The first one I told was the baby. I put my hands on my belly and said it out loud: “I’m going to have you here at home. You are in our family.”
Then I told my husband. He was very cool about it. This was Sweden in 1994, and I didn’t know a single woman who had given birth at home.
The forest
We lived in the forest with our children. We had dodgy electricity, barely any running water, and we grew our own food. I worked with plant medicine and aromatherapy, and somewhere along the way I had stepped back into a very original way of living. I watched the animals give birth, and sitting there in the forest I knew I wanted to give birth to this child at home. In the hospital, other people had decided what happened to me, and I had felt outside of it. This time I wanted to be inside it, in that intense, powerful feminine energy that was mine.
My family shook their heads. “Have you really thought this through?” To them it was Anna’s next crazy step. My hospital midwife was horrified. What if I started bleeding? What if the baby died? She told me that if I gave birth at home and the baby died, I could be considered a murderer and go to prison.
I didn’t believe her. I was angry. Why was it so unthinkable that I would want to give birth to my own baby, with my man, in my family? Then I went home and wondered what I would do if nobody wanted to help me.
I found a midwife in the Anthroposophic community near us who attended births at home. We had long sittings with her, going through what could happen and what she would do. My husband needed her most, I think. She helped him understand what we were taking on.
She impressed me so much. It took courage for her to go into women’s homes and help them give birth in a society where it was so heavily frowned upon
The ultrasound
I kept seeing my hospital midwife too. One day my husband and I took our three children to see the baby on the screen and hear the heartbeat for the first time. We were all so excited. When we were done, the midwife turned to me and said, “I find it very irresponsible that you want to have this child at home. Are you prepared to take this risk, that your baby might die?”
My children were sitting right there. When we came out, they looked at me with horror in their eyes. “Mama, are you going to kill the baby? What if we kill it?” That was what they had heard. We went home in silence.
When we got back, we went for a walk in the forest. We climbed and played little games, and I told each of them about the day they were born. We laughed, because there is always something funny or crazy around a birth. I reminded them of the dog’s puppies and the cat’s kittens. They had seen birth for themselves. Animals having babies, Mama having a baby, same same. Children are really clever that way.
I went back and told the midwife how hurtful it had been. She told me that I was irresponsible and it was her duty to make me rethink my decision. I still kept seeing her all the way to the end. Our two worlds were so far apart, and I wanted to be a little bit of a connection between them.
The night of the storm
The 27th of September 1994 was a beautiful autumn day. At four in the afternoon I asked the girl who helped me in my shop to close up, and I went home. I pottered around, feeling really good. At eight my waters broke. We put the children to bed as usual, and when the contractions started I said to my husband, “We’re going to have a baby tonight.”
Then a massive storm blew in. My husband went out to lock up the animals, and the trees were swaying back and forth like crazy. The electricity went, so we carried water in from the well. At ten we called the midwife. She and her assistant were on their way, though she wasn’t sure they would get through with trees down across the roads. My husband and I looked at each other. We’d done this before. We could do it again. Bless that man!
Our house was tiny: one room and a small kitchen downstairs, and one and a half rooms upstairs where the children were sleeping. We boiled water, made the fires and lit candles. I had my essential oils and crystals, and it was so cosy and beautiful. I worked through the contractions and we danced. The midwife got through at around eleven. She listened to me and said, “We’ll go and sit in the kitchen. You do your thing. We will hear when it’s time for us to come in.”
When it was time, they came in and sat in silence with us while I gave birth. My husband received the baby, and they showed him how to make sure she was breathing well. Then she was in my arms and they disappeared into the kitchen. They came back with a tray of tea, sat down and sang a welcome song for her. Before they left, they changed the sheets on our bed and lit candles upstairs.
She was born exactly at midnight. We chose the 28th of September as her birthday, because she should always move forward.
In the morning we woke the children for school and told them, “Your sister is here.” They came in to welcome her, and then we had breakfast. It was the most natural thing in the world, another child. There were already 3. Later that day we heard that the ferry Estonia had gone down in the storm that night, and hundreds of people had died.
And I had a baby.
What that night taught me
I love giving birth. At one moment that night there was this push, and the whole universe opened. I saw the universe as a womb, and women as the universe. I call it womb energy, and I believe every woman has access to it, whether or not she has had children, and whether or not she still has her womb. It is every woman’s birthright, what she brings into the world. That was the first time I understood what that power actually feels like. It was fierce, even violent, and it balanced on the threshold between life and death.
I believe in medical care when it’s needed. What I question is how a patriarchal society came to take charge of childbirth itself, and left women on the outside of one of the most powerful experiences of our lives. At home, with my husband beside me and a midwife who let me get on with it, I was the one who decided. I had never had that intensely deep connection to myself and generational female knowledge as at that moment.
I’m 65 now, and I can see that I birthed myself that night as well. I had spent years living in a world with rules about how to be a woman. Giving birth at home was one of the first times I felt what it meant to create a world from my personal power. I have drawn on that experience ever since.
When I sit with that memory in meditation, I can still feel the size of the space that opened. I’m curious what comes up for you if you sit with the idea of that space within you.
So tell me, how much of the world you live in was created for you, and what are you creating from yourself now?
Hit reply or drop it in the comments. I read every one.
P.S. If something in this story is stirring in you, and you’d like to look at what you are creating from yourself now, this is the work I do in The Inner Queendom Sessions: three private video conversations with me over four to six weeks. You can read more on my Work with me page, or reply and tell me what’s stirring. You decide if it feels right.