I think about how babies move from one world to the next. We know the science: zygote, to embryo, to fetus. This science is never satisfying to my youngest child, who asks every night during our “body talks,” but how are the eyes formed? And how are our fingers made? And I FaceTime my biologist friend, and they lovingly explain the science of it all. And still he asks again, night after night.

We come from the depths.

Some other place, behind the veil. And when the time comes— still our science can not discern what it is exactly that thrusts a body into labor.

And when the time comes for the flushing of oxytocin and the rhythmic contracting of the uterus and the thinning of the cervix and the release of the mucus plug and the deep breathing and the contraction timing and the surges of power/muscle/love that pump us from that distinct there to this shocking here, there are tiny moves.

Tiny little fetal shifts. Every labor position (“I tried curb walking, I was on all fours for a bit, I was doing figure 8s on the ball, I swayed in the shower”) producing unknown fruit in the womb. They call them the four cardinal rotations beginning in Left Occiput Anterior: Inlet Engagement. Diagonal Through Midpelvis. Outlet Extension. Extension Under Pubic Arch.

a medical drawing of a human pelvis, identifying the inlet, outlet, and brim

From my doula vantage point, the grey gummy slit of head. Depending on the birth, it’s an inching liminality. “We are hanging between universes, loves. Take a moment. Look around. You’re in the Great In-Between.” That grey raisin growing, tiny moves. A lick of hair, wet, blood. Shifting, ever, the baby in the pelvis. Rotating and pausing- Oh the wisdom of the body. The contractions slow, the person birthing melts into the bed, and then an involuntary surge. The yonic shape of grey, almost-here. Baby rotates, the head is born. If you’re lucky, time stands still. Half-borns. Crown, third eye are here. Here.

Throat to root lie in the nether.

Beat.

Sweat on the parent’s brow.

Surge.

The body shutters out in one glorious swoop. Blue and grey and vernix and blood, water and relief.

I don’t think we stop shifting once we are born.

The second birth requires so much shifting, doesn’t it? Tiny moves as we now inch through an unseen tunnel, towards the second veil, which is of course death. I have been shifting for years in that Great Pelvis. Circling around my learnings and unlearnings. Tiny moves towards Self Flowing Through Selves (Audre, of course). Flowing towards You until the next birth.