An intimate tale of a wild birth

The wild and true Veiled Birth of our third baby, including her Lotus birth

It began at 2am on the 1st of March 2025. I had been dreaming of contractions, but when I woke, I realised they were real. It was dark in our tiny bush cabin. My mind visualised the sweet birth pool set-up we’d created outside, looking out on the long grasses, stunted quandong and tall gum trees of the Australian swampland where we lived.

At my Mother Blessing only a couple weeks before she came

The past couple weeks I’d been hoping the frequent ‘practice’ (Braxton-Hicks) contractions would turn into real ones. My partner J’s mum was visiting, ostensibly because we hoped she’d be there for the birth, even though she flew over 2 weeks earlier than the due date (I thought I might go early as my first 2 had been either a few weeks or a few days early).

I’d forced my poor swollen legs to stay active, and we were going out every day to show her the sights and do fun things together. It was a beautiful time, wallowing in creeks and keeping cool in the Air-BnB she’d rented. Baby clearly enjoyed it, too comfortable to leave the confines of my body.

I was exhausted and soooo ready to not be pregnant anymore! None of the activity did anything to convince baby to come out. Baby stayed inside and my mother-in-law left, rubbing my belly and whispering to baby how much she was looking forward to meeting her, what turned out to only be days before baby came.

So, when our ‘due date’ loomed I was over-ripe in my emotional body, exhausted physically and not looking forward to staying pregnant any longer. When I woke on our ‘due date’, it was with the energy of anticipation. After previous days of feeling so drained I couldn’t imagine withstanding the labour of birth. But I’d rested and, the day before she came, I finally felt strong again.

So, 2am. I was ready, rested and eager to begin the journey. I had that sick feeling in my stomach, that fluttery, yet heavy, topsy-turvy feeling we get when we both look forward to and feel anxious about something. I was doing it again, after an 11-year gap, older, wiser, weaker? How would I go? Would it all go smoothly, easily? I had all these last-minute thoughts swirling around, along with the dizzy high feeling of knowing I was launching into an adventure of the mind, body and spirit and all I really had to do was surrender to the journey.

I got up and ate and drank, knowing that, while I could think of these things, I should do them, because later I wouldn’t be in a place to remember them. I swayed my hips, danced and bounced on our new gym ball, hoping the contractions were the real thing, after days of false starts. Quite quickly, it became clear. They were!

I even found myself timing them (something I hadn’t done in my previous births) just to reassure myself I wasn’t imagining the intensifying rhythm. About an hour into them I lay down to try to sleep through them, but after only a very short time I knew we needed to start preparing. They weren’t easing off when I lay down and birth pools (from experience) can take a looong time to fill!

We held off waking anyone up or calling for support, but around 4:40am we woke my teen daughter so she could help J prepare. The sun was beginning to snake light into the cabin, bathing everything in a dawn glow. Birds were beginning to sing nearby, as activity burst from our little home.

I kept feeling a strong desire to be in the warmth of the birth pool. J, after some convincing began preparing in earnest. At first, he didn't believe it was really happening, walking around in a kind of daze, probably hyping himself up that soon he would be meeting his first child.

There was a time that I felt chaotic and unheld because J wasn't there for me, he was still prepping, and B was helping him. I longed for relaxation, nurturance, calm, but all around me was busy activity. J and B hurrying in and out the cabin, checking the water level of the pool, fiddling with hoses and bowls, taking things into our cosy little birth corner of the swamp.

I realise now I was only a couple hours away, the contractions were quite regular and intensifying and we *should* have had the pool prep done as soon as I’d woken up at 2. We were not to know how quickly the adventure would move along!

There was never I time when I thought about calling for more support. We did have a good mama friend on stand-by and several other women including doulas and birthkeepers we could also have called on. But there was never a point in the birth where I felt I wanted more people there. No whisperings from baby, or from my own spirit to say I needed more holding, even during the prepping stage.

The pool took ages to fill and, by this time, I was at the intense stage of the opening process. I felt wobbly and the pain of opening was beginning. As the world grew lighter around us, B supported me, holding me while I hung off her shoulders and groaned loud and long. She was such a star, calm and loving, even though I could feel her wavering. At the tender age of 15 she felt unsure of her abilities, but she played the role perfectly.

Between prep jobs, J reassured me, whispering through my messy hair that everything was going fine. As the sun rose, the sky turned fire and rose. We watched the light grow, between contractions.

The pool was finally ready (I decided) and oh! When I got into the welcoming embrace of the water at around sunrise, I had a moment of blissful peace. My body and baby relaxed into the easeful bliss and the blessed warmth. Looking out at the bush, the fresh outside air on my shoulders cooling the fire within a little. I rested, briefly with the dawning of the new day.

It wasn’t long before more waves took me and the contractions intensified to the point of needing my full focus. It was as if my body knew that it was time, now that I was in the safe confines of the birth pool.

At one moment of pause, I checked my cervix. I did the same with my second child (also a freebirth) and loved the experience of feeling the transformation inside my body. I was perhaps 5 or 6 cm dilated by this time, my cervix was floaty, soft and I could feel the squishy liquid sac and baby’s head beneath, hard and reassuring. I had felt exhausted, and this reassured me that my body was opening easily and right and gave me a shot of energy to keep going.

Soon after this, it all got very, very real.

I needed J close; his supportive presence and our shared bond. He got into the pool with me and I was completely taken over by the opening waves. Each one so all-encompassing I forgot everything but the sensation and the energy coursing through my body. Between these I had short moments of normalcy where I talked to the kids and patted Treff, then was quickly back in. Each one more intense than the last.

J was attentive and tried to do exactly what I needed him to do. I remember realising that I was feeling the pushing energy rather than the opening energy and it surprised me because I didn't think it was time yet, I’d only just got into the pool! The pushing sensation was strong and took everything from me at each contraction. It felt like I was being pushed by an energy bigger than anything human, being wrung out like a sponge. In my ‘normal’ moments, I flopped over the side of the pool unable to even lift my head, until the next wringing out wave took hold.

At this point I told J I was too tired and wanted a break; that transition stage just before baby starts moving into the birth portal proper.

J held me down in the water, as I insisted loudly. If he wasn’t firm enough I felt like all of me was floating away. I absolutely needed his loving but firm pressure keeping me under the water and in the moment. He pushed down on my sacrum as each push wrung me out.

He massaged my hips and thighs and held me close while I shouted, groaned and growled. There was no quiet with this birth. My body wanted and needed to make noise, so I did. The intensity and speed of the opening and pushing needed my sounds to match it. I even screamed out to the trees and bush a few times, hearing my voice echo back to me, the animalistic nature of birth.

Both girls were awake by this time. My middle child sleepy and tousle headed, both sitting nearby as the sun rose. We all looked up at the changing colours of the sky, in awe of this new day and the new life that was coming into it.

I was only in the pool for a short time, perhaps an hour, maybe less, before baby began her emergence into this world. I’d pushed for perhaps half an hour, probably less.

During, what turned out to be one of the penultimate contractions, I felt the urge to poo feeling and asked if I was actually pooing. I was. We’d laughed about this beforehand as ‘the pooing feeling’ is one of my strongest memories of birth from my first 2 and many women do void their system at some point in the birth process, which I’d been convinced I had done with my first 2 births, yet hadn’t. Well, this time, I had! J kindly threw it out of the pool. Birth is glorious in all it’s animal realness.

And we all knew what this poo-business meant - baby was making her way down. The next contraction I asked if her head was out, but it was the one after that J felt her for the first time. He said later it didn't feel hard but squishy and watery and he was confused that it maybe wasn't her head.

I reached down and found out why it felt like this. “She's still in the sack!” I breathed out loud.

Captured on Polaroid- the moment we felt baby’s head!

The feeling of her crowning came in the next contraction. I consciously slowed my body down here, intuiting the need to do so. I held her head as she came down, feeling the stretching over my clitoris, infinitesimally painful, but gone in an instant, as her whole head came through. My mouth open in awe, I held her head in the cup of one palm, squishy and slippery, still in the sac.

I shifted position so I was no longer tilted forward but back against J so I could catch her. This was the first birth I got to catch my own baby. It was something I had longed to do and missed out on with my second as I needed to be in a position that made it impossible to move my arms. I controlled the flow for this baby and she came slow enough for me to move into a position to catch her. I felt elated, finally getting my wish fulfilled.

I told the kids to come see, so they got to see their baby sister emerge into the world. Her body came loose, gliding through me, without that weird scraping feeling I remember with my first 2 births. Because the sack is so slippery, it feels very different.

And out into the water she came! I had a timeless moment where I looked at her in two layers of water, her eyes open, looking up at me, her hands out to the side like she was startled or in awe at something amazing. Which I guess she was.

Something primal overtook me then. I needed her close. I needed the warm heaviness of my baby on my body, in my arms. So, I gently but quickly pulled the caul from her head then from around her body, her amniotic waters mixing with the birth pool waters, as I did this, and picked her up to my chest. We stayed like this for an eternity (that was probably only minutes) while we stared at her, tears coming from each of us, expressing in hushed words and phrases our amazement and love for her, while she looked up at us, breathing her first breaths.

Holding baby close for her first moments Earthside

I realised her cord was very short. I could feel it pulling up between my labia, and it felt uncomfortable, as I moved the cord to the side to reveal that she too was a girl! Added to this, the water and outside air was too cold and intense for someone who had just left the womb. It was time to move inside. This meant we had to figure out how to get me and her out of the pool and into the bed, with a very short cord attaching us.

I held her low, bent over her like an old mother tree, so the cord didn't pull on the placenta, as I hobbled over the birth pool walls and into the cabin. In bed, J wrapped us up in dry blankets. I nursed her for the first time, which she took to easily. Not a perfect latch but it would do for now.

Baby’s first milks

After several minutes, I could feel the placenta getting ready to come. It felt uncomfortable to lie down at this point and I could feel steel tension in my womb. I was ready to birth the mighty organ I had grown for my baby.

J brought over the bowl and colander we’d specifically chosen for this job and moved things around so I could squat on a towel on the floor by the bed, while J held baby close to me, so the cord didn't pull. The placenta came in one contraction with ease onto the towel. I savoured this new light feeling, finally baby and I were 2 separate beings! I was relieved to have my body to myself again and I took a few moments to enjoy it, before I had her welcome weight in my arms again.

The placenta transferred to the colander and bowl, we were now free to move more easily, me, baby and placenta: a little team working together all for the good of this newly birthed being.

Papa and Baby, with the placenta nearby

Having a short cord made it somewhat awkward to move her around, as the cord barely reached the bowl, even when placed close. It reminded me that it was now time to get support from others. We messaged a dear friend and birthkeeper to help us with the placenta.

She soon arrived and sat with us, cooing over baby and congratulating me. But soon it was down to the business of the placenta.

With her herbs and simple tools arrayed over the bed, she talked us through her process of preparing the placenta for a full lotus birth. She checked over the placenta and caul, half of which was still attached to the placenta. (I kept the half of the caul that I had pulled off baby in the pool and dried it out as a keepsake.)

The placenta, the magical organ created to keep my baby nourished, healthy and whole for the duration of the pregnancy was still needed. For different reasons now, but important all the same.

Our beautiful placenta!

She found and showed us the clots of blood that had formed in places, the calcified parts indicating sickness in the pregnancy (I had been hospitalised because of mould poisoning at 25 weeks), the double lobed shape, like a heart, and the dark, meaty looking bulk of it. Perhaps less healthy than my second child’s placenta, but pretty good nonetheless.

I felt a wave of gratitude for this blobby, bloody thing splayed out on the bed beside us: it had gone through so much and still managed to grow our daughter healthy and strong. I could feel its protective nature, as an energy. I’ve since read that the placenta, effectively, is grown from the father’s genes, and I like to think I could feel this paternal nature.

Next, she cut out small chunks for us to eat each day, talking to baby and explaining what she was doing, so as not to shock baby’s energetic body. Then it was time for herbs and salt to be rubbed into it to keep it preserved. Lastly, she wrapped it up in waterproof pads and a cloth nappy cover so we were left with a dense but small package that we kept tucked close to baby for the next four days, until the cord fell off easefully on the fourth morning, her third day Earthside.

The cord did become hard and brittle (as it had with my second baby) so it pulled a bit. With my more mature mindset, I was able to look at this as a helpful reminder (instead of creating anxiety). It kept us mindful of her and her placenta constantly, in other words it kept us present. Even with the fiddly-ness and mess of it, I would always choose a lotus birth.

When the cord fell off, baby didn't respond in any way, no crying, irritation or discomfort and within hours I felt a shift in her. She became stronger, more ‘with’ herself, more capable. It was a beautiful process to witness. Spiritual, holy.

Back with my second baby, we had felt we needed to cut the cord, to deal with the pulling from the brittleness of it. Despite doing so as mindfully and respectfully as possible, my then little baby cried at the moment her placenta was severed from her. It felt too harsh and I wish we could have given her what this now baby got: something gentle and easeful.

She lays in my arms now on her eighth day of life outside the womb, smiling up at me, sleeping contentedly, while I write with my free hand, recalling all that was her beautiful, wild and true birth.