I am in Zwischen

Tomorrow I will be 40 weeks pregnant, I am waiting for my baby.  This is my fourth child and I am a doula so I know that the numbers mean nothing.  Some months ago I came across this article and it definitely sums up where I am right now and have been for a couple of weeks.

Zwischen is a German word which means between and the midwife author of the article uses it to describe the place a woman enters at the end of pregnancy.  A place where she is waiting, waiting to transition from pregnant to mother.

It is not an easy place, I can attest to that.  A week ago I asked some other women on Facebook whether they recognised feeling almost pre-menstrual in these last days.  I was so snappy and grumpy with my family with no obvious cause for around two days, I kept melting into a weepy puddle and then on the third day a sudden wave of calm arrived and I have been there ever since.

Don't get me wrong, in many ways I will be glad when the pregnancy is done, I so look forward to getting to know the new soul my husband and I have created, and look forward to being able to sleep (ha!) in a position that doesn't involve a mountain of pillows under every limb, but, this is a precious time too.  We plan this to be our last child.  This is the last time I will be cradling a life in my body.  The last time I will feel a small foot in my ribs and hiccups in my belly.

Every day now the school mothers look at me with sympathy and come out with all the cliches.  I nod and smile, but inside remind myself that me and my baby are in Zwischen, a precious, spiritual time that only we can share and know, and that may not last very much longer.

Finding my voice

I have liked magpies for over 20 years, I was taught the childhood superstition of saluting them when they crossed my path.  In my early years at secondary school I had an English teacher whom I thought the world of, and he used to make us salute him at the end of class, he died of cancer in my second year and I was heartbroken.  After that the magpie often seemed to cross my path when I had a question on my mind, I liked to feel it was him giving me the nod that I was on the right track.

Despite all of this it only dawned on me this summer that Magpie is in fact my inner totem.  I have done a lot of work with animal totems over the years and knew who most of my key ones were, but always felt I didn't know who my inner one was.  When it occurred to me to look at Magpie a few months ago, it was like being smacked round the back of the head!

When I read the passage about Magpie here - and read these lines - "Is it time to do that writing you have been neglecting? Magpie will help you find your voice." - I knew I could not keep denying my desire to write.  I have been brewing a book for over a decade and allowing my fear of being 'good enough' to stop me from writing it, Magpie tells me to take the risk.  However even after having read and understood this I have continued to stall.

In the last few weeks two specific things have happened that led me to setting up this blog today.  The first was the acceptance of a short piece of prose writing I offered as a contribution to a book of women's writing about menstruation.  I had to get past the fear of wondering what people would think of me for writing that sort of thing.

The second thing was receiving and reading the book 'The Rainbow Way' by Lucy Pearce.  I have been following Lucy's blog for quite a long time, and was honored to win a copy of her book 'The Moods of Motherhood' earlier in the year.  When I found out she was writing a book about finding the balance of being a mother and being a creative person I was really excited, and I haven't been disappointed.  Over and over as I read the book my soul shouted YES in understanding and recognition.

This blog is me giving myself permission to find my voice, to express my Creative Rainbow Mama self.  To be able to write all the things that swirl round in my head and never make it onto paper.  I also hope it will help me push myself to start making the book take shape at last.

I recently found some notes and freewriting that I wrote a decade ago when the book first came to mind, I'm going to type it up here, to remind myself what I want to write, and maybe if you read this and you catch me not writing you can use it to remind me too. 

Freewrite - date approx 2002

I want to write about.....

....birth, about the beauty of it, the stillness, the sacredness, the magic, the love.
...about the women opening to trust, to nature, to their bodies.
....about the creation of new life, the ultimate creative act, the cycle of life.
.....about women and the moon cycle, about a womans pregnant belly being like the phases of the waxing moon
....about women regaining their power, strength, holding the space, connecting, raw energy, feral, primal, sexual, sensual
....about ritual and ceremony, blessingway, bonding with the unborn, bonding with partner, lover, goddess, women-sisters
...about motherhood, maiden, mother, crone, creativity, discovering your power