4 years ago and yet I remember it like yesterday. I remember the feeling that something was happening within me but I so much resisted slowing down.

You see one of my constant lesson in life as a mama is to self care. To stop and take the time I need for myself – something I continue to work at each day.

However with Abbie sleeping after playgroup I was determined to put the shopping away and make dinner. I called Olly to say something was happening but I was still totally fine so not to come home. I said the same to my midwife. Yes i’d been through “27 hours of labour” for my first but the final 10 was with an epidural so to be honest, I had no idea of what a full blown contraction felt like. I remember thinking gosh this is intense but at the same time I thought this was just the beginning and I felt it was manageable.

So I’d cook, stirring the chicken pie and then checking on the vanilla ice cream, before leaning on the bench, head on my arms, moving my hips trying to alleviate the tightening I felt. Soon I could no longer stand for those peaks and would move to the lounge to bury my head in the pillows so I could make that deep ancient noise of a mama birthing her baby, allowing the sensations to release by my movement and sound.

It felt like a fast dance of inward seeking and then outward life, as I went back into the kitchen as if nothing had happened. Olly arrived and began a flurry of activity to set up and fill the birth pool. But I was meant to have this baby on land, water didn’t feel right.

Not long after my doula arrived I birthed my baby on my lounge floor. Totally surprised by the whole experience and yet strangely familiar. My midwife arrived in time to help me birth the placenta.

This birth.

Millie’s birth like all visits to the alter of birth changed me forever.

She awakened a part of me I didn’t know about.

A quiet voice that said things could be different.

This birth began an awakening of my truest self.