Another month has blown by since I’ve written. Two of those weeks I spent in “false labor,” questioning my body, my mind, counting contractions with an iPhone App.  The intensity died down over and over, and progression began to sound like a thing for all the other women in the world, not meant for me.

Now I know that – in my swaying hips, the way my neck held on to my bobbing head and how my eyes stayed in their sockets when they wanted to roll out, how it took the full strength of humankind to not push, to merely breathe – I didn’t have to agree with the truth for the truth to be true. My body is amazing.

I thought he would never come. But after 6 intense hours of unbelieving natural labor, after the hands of my dearest ones laid on me and voices said, “yes you can,” and after only three minutes of pushing, there on the squatted, wild-eyed table was born into music and air my beautiful fourth-born son, Titus Lee Haines –

and was also born the purest hush to my soul, the clarity of thumping hormones in a lion mother – the lick, the purr, the pink skin crying. The flash of ancient memory. Land of Milk and Honey.

*photo by Brooke Robinson, my bff