This offering enters the raw, luminous hours of labor—where creation, courage, fear, and love converge. It is the sacred story of Seren’s birth, and the moment my world split open into something new.
(If you’re new to Eclosion: An Artist’s Path to Power and Peace, start at the beginning. Or visit my Memoir Hub for a full table of contents with links.)
Birth of a Star
Shon and I celebrated my thirty-seventh birthday on August 16, 2016, with dinner out and a walk along the Salish Sea, my belly uncomfortably large, and both of us deeply in love. A few days later we attended a partner pre-natal yoga class together, Shon and I connecting deeply as we practiced relaxing, opening poses in a room full of expectant couples. At the end, the yoga teacher, also pregnant, asked each of us to share how we were feeling about our pregnancies.
Ready.
Ready to become the mother I didn’t think I would get to be.
I wake in darkness with a stirring inside. A tightening. Wanting these first moments to simply be with my experience, and knowing it could be a long day, I let Shon sleep. I lay in the dark, resting, noting new sensations. By the time the first light of day streams through our windows, the contractions are undeniable.
When Shon wakes, I cuddle up next to him to share the news—our baby is coming. I had been feeling the baby would be early, but Shon, not quite ready to become a father, was sure she would be late. We both stay calm, even as apprehension beats beneath the surface. Shon calls into work, then begins timing my contractions: somewhat irregular, several minutes apart, already intense.
We call our midwife, Constance, who tells us to stop timing the contractions. Instead, she suggests I rest and eat as much as possible. But there is no way I am going to sleep with the baby on her way.
After breakfast we walk together through our forest home. Taking the trail above our cabin, we head up the hill through the forest. I feel a contraction coming and pause, squatting low to the ground, Shon’s hand on my shoulder, as the wave rushes through me, tightening, tightening, tightening and then release. As we near the top of the hill, there’s a loud rustling. We look over in time to see the herd of Roosevelt elk that frequents Delphi valley disappearing into the forest. All but one. One female elk stands her ground. The Elk looks right into me. Sensing my labor. Sharing this moment with another mother, I feel held by generations upon generations of mothers of all kinds. After a long moment she turns and follows the herd but doesn’t go far.
I try taking a nap in the cabin again but am too restless. We’d planned to go to the Love our Local festival in town that day and I’d picked out an outfit that would show off my huge baby belly. We are staying home today, but we still don our festival clothes, deciding to do an impromptu photo shoot for the last day of my pregnancy.
It’s already so hot outside as we pause next to a grandmother redcedar tree, standing guard over our cabin. As a contraction takes hold, I lean into her, feeling her strength ground me.
We walk into the full sun of the meadow, the heat boiling as we take photos in the tall golden grass. The hot climb back to the cabin leaves me exhausted as we retreat to the shade, pausing multiple times as contractions wash through me.
Back in our cabin, Constance arrives to check my progress. My friend Jen arrives as well, to stand in as our doula, offering her support during the birth. After looking at my cervix, and massaging a tight area, Constance leaves, suggesting Jen do the same so that I can relax. It’s my first birth and she expects a pause in my labor.
Jen however, decides to stay, wanting me to feel comfortable with her presence before active labor starts. And start it does. After the hike in the heat and the massage of my cervix, the contractions intensify almost immediately. Jen stays by my side as Shon begins to heat water and set the birth tub up next to our bed.
Restless, I circle the cabin, out the front door, up the short trail to the driveway and down again, onto the back porch until the next wave hits me. I squat, resting my perineum on an upright Yoga block, which eases the pain marginally. The intensity of the contractions grows and grows until I am having contractions inside of contractions—so intense I feel like I will explode as wave upon wave of sensation builds to a peak, stronger than I think is possible. It must break. Instead—another wave rises inside the first. Stretching. Contracting. Pushing. I am coming apart. I want Shon to hold me, to keep me from tearing into a thousand pieces. Finally, beyond when I know I can’t endure another moment, the double wave crests, recedes, leaving me gasping for air.
Shon calls Constance to tell her the baby is coming soon. She assumes we are just being anxious first-time parents, but then she hears my guttural screams through the phone and says she will be out shortly. She also says I am not allowed to get into the tub until she gets there.
“Where the F is Constance? I want in that damn tub!” I yell, not the first time. Another, and then another contraction tears through me. Finally, Constance walks in, wrapped in calm. She takes one look at me and knows it is time. The tub, however, is not ready. Shon, worried the water would cool too much, made it too hot. Jen and Shon remove buckets of hot water and add cold to the tub. Jen had severely hurt her knee a year or so earlier and I check in on her, making sure she is okay to carry water. She gently laughs at me for being worried about her in the midst of my labor.
I so want in that tub. I pace across the narrow four by eighteen-foot deck. It has no railing and is a long drop to the forest floor. Jen worries I’ll fall as I pace back-and-forth, back-and-forth, but Constance tells her to let me be, knowing this is part of my process, knowing each footstep is placed with instinct.
The Elk and her herd from this morning have gathered in witness, their presence steadying me as I watch them bed down in the meadow below our cabin, silent sentinels of the forest.
Finally, as the sun touches the trees on the horizon I lower myself into the tub. Descending into the water, my muscles begin to relax. Shon slips behind me, holding me as the waves come again and again, washing through me. I can’t get a break, not a moment of rest. Constance guides me to push, but slowly, allowing my muscles time to stretch and not tear. I lean into Shon as I push and he holds us both, our unborn child and I, with his strength and solidity.
The last rays of the setting sun slant through the west facing windows, landing on my focal point, a painting of a pregnant woman birthing the stars. I breathe into the strength of the universe, represented in lavender and red, bathed in the fiery light of the late summer sun. Then all breath leaves me in a cry as old as time as another wave rushes through me and I bear down.
Shon was planning to catch the baby, but I needed him where he was, holding me so I wouldn’t come apart. I feel myself breaking open, stretching in ways that can’t be possible. I reach into the water and feel the top of her head. She is coming.
“I’m scared!” I cry.
“What are you afraid of?” Constance asks.
In a wail, “I’m scared I won’t like being a mom!”
While I know there is no going back, voicing my fear lets it flow through me and I push again. Constance notes the baby’s heart rate is dropping and changes tactics. She needs to come out.
Now.
The light of the day mostly gone. A candle by my painting. I imagine myself as the woman birthing the stars. I push with all I have and cry out our baby’s name—a name we haven’t yet agreed upon, but was hers nonetheless.
“Seren!”
In a gush of release her head comes through. One more push and her body slides from my womb, into the warm waters of the world. Constance immediately pulls her free of the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around her neck.
As I lay against Shon panting, Constance lays our baby on my chest, covering her with a warm, wet cloth, saying, “Call your baby.”
I am too dazed and overwhelmed to find words and it is Shon who calls to her, “Hi baby! Welcome baby!”
Hearing his voice, she takes her first breath, crying out for the world to hear.
A star is born.
The rest of the night was a post birth haze. Jen holding Seren while Constance tells me I’m bleeding and need to take Pitocin, but she only has it in an alcohol tincture. Me deciding to take it, rinsing the taste of alcohol from my mouth immediately. The awe I felt gazing at Seren’s perfection—her face, her eyes, her perfect nose and toes—while nursing her for the first time. Ravenously devouring the plate of fruit, cheese, nuts, and olives Jen handed me. Almost passing out on the composting toilet Shon brought into our cabin while Constance checked over and weighed Seren. The three of us lying in bed, Seren skin to skin on Shon’s chest, fading off into sleep as the others leave. Seren waking almost immediately, as we began the first of many sleepless nights as parents.