I ask every woman I work with to begin meditating for 3 minutes a day.

Cue the horror! :) Most women resist, which is completely normal, and kind of the point!

What they don't know is these three minutes can make all the difference between a painful, slow labor and a smooth feel-good birth.

Meditation forces us to slow everything down and focus within, a practice our monkey brain and every fiber of our over-worked, busy-busy-busy, people pleasing, productivity-identified self resists. 

When we begin to meditate several things often happen:

1. we feel uncomfortable in our own skin, wanting to get up and get away
2. we get lost in our thoughts and judgements and feel like we are failing
3. we start wondering how much longer until the timer goes off

Whenever a mama shares the experience of any of the above, I say, that's GREAT! Keep going! These are all normal experiences AND exactly the kind of internal struggles we encounter during labor and delivery, which is why meditation...

Yesterday, waking to the early morning light, I rolled over to my right side, stretching out the aches and stiffness of the night. As I moved, I felt a familiar earie warm fuzziness flood my body, and instantly the world began to spin, flipping around and around with horrifying consistency that immediately made me want to throw up. I quickly rolled back over onto my left side, briefly acknowledged the feelings of frustration and alarm, and did the number one thing I knew I had to do to stop the spinning.

Discovering the world suddenly spinning is one of the last things you might expect during pregnancy, and a terrifying experience when you've never had vertigo before.

The first time I experienced vertigo was during my first pregnancy and I completely panicked. I was sure something was wrong with me or the baby and immediately called my midwife and regular doctors ready for a trip to the ED. They assured me that vertigo in pregnancy was normal and unalarming, and although deeply...

Hey, I get it. Having a baby comes with A LOT of expenses. And if it's your first time, you are setting up your nursery and likely already overwhelmed by the choices, options, and sheer inundation of "stuff" that comes with having a baby.

So, why pay for a birth preparation program?

This is the difference that makes the difference.

When I felt my first wave (contraction) I remember thinking, "I thought it was supposed to be like a period cramp! This is not a period cramp! This is not anything like anyone has told me it would be!". By the time I arrived at the birthing center I was doubled over, barely able to walk, already fatigued and giving up. By the time I got to 7cm I was sobbing, begging for an epidural, and past the point of breaking. I kept thinking, "why haven't I passed out yet?? This isn't fair, in normal circumstances I would have passed out by now!"

Let me tell you right now, I had thought I was prepared before that first moment. I was an experienced meditator, strong...

Years ago, as an operations manager at JP Morgan, I couldn't remember what it felt like to be in my body anymore.

I remember sitting at the edge of the boardwalk at Stinson Beach, looking out at the crashing waves and the laughing people, and just for a second, I tried to feel *relaxed*.

I kept trying to drop into my body and feel the release of all the worries and anxieties and just melt into the gorgeous surroundings and the warmth of the sun.

And I COULDN’T.

It was like I was trying desperately to get back into my body, but I was locked out, and the more I tried to relax the more I was terrified I would never be able to feel “me” again.

I sat very still, but I was a ball of tension inside and the tears welled up as I held my face taut against them.

We can get so caught up in trying to get it all done, or just survive the day, that we forget how to actually be *present*.

You take a quick sip of coffee or tea and run out the door, already feeling behind for all...

Hands on mine. Black no-space swirling close and intimate around me. Everything outside melts away and I am deep below the surface.

Jeremy is near, I can feel his structural support as he holds my hand tight, his presence deep and affirming. The weight of my belly is buoyed up by the deep water and I am loving the soft relaxing warmth. The nurse fumbles around in the water with a heart rate monitor, pressing the metal and plastic onto my belly. Searching with the instrument and her voice.

“He’s not there”, I thought. I sensed him deep in the birth canal, nearly crowing, his presence closer and closer to the surface. Each surge took over my entire body, the chthonic motion drawing my insides down toward the earth, while a deep resonant rumble rose up from my throat. 

Then, as if reaching a long sought threshold, I let my focus go. Slumping against the side of the tub, I lifted my eyes to meet my love’s. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”...

I feel stirring next to me and peek my eyes through the dim light to see big eyes staring back at me. I groan, shush him, and roll over. I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to start the day. With a sigh I sit up and begin again: diaper change, hot cocoa, emails, keep the toddler from pushing the baby, put the baby down for a nap, nursing, soothing, feed the toddler, yell “for god’s sake!” while I try to work, make lunch, naptime…you get the picture. At the end of the day I feel like I’ve run a marathon and I just barely managed to get my overstrung, dead limbed, emotionally fraught body over the finish line, just in time for that elusive me time. Is my partner around? I’m not even sure I care at this point, I just want to be alone in silence until the sound of crying breaks the spell.

Is this motherhood?

I was recently reminded that there is a difference between the business of doing and the art of being. This has everything to...

There are so many labor and delivery preparation tools, books, methods, and teachers out there. Over the course of two pregnancies I’ve done my fair share of exploring. After all of that, I found that we can often get stuck in two places as we prepare.

The first place we can get stranded is in our head (really this one is the more evil of the two in my opinion). 

You start reading a book on labor – my favorites are Marie Mongan’s Hypnobirthing, Grantly Dick-Read’s Childbirth Without Fear, and Ina May Gaskin’s Spiritual Midwifery. All that fantastic information enters your head. You might learn about the way the muscles of the uterus work to move your baby out of your body, you might learn that pain in childbirth is actually a result of fear and subsequent tension, or you might read about relaxation techniques. Now all of that super juicy information (that we of course cover in beyond birthing!) is in your head, and if you leave it there, if...

I stepped in from the cold. Eight fresh inches on the road had made for an amusing 45 minute drive to the hospital. I stamped my boots and greeted the woman at the window.

“I’m here to have my baby, I called ahead.”

The woman looked me up and down and said, “okay, well I can’t let your husband in unless you’re staying.” Ugh, covid.

“Ok, I’m staying, shouldn’t be long now.”

She eyed me closely and said, “If you are in labor, you’re the calmest woman in labor I’ve ever seen.” 

I smiled and adjusted my crown. Flowers encircled my head and amniotic fluid dripped down my legs as I stood in the fluorescent white tiled waiting room. I felt radiant, like a glowing quaking power source had turned on inside of me and I was eager to drop in deeper.

A short time later Jeremy and I were settled into a warm quiet room, and I closed my eyes as the midwife checked my initial progress....

“Persephone.” 

He looked intently at me when I described the wave I felt as “earth moving through me”.

“She’s the goddess of fertility sweetheart. She was the essence of the maiden. Then the earth opened up beneath her and Hades took her to the Underworld where she transformed into the Queen.”

Woah. I unwound my hair tie and ran my fingers through my hair. I had read the myth of Persephone and Hades as a child, and thought it was sad that she had to go live with the dead for half the year. Having been through labor, the story now took on a new vibrancy. When my contractions started I felt like I was being dragged, terrified, down into the underworld against my will. I was fighting to resurface, but the only way back was through.

But hang on a second. What would it feel like to go willingly? What if I, like Persephone, fell in love with Hades and relished going down into this dark, mysterious place of non-living, where I held power and...

“It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t meant to, was it, doctor?”” 

Dr. Grantly Dick-Read had asked a woman who had just given birth why she had refused the routine chloroform he had offered her (chloroform preceded epidurals as an anesthetic during childbirth in the 1940’s). Her question left him perplexed and initiated his deep research into the nature of pain in childbirth. 

When I read this sentence, I tasted it over and over again. I said it aloud to see what it sounded like. I stared at the words. I tried to feel the experience of her words in my body that had suffered so much during my first labor.

“I could feel so much life force on each rush I couldn’t believe it. I wondered, is it this heavy for everyone? I guessed so and that blew my mind.”

This is the account of a woman attended by renowned midwife Ina May Gaskin. Her words echoed the deep feeling of heavy earth like energy that had moved like a wave through my...