Cage Free Family

It is amazing how fully and immediately she became necessary in my world.

How a year ago I could not imagine who she would be, and very much less, how she was to fit into our lives, and what our lives would become at her urging.

I know this: Every new gift in our lives, our home, everything, is because of her. Because she said, Now.
I know this: At the moment I laid eyes on her I could no longer accept the world as whole without her.

I'm still processing, reliving, integrating the story of her birth. Two things, two points stand out equally to me and I am working to reassign their importance more correctly.

I had the birth experience that I wanted.... needed.

Free from assistance I delivered her into my own hands, in my own home, in front of the fire, in a world blanketed in snow.

Into my own hands.

I heard no instruction, only what my body told me to do.
My own knees held me in support as I delivered and lifted her into my arms... as I checked to see that she was a she. I rested in the pool as she nursed for the first time... All of her first moments happened just between the two of us. Belonged just to us.

I am woman. Hear me roar! ;-)

The second part of the story of her birth is what I am working to integrate... to understand. To accept how I could have manifested it, and to release the fear that it produced.
Some time after she was born, when we were settled into our bed and getting ready for sleep I began to hemorrhage. Nothing on hand was working rapidly enough to escape the 911 call. In the 10 minutes it took for EMS to arrive a team of midwives worked fast and hard. Painful shots of powerful drugs, IVs, manual removal of clotting blood and an angel of a midwife who used her hands to do what my body would not... contracting, contracting, contracting. More than 4x the normal blood loss.
She saved my life. K, if you're reading, Thank you.

I was perfect before we reached the hospital 15 minutes later.
I bypassed ER and was admitted straight to a private room in the delivery ward where my sweet new girl was placed back in my arms from the arms of the Daddy she never left. There we slept together until the sun set, and I met the doctor that would send us back home with a smile and assurance.

Home. Where we have been, hunkered down, together... ever since.
As if it where possible, these walls are now filled with more love... more peace... more in general.

Simone and I are living in the bed for the next couple of weeks while I recover. Though I am a busy-body at heart, and it pains me to be so still when I want to run through the world shouting, "Look at my beautiful girl!", it is a very sweet time. We watch the postcard like scene of wooded mountains change in the moving sun... dozing, nursing, visiting with Quinn and Nichola, gazing at each other in equal wonder. It's blissful. Really.
I'm spoiled anyhow. Placenta smoothie for lunch ;-) Yes, it's vitally important, and it tastes like berries, I swear! Meals and massages in bed. Dinner tonight was Steak, loaded baked potato and trout stuffed with garlic and herbs and served in a white wine reduction. Yes, Jeff Can Cook!

I'll leave you with this little funny:

Me to Nichola: Do you know who that is, Baby?
Nichola: It's our baby... my sister.
Me: Do you know her name?
Nichola: No. Yes. Baby.
Me: Her name is Simone.
Nichola: Oh, I don't like that name. I like Nichola.

:-)