Your sucking slows, glistening nipple slides out, staying close to your partly open lips. Your breathing regular and calm. Eyelids round, lashes interlocked. Silky, tousled hair. Your heartbeat and mine.
On the breast to sleep still at almost three, I am in no rush. This primordial connection overrides the trauma of your beginnings. A lon…
Your sucking slows, glistening nipple slides out, staying close to your partly open lips. Your breathing regular and calm. Eyelids round, lashes interlocked. Silky, tousled hair. Your heartbeat and mine.
On the breast to sleep still at almost three, I am in no rush. This primordial connection overrides the trauma of your beginnings. A longed-for, second baby…. your conception didn’t follow intimate lovemaking, but instead multiple medical interventions.
I even saw you and your sibling as multi-celled embryos magnified on a black and white monitor in a darkened room before you were placed back deep inside me. I willed you both to burrow into the walls of my womb; it was you alone who did.
I made sure your birth was far from any sterile labour ward. Riding waves of contractions in the fullness of our June garden on a balmy evening, I hugged trees and moaned at the sky. Then, into the warm water of a birthing pool in our kitchen and you emerged in your slimy, newborn way, strong and vital.
I savoured these moments every night when you drifted off gently by my side. I lay beside you, drinking in your smell, your little fingernails, your perfection.
You are grown now and away, but your room not much changed. I sometimes lie on your bed and stare at the clouds. I hug your pillow, close my eyes and am back briefly in those tender times.
Thank you so much for joining the project and with this deeply beautiful piece. Having only experienced two heavily medicalised deliveries - one emergency c-section, the other planned for my safety - I got deep vicarious joy from your description of you labouring among the trees at evening. And I admire your certainty and your focus. I'm bringing that now to the last days of my mother, who is just a foot away from me, who I've been sitting quietly with doing nothing else for hours this week. But I was always planning and striving during my children's babyhoods, even though I was with them most of the time.
Your piece is not only a beautiful description of a memory but a gentle teaching too: how could those of us reading you be that present, that attuned...
Here is your link and I hope some of the themes from the archive will interest you to write for too. All stay open.
Many thanks, Tanya. Life and death go together. Know you are savouring last few days of your mother; it's so hard, I know, to put your own life on hold while you await someone's death, but something you will never regret.
Eimear, I loved every moment of this memory! Our babies are truly the most precious of gifts and what an opportunity and presence of mind to birth away from the cold sterile hospital. I used to work as a birth doula and witnessed these natural births frequently but back then when you birthed, in many countries it wouldn't have been very common. I know it wasn't for me 40 years ago in a sleepy old village in Southern England. I do wish it had been different. It would have taken someone so aware, so present to know this is the way to birth (if one can of course, not all have the option and birthing centres have their place). A beautiful share x
Appreciate your kind words, Tracey. Home births not that common 20 years ago, or now, in rural Ireland but I was close enough to a hospital to consider it safe. It was my way of taking back the intimacy that lacked at conception. Sweet memories for sure (but I remember too some loneliness and many challenges of mothering).
You are most welcome. Yes, many sweet memories and definitely plenty of less than sweet. Challenging times, lots of opportunities for growth... a lifetime's work really.
Your sucking slows, glistening nipple slides out, staying close to your partly open lips. Your breathing regular and calm. Eyelids round, lashes interlocked. Silky, tousled hair. Your heartbeat and mine.
On the breast to sleep still at almost three, I am in no rush. This primordial connection overrides the trauma of your beginnings. A longed-for, second baby…. your conception didn’t follow intimate lovemaking, but instead multiple medical interventions.
I even saw you and your sibling as multi-celled embryos magnified on a black and white monitor in a darkened room before you were placed back deep inside me. I willed you both to burrow into the walls of my womb; it was you alone who did.
I made sure your birth was far from any sterile labour ward. Riding waves of contractions in the fullness of our June garden on a balmy evening, I hugged trees and moaned at the sky. Then, into the warm water of a birthing pool in our kitchen and you emerged in your slimy, newborn way, strong and vital.
I savoured these moments every night when you drifted off gently by my side. I lay beside you, drinking in your smell, your little fingernails, your perfection.
You are grown now and away, but your room not much changed. I sometimes lie on your bed and stare at the clouds. I hug your pillow, close my eyes and am back briefly in those tender times.
Thank you so much for joining the project and with this deeply beautiful piece. Having only experienced two heavily medicalised deliveries - one emergency c-section, the other planned for my safety - I got deep vicarious joy from your description of you labouring among the trees at evening. And I admire your certainty and your focus. I'm bringing that now to the last days of my mother, who is just a foot away from me, who I've been sitting quietly with doing nothing else for hours this week. But I was always planning and striving during my children's babyhoods, even though I was with them most of the time.
Your piece is not only a beautiful description of a memory but a gentle teaching too: how could those of us reading you be that present, that attuned...
Here is your link and I hope some of the themes from the archive will interest you to write for too. All stay open.
https://thecureforsleep.com/stay-this-moment/#eimeargallagher
Txx
Many thanks, Tanya. Life and death go together. Know you are savouring last few days of your mother; it's so hard, I know, to put your own life on hold while you await someone's death, but something you will never regret.
Sending love and warmth to you all.
Eimear, I loved every moment of this memory! Our babies are truly the most precious of gifts and what an opportunity and presence of mind to birth away from the cold sterile hospital. I used to work as a birth doula and witnessed these natural births frequently but back then when you birthed, in many countries it wouldn't have been very common. I know it wasn't for me 40 years ago in a sleepy old village in Southern England. I do wish it had been different. It would have taken someone so aware, so present to know this is the way to birth (if one can of course, not all have the option and birthing centres have their place). A beautiful share x
Appreciate your kind words, Tracey. Home births not that common 20 years ago, or now, in rural Ireland but I was close enough to a hospital to consider it safe. It was my way of taking back the intimacy that lacked at conception. Sweet memories for sure (but I remember too some loneliness and many challenges of mothering).
You are most welcome. Yes, many sweet memories and definitely plenty of less than sweet. Challenging times, lots of opportunities for growth... a lifetime's work really.
x
Wow, Eimear. So powerful, your story, that moment of birth and after, tearing up here! So evocative and beautiful. xs