Lily graced us with the privilege of sharing her memories of both the day she joined us on the outside, and while still inside. She shared many of her memories with me, just me, about 6 months ago. I wrote in detail then what she spoke, as I will now.
To date, Lily has seen pictures of her while inside me. She has never seen the video of either her birth or while inside. She has not seen a birth yet, and we have told her very few things about the environment or process, intentionally not contaminating her memories, or planting any.
Whether others will believe matters nothing; I’m recording this for Lily’s benefit, as well as Russ’s and mine. And this time, Russ was present and heard the entire thing.
Russ told Lily about the day she came, as he does, hour by hour. It’s told from his point of view, his memory. It’s not clinical or otherwise very descriptive in an adult sense, but, in its simplicity, is very engaging for Lily. After he concluded, I asked Lily a to tell me about her memories.
I asked her if she remembered being inside of me.
“Yes.”
I asked what it was like.
“Wet.”
(Lily has never identified it as being wet before, just warm and dark, and sorta wahgahwahgwh sounding.)
“What else do you remember?”
“I remember heat.”
“What did it sound like?”
“Hum… It sounded like boom bah, bah booooom, bah, boom.”
“Could you hear us?”
“Not really.”
“Was it light? Was it dark?” (Note, when I ask questions, I intentionally pose them without any change in inflection so that I am not leading her one way or the other.)
“It was dark.”
“Were you crowded? Did you have plenty of room?”
“It was crowded.”
“Could you move around?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you ever get hiccups?”
“No.” (This she likely has no recollection of because by the time they subsided and were no longer regular, she was about 28 weeks – right about when my uterus started toning up. Given development to that point, it is not at all surprising that she would have no recollection, yet many of her memories, especially of being crowded, would correlate with final few weeks. Last time she told me about her memories, she focused on her emergence. This time, it was more of an environment and experiential recollection.)
“Was it daytime or nightime when you came out?” (This is something very intriguing because, at this time, she has only been told that she was born at 2. We have not made reference to that being daytime or nightime, just 2. She understands morning, afternoon, night, dark, and sunset, but she has not yet begun to make any connection with actual time of day as related to an hour/number.)
“Day.”
“So, was coming out of me and joining us something that was ok?”
“Yeah, it was good.”
“Were you comfortable on your way out?”
“Yep.”
“Was it easy or was it a lot of work?” (Remember, no inflection change.)
“It was pretty easy.”
Now, for anyone who has any concept of a gentle birth, free of fear, with the intent to welcome, open, and allow the baby to come in calm, and into calm and into a safe, secure, and gentle environment (in our case, our bedroom), my guess is you’re smiling right now. My smile washed over me at her sharing, and it’s glow will remain for a long time.