Anyone know of some good online forums for step mom help? Specifically to do with tips on dealing with the bio mom?

At one point, I had leaned against and over and up everything I could think of and remembered my carefully laid out birthing room. I knelt with my hands behind me on my birthing bed, which had been put together all cozily with a shower curtain underneath to catch excessive blood. I looked at everything all neatly and obsessively lain out on the tables: the hot stone cooker and the essential oils I had made ready if I needed heat and sage oil on my lower belly and back. The stones and smudge and sweetgrass to ease my way through difficulty. Paintings and stones and beads from my friends from the birth blessing ceremony I had a month earlier. The herbal tinctures I had procured to promote contractions and staunch bleeding. Linens and towels and placenta catching receptacle. Everything perfectly accessible and where it should be.

I thought how annoyed I should be at myself for not using these things. I had planned and planned and procured and for what? Wasted time and effort! FAIL! This feeling of failure only lasted a moment (much shorter than usual), and as the next contraction peeled through me body, I made the decision not to care. Hel. My uterus is expulsing. I made all these prior arrangements and I forgot to make use of them, or didn’t need them, or… something. So fuck it. My cervix is bloody exploding right now, who cares about using stuff I probably don’t need anyway?

If I was exploding forth, wasn’t it time to call the midwives? Viking offered to check my dilation and announced I was at least 8 cm, if not fully dilated. Pleeease can we call them now?? I moaned. I still wasn’t regular with my contractions, but ugh, it’s 8 am, I’ve been up a whole day with these things… the time is nigh! ‘What’re they going to be able to do for you though?’ reminded Viking. ‘More support? Or… something…’ I weakly offered. I know, I know… not much we can’t do ourselves. I felt so wearily done with the situation. And my body was dehydrated, my lips parched as the desert.

At this junction, I decided it was about time to more actively assist the process along. This labor was starting to take longer than I had stamina for. I had Tiwaz, Jera, Fehu and Birkana marking my belly, I knew my body could handle what came before and what was to come. I was not afraid of the pain of the final act birthing. But now I was growing tired… so so weary of almost 30 hours of contractions. Perhaps if I relax into the contractions… Oh! right… belly dance! My training as a tribal belly dancer gave me the tools to utilize this ancient, fertility based dance form to my advantage.. After pondering how I could incorporate belly dance into the birthing process while the little tortellini was still safely snuggled away, I had read online an article about a dancer who had dressed as a servant girl, sneaking her way into a Moroccan birthing ritual. Undulations! Why had I not thought about this earlier? It was in my BIRTH PLAN!! After all. *facepalm*

[P.S. There is NO PLAN. I don’t care how long you worked at it, how many details you iron out, and how cliché this sounds. The plan doesn’t exist. There is no plan. I just realized how funny of a word plan is. PLAN. Just look at it. Weird. So anyway… the Birth Plan – italicized, underlined, in sweeping font with a slurry of detailed notes ‘neath it. It does not exist. However, it is good to have detailed your decisions on certain things like what you want should you go to the hospital (ex. No one gets to touch me aside from my midwives and lover unless absolutely necessary. I wish to be left alone with no roaming extra people, students, ect. looking in. There is something about birthing that brings out the need for comfort, and nesting, and hiding away, in me. But it’s probably just me… I mean, what’s so shitty about having random people prodding at you and trying to make decisions for you in a situation that’s so personally yours?) So anyway. There can be no plan. And all that junk.]

I began to undulate softly, up to down. The movement helped me to relax and breathe. I quickly learned how to roll alongside the pain, making my contractions more effective. I did this for only 10 minutes before I knew to be in the bathroom (which, I’d like to say, is my least favorite room in the house, but for some reason the most comforting during this whole process). I felt a strange and new kind of discomfort as the baby started to move more fully into the birth canal. I took a squat on my toes while hanging onto the counter and experienced a strange, rubbery bubble… feeling inside me, that seemed to balloon and buckle under pressure. Then the strange sound of a thick water balloon breaking, and I looked down, realizing my water had broken. Easy cleanup on a tile floor. Yea, I’m awesome. And FINALLY Viking went to call the midwives as I removed my clothes and knelt in the tub. It seems we’re getting somewhere.

Labor Day Comments Graphics - Comments

You won’t find any squishy, tear-wrenching poolside water birth photos attached to my story. Nor will you find accounts of birth-induced profoundly spiritual revelations. At first I found this really very disappointing; what I had dreamed about my birth certainly included those things. The more I mulled over the let down of my delayed, put-straight-on-the-backburner love squish feelings, the more I became alright with the whole thing. For me, my birth was a lesson in being present, and in being grounded in my body. And despite all my failed planning, looking back, it was an amazing, life changing experience. Come to think of it… the failure was my most valuable lesson.

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And now, as promised a fortnight ago…

A birthing story [which I will make more all-audience friendly and submit to be possibly used in Birthing Magazine], and details of the placenta party, in parts.

ps. its gory. nothing held back. enjoy.

the nights are colder without you, love