An Unfiltered Birth Story

I went into labor thinking I could manage it with calm breathing and mantras. That if I trusted my body enough, it would carry me gently across the threshold. But nothing about it was gentle.

Giving birth is one of the few remaining rites of passage in life that is still undeniably raw and primal—you are quite literally crawling on your knees, naked, growling and screaming. It is not something you do; at least it didn’t feel that way for me. Rather it is something that happens to you, through you, within you. As a first time mother, I spent a lot of time (and I mean A LOT) reading about birth, listening to birth stories and watching birth videos. Still I went into it completely unprepared.

First of all, it took longer and was more intense than I imagined.