Posts Tagged ‘born too soon’

The Mysterious Power of Children-To-Be

By Elisabeth Hallett – contact: e-mail at soultrek@montana.com or by letter: Elisabeth Hallett, Box 705, Hamilton MT 59840;  http://www.light-hearts.com

It was midwinter and pitch-dark when the Volkswagen skidded off the road into an icy river. Unable to fight her way to shore, C. was exhausted, ready to give up and surrender to the freezing water when suddenly a voice protested…

C. is a down-to earth, level-headed woman, and an old friend. The adventure she related to me happened three years before the birth of her first child, when she and her husband were driving home to Montana after a Christmas trip. In her own words:

“We were anxious to get to our cabin in the Swan Valley so we drove night and day. We stopped in Great Falls for gas and were warned not to cross Rogers Pass because there was wind and extreme cold. Being young, we went along anyway. After crossing the pass we stopped for a cheeseburger and fries — it was about 9:00 P.M.

“As we started up the Swan Highway we encountered a snow packed highway. As we came around the corner, a large amount of snow blew off the bank above us causing a glare of snow and lights. I thought a car was coming toward us so I swerved, over-corrected, went into a spin and flipped over, and landed on our wheels in the Stillwater River.

“J. tried to paddle the car with the snow shovel but we were in a small whirlpool and just went around in circles. He climbed out the window into the river and got the spare tire out of the trunk for me to float on. He swam for shore and I tried to push off from the car on the tire. Unfortunately the tire was attached, so that I couldn’t use it for flotation as it was going down with the car. By this time I was ready to give up, death seemed a treat (I thought I would see my mother again). J. hollered at me from shore and then seemed to disappear under the ice. I resigned myself to an easy death.

“Then I heard, ‘But I haven’t even been born yet!’ This didn’t seem relevant at that time, but a hand or force or whatever seemed to grab me by the collar of my jacket and much as a cat carries a kitten, propelled me to shore. Later, when we had broken into a cabin and were running out of energy, I woke up and seemed to hear the same admonition — “I’m not born yet.” We were rescued in the morning.

“Three years later my son was born. The first night I was home with him he woke in the night to be fed. As I nursed him I had a vision back into the past of my mother, grandmother and so on nursing their children, and I felt connected to this pattern or plan. Then I knew it was my son who had spoken the night of the accident.”

This wonderful story illustrates one of the intriguing patterns in communications before conception: they often seem to have a definite purpose. In this experience, as in many others, the apparent purpose is to overcome an obstacle to conception. The untimely death of your intended mother would surely be a serious problem! But there are other roadblocks on the way to birth, and other stories that suggest the same amazing possibility–that children-to-be are somehow able to intervene and deal with obstacles to their own arrival.

In the story of Miriam and Steven, for example (see part I, this column), Miriam was not only emotionally opposed to motherhood, but had even undergone surgery to prevent it. It took a whole series of visionary and dream contacts with a very appealing little boy to overcome her resistance.

When people have lost a child, their grief and fear can become barriers to risking pregnancy again. Patricia and her husband were devastated when their first pregnancy ended with a stillborn baby girl. They were inclined to shut the door on parenthood forever — and then, as Patricia says, “I met another child in my dreams. His name was Luka, and he said he would wait for us to welcome him into our lives.”

But Patricia was not ready. She still had months of anger and sorrow to endure, and most of all, the fear of another loss. Yet the dream-child was persistent. He appeared again the following year, with the same message that he was waiting to be welcomed. “Why was this happening?” says Patricia. “How could I get this out of my mind?” She continues: “That autumn, I started to realize how depressed I really was. I was functioning in the outside world, but it was apparent in therapy that this sadness had a grip on me. I even thought about whether life was worth continuing. I had had so many losses in my life, and this was about all I could endure.

“Then, the vision to end all visions happened. I’ll never forget it. I was taking a shower, alone, on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I heard this voice (There was no visual). I can’t say the voice was loud, or startled me, or anything like that. But it spoke in no uncertain terms to me, and then vanished. He said that I was perfectly ripe to accept him into our lives, and that this was our last chance because he had to move on.

“I opened up like a lotus to the notion of having this child come into our lives. I felt a cloud lift. But I stood in the shower in slight disbelief. I didn’t know what to do, but I felt lightness, love, hope, and happiness. I told my husband (as I had always done when I got these visions), and asked him if he would be interested in reconsidering our baby decision. When Peter said he wanted this baby, too, I can’t tell you how elated I felt. Maybe I’ve never felt such joy. We made love once, and the rest, they say, is history. Luka was conceived that day.”

Where does the parent-and-child bond begin? The editorial of the APPPAH Newsletter of Spring 1997 made an important point. “Considering what we know about the realities of life before birth,” it proposes, “shouldn’t we be setting the clock of parenting back from ‘early’ (birth to three) to ‘very early’ (conception to birth)?” Now, these stories of a presence even before conception have me wondering: Is it time to look even further back for the beginning of our connections with our children?

INVITATION: Please join in exploring the mysteries of communication before conception. If you have had such an experience, please consider sharing it here! You can contact me by e-mail at soultrek@montana.com or by letter: Elisabeth Hallett, Box 705, Hamilton MT 59840.

A Book for Further Exploration

Conscious Conception, by Jeannine Parvati Baker and Frederick Baker, 1988 (Freestone Publishing Co & North Atlantic Books) was one of the first books to talk about parenthood as a relationship that begins in a spiritual dimension. Subtitled “Elemental Journey through the Labyrinth of Sexuality,” this classic book really is like a labyrinth to explore! It’s an unusual blend of earthiness and spirituality, with a wealth of interesting material from several contributors.

Through all the stories and articles runs the daring assumption that an unborn child is a conscious presence before conception. There are many examples of pre-conception communication, as felt by men as well as by women. For example, a father describes a reverie he experienced, some months before the conception of his child. While half-asleep, he found himself in a rose garden. “Just about the time I started thinking about leaving, I felt something move. It was more like a shift in energy than anything else. I looked over towards the fountain. Seated on a marble bench was a robed figure. It was smiling at me.

“I’m not one to go around seeing things, visions or otherwise. However, I was now very curious. So I asked the figure who it was. I started to repeat my question when I suddenly knew the answer. This being was waiting to come through us. The ‘us’ was my lover and I. This being would be our baby, our child. It was now making contact with us. It had decided to start with me.”

A Psychotherapeutic Experience of Premature Birth

Without hesitation I begin to feel my connection with another human being. I experience that being connected with another human being is a fundamental part of life and procreation. If something threatens that connection, then it is life threatening – the reason being, I am in the womb! To lose my connection threatens my life. But my life is threatened. I am expelled from the womb before my body and soul are mature enough to be ready to be separated, ready enough to undertake life disconnected from the placenta. I feel incredibly vulnerable. Each sound, whether a bird singing or a car going by, is a possible threat to my existence. I had been physically and psychically attached to my mother. Now the bond is broken.

I realise as I experience this that the broken bond, the feeling of life threatening isolation, enormously increased my sensitivity to threats. It set me up for what happened at three when I was placed in a convalescent home and was deeply traumatised. In itself the short absence of my mother was not as potentially traumatising as it turned out to be. But because of the birth experience, I was already traumatised to abandonment. To be hit by it again increased the volume of it enormously.

I wasnt properly formed, so it was very traumatic to be separated as a baby. I am trying to heal this at the moment. I feel the struggle of resisting what has happened to me. I cry out that I dont want to be born. I am not ready. I feel deeply alone. There is in me a sense that tells me I shouldnt be alone. It is like something that pushes me to seek not to be alone. I feel lost. Im not ready for this world. Im feeling awful.

In fact I do feel awful, like I am ill and can barely move, or move only with effort and concentration. I go on to say that I have felt awful most of my fucking life. I can see from the feelings I am meeting how they have contributed to my lifelong feelings of being lost and cut off – alone. I have always called it independence, and perhaps seen the positive side of it more than the negative. But it has been a source of restlessness and a spur to seeking a bonding with someone. Of course I want to find the security of the womb. I want to know someone is deeply committed and bonded to me.

I am so alone. Even when someone loves me I cant feel it. I want to change. I dont want to keep hurting Hy by living like she isnt there at an emotional level. But that is the feeling world I have lived in – who is there for me? I was part of something and I lost it. I was part of something that was good, and I lost it. I was a part of a woman and I lost her. I was rejected. I was rejected. Now I face this struggle just to exist, just to breath, just to be. This feeling of life being a terrible struggle just to keep going has pervaded me all my life. I’ve got to struggle to exist just to keep alive. Got to struggle just to keep alive! GOT TO STRUGGLE TO EXIST – JUST TO KEEP ALIVE! GOT TO STRUGGLE BECAUSE THERE’S NOTHING THERE. I WANT SOMETHING TO HOLD ONTO. I’VE GOT TO STRUGGLE JUST TO KEEP ALIVE.

I cry like a baby. The question burns in me – Why is life like this? I cry again. Then I realise that at first when I was born I was too small and undeveloped even to be able to cry properly, so I couldnt let out my misery. It is such a relief to cry now and be understood, to have known what I felt at that terrible time.

I am aware of my connection with my stream of life having been broken – the umbilical cord. What I realise as the adult watching this, is that because of its proximity to the genitals, there is an unconscious connection made between the genitals and the connection I seek to sustain my life. So even as a baby I am reaching for that connection with my genitals. I want to be fed. I attempt to reconnect through my genitals, but the pain of the separation is so acute even when I do try in adulthood, the pain of the separation turns me back. This is the story of the Garden Of Eden. I was in the garden and was cast out. Now when I attempt to return, an angel with a burning sword turns me back. Not only was it painful every time I attempted reconnection, but I had the unconscious expectation to be fed, to be nourished. Instead of that every time I had sex I felt cheated, deceived and betrayed. I was not fed, but deeply sucked dry of what small nourishment I had managed to build up. I wasnt fed, I was fed upon by a predator. Each sexual act was a betrayal, a predation, and a torturous pain. Yet I had to find my way to the garden again, because there lay the secret of my genesis and myself. So I would return, to be wounded once more. It is even painful to look back on those years of misery now. Why is life so painful?

Seen from this level of experience, that of the uterine baby, God is a projection. You were in connection with a great creator, the mother. You were at one with them, but now you have been cast out of the Garden of Eden, so you have lost your contact with God, the creator in whose bosom you had existed. Perhaps that is why I searched so long for God.