The Knowing Underneath the Noise

The most certain I have ever been in my life was on a hospital bed, eleven years ago, when a nurse told me she couldn’t find my baby’s heartbeat.

I felt no fear.

Maybe she couldn’t find it, but I knew it was there.

It was a Friday morning. My husband drove me through the slow London traffic, and I remember feeling ready: birth plan in my bag, my mind set on the birth centre, the place where I hoped to be supported in trusting my body and letting birth unfold as naturally as possible.

My hands rested on the curve of my belly between painful contractions. I thought I knew exactly how this would go...

Before admission, on the hard hospital bed, I was being examined. With my eyes closed, I felt immensely grateful for my yoga teacher, who had taught me how to breathe myself into calm, and for the hypnobirthing path I had chosen.

My blissful prayer of gratitude was interrupted by a nurse who kept turning my heavy body from side to side. Checking, examining, trying to find what she needed to find. I know that she was doing exactly what she had to do, and I am grateful for the care I received but in that moment, in my body, it felt uncomfortable and intrusive. I wanted to be left alone, to be honest.

After some turns and twists, the words came out of her, tight and quick. The words you already know. The words that should have shattered me.

Yes, I heard her. I knew I had to stay on the ward. I knew my plan to give birth in the birth centre had just changed but I was not paying much attention to the commotion around me because

I KNEW.

I knew that my baby was completely fine.

This knowing was very subtle. It felt natural, almost ordinary. It wasn’t sudden, loud, or dramatic. Quite the contrary: it felt normal. Like a part of me. Like an obvious thing.

I don’t recollect a moment of fear or worry. I wasn’t praying, hoping, or even blocking out the information. In fact, there was a sense of calm.

Perhaps that is why, when I brought my newborn home, overflowing with happy hormones

I FORGOT

I buried myself in another pile of recommended baby books and made Google searches at 2am, double and triple checking whether the rash on my baby’s little finger was something serious.

Of course, I had had some moments of deep knowing that I followed but with the computer in hand, with access to so much information, somehow I believed that the experts out there in my phone knew better…

I wonder why?

Maybe because the external noise is so relentless, the expectations so vast, and the invisible labour of motherhood so heavy.

Was it easier to outsource my knowing?

I know now that what I experienced was a non-local intuition: a knowing that has no source you can point to, not memory, not anything your senses could have gathered. It simply arrives.

Non-local intuition, as I learnt from my own experience, is the mother who knows that her baby is completely fine. It is the artist who receives the song in a dream, or the one who has "no rational reason" to take the decision, and that decision changes everything.

This is not something that is built. It is received.

I have also learnt that I had this beautiful, open access to that knowing because of the state I had taken myself into. Birthing is already an intensive experience, and there is no other way to be but PRESENT. My breath softened my body. My whole system grew quiet. I was not afraid, I was simply and completely there.

I had created the conditions to let it in.

So many women ask me: what is the difference between intuition and fear? How do we know which one is talking? How do we know how to choose?

This, in itself, is a noise. You know the answer, but you doubt yourself.

The truth is very simple.

Fear is loud and oppressive. It makes you small. It keeps you scared and desperate. Your intuitive intelligence is quiet and subtle. It doesn't create drama for you to see her. She would never make you small; she is loving and gentle. Fear will grow louder, like a toddler in a supermarket, if you don't pay attention to it. Your intuition will step back and wait for you to come home.

The story you keep telling yourself - that you don't know - is just that.

A story.

With love,

Ewelina - The Alchemist Parent