Birth Stories: Connecting The Dots Between Patterns At Birth That Repeat Throughout Life

How we come into the world can strongly impact our physiology, psychology and sense of social belonging.

Dear friends,

On August 21^st, 1980 in Fargo, North Dakota my mom’s water broke as the sun was preparing to make its debut for the day.

My dad took her to the hospital where she was ushered into a room to wait out her baby’s arrival. The hospital staff told my dad that labor takes a very long time and he should go home until they called him. Putting his trust in the experts, he did as instructed and left.

Alone and about to give birth to her first child, my mom was pacing the room when she felt certain that her baby was coming. Now.

 “My baby is coming!” she called to the nurses, who quickly propped her up on the bed; minutes later, I traded the watery world of my mother’s womb for the new life awaiting me on the other side.

Today is my birthday, and it seemed like a good time to share my perspective on just how profoundly the events of our birth can impact our physiology, psychology and sense of belonging.

After uncovering many patterns in my own life that appear to correlate strongly with the patterns surrounding my birth, I began asking friends and family members about their birth stories only to discover similarly powerful connections; then, the same thing occurred with some of my in person clients; and finally, online clients and students. Some of these stories - and the revelations uncovered that cleared the path for deep healing - have moved me to tears of awe and wonder.

After a decade of exploring this murky, mysterious territory for clues that can help us understand our relationship to our physical bodies, to pain, to life itself, and especially to our sense of belonging - to a body, to a family, to a culture and a world - I am convinced that birth stories matter; that they imprint strongly on our physiology and psychology; that the circumstances under which we come into the world can - though certainly not always, and maybe not for everyone - create painful patterns that repeat themselves until we connect the dots, tend to the wounds, and say yes to the deep work of healing.

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“I’m not wanted.”

My dad wasn’t present at my birth. Not because he didn’t want to be – he did! He naively put his trust in the doctors and nurses who told him to go home.

However, this theme continued to play out for my entire life: my dad often seemed distant or unavailable; especially during pivotal life events, or when I needed a father most. Sometimes he was literally physically absent – on work trips, or any time my parents separated (which happened a lot throughout my childhood). Earlier this year - as my dad was on his deathbed - I finally got answers and these wounds are now healed completely, for which I am eternally grateful.

For reasons I’ve only just learned about this week, my birth was practically painless for my mom and involved very few contractions. An hour and a half after my mom’s water broke, I was earthside. Immediately after exiting the birth canal, however, I was whisked away by the nurses who told my mom that I wasn’t breathing and they needed to run some tests.

My mom locked eyes with me for a few seconds before they took me away, which meant she didn’t get to hold me in those precious moments post birth; and I didn’t get to be held. They didn’t bring me back for eight long hours. We both missed that critical window when oxytocin is released, which helps mama and baby cement their bond. Skin to skin contact is also incredibly important to establish secure attachment and allow mama and baby (and/or papa and baby) to sync their rhythms of heartbeats, breath, and nervous systems.

Instead of finding myself embraced by loving parents in the moments after birth, as a helpless newborn I endured hours of being poked and prodded under fluorescent lights. My dad was not there to console my mom, or advocate on my behalf.

Though my mom repeatedly asked for me, and demanded to know why I was taken away and what was happening, the only answer she got was to let the doctors do their job. She/we never did find out exactly what happened or why I was gone for 8 hours. When they finally brought me to her, they assured her I was healthy; and she was so relieved and happy to finally hold me in her arms that she let it go.

My mom loves me. I love my mom. We have a great relationship today that is built on honesty, reciprocity and a shared appreciation for uncovering the truth about childhood traumas, ancestral traumas, planetary traumas, and all the ways we are each uniquely impacted - emotionally and physically - by our life events going all the way back to birth.

And…it wasn’t always this way.

My mom and I have had our fair share of mother-daughter wounding and challenges, including an ephemeral distance between us that never made sense until I heard my birth story.  

And for reasons beyond my ability to comprehend with logic, this pattern – of my dad being absent, and my mom feeling rather helpless against external circumstances that led to periods of her relinquishing me to the care of others – repeated itself throughout my childhood.

At age ten, my mom left my dad once again, and – truly believing this would be the best thing for me at the time – she took me to a friend’s house where I was to live during the week. Without giving me any warning or time to emotionally prepare, she simply picked me up at school one day and declared “I’m leaving your dad again, and I’m taking you to live with Sarah and Rachel for a while. Your brother will be staying with your dad, and I’ll come get you on weekends.”

Not yet an adult, and without a fully formed brain or consciousness that could comprehend what was really going on, I heard my heart sink with the thought:

“My dad chose my brother; and my mom doesn’t want me.”

That’s the day I stopped feeling my feelings.

I didn’t see my dad or bother for months, and I didn’t cry again until age 24.

Though my parents always ended up back together (and eventually stopped separating, finding companionship and love in their relationship until my dad died earlier this year) my parents sent my brother and I to live with our aunt and uncle for a summer while they tried to work out their differences; my mom left again for several months when I was teenager; and when our next door neighbor targeted me for grooming, psychological manipulation and sexual violation just after my 13^th birthday (mere weeks after I came back from my aunt and uncle’s house), my parents were oblivious to the danger and unable to protect me.

Long used to enduring whatever pain my body and soul were subjected to, I never even contemplated telling him no; it literally didn’t occur to me that I COULD say no, go get help or stop what was happening. “No” and “stop, this isn’t right” were concepts I could not even fathom, let alone speak or enact.

Worse still was the pattern that I was alone in a dangerous world and there was no one I could turn to for help; the only one I could depend on was myself.

Is it a reach to think that these patterns were imprinted on me at birth?

Maybe.

Or maybe these kinds of patterns are imprinted on all of us, along with the innate potential to make them conscious and break free.

I’m typing this from a coffee shop in Boulder, Colorado - the only place I’ve ever felt at home, and a place I never thought I’d leave.

When I left Boulder in 2018, it wasn’t because I wanted to live somewhere else; it was because my deepest wounds and fears had been triggered and I had no idea how to face them under the circumstances. I was very ill with acute mercury poisoning, and while this story is too complex to share today, it is relevant because this was the event that triggered in me the feeling that I’m not wanted; which led to a rapid ejection from the place I thought would be my forever home. It took me three years to connect the dots, uncover the wounds, and tend to the work of deep healing.

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“I can’t find myself.”"

When my mom shared a few more details of this story with me for the tenth or perhaps the 15^th time a few months ago (my birth story is something we explore together every so often), she said “you just slipped out; I didn’t have to do any pushing.” And she told me about something she’d read a couple years back about C section babies.

We were connecting dots and trying to make sense of my nervous system, and the fact that I LOVE being stepped on (Kinetix) while the majority of people find it incredibly painful.

Traditional natural labor – involving increasingly powerful contractions as mama and baby negotiate the birth process together - creates a rhythmic, compressive massage for babies traveling through the vaginal canal. Lasting many hours (or in some cases, days) these contractions help newborns orient to themselves and their body (as separate from mama), prepares their organs for life outside the womb, clears the lungs of fluid so they can breathe effectively, and awakens the nervous system.

Studies have been conducted that reveal C section babies are more vulnerable to breathing difficulties, fluid build up, digestive disturbances and irregularities of the nervous system because they did not experience the physiological compression created by vaginal deliveries; firm compression and massage is recommended to help these babies develop healthy organs, sensitize their nervous system, and locate their body in space and time outside the womb.

When I was stepped on for the first time in 2018, I instantly knew I would be OK. I knew I would hike and run again after years of debilitating knee pain; I would heal at a profound soul level; I would find peace and freedom after decades of trauma, confusion and chronic pain.

How did I “know” this?

After all, I had tried chiropractic; massage therapy; juice fasting; naturopathic medicine and supplements; psychotherapy; hypnotherapy…you name it, I had probably tried it. But none of these things came close to giving me the feeling I was searching for.

I didn’t know what I was searching for, I just knew that something was missing.

Feeling someone’s body weight – 100+ pounds - sink into the soft tissues of my calf, creating a 360 degree compression of my skin, lymph, nerves, muscles, blood vessels and bones, I could finally locate myself. I could finally feel my body and being with my own inbuilt senses.  

Before that moment, my insides had felt like a giant vat of sensations and emotions, chemicals, hormones, blood and water that had been put in a tumbler, shaken violently, and then brought to an abrupt standstill to remain in disequilibrium for all time.

Getting stepped on helped me “put things in their rightful place.”

Finally, I knew where I ended and the world began; I could easily differentiate between emotions and sensations; I could feel – physically - the difference between blood vessels and lymph, muscle and bone, fascia and nerves. Finally, I could make sense of myself.

Lacking the experience of bodily compression at my birth, I’ve been prone to digestive issues my entire life; my blood and lymph flow have been sluggish, making it difficult for me to eliminate toxins effectively; I struggle to breathe in humid environments; and my senses have always been highly attuned to my external environment rather than my internal world, making it challenging to identify and differentiate my physical and emotional needs, or to negotiate boundaries –  both physical and social.

Fascinatingly, nearly all of the above symptoms improve dramatically when I live at elevation because - I am learning - while atmospheric pressure is reduced at elevation, this phenomenon increases internal pressure within self-contained “air tight” systems (like a tennis ball, bag of chips, intestines or blood vessels). This internal pressure of lymph, blood vessles and organs gives me a daily assist that I’ve needed (since birth?), whereas living at sea level (as I have the past two years) my body has a lot less internal pressure, leading to very sluggish and slow moving fluids like blood, lymph, bile and water, causing internal conditions conducive to chronic illness.

Last week I wrote about the effect that weather and geography have on our bodies and minds, and I’ve now been in Colorado for over a week.

My digestion (which was so good while living in Colorado before, and which became painfully dysfunctional the past few years) has improved 5X while being here. Fluids are moving in my body, which is no longer exhibiting symptoms of chronic inflammation. I can breathe. And I feel so much more at home and at peace in my body, and in the world.  

It didn’t occur to me until this week, contemplating my birth story yet again, that so many of these physiological vulnerabilities of mine might just go all the way back to my original birth day!

I’ve heard so many mind blowing stories of other people’s birth stories, and how those experiences imprinted on them – creating patterns of chronic pain and so called autoimmune conditions. Many of these people experience complete resolution of their pain or illness simply by connecting the dots and taking the necessary actions to resolve the internal conflicts and/or physiological deficits.

Those stories are not mine to share, however, and many of them are tender; vulnerable; and involve more than just the person who was birthed. So today, I’m using my own story to help illuminate the patterns we can identify by exploring the circumstances and events of our emergence into the world.  What I’ve shared is a fraction of the complex story of my birth as it relates to the many patterns of my life. But it should give you a glimse, and hopefully spark an interest in exploring your own.

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Do you know your birth story?

If your parents are still alive, I highly encourage you to ask them to share that story with you (if you haven’t yet). Every detail matters, and might hold a clue about why your body behaves the way it does; or why you behave the way you do in your relationships; or why there are certain triggers that instantly cause you physical pain or anxiety.

And if you have children, please give them the gift of sharing the story of their birth with them - even if it was painful or traumatic for you and/or them.

While I am convinced at this point that birth stories have a lot to teach us, I don’t believe we need to know our birth story to heal. And I don’t believe that all birth stories are traumatic or imprint patterns of chronic pain or illness. I do, however, believe it’s well worth investigating in order to rule it in or out as a possible factor. Besides, I find these stories moving, sometimes heartbreakingly beautiful, and oh-so human.

If you’re feeling brave, please share your birth story in the comments section along with any patterns you notice between how you came into the world and your experience of your body, pain, illness, life, relationships…

Since it’s my birthday today, I’ll be hiking one of my favorite trails followed by a farm to table meal (Boulder has some of the best food in the country).

I’m overjoyed to be back in Colorado.

With love,
Elisha

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