The birth of a thousand honeybees

I have felt reluctant to share my newest birth story, fully with anyone, not because it wasn’t beautiful but because it kind of knocked down some certain ideals and perceptions I have made up about birth, which all in all has left me humbled in my own storms and has given me a deeper seeing point into birth and how fluid birth is. Both of my birth stories are exact opposites, two different lenses and of course each time I was a different person. I feel called to share my first experience with birth, not so too ramble in the past but because both of my births play a vital role in one another, I would almost consider them twin flames.

My first pregnancy carried a certain kind of freedom that I can’t exactly put words on, as life has tumbled me up and made me a new sort of freedom now. Kind of like beach glass – tumbled by big waves, soft and rough, even milky. I never really read what unassisted birth was, nor did I know that a whole lot of women were feeling called to do this. I only knew that in high school, I watched my kitten give birth in my mothers closet – so easily and so effortlessly, kind of like a balloon letting air out. I felt if my little kitten, who no one told how to birth or how to raise kittens, with being a kitten herself, could do it, then my body must know all those things too and I trusted in that one hundred percent. My cat showed me my first “free” birth. My pregnancy involved a lot of riding my bike through Montana, flying to Maui, living in Georgia. I felt I was on the hunt for the place to birth my child. It may sound romantic, and it surly was but it also carried a lot stories, which sometimes didn’t attract what I would think I wanted, but I always learned. I was always seeking the right place to birth my child, and it sometimes caused unnecessary stress. My partner Taylor was always with me, but I lacked women. I became my own woman. From the beginning, I knew my baby wanted to be born this way, in a way that we could meet them really easily, without any barriers – in a way that allowed freedom in the most authentic way. About a week before I gave birth, we were driving along the coast of Big Sur. We initially were going to hike out to Sykes Hot Springs for the night to stay in the middle of the forest, surrounded by river and redwoods. We arrived at night and made it to the halfway point, I laid in our tent, feeling big feelings, felt like currents moving through my body, rearranging the inside, making movement. I wouldn’t pinpoint and say this was pain but beyond pain or pleasure. Something preparing me. I started to spot, which I knew was my mucus plug. Beautiful and red, deeply primal, claylike, purple, colors of the cosmos, womenly. We were about two hours from my hometown, where my grandmother and mother were living, and we continued along the coast. Looking back, I think, wow, what a view to see and hear, taste and touch, and how my body was turning inside out like giant wave, and the ocean sat down below, saying “yep.” Really I wasn’t aware of this pilgrimage I was on. We stopped at this beautiful beach and we walked along the curves of the ocean, and we came upon a dead whale. Something about this now, seems so sacred and special. Like a giant omen given from God. I consider whales to be so motherly, great caretakers of their calves and the ultimate soundtrack to the ocean. Even though it was dead, it was beautiful and I felt really in aw, of life itself, being this close to this magnificent mammal and how vulnerable it was just laying their in the sun.

By the time, we had gotten to my hometown, it was really dark. We arrived and my mother gave me and Taylor,her room. She bunked with my grandmother in her room. I started cleaning a lot, almost rearranging the house, dusting, moving books, etc. I even went out back and started clean the chicken coop.

I remember moving from the bed to the bath, and almost as if the center area of the bedroom became a place where I danced and moaned and wailed, it felt extremely primitive. I remember feeling like a dragon, a monkey, a cow and a lion and how I felt these animals were opening the gates for me and all I had to do was open my mouth and let my voice be heard. Taylor slept most of the time, I felt there wasn’t really anything he could do for me. That I had to do it and I preferred knowing he was taking care of himself by sleeping. The main bathroom with the tub was in my grandmothers room, so I went from our room to hers. The bath became my safe haven, and gave me a lot of strength. I remember laying in the luke warm water, talking to my baby, letting them know that when they decide to come, that is the most perfect time and that I was in no rush whatsoever and how excited we were to meet them. At the wee hours of the early morning, I had the urge to poop. And it felt like I needed to poop the entire world with everyone on it. I begged Taylor to hold a bucket behind me to catch this “world’. I almost started to feel panicked inside because wow, I really had to poop and no matter much I tried, nothing came out. I got in shower, sat on toilet. The toilet gave me a lot of ease and almost instantly calmed me down. I finally moved to the bed and got on my hands and knees, and Taylor was behind me. He told me when to push, and he told me the louder I was, the more I opened. The feeling of fire was so surreal and present. I pushed when he told me. I remember looking down and seeing the head emerge, and I couldn’t tell if I was crying or the baby was. I felt I was down there too, being birthed. I’m on the bed, pushing when this sweet man gave me the go, and listening to my body, and our baby plops out onto the bed. Three or four pushes, there is a new human. Water, blood, baby, all of the beautiful things that hold a human together. This precious baby, just roughly sunrise, arriving into our Earthly plane. Taylor says, “she’s a girl.”. The cord is somehow wrapped around my thigh and I feel disoriented. We move from the bed, Taylor holding our precious daughter and I kneel right near the big windows. The sky is pink and covered in dew, the outside is springing forth with hundreds of oak trees and the birds are singing, it feels like heaven has finally come back to earth. The world is just waking up. A few seconds from moving to the windows, my placenta plops out onto the carpet. It looks alien, it looks like a forest, covered in blood and I am now a mother. We didn’t really have much awareness on delayed cord clamping or more so the deep awareness of how important it was. I feel now we kind of rushed through this process and could have waited a bit longer, to insure all nutrients were received. We tied the cord with this colorful string, which I now think is meant for embroidery and after maybe five minutes we cut. After we felt settled, we grabbed some quilts and went into the living room. Everyone was still asleep, and Taylor laid on the couch with our sweet baby. Around nine o’clock my mother and grandma came out into the living room. Single file, one by one, sleepy eyes still. I remember hearing my mom say “Oh my fucking god.” In disbelief that while they slept soundly, a new spirit had arrived here not just on planet earth but in the house that they were both in. I always have thought, what a treat, to wake up and a new person is waiting to greet you. They both came and kneeled near the couch. I remember my grandma grabbing some clay to mold our babies foot.

I like remembering that my grandmother wanted to press her foot into clay. How something in that, seems so solid and present. Something about my childs foot, clay and my grandmothers hands seem so perfect together. My daughter took her first breath in that house and my grandmother took her last breath in that house. Two birds, earthbound, covered in clay. When I say the birth of a thousand honeybees, I mean it. My daughters name is Lorelei Honeybees. My daughter lived to be One years young. What a great age to live to be and become. One, wholeness, nothing missing, all components there and spinning a web of a million galaxies. She took her last breath by water on February 3rd, 2016 on my friends small farm, in a precious little town in California, called Garden Farms. I grew up on this land, being wild and free, chasing geese and picking flowers and dancing in the trees, running ramped down the long road, past the creeks and big pecan trees. This little plot of land screams life, it is wild and full of permaculture of heart and soul. Lorelei was quite fascinated with this bucket that collected rain water. Sometimes parents aren’t born with enough eyes. I cry as I write this now, because the amount of oceans my heart has sailed through are bigger then all the earths water. Grief is an interesting teacher, one that comes and goes. I would consider it to be just as free as love.

I remember the day I left my daughter. There were a lot of little signs that I see now were telling me something much bigger then I could imagine was going to happen. Lorelei had one of those sweet little amber necklaces. She somehow took it off some days before, and hid it. I remember thinking that morning while we ate breakfast, “she is supposed to wear it forever!” and soon after she comes tumbling down the hall, into the kitchen holding her necklace and I help her put it back on. She kept pushing mason jars into the bathtub, as Taylor showered, like “hey guys!”. I had just gotten a job at a little health food store and was so excited that I would be making good money, and I would be able to pamper my daughter with treats and goodies and take her to new places. I remember, looking at her while I was leaving to go, Taylor was holding her. I felt SO SAD, and I tried to talk myself out of it, “your just going to work.” But I felt like my wold was ending, and Lorelei just looked at me smiling and saying “bye” while waving, and usually I’m not the person she wants going anywhere, it was usually not easy for her to be separate from me. I’m her person. I take the words bye with heavy heart. Around 9 in the morning, my sweet friend Karyn, whose land it is we were living on is at my new job. I remember feeling excited to see someone I knew at my work, I wondered what she was getting there. Her and a women who is her neighbor were there to take me to the hospital, I didn’t have any fear, I didn’t know what was happening. All I know is that an accident happened. While driving to the hospital, I just wanted my baby back in my belly, where I know all things are safe, and nothing can harm her.

We get to the hospital, a man who looks like he has tried to save many lives comes in, bags under his eyes, a man who I would say is pretty desensitized, but most call him a doctor. He tells me my daughter did not make it and walks away. I remember wailing, yelling, running, but my feet couldn’t go anywhere because the walls were closing in. I felt I was meeting death. I felt boxed in, and entirely alone in this strange new feeling, no escape. That I really have to be with this. I felt confused. I felt like a child who was playing and I had this precious teddy bear, and some big person, reaches down and yanks it from me and pushes me down onto the asphalt and just walks away, without telling me anything.

Taylor wasn’t at the hospital yet, and I remember sitting alone in this room, and eventually the nurses said they needed it so I got up. I called my mom, I called my best friend, Taylors mom. I called everyone, trying to find some sort of rescue from this but I only gifted them sorrow. Everyone came and eventually Taylor came. It was raining, and I saw him getting dropped off, I stood out there with my hands open to embrace him. He said he was scared that I would hate him but I felt nothing but love. I felt that my heart had been really broken open, smashed, just open enough for me to be able to receive love fully – that only when my world had been destroyed did love come in to greet me.

Eventually we were asked to go in and see her body. An vessel is nothing without a soul. I felt really calm looking at her, and kissed her little head and touched forehead. Taylor sobbed uncontrollably, and two officers overlooked us, from behind the plastic curtain. They had remorse in their eyes. I knew they probably witnessed this daily, but it didn’t feel any less sacred having them there. I mean, even when you see the body of a beloved one, it does not make it fact in your mind. Death is a really interesting force. I felt sad my daughter had to die alone, and I wasn’t there for her. I felt and still feel saddness that she took her last breath without me, that she even had to take her last breath at all. To really see that we as souls are angels, we are just in these bodies. My daughter was not as precious dead as she was alive, and I mean that, whatever we loved about her, whatever made her glow, whatever it was that people just wanted to be near her, was no longer there. It was not her body, it was not her little hands or big eyes, her fast moving legs. It was something beyond the body.

We are all apart of some divine communion-ship, one that sometimes I forget, but I believe each moment has purpose and is delicate in its creation. We are always unfolding and folding into ourselves over and over again. We are always relearning love, and I learn each time love is a very vast angelic being, who is not always the same and sometimes this love is tough, sometimes its centered and calm, sometimes its fierce, but it is always love. Some days I am a different person, and I know that love is sometimes different as well. I am still learning to love.