I nearly died 25 years ago to this day
On this watershed anniversary of a near death experience, I reflect on how this has informed my stance on what has unfolded in the last, extraordinary, three years
It is exactly 25 years ago to the day since I was in labour with my first child, my son, who arrived during the evening of 2nd February 1998 after a very long, traumatic labour with high levels of obstetric intervention. Today he is 25. His birth was a miracle, though we almost didn’t make it. It was a near death experience in a clinical environment (actually a UK hospital with a known preference for encouraging caesarian sections). How is it that in our supposedly sophisticated medical institutions, one in five first time mothers are reported to have high levels of obstetric intervention? How is it that the most sacred of human experiences has become subject to mechanistic approaches of the industrial medical complex?
Each day for the last 10 years, since I renegotiated our birth trauma, I feel a profound gratitude for his life, mine and for his younger sister who followed almost two years later. The experience changed me irrevocably. The trauma was buried deep and the healing process is, I feel, a lifelong commitment.
The beach cove I visited today, the 25th anniversary of his birth, has special symbolism for me. It is approached via a long, narrow, dank, wet tunnel. Children call out as they walk along the tunnel as it has a haunting echo. Somehow it reminds me of the descent each of us undertakes when we are born into this world both spiritually and physically. It is dark, narrow, wet and scary. We leave the cocooned safety, warmth and comfort of our mother’s womb and find ourselves separated, often unceremoniously, cut off - literally - from Her. In our case, the litany of medical mistreatment, errors in judgement, harm, incompetence, fear; mine, my then husbands and that of the medical team and their vicarious trauma, led to my son getting a shoulder stuck, having crowned. There was nowhere to go. Babies, once they are ready, are naturally, organically able to push their way out and work with gravity, and left without interference, most often, they work with their mum’s magnificent uterus to manoeuvre and push their way out to freedom. However, I was, from the moment I entered the maternity suite, encouraged to lie down and not move. I was strapped to a heart monitoring machine and left. This was my first birthing experience, and even with a vast amount of research, preparation and ante natal classes, I felt disempowered, bullied into submission and devastatingly unprepared. I won’t go into the gory detail of what unfolded. By the evening, all those years ago, what for many is a sensual, incredible experience was proving too much for me. Emotionally, physically and psychologically, I was spent. I vaguely recall the sensation of leaving my body, when what felt like a rugby team were shouting at me to push. I had absolutely nothing left as the part of me that died that day was looking on. Time stopped. Suddenly, a miracle occurred and I felt myself returning to my body. I felt an immense surge of energy that didn’t feel like it was from within me or from my son. Sometimes I feel that our souls merged because they weren’t ready to give up; the idea being that we both had work to do in this lifetime! Maybe we will never know. He was born blue, flaccid and needed intense medical support to get him breathing. The wait for him to breathe and cry seemed interminable to me. All I could do was look on in desperation and utter helplessness. My husband’s nervous system was in full “fight” mode and he said he had threatened to kill the consultant obstetrician if we didn’t come back. Our son was whisked away to the special baby care unit. His head, face and shoulder battered and bruised by the medical interventions. There is a deep, cellular trauma for an infant who is immediately separated, incubated and not able to feed or have skin to skin contact with their parents. There is deep cellular trauma for the infants’ parents, alongside the loss and grief contained within these all too common and sadly normalised experiences that are rarely given a voice.
Why am I sharing this? Well, I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, as I reflect on the last three years of what feels to me to be another watershed moment, this time for humanity as a whole. What informed and shaped my perspective? My perspective is vastly different from some of my friends and family, as well as the apparent majority who have chosen to conform, to believe the government, mainstream media propaganda and the litany of lies. My conclusion is that what I feel to be a healthy scepticism and a whole body “no” to the injections was seeded by my life experiences, birth traumas and subsequent traumas endured as a result of the scientific tradition of medicine.
What I now know, is that my mother had a traumatic birth experience when she had me and was also separated from me. This was in the era of Dr Spock who is, I believe, responsible for so-called medical professionals adopting widescale birth and parenting practices that, possibly unwittingly, led to harm and trauma. My mother was offered thalidomide when she was carrying me and at the time, something told her to refuse. She was so dissociated by our birth experience that it stayed deeply buried in her psyche. The only reason I know about this was because a few years ago (she is now in her 80’s) she gave me the diary she kept of my arrival and our time in hospital, where we had been separated from birth by the medical staff, for 2 1/2 weeks due to a retained placenta and an infected umbilical injury.
I was deeply sceptical about masks, lockdowns, PCR tests, social distancing and horrified by the blatant bias and censorship of any other opinions and other kinds of treatment outside of the allopathic, including basic immune support such as Vitamin D. I have experienced gas lighting by those who are pro jab because of my personal choices around medical freedom, and there were many times when I felt ostracised and isolated, both within my family of origin, friendship circles, local and my professional community.
It was a great relief to find Therapists for Medical Freedom. We came together during lockdown because of a “shared, deep concern about the growing use of medical coercion, mandates and the loss of civil liberties as part of the international response to managing COVID-19”. Therapists for Medical Freedom, as a group, feel that it is our ethical duty to stand up for the emotional health of the population and to highlight where harm is being done. We have been challenging the restrictions and psychological fear campaigns, the willful blindness and harms being done to so many and particularly the vulnerable. It was clear to us early on, sadly, that the professional bodies and journals were falling hook line and sinker for the fear narratives, and were not able to uphold their own ethical standards around autonomy and informed consent, amongst others, nor indeed to support any practitioner who strayed from the dominant messaging.
There is much more that I could say about what has informed my perspective. All the times since my son’s birth where, in my disempowered state, I betrayed my body’s innate wisdom and intelligence over and over again. The start of my healing journey and out of dissociation occurred just before I reached perimenopause. My heart and my body took over from my mind and all it’s chatter, programmes and beliefs. Menopause can be a rough passage or a divine initiation, a blessing or a curse, either way, woman is transfigured from maiden into crone. At this time, any unmet trauma and wounding comes home to roost. Anything that needs to be released, leaves as the most extraordinary alchemy unfolds. The grit has polished us into our becoming. Becoming the wise woman that we always were, before this human life had its way with us. Most importantly, though, this journey brought me out of the numbness of dissociation and back into my body, to feeling sensations, to loving and tuning in to my body and her innate intelligence. I, as the saying goes, needed to feel it to heal it. And boy did I feel it! Now, as I tune in to my “heck, yes” or my “hell, no!” responses, where my “yes” feels like all my mitochondria are turned on and lit up, I am sensing, feeling and tuning in to my uniqueness, reclaiming my bodily freedom, owning my sensitivities, and trusting so completely, so implicitly, that I feel immensely grateful to be alive.
I invite you to reflect on your journey to where you are now. What have you learned that has moulded, shaped and informed your perspective on health and life?