I am a birth keeper.
I believe that birth is sacred, and that the entire process is one of the most powerful and vulnerable experiences that a woman will ever have. I believe that the moment that we arrive on the planet is of great importance to God.
When I had my first child just six days after I turned 24, it changed my whole life not just because I became a mother, but because everything shifted after that. Something awoke in me that couldn’t have any other way. My experience of pregnancy, labor and birth set me on a path in life that really was the first time that I started doing things from an intentional place rather than just going through the motions.
It was the first time that I had set out to do something that I really didn’t think that I could do, and through the grace of God, and a tremendous amount of support, I was able to do it. I had always been terrified of the pain of labor enough that it actually caused me to consider never becoming a mother.
I ended up having the exact perfect experience that I needed to have for my particular growth and process. From that, a strong passion was born around pregnancy, childbirth and newborn care.
I was a birth professional for 10 years and learned much walking that sacred path with hundreds of families. It really shaped so much of how I see the world.
You see, I had gotten into some pretty ideal and self righteous perspectives at the ripe old age of 24 about “how birth should be.” At one point, after attending a series of births that didn’t go the way that I thought they “SHOULD” I found myself in some intense wrestling with reality. It was so painful to see what was lost in so many experiences.
I mourned with these families over what they couldn’t have, yet deeply sought out in their experience of bringing new life into this world. When I didn’t think I could explain what seemed so horrific and I had no stories that made sense on the matter, received some profound, Divine insight that gave peace to my soul:
ALL BABIES ARE BORN WHEN AND HOW THEY ARE MEANT TO.
There is no right way to give birth. There is no better way to arrive on the planet. Yes, some ways come with less complications, and other ways come with a whole string of difficulty. But there is no right or wrong. There’s only what IS.
Fast-forward several years, and I find myself as a professional Light-Filled Astrologer. I personally love that both of the long-spanning careers for me have been centered around the very sacred and powerful moment that we take our first breath.
I share all of the backstory to illustrate that I deeply understand the significance of a premature baby or an induction, or even a seriously post term baby. In fact, all of my children were pretty far past their due dates, coming in at 16, 17 and 25 days past their actual and verified due dates.
So does that change their natal chart? Should they have been born on their due date and should I be running their charts for those days and then compare it to their actual natal chart? Or what about somebody who was born eight weeks early? Do we look at both charts or just consider the one?
It makes sense to question this. We get very attached to things arriving on schedule, and while we have been able to improve the outcome for mom and baby in significant ways over the last several decades, birth, sometimes just happens on its own schedule, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Sometimes it is quite the introduction to parenthood to remind us that we are not in control.
Ultimately, the natal chart is the natal chart is the natal chart. Period. Due dates and induction and premature birth and post term babies have absolutely nothing to do with the natal chart.
However, this does not negate that sometimes the way that we arrive can create trauma for us. Sometimes being induced can create emotional ripples that tell us on an unconscious level that we cannot trust ourselves and that something outside of us is in charge and forcing us.
Being born via C-section, medically necessary, or not, skips over the natural processes that we are meant to go through. Even if those natural processes may have resulted in us not being born alive, it doesn’t change the fact that it wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
You can trust that it was how it was supposed to be. Because that’s what happened and there is divine order and everything. But there is power in understanding what would have been the natural occurrence of events that would happen in an ideal environment, so that we can see the distance between what actually happened and what should have happened. Not from a place of shame, or to become attached to that discrepancy, but rather to know what needs to be healed or made up for or compensated. How can we help to repair something if we don’t see the original design?
So if you or your child or someone you know was born premature or really late or even just not on the due date, (better called a “guess date”) there may be some emotional processing to do around that event, but ultimately being able to trust that your natal chart is your natal chart can be settled.
✨ Be Light