donnalotus | Graceful Swan rising (Reply)

So, I have returned to the land of the internet, it’s been a while. I’ve been loitering on Facebook, but that’s about it. I’ve been trying for the last month to get my thoughts in order, to post and write about what’s happened, but there just doesn’t seem to be any good place to start.

I’ve had the baby, born 8th August, 7lb 7oz (3.56kg), 51cm long. It was a long and ended up being complicated labour which I will be talking about later on, but suffice to say that the baby and all are doing well, the whole experience has left me a bit physically traumatised due to fatigue and a severe hemorrhage (over a litre of blood) after the placenta was birthed.

Mistakes were made on behalf of the hospital, yet at the same time I was surrounded by the people I needed to get me through the whole thing. Unfortunately some of those who got me through it (the midwives) were also the same people who made a few bad judgement calls… a lot of it was due to the fact that most of them didn’t believe I was actually in labour because apparently I didn’t act like a woman in labour (ie. I didn’t bitch them out and yell and scream the whole time). So yes, mistakes were made, it was a horrible ordeal in the end, but it was also an incredible rebirth to go through.

Rebirth I certainly went through, I didn’t realise at the time because I was so tired from being in labour almost 46 hours, but I came really close to dying from that bleed. It was a surreal experience because I didn’t really know what was happening, it was only later when I was reflecting upon it all that the thought of “oh my god, I really came close there…” even came to mind.

A new totem showed up during this time, one I never really connected to before, but the name Graceful Swan was given during the whole labour and birth, and has been with me since then. This is in stark contrast to some of my more “clumsy” totems which can be overbearing and strong, this is a very gentle energy. I have been connecting to this energy ever since.

I have well and truly entered the East with this whole experience. I have rebirthed as much as the baby has rebirthed (birthed) into this world. I will be talking a bit about that soon as well. I was going to try and chronologically cover what happened but it’s just not working, so instead, I’m going to be writing about the things that have occurred in the last 3-4 weeks in no particular order as they come up for me to process and heal.

The baby, Declan, is beautiful, the most amazing thing I’ve ever done in my life, and I feel so blessed to have had him choose me for a mother. He is amazing, and my heart just opens even more every time I look at him. We’ve been having a few issues with my milk supply, but it’s slowly being fixed and we’re surviving, in fact he was weighed today and he’s put on 170g in the last 4 days. Before that he was 100g up on his birth weight (and he’d lost 50g of his birth weight in the first few days) … so he’s up about 270g from his birth weight, which is great.

OK, this will do for now. I’m cross posting this to my new Blogger account and my Dreamwidth & Livejournal accounts, so you can follow me at either.

http://swanrising.blogspot.com/
http://donnalotus.dreamwidth.org
http://donnalotus.livejournal.com