As we look to the day our borders open, what will be will be. We have done all we can to prepare, we could do better with our personal health on a long-term basis – its’ not too late, writes Ruta Mave.

For my first born I was focused on a natural birth with soft music, candles, in a house with a birthing pool, no drugs, nothing clinical and automated. A week out from due date, I found out I was placenta previa – one of those conditions that in the old days without medical intervention mother and baby die rapidly in a pool of blood. This meant my home birth dream became my worst nightmare, elected surgery, stark hospital room, drugs and strangers in and around me ‘down there’. They say every time you birth a healthy baby regardless of the how it arrives is a good birth. What matters is the healthy baby and the healthy surviving mother goes without saying – which may be why no one says it very often or loudly.

My pregnancy had been brought to a grinding halt. This magical and dreamlike vision of how my baby was going to be welcomed into the world was slapped away. There was no way to entertain it, there was no questioning what needed to be done. It was in the best interests of myself and my child, my worst-case scenario became my only lifeline to survival.

Every woman’s pregnancy is different and unique to her. Recently a friend posted on Facebook “childbirth is big, intense, beautiful, challenging, healing, empowering, life altering, it takes you to your limits and over”. While in New Zealand, Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter cycled to hospital whilst in labour at 2am and delivers a healthy baby girl 1 hour later.

Childbirth is the rite of passage for many women. Being a daughter is a gift, a wife a treasure, becoming a mother makes a female goddess worthy. Childbirth has been a natural occurrence since the dawn of man yet you wouldn’t catch too many men volunteering to have nature and evolution change the course whereby, they were the ones who gave birth. It’s often said if men gave birth, they would only do it once, and you wouldn’t’ be able to tell them what they could and couldn’t do with their own bodies.

My second pregnancy – another incomprehension for men, why women willingly go back to do it again. I felt like my son was three months overdue, I had constant morning sickness a contradictory term when it existed 27/7 for me. No, it’s not a typo.  I did get my natural birth but it had to be under the watchful eyes of the medical team and monitors in the bright lights of the big city hospital. But again, the birth of a healthy bouncy boy negated all the trials and tribulations of losing my birth plan fantasy. He lived, I lived, we all went home happy ever after.

Waiting for Covid is like childbirth. You know it has risks and despite all your preparation, covering all scenarios it can still catch you off guard, challenge your beliefs, test your patience, question your intelligence, morals and ethics. But like pregnancy we cannot live in a bubble forever. We can’t keep our little nation safe away from the world cocooned inside our borders not allowing anything to harm our life within.

The minute we open to the world and push ourselves back into breathing for ourselves without the umbilical cord from New Zealand, we’re open to risks, outside the mandated quarantine.

We had our first contraction, a weak positive test in a 10-year-old boy, too young to be vaccinated and too young to be blamed for purposefully bringing our due date closer to us than we want. We know births can come prematurely – we have our hospital bag packed ready. Or be induced early for the best interests of mother and child. Still, we look with the trepidation of a new mother, knowing we survived the first foray into opening, to a world deemed safe as possible, then. Now it’s different, we will bring our baby into a world at war.

As we look to the day our borders open, what will be will be. We have done all we can to prepare, we could do better with our personal health on a long-term basis – its’ not too late. But it is what it is, we need to cut the cord, to take that first breath without the resounding smack, to shock us into a scream. The borders will open and we will live life once again with others, with new rules and directions, because everyone knows there is no going back to normal after childbirth.

During this last trimester, let’s take the time to wallow in these precious moments we have left, let’s not spend time in fear or what if’s, rather we should watch the moon and sing and appreciate this incubation as a time of restoration.