The Womb that Holds My Heart - Julianna Morasse

Julianna’s birth video is here on Instagram.

I'm twenty five years old and I have just begun a journey of loving my womb unconditionally. The sacred vessel that pours forth life and receives love is mysterious in itself, but is also easily invaded and stores all the negative energy that once circulated the body. That womb. Honestly, this was not a decision for the sake of "self care," or to follow a holistic health trend of bodily awareness. Rather, thanks to the birth of my second child I finally broke out of a dissociated fog. The sacred event of labor and delivery allows our wombs to have it's loudest voice to send us clairvoyant messages, like it did for me. Some think our womb pours forth many hidden emotional traumas during birth. This is absolutely true, it roars everything we suppress, but I want to add that it really sends us warnings every day. They can be subtle and gentle but they are there and most times we choose the easiest option which is to ignore them.

The first messages my womb tried to give me were seen in puberty when I became completely detached with my own anatomy, had overwhelming fears of tampons, and couldn't sit through a gynecology appointment without severe panic that caused physical pain, and later in my second pregnancy with undiagnosable vulva pain. These things came and went in my life and I marked them as "quirks" because "I'm just a private, modest person." No. Those were signs my womb was holding onto a lot of trauma and pain. But there was ease in calling them variations of normal. When I entered labor my womb was ready to finally be heard after years of intense compartmentalizing. All this energy stuffed inside my womb came charging out with a radical intensity, demanding to be listened to. Ironically, after my first birth I still didn't listen to my womb. 

The birth of my first child was a homebirth with my midwife team Lisa Marie and Richard, whom I now consider my good friends and mentors. While it was a fast 4-5 hour first time birth, surrounded by trustworthy, safe people, I had a very intense cervical lip for two hours. The pain is unfathomable and I truly believe it exceeds the copable pain threshold for a human to experience. It left me unable to adequately communicate. Luckily, I had the support of Lisa Marie who was precisely able to correct the lip. That experience deeply rattled me and I wrestled with the "why" my womb would fail me.

Second Birth:

A year later I entered into my second pregnancy...You, reader, should know that I did everything to create the most peaceful birth: mediations, prayer, birth affirmations, chiropractic care, spinning babies. I had a seamlessly ideal labor that was actually painless until I experienced something that no one could have anticipated. My emotional and mental state radically changed after a cervical check, that I myself planned, was performed. I entered a very dark place and had a panic attack so severe that I became completely unglued. But nothing could have stopped this. This trigger not only affected my state of mind but it also had physical repercussions. I went from mild discomfort to unbearable pain that I couldn't cope through in a matter of seconds. I spent 20-30 minutes, which felt like hours, screaming with intense ferocity, begging my team to make "it" stop. My behavior was unlike my gentle personality and even when I recall the memory it feels like a completely different person took my place.

Immediately after this labor I finally heard my womb and painfully let my mind unsuppress the trauma I held deep within me. And let me tell you, there isn't a trauma too small to be unable to cope with. Your hurt is heavy, period. But if we suppress our wounds, the hurt of violation, and we bury it deep within our wombs then we will alter that sacred space. I am abundantly grateful for these experiences even though they felt torturous at the time because now there is a sense of freedom and wholeness within me. But I wonder how many other women are still stuck in the dark and ignoring messages from their womb.

Father Daniel Morasse:

I was in the room when my sons were born. In the case of our second child, I remember holding my wife's hand, watching her do an incredible and beautiful thing, this sacred task of bringing new life into the world. I can still hear her breathe in my mind, picture her flushed face that would alternate on waves of tension then relief, feel her grip tighten around my hand. It was in this setting that I learned something unique about my wife- that sometimes the body can speak when it feels impossible to form the words.

Certain things happen in a life that can shape it, for better or for worse, like a history written within a person. But this history is often kept in secret, where the keeper hopes it will wither away on its own or remain the monster behind the closet door that will leave them alone for the most part- and maybe for a time it will. However, doors are made to open and written words are meant to be spoken and understood- this is what occurred at the birth of my second child. There was an outpouring of fear, doubt and anxiety all in an instant, flooding out like a rushing white river burst free after being dammed up. A voice found after a long silence.

I'd like to say that I was a man who had the perfect words of comfort during and after the event, or that I was able to lead her back to a place of peace, but things don't always unfold as cleanly as that and neither did this. After the birth, we went back to our normal lives. We ordered sushi for dinner that night and later introduced our older son to his new brother. I went back to work. We went on walks in the park and stayed up to watch half of a movie once the boys were in bed. Every once in a while, the waters which broke free that day would begin to rise and we both had things to learn. I learned to offer consistency and safety, ready to listen and slow to speak, and she learned to wade through the painful waters to find out if she could. I learned to be an anchor and she learned to swim.