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motherhood

Vanishing Twins

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A vanishing twin is a term used to describe a death of a twin in the womb, although not widely known this is a relatively common occurrence in pregnancy with as many as one in five babies thought to be living their life as a twin survivor.
 
My attention was bought to Vanishing twins in a big way earlier this year when my youngest son had trouble adjusting to pre-school. I thought to share today my vanishing twin story and the potential psychological characteristics that can play out for those of us who are twin survivors.
 
During my sons kinesiology session gestational feotal trauma presented itself as the loss of a twin, and as with the magic that often arises during sessions I was able to reclaim and put back together pieces of my pregnancy story I had previously not been able to see that fit. 
 
I was reminded of a particular week early on in my pregnancy with him when I had the deep sensation that I was miscarrying my child. At the time I was certain I was carrying the soul of a female child I had been in communication with before we had even conceived our first child.
 
In my drum journey to meet with her before conception she laid down next to me and whilst gently stroking my hair she told me that she would not come unless I would promise to bring this other soul with her, she gestured down to my womb and there laying above it was my son Mercury curled up sleeping like an angel baby.
 
This journey with her was the first time I communicated with my son in spirit and now I look back and laugh, at how clear the journeys message was, and how very unable I was to interpret it without bias at the time. During the journey I promised her I would bring him earthside, but If I’m being honest with myself I saw him as a very far off ‘maybe’ third child. My longing for her had me making promises that I’m not sure I intended to keep. During my first scan a couple weeks after my miscarriage scare the attendant informed me that the baby I had continually refereed to as a ‘She’ during the scan actually had a very obvious penis and scrotum! 
 
His “jumping of the cue” as we fondly referred to It at the time was a shock to both my husband and I. It was an even greater shock to me personally because of what it meant for how I felt about myself and my intuition. Where I had felt so confident before I was now riddled with doubt. This doubt is something that took me a long time to recover from “how could I have had it so wrong when it came to my own child and my own body?” Reflecting on this journey now I can see how humbling and integral this process of losing trust in myself and then gradually reclaiming it back has has been, especially in my ability to further step into my medicine and work in this life.
 
Until my sons recent session that perhaps the feeling I had of loosing her as a baby in the womb was my intuition being acutely in-tune rather then ‘wrong’. It had never occurred to me that I could have been carrying them both together during my early pregnancy. 
 
A twin can die due to poorly implanted placenta, a chromosome abnormality incompatible to life, a developmental anomaly, or an ovum that never developed beyond the very earliest stages of embryogenesis. In some ancestral traditions it is thought that when a baby is lost due to a miscarriage that the soul of the baby is not yet ready to reincarnate, certain things may not have lined up karmically or in the life path of the babies parents or perhaps the times it desires to be born in are not yet in resonance.
 
What ever the reasons there is a magic and mystery to conception, gestation and birth that goes beyond what our conscious mind or science can comprehend and can leave us both painfully baffled and both bathed in wonder. 
 
The threads of fate have always spoken to the human soul and mind over our entire existence and Im constantly amazed at our ability to witness this weaving so intimately during kinesiology sessions. 
 
Over Christmas and January I was personally going through a cross roads, the female soul that did not come through as my second child but who has been in constant communication with me for over 7 years now is so often around. Some days I feel her like a phantom limb, I see her sitting In the corner of a room or feel her next to me in the car. The thought of not having her earthside with me brings up deep feelings of longing and grief. I knew she was ready to come through at the beginning of this year if I so wished. My body was ripe and her soul was ready, but I had my doubts. To jump from a family of 4 to a family of 5 will mean many things for us as a family and obviously me personally. I kept finding myself being a full yes while ovulating and a full no whilst bleeding and as I have been around the block twice before I no longer have a naivety around motherhood and its challenges in our modern world. So for me it is a no until it is a full yes.
 
On my youngest first day of pre-school I felt the portal for her coming in fully close, it was a bizarre sensation like a kind of switch that had been open had suddenly fully turned off. Whether its the forever portal closing or the just the for now portal Im not totally sure.  My son felt this shift too, Or perhaps It was me feeling what he was feeling as he experienced this other loss with his twin. 
 
For the past year everyday when we have dropped his older brother off to school Mercury like many second children would ask me ” when do I start school mummy.”.
 
He was so independent and ready that he would run off and try and enter the school by himself. When he very strongly expressed the desire to no longer go back to school after his first day and I witnessed a vulnerablity in him that Id never felt before I suspected something else was going on for him then the usual pre-school adjustments.
 
His session showed me that he was deeply feeling his twins absence perhaps triggered by the closing of the portal I also felt. Karmically they were so close that he now felt like he had to be able to do and be, in a sense ‘both’ of them. He felt responsible for both his and her contracts in this life and without having the ability to do this he was left with feelings of being vulnerable and alone. 
 
Most womb twin survivors and their mothers don’t know that they once had a twin, however like my sons story the psychological, emotional and energetic effects can be intense and long lasting.
 
Characteristics of womb twin survivors can include:
 
  • Spending much of their life going in opposite directions and not understanding why they do it.
  • Constantly searching for “something missing”, but not knowing what that ’something’ is. This can be felt like a life long search for the missing ‘other’.
  • A subtle feeling of insecurity or abandonment. I have had clients express this feeling with confusion as their parents never made them feel this way, its simply something they have always felt.
  • Feeling ‘unhappy’ for no reason
  • Having a sense of life being incomplete even when everything is going well and ‘right’.
  • Feelings of incompleteness
  • Being haunted by a strange sense of vulnerability.
  • A longing desire for that perfect relationship, finding your ‘soul mate’
  • Being extremely empathetic and sensitive to the needs of others
  • People with devoid cysts or teratomas (painful lumps/tumours)
  • Vanishing twin survivors can sometimes form intense relationships quickly and then let go of them just as quickly.
 
After my sons clearing Im happy to report that he is enjoying pre-school and the states of vulnerability in him I was witnessing have left. My womb is still feeling closed for now and from his clearing I am also feeling less guilt about this fact then I had previously.  Who knows what weavings lie ahead for me and my family, the journey and lessons with my soul baby have already been life altering and for now that knowing and journey is so much more than enough.
 
If something in this story has spoken to the knowing in you or has bought anything to the surface for you and you would like some support please follow my booking link or email me directly.
 
 

Sometimes I hate motherhood

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I wrote this piece three years ago and stumbled upon it this morning. It felt like a good time to share. Im sharing for all the mothers who do or have felt this too, and for the mothers who may suppress these feeling’s because they think it may make them be a “bad mother”.
 I know I’m an amazing mother, but sometimes I hate it.
Hate may feel like a strong word for many but I’ve always been one to feel all the feels deeply, and the current mantra I’m living by is this.
Theres room for this too.
Theres room for all of it. The suffering, the beauty, the heart breaking joy. There is room within me for all of it, and when theres room within me for all of it, theres room within me to accept all of it from others. And to accept ALL OF my children exactly as they are I believe is the greatest gift I can give them.
 
 

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There are some days where I hate being a mother. I curse myself for being such a romantic idealist, for being that mother to-be that never once contemplated the hardship that was to come. Standing in that place of hardship, it hits me across the face like the news of a cheating lover. I feel betrayed. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this.
Months of toilet training resulting in the scent of urine singed to my nostril hair, sleepless nights – for years, tape worms – more than once, the putting on of shoes, the taking off of shoes, the cooking of meals no one eats, the explosive tantrums, the unshaved legs and the endless washing. The disappearance of desire, the lack of wanting touch from my husband. I feel swallowed up by my existence, barely able to take air before black waters again take me.
It’s in these moments and at these times that I dream of my life before children, I have sexual fantasy’s of a quiet and empty bed.  I crave to escape in a book, escape into my writing, escape up a mountain. Escape. Anywhere.
I’ve been unwell, really unwell and I’m still unwell as I write this. Im aware that sickness makes everything feel worse, but right now my life seems like a dark absyss of endless whinging and chores.
There is light, because of course without the light I would not know it was dark. My father has taken my eldest so I can rest, and my husband has come home early from work to be with baby number two.
I’m propped up on pillows on the top bunk bed of my son’s room, so I can breathe and so I can hide. This bunk is a place in my home that I never dwell in. So I’ve escaped, here, where no ones knows to look for me, and for some time it feels like I’m in a far away place.
I hear my father’s car pulling up returning our three year old; my husband walks to the front door opening it with our seven month old in his arms.
My eldest runs to the door ecstatic to be home and yells out in that sweet, sweet voice that only three olds have “daddy, see mummy?!”
My heart melts, it cracks open that little bit more, as it does every time I sink into these places and I find myself close to weeping because Im so desperately grateful. So grateful to be a mother, so grateful that all the hard things are tempered with the refined magic of what it means to be human. Love.
They tell you before you become a parent be prepared to “learn a love like you’ve never known.” 
What no one told me was, that I also needed to be prepared, to ‘be’ loved like I’ve never known.  No one warned me that my children would love me just as much, and sometimes even more, and this is what has made the experience of sometimes hating my life and motherhood such a pleasure.
I walk downstairs, with a soft smile on my face, preparing to be ambushed with cuddles. 
 
 

Self care is more than a massage

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Its the dark of the moon and I am weary. Each stair I climb to my room feels like a mountain. A mountain that dares me not to cross. The thought of rest leaves me both with a longing and a fear. What will I find there, in that place of rest?
Sitting on my bed my hands reach for the oil of basil and I ungracefully yank off the lid. My exhaustion has made me messy and rough, as I reach for the diffuser my hand knocks my tea. I mutter words under my breathe equally as rough and heavy as I feel. Watching the oil slowly drip into the waters below, my thoughts spiral. The heady scent of basil washes over me and out into my room giving my mind a moment of respite. I say a quick prayer to the spirit of basil, quick because I can manage no more. I ask him to help me to empty, to help me let go of all that no longer serves, to help me to surrender to what is. I watch basil, his samurai warrior spirit enter the room and take up space, sending tingling sensations through the cells of my body.
Ripping off my crushed velvet leggings I pull back the covers of my bed. Sitting, I sink back into my pillows feeling the softness and tenderness of my sheets against my skin. My bed, the refugee I constantly seek since becoming a mother. Holding my tea close to my face I take a slow conscious breathe, allowing the brewed herbs to wash over me before I take my first gentle sip, some of the held tension in my body leaves me as I exhale with an audible sigh. Placing the tea back down, I pick up my book and attempt to read a page before I involuntarily start to sob. Raw emotion rises in waves racking through my body. My mind runs to catch up with my emotions and when she manages to reach them the pleasure of release consumes me. My heart gently whispers,  It’s been so long since we’ve been here. 
Gratitude for this quiet moment of self care washes over me, tears of exhaustion and happiness rushing down my face, like an annoitment from the goddess herself. My tears become blessings of water, liquid to heal my weary soul. I finish my tea, and I sleep.

 

The term ‘self care’ is thrown around a lot in the personal development and healing world. It often tests up during my healings as support for clients. I ask the glorious woman or man sitting before me the question “Do you have a self care practice?” The usual response “I sometimes go for a massage.” Or “what do you mean?”
Massages are wonderful but they are a tiny part of what I would consider self care.

Self care is saying no when many people want you to say yes. Self care is doing things your way when the world tells you ‘that’s not the way things are done’. Self care is protecting and ‘caring’ for all parts of yourself mental, emotional, physical and energetic whilst living from the passion of your heart.

Self care is not just a monthly massage, its a daily choice.

The choice be true to your needs, the choice to focus on your priorities, the choice to practice love. Whether those priorities are your business or children Its the daily management of what comes in and what goes out of your life that becomes a self care practice.
We live in a culture that by its very nature creates physical exhaustion. We are always ‘on’, striving forward, hitting targets, reaching goals, our lists are endless and our minds are busy. We have forgotten the natural rhythms of this earth. We have Forgotten that the moon herself is not always full, as I write this she is currently dark. Nature teaches us there MUST be times of rest.
For me reclaiming my ability to care for myself took small baby steps. Sometimes I got it ‘right’ and sometimes I got it ‘wrong’. I no longer strive for balance but I do strive for harmony. Self care is the practice of loving yourself. There are many reasons we stop loving ourselves or struggle with the compassion we need to love ourselves well. To have the ability practice self care, to truly mother ourselves is a true sign of reaching adulthood, and spiritual maturity. Without this ability the way we care for all others, our children, our partners, our friends, will always come from a place of lack.  Life will feel too full, unfulfilling, out of control or simply empty.

So today I ask you, what is your self care practice?

 

Journal Questions to uncover your self care blocks:

What did rest look like for you growing up? ( Think back to your childhood Did you witness your mother resting, did she give herself permission to say no? Was your home busy and always active? Did rest happen but not in a truly regenerative way?)

How is the story of your childhood playing out in your life now? (Have you followed your mothers or fathers patterns? Have you done the opposite. How do you feel about setting your own boundaries?)

When do you rest and practice self care? ( does this feel like its enough for you? How could it be better?)

Where do you neglect yourself and your needs? (Why are these areas harder than others for you?)

When you hear the term Self care, how does it make you feel? (Where do you hold this in your body? What story is your body telling you?)

 

Id love to hear back from you. Where are your blocks? What is your story? What can you do to commit to a better practise of self care?

Blessings and Love Amanda 

Motherhood as a practice

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Naked and wet I bound down the stairs, I solider through the piles of toys on the floor, shrieking out in pain as a triceratops pierces my foot. I fall, but I’ve reached the baby and pull him as calmly as I can into my chest. Soothing him with a song whilst my eyes glare fury at my eldest son. I know he’s pushed the baby over, hard. 
My stomach is bearing the burden of my suppressed rage “why did you do that?” I growl. Even as I say it, I know it’s a useless question, but like most parents, I say it anyway. It makes me feel better. For that moment blaming my three year old for my lack of supervision relieves my guilt. 
It’s my fault and in that moment. I hate myself. I feel like I’ve failed my baby and my toddler. I have yelled at my eldest in a way I never would have dreamt was possible before having another child. I feel inadequate and exhausted.  I want it to be easy, I want to do motherhood well.

If intentions raised children, my god I would be the best, but Intentions don’t raise children. Children are not products that go into a machine with a formula and come out the other end with your intended result. Motherhood is messy and at times it can be your own personal hell. Every personal weakness bought to the surface, endless trigger points awaiting their first touch. The bar each day never quite being hit and if by magic you do reach it, somehow that stakes always seem to be raised. Harsh words can be thrown and no amount of cuddles can take them away. They just become another scratch on the skin, another memory to replay on the heroines journey of motherhood. 
I want my eldest child to help me beyond his capacity. I just want a shower. Surely after being up all night I deserve a shower? But motherhood doesn’t barter in traditional terms. My legs will remain unshaven, my stomach will require suck in pants, and some days coffee will seem like it’s the only way I can make it through the day.
Despite all of this, I won’t care. I wont care because of the way I feel when I hear that first laugh or witness that first smile. I won’t care because of the first day he takes his first step or eats an entire meal or sleeps in his own bed. Since becoming a mother my life and my daily goals may have become smaller but my heart has grown infinitely larger. Motherhood has taught me the practice of love, and love practiced is what will heal the world.