On Redemption Birth

In my circles, every once in a while a discussion comes up around redemption birth, sometimes during and sometimes in response to a circle. This page is written with those in mind who either asked if a redemption birth is needed for their healing, or who have contemplated this silently. 

If you’ve had a redemption birth and it felt amazing for you, I’m absolutely happy for you and celebrate this. This email is not to diminish your experience in any way, and please do view your birth as transformative, valuable, formative and equally real. This newsletter may still hold some real gems for you to deepen your birth and matrescence journey. (Or you could simply skip this one.) 

A redemption birth can feel deeply healing: beautiful, empowering, profoundly different, and it can deeply change the way we relate to what happened before. I don’t want to take that away from anyone. A redemption birth can be a welcome experience. But I don’t believe it is required as that transformation can happen without the second birth taking responsibility for that transformation. 

What I’m really diving into is the possibility that we don’t need a particular kind of birth at all in order for transformation and integration to happen. Please follow along with my thought process and rabbit holes. :)

I have to start here; oftentimes when we hold a question that really matters, it finds resolution not by finding the literal answer to the question. The question dissolves in the journey of looking for the answer. The need for an answer sometimes can also be blown away by adjusting our perspective. For example, worrying about falling off the flat earth is completely removed when you switch to assuming the earth is round. I also want to be honest that this journey of a deep question often takes a couple of years (or even decades). I actually don’t want to rob anyone of any such valuable journey and so if this newsletter resonates, I hope you don’t abandon your journey, and instead use it as a little inspiration. I’m not here to preach you my answer to your question; I am here to inspire you on your journey to your own answers. 

I don’t think I come into this question about the need for redemption births neutral, and I have to preface this newsletter with owning that. When it comes to wondering about the importance of a redemption birth; I’ve taken that journey. One could say I had a redemption birth, because my first son’s birth was an experience that I perceived as traumatic, and my youngest son’s birth was one that I experienced as beautiful and quick. I even mentioned how this was such a redemption to my spouse and midwife in the first 2 days postpartum. 

I think many of you are familiar with how I changed my opinion on that only within a couple days. The pairing of such a beautiful experience with such a traumatic one, while having held the intention of a beautiful and peaceful home birth for both children, triggered such a descent of grief and guilt, which was much deeper and more painful than the traumatic birth itself.  

So now that we have established some parameters around my exploration of redemption births, I would like to open it up by adding that trying to simply answer the question whether a redemption birth is needed after an undesired birth often ends up in an ugly tangle of how to do birth ‘right’. 
I’ve been trained in debriefing birth stories via midwife Pam England’s Birth Story Medicine courses. And it became quickly clear there is no such thing as a right birth, which then immediately in this world of polarity also indicates there is no such thing as a wrong birth. What a relief! What happened is what happened and how we feel about it is determined by our perspective. 

We also started off the courses with learning about Kinsugi, a Japanese tradition of glueing precious, broken ceramics back together with a gold or silver epoxy. They perceive the new version as improved as it’s more unique: the cracks cannot be replicated and are now adorned with precious metals. (At first I really didn’t understand why we had to learn about broken dishes with an important topic like birth needing integration, until that perspective became clear.)

Birth not having a ‘right’ version can be a really big jump for our brain and psyche, after growing up in a world where we are unconsciously trained to be good little boys and girls. In that limited framework, right and wrong definitely exist. Even if we don’t use it with our children, because we’re aware of that dynamic, oftentimes it seeps in elsewhere, like how we treat ourselves while parenting - or in our house how we talk to the dog haha - good dog when she's sweet vs bad dog when she rolls in dead fish. 

We are swimming in a cultural soup that is intentionally flavoured with ‘if I do all the inner work, get the right location, I surround myself with the right people, and I am physically fit and limber, then I will have a good birth’. Our cultural framework is intentional, because having to 'do it right' sells anything and everything that supports that right thing, including right birth. Having to heal from what went wrong also sells anything and everything. It keeps us intellectual and rational, in our minds, and keeps us out of our bodies where we feel life with all its ups and downs and highlights and disappointments. Before you think I am saying we shouldn’t pay for doulas to support birth; there is a difference between hiring a doula because you’re afraid it will go wrong without them there (or increase the chances of it going right), and hiring a doula because in your pregnant body you feel that wish to be held by others as you navigate birthing. 

I would like to say that the desire to learn and to grow from experiences is beautiful and necessary. However, it needs to have its roots in our bodies, not in our minds - where right and wrong lives. Pregnancy, birth and matrescence are extraordinary times of learning and becoming - our bodies literally rewire for us to do so. This phase will change our perspectives, our beliefs, our understanding of our bodies, our relationships, our boundaries, our sense of ourselves and our way of being in the world. However, we do need to keep something in mind… Knowing more and allowing this phase to transform us does not guarantee a particular outcome.

We can be more informed and have a difficult birth. We can be deeply embodied and encounter circumstances we never imagined. We can advocate beautifully for ourselves and still experience something we would never have chosen. It is easy to understand that when unforeseen circumstances indicate this, however I am inviting you to consider it when you feel you could or should have controlled the outcome more. 

I think this ‘right vs wrong’ is where the idea of redemption birth can become complicated, on a deeper level. There can be an unconscious or sometimes blatantly loud assumption underneath it that says: ‘Now I know better, so I can do better’. And if birth didn’t go well, that outcome then becomes a score card for the aforementioned checklist of right location, people, fitness etc. The reality is that birth isn’t a checklist item, and it isn’t an event that we can make a checklist for with guaranteed outcomes. 

So then what? Is there no point in preparing for birth? Is there no way we can participate in the creation that is about to unfold during birth? I have so far built a case that almost indicates there isn’t. Hang in there. 

I have approached Pam England with the hopes of doing a Birth Story Listening session with her. In response to my email she wrote to me about whether the birth of my son needed healing, or whether the birth WAS the healing - and that really, really resonated for me. It is why I never booked that session with her, and instead signed up for her training. It is why I am offering Birth Story Integration sessions now. 

Ok, I am taking a bit of a rabbit hole side step here.

Traditional hunters can see which animal will be killed by the predator, as they say there is a soul transmission that happens, not just food. There are times when a wolf shows up and no animal even runs away, and the wolf never initiates a hunt, despite clearly having been looking for food in previous actions. Other times two animals lock eyes, and despite all the efforts, the prey knows that the predator will succeed at feeding. The traditional hunter will say that this moment is actually dictated by the prey animal - not the predator, and the predator responds to that exchange. We are so disconnected from this experience and wisdom, even me while buying meat from a pasture raised, grass-fed, ‘all the things’ farm. Yet I have read stories of family homestead farmers talking exactly about this - the family discusses which animal will be killed for food in the evening, and the next morning that is exactly which animal has separated itself from the herd and is waiting at the fence. Not just once, but repeatedly. Because I don’t hunt or have my own farmstead, I have never had this experience, but I find it fascinating to read about this. It makes me consider hunting for our food even more. 

Somehow for me, this traditional hunting and farming information is an important piece to hold onto, when talking about the meaning of birth. For me this wisdom combined with my experience of how I integrated my 2 opposing births, creates curiosity if we may hold a too simplistic view on who is birthing who at birth. The mother is physically birthing the child into the world - that is something we all cannot deny (whether she then continues her role as mother or not). However, I also think the child is birthing the mother in the woman giving birth (or if applicable, the person carrying out the mother role). Not only that, I think there is a relationship that is being birthed, and this birthing of relationship and roles holds transmissions. 

What if we not only have a soul contract to teach our children in this lifetime, but what if we also have a soul contract with our child as our teacher? And what if the birth was part of this? For me personally, holding the question whether my son gifted me this difficult birth so I could grow into the mother he needed for his own journey, is what eventually allowed me to let go of the crippling grief and guilt. Not over a long period of time - the moment I asked that question it dissipated completely. I can never answer that question with certainty, yet holding that possibility was enough for me. 

For me, my first son’s transmission was centering myself for the benefit of the whole family - requiring better boundaries, and my second child brought a transmission of patience and right timing, but also a curriculum on guilt. In hindsight I see these show up in pregnancy already, and I see them in the years following birth. Could I have completed some or all of this lesson before birth on boundaries and centering myself, and therefore impacted the outcome of my first son’s birth? I’d like to think so in my rational brain but in my body I’m not so sure. 

And not in a desperate way, but with a bit of an entertained chuckle. It’s hard to explain but there is a trust deep in me, which says it’s all perfect even when I think I failed and my perfectionist mindset has a new and improved checklist for future births. ;-)

I’ve spoken about how I would never do this work, if it wasn’t for my own 2 opposing births and the descent that followed, and that means I wouldn’t have impacted others in the positive way I have. I therefore don’t know that I would have it any other way. That work is immensely meaningful and important to me. I would fill my days with it, if I could. 

I also see how each and every human has ‘initiations’ along their lifetime. For some that doesn’t happen till much later, yet for many there is something in their childhood already. And because I can see why I experienced that birth the way I did, I can now also see why perhaps my child went through this experience. Perhaps this was their initiation for how their life needs to unfold, starting the major themes of their curriculum, and the underlying red thread in their life's tapestry. 

So if I don’t think anyone needs a redemption birth, then how do I help people integrate their births? And in particular, how do I prepare pregnant women for their next birth, when they integrate their last, traumatic birth with me in a session? 

I believe we can do this integration by meeting an experience fully. We can grieve what was lost, feel what is still there, understand what we understand now, and allow the experience to transform us. And transformation doesn’t mean getting a different ending to a story that already happened. The only way to place a past experience rightly is to feel what we still need to feel about it, because we didn’t feel it fully at the time, or because it started a deep change within that is still ongoing. Not naming the emotions, although that is a starting point, but experiencing the sensations. Every moment can transform us, if only we meet it fully - in the body. There is not much rationality to it, other than that it is easeful for the mind to be able to articulate some of the transformation. 

It is that transformation inside the body, on a formative level, that will help pregnant mothers step into the next birth feeling fully prepared. They will understand better what kind of support they need, what kind of environment, and they also step into more trust that if things need to change, that they can meet that also. That it doesn’t need to define them or their child. 

And it is that transformation inside the body that will allow for new perspectives to surface about the birth that didn’t go as intended. In principle, our posture is the reason for our sensations, and we make sense of them by naming them as an emotion. Our posture is the result of our nervous system responding to our environment. Sometimes, the inner environment weighs more than the outer environment. So when we are able to deeply feel and shift memories, we can become more present and more responsive to what is happening in front of us. This is why I absolutely LOVE the works by Stanley Keleman on posture (formative psychology) and Robert Augustus Masters on emotions. 

I would like to address one more thing. I know the difference of how it feels after a traumatic birth (collapse is a quick word) and a beautiful birth (empowering would be the quick word here). After all these pages of writing - how do I address this? 

With the integration sessions now I’ve done I have seen that this empowerment is always there. Sometimes we need longer to access it, yet you’re never missing out on it. And I will say that, like the descent that is part of Matrescence; what a beautiful example you’ll give your children to not receive immediate gratification and yet have a longer journey to access that empowerment. 

So what about the collapse? My question is, what if that is exactly what is needed, and equally what if it is not worse than empowerment? The cultural soup we’re in quickly wants you to go to what is more desired, oftentimes missing the point of why something was the way it was in the first place. If we did wonder about that, our actions of wonder would allow the space that is needed for things to transform naturally. 

If we watch ballerinas on the stage, performing all sorts of movements, we always applaud the loudest to those proud and upright jumps in the air. They are definitely so impressive and elegant, sturdy in their form. However, we find their movements that resemble a fetus position, all bend forward and much more elastic in their form, as equally moving to our experience as third party spectators. We don’t judge those movements as wrong or bad - we see them as part of the full performance. 

The collapse I experienced after the first birth allowed me to go inward. I have to admit that when I felt so empowered in the 2 days after the second birth, I felt completely dislodged and disembodied - I tried my best to somehow harness and harvest this, and have felt that I didn’t succeed at that. I am still wondering if I somehow could have done that differently, where I experienced that empowerment and simultaneously felt more rooted in myself. 

I was incredibly grounded into myself after that first birth - I had viscerally felt how my whole family suffered when I didn't centre myself and had the healthy boundaries that come along with that. I could feel this wasn’t just a wonderful insight - I could feel the shift in my body happening. It was an incredibly powerful lesson about being moved to change, versus pushing for change. Of being deeply moved to change by an experience without having to intellectualize the process with research, action steps and plans. 

Alright... This is a lot to take in. I wish to be complete, despite there being room for more and for improvement. Still, I am leaving it at this and hope there was lots to ponder for you in here. I hope, rather than this being some kind of a manual for you, that this write up inspires you to think about your own experience with the question of whether a redemption birth is needed to heal from birth. 

• What has your own experience of life and birth shown you? 

• What is your own felt sense, rather than your ideology, when you think of a redemption birth? 

• What was moved inside your body as you read my words about redemption birth?

I hope this was helpful!