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The Birth of My Dreams

By Asha Ramakrishna

I was aware of the impact of my emotional and mental well-being on my baby during my pregnancy, yet I was living a stressful life. I allowed my work environment to bounce me from emotion to emotion while knowing that I was not choosing the most optimal external and internal influences for the incoming soul.

Allowing circumstances and people to control my state of mind led me to a disempowered birth experience as well. I gave my power to my medical team, and they took care of me the best way they knew how. With the care of Western medicine and use of statistical data, I became another pitocin-induced, narcotic-managed birthing woman. My baby was born, allowed to be on my chest to nurse for minutes, and then prodded, poked, bundled, and returned to my husband’s arms as I was stitched up, owing to the forceful delivery.

Comparing my experience to television birthing shows, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Yet I had wanted it differently. I knew what I had intended, and I hid behind positive thinking and blindly trusting my obstetrician when the time to birth arrived. Really, it was not her responsibility to grant me my desires. It was mine.

I learned so much from the choices, decisions, and essence of who I was then. The healing began when my baby girl was diagnosed with cranial synostosis. This is a condition where two bones in her skull had fused in utero. I broke into tears realizing the impact of my co-destructive choices. My husband embraced me, pleading with me to let go of all this pain and reassuring me that everything would be fine with all of us.

Overcompensating for my disempowered pregnancy and birth, I decided I would process all my pain prior to my daughter’s upcoming surgery. I wanted to be strong and present for her. Approaching it as a preparation for an exam, I researched, meditated, cried, and asked all the whys. I promised myself and I promised her that on the day of the surgery I would be a rock for her and everyone else. And so I was.

The surgery was a success, and she recovered faster than anyone expected. We attributed this to breastfeeding, love, and the countless prayers. Yet I knew I had not resolved the personal trauma of my first experience of giving birth. The opportunity to create a different way began when we made the deliberate and sacred intention to conceive a second child. I wanted a truly inspired pregnancy and childbirth experience that reflected my heart as well as the energy of this welcomed soul. I wanted to be led by the Divine.

I surrendered to being led as a blindfolded child to an unexpected surprise, and yet there was a sense of ownership too. I wanted to process all fears and embrace birth in its most primal. As I processed my fears, I decided to go deeper in manifesting the birth of this baby. I was in pursuit of pleasurable birth—I desired pleasure on physical, mental, and spiritual levels during this birth. Later, I realized that it was also the birth of my own life.

The veil of truth and deep desire to be authentic is so thin during pregnancy that it is the perfect opportunity to expand a woman’s consciousness. See, I believe that we are evolving as a species, and the children we are giving birth to are more aware. This heightened awareness is reflected in their higher vibration. The time of pregnancy is an opportunity to be intimate with this expanded awareness, and if we engage it, it becomes a window for growth.

Reacting to life with grace became my daily practice. I utilized whatever alternative method that felt appropriate. I used acupuncture to manage my anger, and art therapy, “Painless Childbirth Using Reiki,” and spiritual coaching to process my fears. I enlisted my husband with facing our fears. I knew that agreeing to a home birth was outside his comfort zone, and I also knew that this was a clear request from the baby’s soul. The communication with the “unseen” became more clear. I felt nudged to accept energetic attunements; I finished Reiki II training and was ordained as a minister. I felt clear on what tests to decline at the doctor’s office, what books to read and avoid, and when to gently end conversations that could potentially feed my fears. I had also been invited to step up in my goddess discovery leadership role, as a clear metaphor for what was to come after the birth of this baby. I had no idea of the impact this birth would have on my life, yet I could feel that my soul was grounded, passionate, and determined.

The day came for her birth. There were some lingering fears, but my unwavering desire to birth at home was clear. I befriended each contraction and surrendered to love during transition and pushing. I did not feel pain. It was intense, yes; but I had trained my mind to perceive this act of power and love with different eyes—eyes full of wonder and inquiry. No expectations, no dilation to track, only openness to be led to the next moment. And so I birthed with ecstasy, and my life has forever been transformed by that August afternoon and the thirty-nine weeks preceding it. I am on my way to healing from my first daughter’s birth. I am grateful for both births because without them both, I could not have given birth to the work that calls me.

Fear versus Intuitive Intimacy

The subconscious is responsible for 80 percent of decisions and actions taken. It is a compilation of childhood experiences, belief systems programmed early in life, and past-life influence. The reticular (or survival) part of the brain is responsible for maintaining safe parameters of existence, and it dictates the habits we form to stay “safe.”

Fears and anxieties are emotions that reflect anticipations of circumstances that fall outside the “safe” zone. These emotions can control the course of any experience, including pregnancy and childbirth. Emotions are important triggers that signal attention to something deeper. For instance, for me, one of the expressed fears was of having a breech baby. I refused to talk about it until my midwife engaged me in the possibility of this occurrence. She gave me permission to talk about it, and what was freeing was the opportunity to come up with a probable course of action that would support the home birth. She was going to assist a natural delivery of a breech baby, if that was what I desired. What was underneath this fear was the intense longing to birth at home naturally, and by reducing the charge of the fear, it lost all power.

We tend to retract from giving such triggers a voice and a stage to unfold. Sometimes we cover them with “positive thinking,” or we feed them so much attention that they have no choice but to manifest in the physical. What I have seen in my own experience and in coaching other women is that the largest emotional obstacle is fear. I encourage women to embrace and express these fears, and suggest they find a healing venue that feels right for them. If a woman expresses her fears but finds no medium with which to transmute this fear, in order to get it out of her body, she will tend to obsess until something intervenes to cause the emotion to lose charge. The time of obsessing could be a lifetime, a month, or a day, depending on the person. The longer she holds this charge, the longer it impacts her life. Energetic tools can be used as catalysts to process and heal, and to ultimately reduce the charge. Energetic tools such as Reiki or EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)¹ are ways to extract the emotion from the cellular memory. Even if you don’t believe in such tools, the impact of the placebo effect is enough to convince the mind that the emotion has an outlet. Alternative outlets could be writing, dancing, therapy, or energetic modalities. It is up to each woman to decide what technique works to release and let go of unsupportive thoughts and emotions.

During pregnancy most women go into information overload. It is now normal to be consumed with books, nutrition, tests, due dates—all in the pursuit of knowledge. The knowledge we find is superficial, arbitrary, and alienates us from connecting deeply to our body and the baby’s needs. We are in the what-if-something-happens universe, never really expecting the something to be wonderful or magical. We train for nine months to be on high alert and leave little room for intuitive intimacy.

Intuitive intimacy is the knowing that the mom-who-is (as opposed to the mom-to-be) is in synergy with baby in every moment. Before eating or doing something, she checks with her body to see if this feels appropriate for her. This harnessing of intuitive processing becomes a continuum tool for labor, birth, and parenting. We live in a world where everyone has an opinion, and everyone is too eager to share it. We are bombarded with other people’s suggestions, and rarely are we encouraged to go within for answers.

Integrating Healing

To live moment by moment is a lifelong practice, and the proposition of engaging labor (and parenting) as such a practice can be daunting to many women. What I have found is that to sell this proposition to the person takes marrying the right and left hemispheres of the brain. We access our right brain by feeling, and the notion of having a natural, powerful, and spiritual birth is appealing to all. However, when our rational left brain engages in this dialogue, it requires proof, evidence, and tools to make the beautiful idea grounded in the physical plane. They each have their purposes, and we benefit when both hemispheres are on board, especially when giving birth.

So how do we present the information in a way that seems doable for women? Most importantly, by the understanding that scientifically, the laboring body—as a perfectly balanced mechanism—is primordial. We find today that science, in pregnancy, has been boiled down to hospital statistics and reasons for intervention, but we forget that there is science happening as the maternal hormones orchestrate the contractions, and signals are sent to the baby to descend. Not only is dilation directly related to these maternal hormones, but so is the opiate-like effect that can result in uninterrupted labor. For instance, the hormone oxytocin, or the “love hormone,” is released during sexual activity and pregnancy, and peaks during the descent of the baby out of the vagina. This hormone not only is responsible for uterine contractions but also triggers the feeling of love and altruism. Oxytocin is just one of four major hormones that are so brilliantly expressed in the laboring mechanism. As each woman understands the perfection of the system, she becomes more comfortable with trusting it.

Labor and Birth

I honor each and every mother who is brave and authentic in facing the rawness of her fears. I honor every woman who dares to dream of her heart’s desires. I honor every human being who is committed to birthing greatness in self. But how do we deal with the pain of any process?

Contraction by contraction is the answer. Knowing we are supported by our peers and a Power greater than ourselves is not only comforting but empowering. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of feeling supported during pregnancy and childbirth. I have seen mothers progressing steadily during labor and when the midwife, doula, or close friend arrives, their labor speeds up. The intensity and feeling of the unknown is more surmountable when those trusted are present, physically or spiritually.