.

I may never have answers, and I really don’t need them anymore. What I do know is that I have landed in the serenity of total acceptance, humility, and a rooted self-knowing

That I would not have changed a thing about my wild pregnancy

That laboring in the sanctity of my home in ceremony was the most holy prayer 

That pushing my baby down through my body to touch the outer world in full presence and in full sensation was the sacrament

That I’m grateful for the hospital team for knowing how to do what they do.

That when I do this again, I won’t change a thing about how I go about it.

That I trust in Life and what she brings, including death.

That this imperfect birth story was the perfect birth story.

Thank you, Madrona for being a pillar of grace, comfort, and wisdom in the ceremony

Thank you, Aurianna for being the perfect postpartum Godsend for the integration and processing of this experience.

And thank you, Patrick, my beloved, for your trust in the mystery, in me, for your divine devotion, for being a mountain, a protector of the sacred, and for the sanctuary of your fatherhood to our sweet baby Khai.

Happy birthday to us.

Sacred Valley, Peru | April 2024