Labour land can feel like an out of body experience for many birthing women.
Where do we go when we go into labour land? It is almost like we transcend into a different field, letting our body and our baby do the work that is birth while we float on a hormonal cocktail, allowing oxytocin to flow through our bodies, naturally reducing pain and fear. It is the moment we surrender that the magic truly takes place.
I remember what it feels like to be in labour land. There is no sense of time, identity, or even the outside world. I went so far inward I couldn't hear anyone or anything. I knew something big was happening, but it was all very dim and blurry, and I wasn't under the influence of any pain relieving drugs.
It is a very hard thing to try to explain to another person, but it is something I will never forget. I've never been so unaware of time in my life. For all I knew, my labour could have been a matter of 4 hours, or 24 hours (spoiler alert - it was 24 hours). I remember early labour very well, and even the start when things started intensifying. But I do remember there being a point where I handed my control over to the ancestral wisdom of my body and my baby and fully surrendering to the process of birth.
Birth is crazy. Our bodies are also crazy. Capable of so much more than I ever understood before undergoing the rite of passage of matrescence. Maiden becoming mother - tapping into the intuitive nature of our bodies and being given the gift of my daughter.
Where do you go when you go to labour land?