Powerhouse Birth

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Powerhouse Birth

Radically Rooted Support for Divinely Human Passages. Centering you and your needs unapologetically.

Whether you are preparing to birth your baby or are traversing the coals of another huge life transition, you deserve unwavering support that centers you and your needs unapologetically. We believe that autonomy and liberation in life + birth is for ALL bodies, and is *especially* important for those bodies that are “othered” by an oppressive society or labeled as “high-risk” by the medical industrial complex. At Powerhouse Birth + Human Rites we honor deeply your unique experience, because we know you hold your own medicine and truth.

05/26/2022

🌊GET HUGE🌊

When the wave comes crashing through our body we have to match its bigness.

For some folks that means roaring out a guttural cry that fills the space with the energy of gashing a hole in the matrix.

For others it might mean going deeply, deeply in, melting into the vastness of silence, feeling the borders of their field expanding further than they’ve ever known.

For some this means practicing their “sacred no” in birth—“no don’t touch me, no close the door, no don’t talk, no don’t even look at me.”

For others this means radiating “yes” in their screams, cries, filling infinite space between them and the stars with affirmation as they soar out to retrieve their baby.

Birth is so many things. Every time I come home from a birth I am left with the resounding Knowing that there is so much more we *don’t know* about the Great Mystery that is this birth thing, than we could ever possibly begin to comprehend. This is its power, its alchemy.

And. What I do “know” is this:

Every time, no matter how it shows up, birth requires us to extend beyond any reality we have ever known. Birth extends us beyond the Great Beyond.

So this is why we will often use the affirmation in the prenatal time to “GET HUGE”. Take up ALL of the space. Get vast. Get stretched. Get full. Get grown.

And then during birth, the Big Waves will come. And we let it take us all. The. Way. Down. (As once said so eloquently at mama blessing 💝). But we don’t let that Big Wave make us tiny. We match it. We envelop it as it moves through is. And we partner with its Hugeness to bring our babies home.

🌊🌊🌊🌊

📸: A photo from today’s prenatal, of this 38-week mama’s birthing space next to the garden 🌿

02/20/2022

🍳SUNNY-SIDE UP🍳

Babies come out.

I say this a lot but it is simply true.

The great majority of the time, if left undisturbed and physiology supported, babies and parents will find their way, whatever their position.
🧭🧭🧭

Mama Shawn’s waters released around 11pm the night before baby was born, past 42 weeks. There was light-moderate meconium staining in the fluid, but baby was doing great and moving lots. Sensations began about 15min later and gradually increased over the next couple hours. At around 1am, Shawn came to wake me in her guest room, where me and my daughter had been staying the last 10 days. She was ready for some company and love from a sister. Shawn continued laboring through the night, in the living room and in the bath. When dawn came around the kids were awake and she was getting tired. The back labor was painful and she thought she would be done by now. Me and Amara got the pool set up in the front yard and began filling it, while we tried to keep the two toddlers fed/occupied and relatively quiet. They even helped fill the pool 🥰

Shawn got into the pool and let the sensations come. She asked to listen to baby as it was getting harder to feel his movements, so we listened through a couple contractions with the doppler and all was well. Shawn was starting to feel stuck, and asked me about things to try next. I suggested she try to eat something substantial, take a break from the pushing she had been doing for quite a while, and try some inversion positions. An inversion can help a baby “back up” and give them a little extra space to rotate or adjust their head.

Amara made a smoothie, and Shawn leaned over the edge of the pool with her hands in the grass for several waves. Eventually she decided to move to the squatty potty (old faithful, the place she birthed her first baby). At this point she said she was starting to feel scared and like baby may be stuck. I asked her if she wanted to try feeling for baby’s head. She put her hand in her yoni to feel and a look of total shock and emotion and hope came over her face—her baby was *right there*.

What followed was what looked from the outside to be 45-minutes of sheer strength and determination, as Shawn worked hard with her baby to help his final descent. She went straight to “the place”.

The Place is what I have seen over and over again when someone surrenders to the abyss of the last minutes of birth. In The Place there is no holding back and they go deeper than they ever thought they could go to retrieve their baby. Where there is no doubt, the only option is that their baby is coming out, and they are going to rage to the edge of the earth to make it happen.

And then Onyx was born.
🌟
[Video of Onyx’s birth and words from mama Shawn soon to come 🙏🏼💕]

📸: , with permission 💓

12/17/2021

I feel that train a-coming…🚂🚂🚂

“I ran back to the bathroom to get back on the toilet for the next wave, feeling what was coming for me. Then the surge slammed into me like a freight train and I shot up from the toilet and screamed, trying to escape the sensation inside own body. The feeling of bone on bone, opening me wider than I have ever been and shattering any sense of identity or who I was before this moment. Fragmented. Demolished. Gone.

“All at once, I recognized a near-universal moment I had witnessed over and over attending other people’s births through my entire pregnancy. The moment where the Maiden is put to rest.

“My mentor midwife would softly say to the woman, “You’re safe, love. You’re safe. You’re safe.” And the first time I heard her say that to someone, I thought, “Why would they think they’re not safe?” Of course I could understand intellectually after observing it. But after experiencing this myself I realized, “oh right, it can feel very scary.”

“You have the combination of adrenaline at 900% its normal levels, the sensation of a skull coming through your pelvis, and a sense of no control over it whatsoever. That is WILD.
You’re on the front of the train trying to hold on for dear life basically. But the ride is almost over.”

🌀🌀🌀

This weekend in honor of Miss Hummingbird’s 4th Solar Return, I will be hopping on IG live at 10am PST to recount the tale of her pregnancy and birth that took me through the deepest underworlds of my life. I would be honored if you would join me 🙏🏼💓🌄

12/11/2021

How we feel during and after our births is so complex, often looks/feels nothing like our expectations, and takes us somewhere entirely new. We can plan and hope and intend and pray but sometimes the medicine has its own way of coming through.

Thank you to the incredibly powerful mama, Shawn, for sharing her photos and story with us. More to come, including video ✨✨

“This pretty photo looks very picturesque and is extremely opposite of what I was feeling. I always wanted cool and peaceful birth pictures and I got it but it's not what was happening in my head and now it just seems silly to me. This was actually my "oh s**t" period where I was out in the ether trying to hold it together, feeling lost, feeling like I was not sure I could do it.

The beginning of labor felt hard but good like things were moving fast. I was able to handle the waves so much better than with my first birth, diving into them rather than clenching ferociously with fear. I was excited and felt good about how I progressing and good about managing the pain.

When this picture was taken I felt stuck and baby felt stuck and I was getting disheartened that I didn't have a baby in my arms yet. I thought for sure I would have had the baby before it was light out. I was a little mad at this point, I didn't think this birth would be easy but I didn't think it would be so incredibly hard. I thought my first birth was difficult and it broke me but this was so much harder physically. Mentally, it was hard but I felt like I had closer and better support and I didn't feel so alone and floundering.”

I had such confidence going into my second birth thinking it would be easier and faster. It was faster but not easier at all. My body and mind could be pushed even further beyond anything I could imagine. It was mind-blowing.

I felt broken after my first birth. Despite this birth being harder, I feel good, but I don't necessarily feel triumphant and thrilled. I feel powerful, strong and I am happy with that.”

📸:

12/04/2021

To have your birth support enter the deep delta terrain with you, go to the edges of reality with you, honor your desires, needs, and intuition without question, then witness you and participate in the most powerful moment of your life…that is transformative. It is an opportunity for reclamation of all the pieces of you scattered across the universe, an opportunity to exercise your sacred F**K YES and your sacred HELL NO, an opportunity to receive and be held more vulnerably, more intimately than you have maybe ever in your life. With *no one* interfering in the process.

Can you understand why people might choose this? Not to mention the hundreds of physiological, safety-related, + practical reasons one would lean this direction.

This speaks to the fact that many folks make the huge decision to birth autonomously (outside of the regulated model) because they will accept nothing less than being the center of their own spiral at all times, meaning they are subject solely to their own authority, and that every person around them holds their autonomy in the highest regard.

This is just NOT available in the medical industrial complex, because that model is built for the opposite of this kind of experience. The medical model is hierarchical, linear, non-intuitive, efficiency-oriented, and is based on the belief that the human entering that system (the “patient”) couldn’t possibly know what is best for themselves or their baby, and that any choice they could make that goes against protocols, regulations, or standard of care automatically puts them in a category labeled “non-compliant”, “high-risk”, or deserving of a DCS case being opened.

Is that 👆🏼model supposed to foster, trust, safety, and intimacy—which are some of the most important factors in truly supporting someone? Absolutely not. It is made to hold institutional power and control, to make money, and to make its “patients” as dependent on the system as possible.

The birthing families get to decide what they value. The birthing people making new choices are the ones who will turn the tide of birth on this earth. What will you choose?
🌀🌀🌀🌀

📸:

12/02/2021

Can you imagine the magic of birthing in an herbal apothecary, in a yurt, on beautiful land? Plant spirits and medicines surrounding you, along with a few of the people who trust and love you the most in this world, sacred smoke unfurling in the corner. Between each wave you are fed peaches canned by a beloved grandmother and soup made by a dear sister just for this occasion, spoon by spoon at the hand of your best friend who you fed at her own birth. The coyotes howling with you all night, the spider from the rafters gliding down every once in a while to check on you, with the new moon skies dark enough to see the Milky Way and shooting stars streaming through the skylight above you.
🌚💫🌌🕷🌿🌾

What does your dream birth look like? Where is it? What do you see? Feel? Hear? Smell? It can be anywhere, it doesn’t have to be “realistic”—it can be on the moon or the bottom of the ocean or in the middle of the Grand Canyon ( 😘). Let’s dream together… 🌐🔮🌄🍄

📸: Me (Annika)

12/01/2021

That time when your waters were open for several days and early labor was finally beginning to brew...🌀😜😭🙏🏻🙏🏻

I’ve said this before and I will say it again, almost every person I have ever walked with in this pregnancy + birth journey has *something* going on that would “risk them out” of regulated care. Whether it is age, weight, “overdue”, waters open “too long”, baby in “wrong” position, prolonged labor, history of bleeding, high blood pressure, baby “too big”, baby “too small”, etc. etc. etc.

This begs an important question: If barely anyone fits in the “normal” box meant to keep people “safe”, is the box really normal or based on safety at all? Or is it based on the illusion of control? You can guess my opinion here, I’m sure.

You will notice that I am using quotations a lot here--that is because these are not problems, or complications...unless they are. To discern whether something is a variation or a complication, it takes a pregnant/birthing person *knowing* themselves, their baby, and body deeply, and (if they so choose) a support person who has developed a soul-level connection with them and their baby, who is informed not only by their skills + knowledge but most importantly by their relationship with the person they are serving.

This way of caring for pregnant + birthing folks is utterly impossible in the medical industrial complex, including licensed midwifery, where regulations, protocols, and rules are LEGALLY REQUIRED to come before the practitioner’s relationship + allegiance to their own wisdom and that of the human they are serving.

For this and many other reasons, there will ALWAYS be families who seek support and care outside of an unethical system, and I and an ever-increasing community of attendants will be there to support them.

🌊🌊

Amara, the powerful mama in these photos, would have been “risked out” of care several times over if she had chosen the regulated model of medical management, i.e. birth center or licensed midwives, like many, many other pregnant/birthing folks have over and over again.

Later this week Amara and I will be jumping on an IG Live where she will recount the swirling, potent tale of her autonomous pregnancy + birth, and all the challenges + triumphs that made up this sacred initiation orchestrated perfectly by spirit for her and her sweet babe 🌸 Look out for an announcement about timing of the IG Live--we’re thinking probably this Sunday afternoon 😍😍😍

📸: Yours Truly

11/24/2021

When the Veils Begin to Part 🌫🌫🌫
🎨: 'Gate Weaver' by Emily Kell and Morgan Mandala

There’s a point around 32-34 weeks of pregnancy when a person has an almost-sudden realization that they are going to give birth, and relatively soon.

Often there’s a sense of not feeling prepared or ready--which makes sense because really in the most physiological aspect you are *not* ready...yet. Your baby still has lots of growing + developing to do, your uterus doesn’t have its requisite number of oxytocin receptors prepared, and your hormonal matrix just. Isn’t. There. Yet.

But what I have also observed is that there is a significant component to this sense of not-quite-readiness for what is impending that is very much spiritual + emotional in nature.

This is the time in pregnancy when we feel the veils start to thin and brainwave patterns change, as we are being pulled inch-by-inch to a beckoning, dark HUGENESS that feels familiar and chock full of the Unknown all at the same time.

This is the Great Mystery opening itself...preparing to swallow us whole and digest us into something entirely ancient + new. A call from The Mother of Us All to melt into the first layer of surrender. To meet the fear where it is and feel it deeply. To stare into the deep belly of Death and Birth... it is only one portal.

This particular fear isn’t a sign of something wrong, or something we need to fix. It is a fear to be respected, to be held as sacred. This is the feeling that begins to change our molecular makeup, if we let it. This feeling of vast proportion starts to prepare us for the great initiation ahead of us, if we let it.

Too often, this sacred fear is projected outwards, and back at us again. In the mainstream model of care someone may feel this, and be terrified by it, think something is wrong, or something they need to fix immediately....Which feeds perfectly into the cascade of obsessive checking, assessing, testing that this last phase of pregnancy often includes.

Both the pregnant person and the mainstream care provider feel the Great Mystery beginning to open, even if subconsciously, and then desperately try to exert the illusion of will, management, risk-assessment, and control all over this big feeling that is simply meant to be embraced and integrated fully, with honor and reverence instead of panic and interference.

So how can we do this differently? Recognize this feeling for what it is. Speak it out loud to someone wise. Embrace, soften. Of course, do what you need to to process any true fears coming through, but be discerning in that undertaking and notice if your mind is spiraling only because it is about to enter the Cosmic Birth Canal. Then let it all be.

People support pregnant folks in this portal: It is your very important job to help normalize this feeling, to support your people in **seeing** what it is, to reflect with them in their discernment process, and witness them in their transformation. Most of all, it is our job to manage our energy (as Whapio would say), to not project our unprocessed fear of the Unknown onto them. It is violence, no matter how “subtle”, to do otherwise.
🌛🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌜
Wishing you all ease and peace as we are collectively drawn towards the darkness of Solstice by the Crone herself. This is a time of profound magic if we can slow down with it.

Address

Flagstaff, AZ
86001

Telephone

+19282752947

Website

http://www.PowerhouseBirth.org/

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