A story for birth
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Introduction: This is a personalised story about a trouble free vaginal home birth of a third child. For those of you who had more difficult births, forceps deliveries or Caesarean births, see if you can add your own healing images of what happened to you. In this story the baby comes out of the little baby house (womb/uterus) through a little round door (cervix). Within this imagery, was your doorway too small, was the door blocked or stuck? Or did the child’s limbs get tangled in the doorway? In a Caesarean another way to get out of the house has to be found. Usually if we can’t get out of a door we will try to get out of a window. Perhaps you had the doctor open a window to take the baby out.
By working with images in this way, mothers can not only ‘normalise’ the picture of a complicated birth for their children but sometimes the images can provide healing for the parents, alleviating the stress and disappointment often felt when a natural birth had been prepared for but the birth got complicated.
This story also encompasses the idea of a spiritual world and reincarnation. Again you might want to alter it to suit your own beliefs. Some other beautiful images for this birth process can be found in stories in Rahima Baldwin’s “You are your Child’s First Teacher” (Celestial Arts), and Joan Salter’s “The Incarnating Child” (Floris).
For those with more complicated birth stories, for example using IVF, a donor for sperm, adoption, you will have to work through what your story is. You may want to keep it very simple and open ended to start with and add to the detail of it at appropriate times as the child grows up. The important thing is to help the child to know, however they came, they are wanted and loved. There is more on this in the article ‘Womb to World’.
A story for birth
Once upon a time, in the starry heavens where humans live when they are not upon the earth, a very special person was preparing to come back to the earth to live once more. She talked about what her earthly tasks would be with her friends and teachers.
At last, she took up her golden crown and gathered her silver cloak around her. Then with her very own angel leading the way, she travelled once more to the earth. There they searched for her special family who would care for her while she grew up. She looked forward to meeting again with her own dear mama and papa and her sisters.
She found them in their little wooden house, set amongst the trees, where wattles were glowing yellow like the sun. Her parents were waiting, watching for signs of her coming and welcomed her joyously into their arms.
With their love for each other, her parents made the beginning of a tiny earth body for her to live in. This little body grew with the help of her angel in a little baby house in her mother’s tummy. It was warm and soft and snug in the little baby house. Her mama could rock her as she walked, and sing to her as she worked, and stroke her as she told her sisters all about her coming. Her family was so looking forward to the day when her little body would be big enough to be born.
Then at last the time seemed right, and the mama and the baby began their work to open the little round door leading from the baby house into the world.
When at last the door was open, the baby had to squeeze its way through the passage which led from the door out into the world between her mama’s legs. There the mama cradled the baby with her hands and took her up to snuggle warmly at her breast. The angels were there to welcome her too and they blessed all her helpers. Her family shone with the touch of the angels’ wings.
At first she could not do very much, except sleep, look quietly around or cry. Mama fed her at her breast, Papa nursed and burped her and her sisters sang to her and held her little hands. So she learnt to live inside her little earth body. Gradually she learned to sit and stand and walk and talk and explore the world around her.
Only at night in her dreams, was she able to visit once more the starry heavens from whence she had come.