FREEBIRTH in a glance | A Birth Keeper's Diary

[...] When I entered the room I felt magnetised by her gaze. The familiar gaze of a woman who walked in between worlds, to birth herself as a mother and birth her baby. A gaze only able to be captured in those precious moments during and after birth; its is not just joy, nor just wander, surprise nor just love… ITS BIRTH which includes all.

This is how the cord looks when the placenta has delivered all the valuable blood it has to give to the baby. This picture was taken about 4 hours after birth. The baby took her time to adjust to her new 'out of the womb' environment; she didn't take the breast straight away, she did not cry at all, just made the most adorable baby sounds and actually fell asleep whiles still on her mum's chest, before she slowly started to explore the breast.

🕔 5:45 am

I received the call that I was anticipating for awhile... ’My waters broke’, said the woman.

‘I can still speak normally and the surges are manageable’. We agreed to call again in 30 minutes. I was still in bed, but my mind was already awake, going through the facts; ‘second baby, the waters broke, which will probably speed things up, I have to drive for more than an hour to get there, she is alone … I had a strong feeling that I should start getting ready to leave the house as soon as possible.

🕔 7:45 am

I was 1 min away from the house when she called me saying ‘She is here, my baby is here!'

When I entered the room I felt magnetised by her gaze. The familiar gaze of a woman who walked in between worlds, to birth herself as a mother and birth her baby. A gaze only able to be captured in those precious moments during and after birth; its is not just joy nor just wander, surprise nor just love… IT IS BIRTH, which includes it all.

Through her gaze I felt her raw, unapologetic, yet soft essence. She was ‘striped off’ from social restrains or any ideas how birth supposed to look like.

She was sitting naked on the floor, leaning against a sofa dressed with ‘signs of birth’, holding her newborn in her arms. The room felt like a temple in which a mystery took place. The floor, wet from poo, blood, amniotic liquid - ‘fluids’ that define our human-ness… An ‘undomesticated’ chaos that has become rare in our civilised, shameful view towards the animal nature of the human species… I prepared a space for her to sit and slowly helped her to get up; she looked at me and said’;