My intuition scares me.
Sometimes that IYKYK feeling isn't all butterflies and rainbows. It's a call to brace yourself for impact.
When I was inching closer, week by week, to the birth of my second baby, I had a feeling in my stomach. It wasn’t the baby kicking and stretching out my lung capacity, or moving my gallbladder further out of the his way. It was a feeling of ‘fuck, you’re right Maria’.
Let me explain.
At every appointment from 32 weeks, my bump measured exactly 2 weeks bigger. My weight was perfect, there was no other underlying issue, I was just carrying a bigger baby than my first (turns out, a whole 1lb 4oz bigger). But as I was reaching closer to his due date, I felt like something was going to go wrong. This wasn’t labour PTSD from my first or anything, as that was a very straight forward and - as far as first babies go - quick labour. This was an instinctive feeling that I needed to prepare myself in ways that I wasn’t planning to. I needed to be stronger mentally for this one.
Sure enough, one week before his due date, I went into labour at home. We had planned a home birth, so I rang the home team and they knew instantly that things were progressing and headed straight over. An hour and a half later I started pushing and I felt the feeling in my stomach again - something potentially very bad is about to happen. I told the midwives that I had a resistance to pushing. They told me it was just a bit of fear of pushing the baby out. I told them it wasn’t. I wasn’t scared of pushing him out, it’s really not the worst part about a vaginal labour. I told them it was different.
As the minutes went on, they monitored baby’s heart rate and told me that with every contraction his heart rate was falling. I pushed harder and harder, but told them again ‘no I’m being serious, something isn’t right. He’s not coming down’. That was when the midwife checked me and realised that Axyl’s hand was up by his face and his shoulder was locked in my pelvis. He was stuck and every push was cutting off his oxygen - hence my instinctive resistance to pushing, and also because I physically couldn’t get him out.
What happened next was a blur and happened extremely quick. They performed an episiotomy and every push from me was supported by the midwives physically pulling my baby out. They performed an emergency maneuver once his head was out (I didn’t even know that was a thing; I had never seen nor heard of it before), grabbed him by the neck and pulled him out. They had to resuscitate him, but after a few minutes he started breathing and was placed on my chest before we transferred to hospital to be checked over.
We were both absolutely fine, no injuries or physical damage done - which was a fucking blessing in itself. Children with shoulder dystocia can suffer from dislocated shoulders, brain damage and other injuries. But that feeling I had weeks leading up to his birth was like a deafening sound in my head. I had only felt that way once previously - the morning I got a call to say my stepdad had passed away suddenly whilst my mum was at work.
I know now to trust that feeling I get. That impending doom - the one that says life as we know it is about to change forever.
I have that same feeling when I think about my current life goal of moving to Australia. We’re waiting on updates telling us whether we’re moving this year or not, but I have the feeling. I have the feeling that things aren’t going to go as we expect them to and I’m finding that the most difficult thing to sit with.
Anyone who knows me will know that I am the one person who always says ‘okay but if one door closes, then another opens’. It’s not rejection, it’s redirection. But I fear that this time, I’ve spent so much energy on this one thing, that I don’t have a whole lot left to give to something else. The impending doom feels like grief. I feel like I’m grieving something that’s still alive - something I’m no stranger to with my estrangement from family members over the years.
I’m mourning the loss of something that could have been, but never will be - and I don’t yet know if that’s even the case. It feels absolutely psychotic to be in this place mentally, but as much as I try to get myself into a better headspace, the more it feels like I’m covering up shit with glitter and pretending it’s a unicorn, lol.
When I think back to the times I had this feeling, the reason for it was always preparation. It was to brace myself and consider alternative routes. Even with Axyl’s birth, I talked with my midwife about having him in hospital just weeks before he was born but she talked me into staying with the home birth.
So how I’m seeing this now is to consider a plan B, and maybe C. To ask myself the one question I hadn’t allowed until a few months ago - ‘what would I want my life to be like if it wasn’t in Australia?’. When I first asked myself this, we gave up the dream and 3 days later (literally) got an email to interview for the visa process. So perhaps if I do this now, we’ll get an email saying it’s happening. One can only hope!
I think the point of this article is that sometimes the fear we feel around certain things isn’t impostor syndrome or simply doubting ourselves. It’s actually our intuition speaking to us saying ‘listen, I want the best for you, and for me to do that I need you to brace yourself through this next part of the process’.
Our intuition isn’t always that fuck yes feeling, and I think it’s so important to learn to feel the difference in how your IYKYK feeling speaks to you.
Maria x
I truly hope you make it to Australia, my fingers are crossed for you!