An album to my baby that never was

Induced early birth (Part II)

I felt a lot of shame when I became pregnant again. It was unfathomable. I had done all the things to avoid pregnancy and yet I found myself pregnant again. The narratives in my mind began —

My relationship is going to fall apart.

I can’t have an abortion AND keep my boyfriend.

I won’t be able to maintain our relationship.

I’m going to be depressed again.

I’m unlovable.

Everyone will think I’m reckless, stupid, irresponsible.

I don’t deserve to be a mother.

While the inner dialogue was persuasive, my partner was more compelling. Instead of feeling completely abandoned, I felt supported. He didn’t leave me when I needed him most. He stayed and made a continuous effort to reach me when I started to fade. He was also honest. Completely unprepared and unwilling to father a child. Growing up in a single-mother household, I know the weight of an absent father. While I know now, he will make the best father one day, it felt important for me to listen and understand. I always knew I wouldn’t bring babies into this world unless my partner wanted that as well. I’m under no illusion that relationships can end after having kids (or during or before). But there’s just a knowing that for me the cocreation of life had to consensual on both sides. I felt okay about that. But this time was different. I spent longer pregnant. Wondering if he might change his mind. I’d cup my little womb bump in the mirror imagining how a full belly might feel. I lingered in the kids section of op shops imagining dressing our baby in cute vintage onesies. I’d see another pregnant lady at the markets and try to catch her eye, wanting to silently share my secret. So while I held onto a hope that maybe he would change his mind, he never did. Somehow, there was never any projection of blame (except the glimpses of internal blame for finding myself in this position again). We agreed together, and so, once again, I found myself inducing birth early and birthing at home — albeit, a different home. The depression came, and I hid under the metaphorical house and each time my partner dragged me out (or rather joined me until I was ready to emerge). I hated myself. I went back to therapy and I received a new diagnosis: PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder).

I think my early births were the catalyst to developing PMDD. I was about the age when the onset of PMDD impacts most women, 26 (I was 25). A GP at the time gave me a print out, I’m sure he simply searched and printed the first article that appeared:

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) is a severe form of PMS that includes physical and behavioural symptoms that are generally exacerbated the week prior to menstrution and usually resolve with the onset of menstruation. PMDD causes extreme mood shifts that can disrupt work and damage relationships. Symptoms include extreme sadness, hopelessness, suicidal thoughts, irritability or anger, plus common PMS symptoms such as breast tenderness and bloating.

The doctor convinced me antidepressants was the only way. I declined and encouraged him to please renew my mental health care plan so I could continue with subsidised psychology appointments. I tried to convince him that they had been helping but he told me “I knew nothing and to just take the pills.” While this is a completely valid option for many, I knew it wasn’t what I wanted. So, I found a new GP who would renew my care plan.

I had been here before, the darkest depths of my psyche, but this babe really wanted me to reconsider everything. They nudged me to shift some of my beliefs. If my partner was willing to make it work, to give me a love I hadn’t yet known, to show me that I was still loveable despite my flaws, then I wanted to feel it all. I had already existed at the lowest point of my life, so I was faced with an opportunity of how I could have this experience AND make it better.

Along with therapy, I researched other ways to support myself. I started taking herbal supplements and when I finally saw a naturopath she confirmed what I was taking could help. It did. Yoga was always there for me to return to. A path of remembering and feeling my body and continually checking and accepting my mental fortitude. There were a lot of mistakes, I fumbled a lot and had to relearn ways of clearer communication. I found conscious connected breath work and let visions and sensations guide some of my missing pieces back towards me. It took a really long time. It’s still taking time to process. But I realised, over that time, that this water baby, leanbh uisce, came to show me how it actually could be different. My first, acqua tesoro, excavated the most tortured parts of my soul, my second showed me how to gather myself back together. My first scattered the bones as far across the desert as possible, but my second called for the union. A singing of the bones, Clarissa Pinkola Estés calls it.

In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Estés tells the tale of La Loba: Wolf Woman. In the desert La Loba searches longingly for the fragmented bones of the wolf. Slowly she gathers them piece by piece, sometimes unsure of which parts of the skeleton she has found. By the fire she sits, feeling the cocoon of warmth, everything beyond that drenched in darkness, as she pieces the bones back together.

Then she sings.

The deep thrumming of her voice over the bones, breathing life back into them. Cartilage appears to begin the reconnection and then muscle wraps to protect the bone, skin encases the forming animal and then fur sprouts, teeth grow from gums, eyes pop — the bones alchemise into the living wolf once again.

La Loba (Artist unknown).

La Loba's ceremony is about reclaiming the lost parts of the self, the restoration of vitality, and the resurrection of one's true nature. Her song represents the call to retrieve our wild and true essence, buried beneath layers of societal conditioning and our own traumas (individual and/or collective). The bones represent the fractured and forgotten parts of the soul that need to be reclaimed, acknowledged, nurtured, and integrated to feel whole again. That includes the dark and sinewy parts of self too.

When I first read this folklore shared by Estés it invited me to reconnect with my instinct and intuition. A nudge to embrace my wildness while honouring the wisdom and power of the feminine spirit. Singing over the bones gives life to the transformative process of salvaging my inner strength and resilience — for embracing the wild, untamed aspects of myself that are so often suppressed or ignored in the patriarchal society I wish I didn’t live in.

I have called back the dead and dismembered parts that fractured away from me: shame, guilt, embarrassment, self loathing, depression. The parts that hollowed me out and left a brittle shell. I have combed through the dark, windy, cold, lonely desert nights plucking the bone white fragments of skeleton poking through the sandy soil. In devotion to my water babies, I have harvested the scattered carcass of my ruptured soul and pieced it back together like a gnarled puzzle. Only now, am I able to see the way the shards fit, for it took time to find my own way to not only gather but sing the bones back to life.

My induced early births were both the cause and the cure. It is truly painful and yet surprisingly euphoric to allow what must die to die and what must live to live. I cannot escape death if I am to exist living.

While I actually only intended to share only a few photos here, as a literary landmark to leanbh uisce, words have once again found their way through me. So I take this time to be in worship of my water babies. Through Feeding the Astral Umbilical (read Part I here) I came to learn and remember that I’m a conduit between Earth and Sky. I, as a person, am the umbilical between the Earthly and Spirit Realm. I’ve reached a place in my life where I welcome the channel of communication between me and my babies. Those that have already move through me and those that are yet to come (perhaps they are the same). I am forever thankful for the lessons my water babies have bestowed upon me. For journeying with me through the hardest times of my life and circling into a place where I can always find them, as long as I listen.

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Here are some film photos I took in 2018. None are of me, but all are taken by me while unknowingly pregnant. On a weekend away with my partner and only a few days before we found out. When I see these images I can remember exactly how it felt carrying life that we made.