Home Free Birth: Teal Xaman Ek's Birth Story

After Adam and I left Arcata, we went over to the Bay Area for a few days to hang out with his cousins Jacob and Jesse. We then came over to LA, where my good friend Alexandra had found us a place to nest and rest for the arrival of our baby. She generously offered to rent us a room in her mom's housekeeper's house, Josefa, a wonderful Mexican woman from Michoacan.

We bought an inflatable kiddie pool from Amazon and got ready for a fully DIY water birth, also known as an unassisted birth or free birth. I have nothing against midwives, I actually think they are wonderful and I would love to some day become one myself. However, hiring a midwife in the States costs between 4000 to 7000 dollars, money that needless to say, we don't have.

We were a little nervous about doing this ourselves. At some point I called a midwife whose number and info I found online to ask her for advice about some doubts I had, hoping to get the encouragement I had gotten from other midwives in Montana and Arcata. The one that I called, however, told me an unassisted birth was a terrible idea for "someone like me," and said I should apply for emergency mediCAL and go to the hospital. I was pretty sad after that conversation. Our decision was most definitely made, but it still sucked to hear someone's negativity mirroring that little voice in the back of my head that still doubted the abilities of my body. I found a lot of strength in observing nature those days. The universe knows how to create and sustain life, and I didn't feel any different from the squirrels that ran up and down the trees, or the trees themselves, that find ways to survive and thrive in the concrete jungle.

All through my pregnancy reading other people's birth stories inspired me and reminded me that birth is a natural and wonderful process. So it's an honor to be able to share our birth story now. For people who have never read a birth story before and aren't familiar with the process of labor I have included a short list of terms below.

Rushes: it's the word that Ina May Gaskin uses instead of contractions. She says these sensations are rushes of energy that open up the body for the arrival of the baby. Many people called this sensations "labor pains," but I would never call them that because words have a powerful effect in the mind. If you expect something to be painful, it will be painful.

Perineum: in women it is the area between the bottom of the vaginal opening and the anus.

Dilation: it refers to the progressive opening of the cervix. The cervix is the muscle that separates the uterus and the vagina. During labor, it opens up from 0 to 10cm).

Transition: The time between the full dilation of the cervix and the pushing stage. It's common for women to puke or feel nauseous during this time, and to feel like giving birth will be impossible.

Teal Xaman Ek's Birth Story.

On Thursday December 5th, 8 days after my due date, I started suspecting my water could be leaking very, very slowly. Josefa's sister, Nei, had woken up that morning with carpal tunnel, so Adam and I offered to go with her to the supermarket to help her carry groceries and drive her around.

While we were in the supermarket the leakege became serious enough to actually go through the pants that I was wearing that day, so I started to worry, although it was still very slow and didn't run down my legs. We came back home and Adam texted our amazing birthing team, who had gone to Slab City for a few days. The team consisted of Katee, who we traveled with in Mexico back in April, Jenny, who I traveled with in Mexico and Central America last year, and their two friends who we met recently in Arcata: Lindsey (who thinks of some day becoming a midwife) and Leyna. They traveled together as a band, "The Serpentine Sirens," playing guitar, ukulele and banjo. They all have beautiful voices and we had a lot of fun playing music with them.

I thought it was way too early to let anyone know that labor could be on its way, but Adam was simply very excited.

Our friends arrived at night while I was going crazy researching about amniotic fluid leakage and the risk of infection. I was very distressed, thinking that if I didn't go into labor after 24 hours, I would have to go to the hospital.

That night I woke up around 1am with very mild contractions that I sarted timing. They were approximately 45 seconds long every 10 minutes, but after an hour or so they slowed down and I decided I should probably just go to bed.

The next morning the leakege had stopped and the contractions were coming very, very spaced out until they completely stopped. I found this great article about amiotic fluid, and after reading it I felt pretty sure that what had ruptured was just my chorion (outer water bag) and the baby was still cozy and safe inside the amnion (inner water sac). So labor could still take a few days to actually start...

I went back to bed after reading the article and eating breakfast, trying to recover some energy after a somewhat stressful night.

When I woke up our friend Adrienne came over to visit for a little while and she gave me a wonderful acupressure massage to induce labor. Perry (Adam's best friend since middle school, who we love like family) also came over and we all decided to go out with the Serpentine Sirens to a restaurant in Studio City that claimed to have a labor inducing salad that I had been obsessed with in those last few days of waiting and being overdue.

I started feeling contractions again when we were in the car, but they were very mild and not consistent. I ate the "The" Salad, with a lot of extra dressing that our friendly waitress brought, and some delicious pizza. Afterwards we still somehow managed to share some gelato and the girls got some coffee in case that night was going to be the night.

We went back home and I tried to sleep as much as possible, but the contractions kept waking me up every 10 or 20 minutes. I had many dreams in between them. I remember dreaming of the big mama turtles on the beach of Mexico, and Leyna's dog (Valkyrie), who had puppies a few months ago.

When I woke up in the morning everyone was excited and really nice. I mostly just felt like being alone, so I stayed in my room and our friends made me breakfast and tea. Adam and I went for a short walk around the block and when we came back I tried to sleep some more, but around two it seemed like early labor was truly starting to kick in. I was having a hard time dealing with the contractions at the beginning, but I started using a chant I heard in the movie "Birth Story, Ina May Gaskin and the Farm Midwives." 

I am feeling really open,

Like a flower in the morn.

Let my petals open,

Let my child be born.

If I chanted and moved around when the contractions hit, not only they became managable, but also somehow psychedelic and so pure and sacred that I started losing track of time and reality. At some point we decided to try and check my dilation and although I wasn't quite sure we thought I was about 4cm, I told Adam we maybe should start filling up the pool. The contractions were still not coming every 5 minutes, and Adam thought we could fill up the pool in less than an hour, but I insisted that the whole team should get to work. However, the water from the hot water spicket was coming out quite cold, so there was a lot of water being boiled in the kitchen and the whole process took a long while. At this point I started getting really overwhelmed. The contractions were coming stronger and stronger (but they never got very regular) and I needed to hold on to Adam and chant really loud through them. I started feeling quite desperate to get in the water. Perry was playing the didgeridoo during the rushes and that seemed to help a little bit, but I started feeling quite nauseous and when the water got to 90° F, I decided I had to get in. I realize now that although the rushes were still coming no closer than 5 minutes, I must have been going through transition. I didn't get as relieved to be in the water as I thought I would, but it was definitely more comfortable. Everytime a new pot of boiling water came into the pool to warm it up, I would feel better. The contractions were now absolutely wild, I would jump up and switch positions every time one came, and I started to feel my body pushing, which really freaked me out because I have read all sorts of things about pushing too early and the cervix getting swollen from that. It made no sense to me that I could be fully dilated because I had been in active labor for maybe 3 hours and the contractions were actually slowing down instead of getting closer together. I instinctively checked my dilation and could feel the baby's hair. Adam got in the pool with me and I started feeling like a wild animal. I hadn't been yelling much, but at this point I couldn't help it. I knew yelling wouldn't help so I did some raspberries during the rushes to relax the muscles of my perinium, like I read in Spiritual Midwifery, but they would almost always end up as screams. I was getting tired, I could feel the baby's head entering the birth canal, but I felt like moving it past that point was simply impossible. I kept on telling Adam I couldn't do it anymore and I felt helpless. At some point Katee had come into the room. Perry was continiously oming and Katee started singing our openess song, which created a very sacred psychedelic mood. Lindsey came with a cup of tea and I just looked at her and said "No!" and after that I started dwelling into negativity. When I felt a rush I would say "No, no, no. I can't do this," but Adam and Katee would firmly respond: "Yes! You can!"

I would feel the head move a little bit farther and then going back to were it was. How could I ever do this? Adam said he could see the head when I pushed, but when I asked him what color the hair was he wasn't sure.

I relaxed in a kneeling position, leaning against the pool's side, while Adam poured warm water on me (the pool was now at the right temperature) and I started falling asleep between contractions, which seemed to be more and more spaced out. My body wasn't doing any more involuntary pushing, now it was totally up to me to birth this baby, and I didn't feel strong enough. I almost started dreaming, I didn't know if the contractions weren't coming or I just couldn't feel them anymore. My mind kept going to far away places, images of mountains and rivers... Adam kept trying to bring me back to reality, but I was escaping, with my eyes closed, waiting for my body to do the work I didn't feel capable of doing. I would keep pushing once in a while when I felt like a rush could be coming, but a part of me thought maybe I was imagining the rushes. Adam was so amazing. He spoke gently to me, reminding me it was almost over, and whatever I was feeling at the moment wasn't always gonna feel that way. Changing, changing, changing. I needed to BE HERE NOW! I realized my baby wasn't going to be born unless I gathered all my strength and came back to being in the moment. I opened my eyes and realized Jenny, Lindsey and Leyna were all now in the room chanting and oming. I asked someone for juice, then I squatted in the pool and looked Adam in the eyes. I drank some homemade grape juice my friend Alexandra had sent and that gave me the little extra strength I needed. I concentrated on trying to feel the rushes and when they came I roared loudly, like a lioness, and pushed as hard as I could. I kept on thinking of all the videos of animals giving birth that I saw during my pregnancy. Adam told me the baby was crowning! The hair was black! For some reason, hearing that the baby's hair was black made me realize that it was real, that this was really happening, that I could really do it. So I pushed with the next rush and got a little part of the head out. It wasn't going back in anymore! For what it felt like a few minutes, I stroked its hair in ecstasy, saying "oh baby!"

I knew that I now needed to birth the rest slowly and gently, so I panted a little and kept pushing. Adam kept on reminding me that the sensations are all impermanent, and with that in mind I concentrated on the infamous ring of fire, holding on to that impermanent sensation for as long as I could and then... One more push... And the head was out! I wanted to see it, but my belly was too big. I just saw the amazement on Adam's eyes. The rest of the body slipped out easily, shooting underwater into Adam's hands. My friends clapped and cheered and I saw the little baby moving peacefully in its aquatic environment before Adam handed it to me. So beautiful! It made some little noises and I sucked the mucus out of its nose and mouth. "Give us a good cry, little baby," I heard Lindsey say. The baby was very lively and pink, but didn't cry. After a brief loud yell it seemed to be breathing very well. Someone asked if it was a boy or a girl. All througth my pregnancy I dreamt of a baby girl, so I was very surprised when Adam announced it was a boy, but I stared at him in odd recognition, holding him to my chest. Little Teal Xaman Ek had been born. It felt like such a miracle, but really, it's a daily thing...

Josefa came into the room very excited. That made me come back to reality and I remembered the midwife we saw in Arcata recommended for me to get out of the pool to birth the placenta, so that we could assess the bleeding, which would look way too dramatic if I stayed in the water. Someone asked what time it was. 1:30 am. Josefa said she looked at the clock when she heard the baby cry, and it was 1:25.

I sat on a big pot waiting to birth the placenta while Adam was trying to figure out the cord situation. He tried to tie it up with some regular string from my sewing kit, but it wasn't tight enough and when it was cut it started bleeding too much. "Floss! We should just tie it again with floss!" I suggested, and Jenny made a joke about how we would sew Food Not Bombs patches with the same floss we use to tie the umbilical cord for a baby. We were all feeling cheery and happy, what an amazing trip! What a perfect little baby. I counted his fingers and toes while we waited for the placenta. I tried to breastfeed him, but he didn't seem very interested. I had read that there would be a contraction that would push out the placenta, but I didn't feel anything and I was thinking it had been at least 15 minutes, so I just gave a little push and that was it, the placenta was out, the delivery was over, I'm not pregnant anymore!

Lindsey, Adam and Katee cleaned the placenta and put it in a tupperware for me to take care of in the morning. We weighted Teal: 8.4 lb, 3.8kg. I took a warm shower while the rest of the crew hung out with him, and soon everyone went to bed and Adam and I laid on the bed with our new little miracle, amazed at his presence finally in front of our eyes... We felt so in love with each other and with him and we fell asleep in the warmth of our new little family.

Teal's birth has definitely been the most empowering experience of my life. For the days following the delivery I felt like a goddess or an epic warrior. Our friends who witnessed the birth kept on telling me how amazed they were at me and I had to keep reminding myself that I'm not a super woman, but just a creature of the world; because feeling so strong, beautiful, and powerful could either go feed my ego or my oneness with the universe. And feeding that ego is so tempting!

There are many things to come and many challenges that parenthood will bring to us, but after going through such a powerful initiation together, Adam and I feel ready to face anything and to trust the universe, our bodies, and the mysterious perfection of it all.

Harvest: Reflections on our Life Style

There are so many ways to live life.

Some of them are unimaginable for us.

Some times we get so sucked into our life-style that we forget that other ways of life are also valid or even possible. At least it happens to me once in a while.

Adam and I have been cruising up and down the incredibly extensive length of California for the past few months. It's crazy to think that 1400 km separate Ensenada from Arcata. It doesn't feel like such a big distance when you're staring out the window of a moving vehicle, with the Pacific Ocean in the background and the changing landscape matching the constant transformation of our lives, of the world.

We have been moving slowly but surely, not really knowing what awaits but having faith in the universe to support us. Some of our plans have had disappointing outcomes, like the "Dream Machine," a 1986 broken down van that we left behind in Los Angeles after we realized it had a transmission problem that couldn't be fixed at the time for lack of funds.

We made it to Humboldt county at the beginning of October.
Every year thousands of nomads congregate in that area looking for seasonal work, so it wasn't such a surprise to find dear family walking around in the Farmer's Market or in the bathroom line inside the co-op.

Ever since the Rainbow Gathering of Montana, I have been thinking about the many ways of alternative life styles and the way that "Babylon" or "the tax payers" perceive us. Being in Arcata during harvest season made me think even more about this and also made me ask deeper questions about the way that I have been living my life.

When I first found Rainbow last year in Guatemala, I perceived it as a global family of epic travelers with amazing stories. Depending mostly in mutual aid and organizing without hierarchies, it seemed like the utopia I had dreamt for a long time. The gathering in Guatemala was very small, perhaps 300 people at the peak day. The Palenque gathering was a lot bigger, with maybe 2,000 people gathered on the 21st. But the National Rainbow Gathering of Montana had approximately 10,000 people in attendance, and it was relatively small compared to previous gatherings in the States.

Ten thousand people gathered in the woods, eating, shitting and sleeping for free! Of course there are gonna be problems when something grows so big. Different people have different intentions and different ideas of what a perfect world would be like and about what the Rainbow Family means. And of course it's not the same to be just a few kids traveling in some small town that rarely sees visitors than being part of a gigantic group of people flooding a small community with homelessness and what's often understood as freeloading.

This is something that many people questioned when I was traveling without money and which seems a lot more clear to me now: the more people that do this, the more difficult it becomes.
I tried recycling food at the Farmer's market in Arcata and I thought that maybe being 8 months pregnant, well spoken and looking clean would help me get some potatoes, but I was wrong. The farmers that I talked to looked upset and told me nothing was wasted while they packed their leftovers in cardboard boxes that probably ended up in a dumpster later that day.

I don't know if it's just my bias perspective, but it seems to me like everyday more and more people in the world are voluntarily choosing "poverty," trading security for freedom. In the States this choice is facilitated by an extremely wasteful society and government programs like Food Stamps. Because let's face it: the majority of jobs are not fun. There are a few lucky people out there doing what they love and getting paid for it, but many of those dream jobs are also very damaging to the environment or to society. I personally know that the job that paid me the most money when I was doing film was a manipulative corporate video that I still feel guilty for doing.

Many people hate their jobs, but they would hate uncertainty even more. Many people are not as privileged as to be able to truly leave everything behind and still find food to feed their families and other ways to survive. But for those of us who are young and still have the energy to deal with it, nomadic, low or no income life is a dream. It has its disadvantages and its difficult moments, but so does any life style.

This group of homefree travelers is not at all an homogeneous mass.
There are rebellious youngsters looking for adventure, who have many times grown up abused in foster homes, addicted to all sorts of things, passionate about music and resigned to an early death. Many of these people accept themselves as the scum of the earth and declare war on the very society that feeds them.
There are also people who grew up in relative privilege, who have experienced the artificial abundance that can be purchased with money and who decide to give that up in the search of a spiritual breakthrough.
There are people who became homeless against their will and later on decided to embrace it and keep moving.
There are people who are simply searching for freedom.
There are people who are all sorts of combinations between the simplistic descriptions above, and people who make their choices for reasons that I cannot even imagine or attempt to describe.

But the point is, for whatever reason we are choosing to do so, there are more and more people everyday who decide to stop participating in the cycle of production, but who still need to consume resources in order to survive. And this is when the people who wake up every morning to go to work get really resentful and pissed off. Hey, I get it. I can totally see how this seem unfair. But it's also really easy to see how other people "oppress" us and to ignore the way we oppress others.

One thing is clear to me: not just because you have money to pay for something it means you deserve it any more than the people who don't have money to pay for it, especially when it comes to food. Daniel Suelo said it once in a way that seemed pretty clear to me. People call him a freeloader because he takes what's given freely to him, but what about the people in the world that take what's given freely by nature and then SELL it and make a profit? Driving through Northern California we passed a lot of logging spots and Adam would always make me reflect about those incomplete landscapes by wondering aloud how this land looked back in the day, before there were roads and towns and "civilization."

The tax payers in Arcata turn their noses to us. A strong looking old lady yells at us from her mobility scooter, ironically decorated with Tibetan flags and peace symbols, because we are sitting on the sidewalk. We immediately move our stuff and our bodies to make space for her to pass, apologizing, and she looks at us with hatred and says: "Yeah, you should be sorry. And if you were truly sorry you wouldn't do this!"
"Wow," one of my friends answered, "we just moved for you, no need to be rude." She then backed up to pass through the spot again and announced she was gonna report us to the manager of the store for loitering in the property. We grabbed our backpacks and walked over to the plaza, where a guy that was passing in his pick up truck yelled from the window: "get some lives!"

The funniest thing about Arcata and other small towns in Northern California is that in those places and during this season is exactly the time when all these "hippies" (many times coming from very far away places like Japan and Spain), are looking for work and contributing to the economy of the world.

It's seems a little bit like envy. A lot like resentment. They see it in a way in which their taxes are funding the lives of people who don't contribute anything back. After all, they think, it's their tax money which pays for those sidewalks and parks where we hang out. It's their tax money which pays for the salaries of the cops who fine us for playing music. Their tax money which pays for increased Forest Service and imports police force from out of State to monitor Rainbow Gatherings. Money, money, money. But we often forget that money is just a tool, and the resources that money is buying are being ripped away ruthlessly from poor countries that can't defend themselves. Look at all the mess in Central America over mining, so that we can replace our smart phones when a new model comes out...

The food stamps argument is a big aspect of it, and that's why people like Suelo don't use food stamps. For those in other countries who might not be familiar with Food Stamps, it is a government program that helps people with little or no income by giving them a small amount of money a month that can only be used to buy non-prepared food. In some rare places, like LA, you can buy fast food and other hot foods, but in most places it's just for groceries. The Farmer's Markets in some areas give a little extra when you convert the electronic food stamps to tokens, and in places like San Diego and New Orleans there are even a couple of Farmer's Markets that double them, to encourage people with low-income to eat healthy.

Why are we taking help from a government we claim to reject? Well, for one, because we need to eat and although many times the dumpsters are full of abundance, some other times they are just full of GMOs. Or locked. Adam makes the argument that most tax money goes towards financing war and he sees no problem with taking a small amount of that money and redirecting it to feeding people. If he could take all that war money an turn it into food, he would. And I bet many would agree with him. I used to feel uncomfortable about food stamps, but now I see them as a tool to get some foods that would normally be inaccessible to us, like chia and organic "luxuries." But I don't want to depend on this and especially now that we are soon gonna have a baby I would like to be as coherent as possible. Because one thing, at least in my case, remains true from the hateful arguments of the people who resent our life-style: I'm not giving or producing as much as I can. Since last year I have been feeling a little bit dissatisfied with traveling for the sake of traveling and now it's time to commit with strong projects that can help create the world that we dream of.

We have talked to many friends who are planning to go to Mexico this year to travel and get involved in projects. Adam and I want to settle down on some land, grow some food and build something. I have learned a lot this year about plants and herbs, and although I don't have any papers that certify me as a knowledgeable person, I'm excited to share my new discoveries and keep learning about nature, the land, and health. I don't know how much time I will have at the beginning with a little one needing my full attention, but I have high hopes to little by little start giving more and more. I want to possibly give free English lessons for children of whatever nearby community we end up living in, help pregnant women to gain confidence in their bodies and to nourish themselves with good food and wise herbs, get involved in translating and creating a zine library or info shop, and many other dreams for spreading the message that has inspired my life for the past couple of years: reject the indoctrination of impossibility, take what you need, give what you can, always love.

This is what is going on right now in my life and my mind... We will be in California for another couple of weeks, waiting for the arrival of our baby, who is due on November 26, and then we are heading South to Mexico or even farther depending on how things unfold.

A different journey: Pregnancy as a time of growing

It's been a long time since I last posted.
Many things have happened in these past few months: miraculous encounters, traveling, learning, weddings, surprises, lessons, etc.

Adam and I in our Rainbow wedding.

My silence springs not from uneventfullness, but perhaps from shyness.
I would be lying if I denied that since my last post my life has been revolving mostly around my unborn child and the many preparations and learning I have to do for the event that will soon change my and my partner's life.
I didn't and still don't want to turn this blog into a pregnancy blog (nothing against pregnancy blogs, I think they are really inspiring), but all I wanted to write about was pregnancy.
I have been reading Ina May Gaskin, Aviva Romm and some other authors who advocate for natural pregnancy and childbirth. I also have been reading many blogs, birth stories and different opinions about pregnancy and maternity.
And it's not until now, six months into my pregnancy, that I dare to recognize that two big things have been stopping me from continuing this blog project:

1. Fear. 
The first few months of pregnancy I was afraid of talking to friends and family about my pregnancy because I feared a miscarriage or some other tragedy.
It's been clear for me since the first moment I found out I was pregnant that I wanted to avoid doctors, hospitals and medicines at all cost. My experiences in those areas have always been quite negative and although I didn't know almost anything about childbirth I was inspired by a couple of stories I have heard in the past.
The first time I ever heard of someone speaking of childbirth as something different than agonizing pain was while talking to the sister of one of my friends from college, who had her babies in water. Although we didn't get too much into detail, she told me about falling asleep between contractions in a comfortable and relaxing jacuzzi and described the contractions not as painful, but simply as powerful sensations. I was very impressed and shocked to hear that, in my mind having a baby had always been placed as probably the most horrible pain that could ever be experienced and I remember asking my mom when I was a little kid "what would hurt more, to have a baby or to get shot with a gun?"
My dear Rainbow brother Sam had also told me about his biological sister experiencing an "orgasmic birth" by herself in some cabin in the woods of Canada, but again, I wasn't as interested in the subject at the time and just placed that story in the back of my head, deciding that if other women could do it, I could also do it when the time came. I honestly didn't expect the time would come so soon.
Soon after we found out we were pregnant, Adam and I decided to travel down to Mexico and by gift of universal synchronicity we met our dear friend Katee in Baton Rouge and ended up hitching down from San Antonio all the way to Mexico City with her. I kept being paranoid about many things related to my body and I was terrified of anything happening to the baby at the point. It was on those first months that I almost decided to go to the doctor, but we didn't have money and we didn't make the time to really look into free options much. In Mexico City we stayed with my friend Ximena and I got the chance go watch the movie "Orgasmic Birth: The Best Kept Secret." That ended up convincing me of not going to the doctor, even if someone offered to pay for it or if we found a free option.

This decision, of course, was subject of many opinions from friends and family. It makes senses that people who love us worry about us and our well-being. It's just too bad that we have been trained to think so narrowly about health and natural processes of the body as gestation is.

"It's not only about you, now it's also about your baby," or "I don't think it's crazy, I think it's irresponsible," were some of the arguments that I heard over and over.

Being as stubborn as I am, and strengthen somehow by the overwhelmingly beautiful energy that Rainbow imprinted in my heart (I learned that woulds actually heal without us doing much! Our bodies work!), I stuck by my decision and kept hitchhiking with Adam through Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, Puebla, Veracruz, Michoacán, Jalisco, Zacatecas, Durango, all the way back to Chihuahua, were I really wanted to visit my mom. The whole time I would be going through an emotional storm. Adam got horribly sick in Mexico, to the point of almost dying, and we both felt quite helpless and inept for the huge task of taking care of each other and our baby. The baby was also a very abstract idea, for as much as we would look online to see how he or she was developing, we still couldn't feel it moving and everything felt like a crazy dream that maybe we were about to wake up from.

When we finally arrived to Chihuahua I was happy to see my mom and always amazed at how really open-minded and adaptable she is. Once I showed her the orgasmic birth movie and we reflected together about her pregnancies, she realized that maybe there was a small chance that I wasn't been as irresponsible as I seemed to be when I first told her I didn't want to have a hospital birth. She still insisted on doing an ultrasound with the equipment of her veterinary clinic, and it was then that we got to see the image of our little baby kicking and turning for the first time.

Adam's eyes got all watery and my mom was full of joy. I rarely see her as happy as that day. It was too soon for the ultrasound to show if the baby was a girl or a boy and we are happy about that. It's not even so much that we want to be surprised, but just that the gender of our child doesn't matter much to us and we want to treat it the same whether it has a penis or a vagina.

My mom also insisted on me getting some blood exams, also in her clinic, just to make sure I didn't have anemia or any glucose complications. Despite my results coming out perfect, I still had to deal with a whole bunch of disagreement from an old friend about my choices for pregnancy. He wanted to gift me folic acid pills and kept on telling me about the things that his friends who were doctors said should be done or not done during gestation and childbirth. "I eat a lot of greens, I don't need folic acid pills, thank you very much."

When he heard about me wanting to go through labor without drugs he even said "Oh, I really want to be there and hear you screaming!" I really tried to stay open and take it with humor, but I found myself accumulating some resentments against all the skepticism I seemed to face. I mean, it's kind of hard not to take it personally. Why would nature be against me? Against all women? I have always been strong and healthy, even when I used to eat junk as a teenager, and particularly now that I'm taking loving care of my nutrition.

I have gone through very scary times during my pregnancy when I fear everyone else being right, shaking their heads in disapproval and sadness while they lament over some catastrophe related to me and my baby: "I told her, but she didn't listen... If only she had been at the doctor..."

Perry, Lauren (holding baby Clementine) and Kaleb. On the way to Montana. Lauren and Kaleb had their baby all by themselves in their house. They were both 18 and a big inspiration for us.

That fear was a big reason why I didn't want to write on this blog. I fear to advocate for unassisted pregnancy and natural-drug-free home birth and then end up having an emergency c-section or something much worse.

The second reason for my silence is a little bit harder to explain, but I will try...

2. The feminist dilemma: Shame?

While I was in high school and college I used to think having a baby would totally ruin my life. I remember the feeling of relief after I graduated without having gone through any unwanted pregnancies and thinking: "Okay, even though it would be really difficult and kind of inconvenient for me to get pregnant now, it really wouldn't ruin my life anymore."

It's been more than three years since then. I moved to Mexico City, worked in the film industry, met a bunch of my ex-heroes, traveled to Europe, traveled without money, rode freight, hitchhiked by myself through Central America, Mexico and the States. I'm 26 years old! And I was shocked to realized many of my friends and acquaintances still reacted to my pregnancy (or maybe pregnancy in general) as if I were a teenager who would now very unlikely finish high school. My grandmother said: "of course, traveling by herself like that... it was bound to happen."

For many different reasons, a lot of people still act as if having a child were the biggest tragedy of the world.

I mean, there are so many sides and layers to this... I went to school in New York City, where the average age for having your first baby seems to be 35, but I grew up in a town where many girls' life goals could be summarized as getting married and having children.

I have always considered myself a feminist, ever since I was a kid, and I went through a stage where I really didn't want to ever have kids because they "take too much."

I read Simone de Beauvoir in college and I don't think I really understood then and maybe I still don't understand... But I have a vague memory of interpreting her writing with the conclusion of "denying our femininity for the sake of equality is self-mutilation."

And maybe this is me trying to blame it on something or someone, but I do have to recognize I dealt with a very weird feeling of embarrassment when talking or writing about pregnancy.

One of my really, really dear friends in Rainbow confessed she felt uncomfortable with the subject because all women who she met who got pregnant all of the sudden couldn't talk about anything else. 

I guess is very natural to fear the loss of personal identity when you have children to look after and for people that care about "success" and careers (not that I know many) it's even worse.

Even when it comes to labor itself the feminist movement seemed to have a deep impact. After being told their whole lives that the ultimate difference between the female and male body (the capacity to bear and birth life) was to be manifested by agonizing pain, many women accepted drugs during labor as a huge symbol of emancipation, equality and freedom.

Instead of learning to experience the sensations unique to labor as an incredibly life force and therefore embrace them, we have learned to understand them as a punishment, and therefore reject them and shush the voices of our bodies.

I just finished reading Aviva Romm's Natural Pregnancy Book and do have to say I found a lot of force and inspiration on it to get out of the weird feeling of embarrassment that I was experiencing. It took me a little while, but I can now see pregnancy as an empowering, enriching and beautiful process that make me discover and appreciate more my femininity.

There are some undeniable differences between men and women. The bodies we are born in are part of our facticity. Only a person born in a female body can experience pregnancy and the process is a mysterious, magical and I would even say psychedelic one.

I came to acknowledge more than ever how we are all truly one, because by carrying this baby I'm carrying a bit of myself, and of Adam, and of both our families and ancestors, but at the same time this being is it's own person, unique and with their own destiny and life to live. I remember one day I was sitting next to Adam in our tent in some deserted lot somewhere on our way to Nevada and I looked at him from the corner of my eye and I got a crazy vision thinking our baby was probably someday going to be a grown-up, doing his or her own traveling, and there was a sense of synchronicity, as if I were looking into the future, and I have heard so many times of time being cyclical instead of linear and the full force of my body being an interdimensional portal that connected those two points in time seemed at that moment evident.

Ok, maybe I'm getting a little too trippy now, but the point is... It's been a strange process, but pregnancy has definitely help me feel empowered and stronger and completely ready to celebrate my body and my self as a woman. I feel like before this, I tried to find my feminist force a bit more on stereotypical male characteristics.

And of course I'm not saying that women who can't have babies or choose not to have babies are any less feminine, any less women, but I definitely learned to appreciate and embrace a different way of creativity that had before been a little banned and even look down upon by me probably because of my personal history, but also because of the black and white way society tends paint pictures for us.

So... I guess all I'm trying to say is, hey, I have had so much on my mind, heart and body that I didn't know how to express it, but it does feel really good to write all this now. And as always, I'm not married to any of my ideas and I just let them change, change, change, like everything else around me does.

As a last thought... When I was in San Francisco a month ago I found the Bhagavad Gita in a free books box in the street and I took it with me. I was kind of reading it before I got all my pregnancy books in the mail. Adam and I went to see our friend Perry in LA after. We talked a little bit about the Gita and he took out his copy to show me this image:

I was at the time, like I keep on doing from time to time, fearing that something could happen to either my baby or me during this pregnancy and delivery, and I was deeply moved by this picture. It was beautiful to be humbled by the recognition that my body was created by a force bigger than me, and that the universe knows how to create and sustain life, we just have to trust nature. I'm not consciously thinking of how to to put together the cells that will make my baby's eyelids, and neither did my mom have to think about any of this. I can just nourish my body and my spirit and know that whatever happens it's just part of a cycle bigger than you or me.

The Land of the Free

"Because you get what you pay for. Pay a lot of money and you get an expensive life. Take what's free and you get freedom."

- Off the Map, Crimethinc

As plans often do, the idea of staying in Chihuahua to start a Food Not Bombs group changed.
I found myself pulled once again towards the North, in what felt like a long, confusing Dejavu.
Partially, my coming back to the States had to do with a movie project. My friend Jack and I have been writing a feature film for a year now, and we celebrated our creative partnership in Memphis, working hard on putting together a bunch of documents to start applying for funding. We are hoping everything will come together next year and we will be able to make this dream come true.

But really, what has been mostly going on in my life is a love story, and although I usually don't write much about that, I couldn't possibly start writing about my time in the States without a proper introduction.

I met Adam on November 2nd in Coban, Guatemala. I had gone to town that day with my dear friends Maureen, Sam and Brian to get supplies and indulge in some Babylon's pleasures, but we ended up getting stuck in town looking for some rope and mats to set up our camp at Rainbow. So we decided to stay for the night in the Fire Station, as I always do. Walking around the street of the city we met an American girl and an Argentinean guy who looked like they were also going to Rainbow and have them join our crew. We sang songs loudly, navigating the streets looking for food and celebrating the official beginning of the Rainbow Gathering.
Right when we were getting ready to go to sleep we found Adam, a barefoot gringo with dreads and toe tattoos who looked absolutely lost: totally! Another Rainbow kid! The seven of us slept in the fire station and the seven of us hitchhiked together back to Rainbow land the day after.
I didn't hang out so much with Adam during that gathering. He was intimidated by the fast speaking Spanish of the Spanish School Camp and although he grew up in LA and San Diego area, his Spanish was absolutely disastrous. He would still come over and sit quietly with us, making a big effort to understand when Alejandra and I looked at him and asked slowly: "¿De dónde eres?"

I left the gathering in Guatemala for a short visit in Mexico City in which I met up with Jack to write our script and attend to a movie premiere.
I broke a personal hitchhiking record, from La Libertad (right by the border of Guatemala and Mexico) to Mexico City in just 36 hours. Around 900 km! The trip did require me sleeping on the cold concrete floor of the machine room of a gas station in the State of Puebla, and after that cold, cold night and such an exhausting trip, I got terribly sick. My friends Ximena and Jack took wonderful care of me, and in the short periods that I could stay awake we would write. My body was in absolute pain, not allowing me to even move my neck. I didn't want to eat anything and I had fever. I thought maybe it was malaria, but the fever was not bad enough. Jack had a ticket to go back to New York and I really wanted to get better, so I decided to try to take an antibiotic. It was awful. I hadn't taken any medicine in years, and my weaken body broke down on uncontrollable shivering and I puked. My friends decided I had to go to the hospital, but I refused. I would see no doctors. They finally convinced me to go to the acupuncturist, which sounded a bit more acceptable. The acupuncturist asked me a few questions about my family and after I relaxed enough I told him about not talking to my father in such a long time and missing my mom, but seeing her rarely. He put the needles on me and told me I was about to start a very different stage in my life, but before starting, I really needed to go back home and thank my parents for the biggest gift I had ever been given: Life.
I didn't think i felt better after the needles, but I still didn't want to go the hospital, so I begged Ximena and Jack to just take me back home and let me sleep. That's what they did. I slept for a few hours and woke up feeling well, a lot stronger, and even decided to go out to the premiere of Post Tenebras Lux, Reygadas' new movie, which Jack and I had been talking about for ages.
The day after I wrote a long email to my dad.

After that week long visit to Mexico City, Jack flew back to New York. I met up with my sister Minerva for a few days, did a little film gig, and met a hitchhiking partner to go to the Rainbow Gathering in Palenque. While I was in Guatemala I told everyone I didn't want to go to Palenque because it sounded like a crazy touristic end of the wold mess, but while in Mexico City I felt so called to go back! In my fever deliriums I would listen to the food circle songs and dream of all those paited faces dancing by the fire.

When I arrived to the gathering the only familiar face I found was Adam's. He had a red dot painted like a third eye in his forehead and his big, clear blue eyes opened wide when he saw me. We embraced and talked for a few minutes.
Since that day, we kept running into each other at the gathering and we started spending more and more time together. We fell in love under the stars, listening to the Hopi prophecies of the New Era and looking at the star that shinned blue and red close to the horizon.
We slept together under a tree in the rain and held hands while Oming our way through the gathers of the ruins on December 21st. He told me about being sick with the same symptoms than me, at the same time, when he was in Guatemala, and having a strange vision about going to China, changing his life and shaving his head.

A few days later he flew back to California for his mom's wedding and he promised to come back down to Chihuahua a month later to see me, but we were both left with a taste of uncertainty and I repeated to myself one of my favorite Camus' quotes: "There is no noble love but the one who recognizes itself to be both short-lived and exceptional." Oh well...

After the gathering I left with a hitchhiking caravan of 15, but found myself a few weeks later traveling only with my friends Sam and Arianna, who are truly my family at this point.
Together, we crossed the whole length of Mexico in a month.

February 1st came, and my hopes of seeing Adam again where starting to die that night, but then the phone rang and I heard his voice saying that he was in Chihuahua and he wondered how could he get to my house. Sam, Arianna and I went to meet him up and I haven't spend a single day away from him since then.

His traveling style is a bit new to me. He loves ridding freight trains and even though I have camped out many times before while traveling, I always had a tent. Adam considers tents unnecessary and thanks to his confidence I found myself truly sleeping in the street, truly under the sky for the first time, and I was amazed by the experience. We are really living in the world! Waking up and having no walls around us was surprisingly liberating. I rode my first train with him from New Orleans to Memphis, and I found myself constantly amused at his ability to always find good food for free. Nothing could stop this kid. He has been doing this since he was 16.

As usual, the States brings mixed feelings in my heart. On one hand, I constantly find people who are like minded, resourceful and motivated. On the other hand, the laws are beyond ridiculous and continue to get worse. Am I breathing too much air now? Oh, what do you mean I'm not allowed to sit on the sidewalk? Getting kicked out of places is common routine. I remember how Sam walked barefoot around Morelia and got many curious and weird looks, but we never got kicked out of anywhere. In the States most places will kick you out for not having shoes. And even if you're not doing anything wrong, even the concept of the "No Loitering" signs at every corner blows my mind. The basic idea seems to be: if you have no money, if you're not consuming, we don't want you to exist around here. It's hard for me to understand how this country prides itself on the slogan "Land of the free, home of the brave." Free... free food in the dumpsters! Free consumerism! So much consumerism that it allows even the homeless to be consumerists. I thought about that when we found 60 pounds of donuts in the dumpster and I realized... We are getting greedy! Definitely taking more than what we need.
People see two kids with backpacks sitting on the side of the road, playing guitar and we find ourselves a few dollars richer, well fed and ready for the next town. It's really interesting.

After hanging out in Memphis for almost two weeks we left towards Georgia to do Vipassana again. We crossed Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, facing storms, floods and even Christian concerts. People were almost always curious and friendly, and we had a really good time. And then the big surprise came.
Three days before starting Vipassana we were in Perry, Georgia and we found out we are going to have a baby!
Of course, it's a huge shock, but we are both happy and excited. These news bring a lot of new questions to our lives and as we sat outside of a Wal-Mart with our instruments, hugging each other and crying of happiness and confusion and excitement and fear, the whole world felt like it was changing around us.
Doing Vipassana after just finding out about my pregnancy was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. How can I focus on the moment, right now, when for the first time in my life I have to start thinking about the future? But it was definitely the best thing that I could have done at that moment. It helped me calm down, look inward, and allow my feelings to ripen in solitude and quietness.
Everything came full circle all of the sudden. The acupuncturist words, all the talks about the uprise of female energy in the new era, the random palm reading Adam and I got by a friendly Honduran in Katy, Texas, the Peace Pilgrim Pamphlet I found in New Orleans, Letters to a Young Poet... I don't remember exactly where I had just read about observing nature, and how the caterpillar never craves becoming a butterfly, but when the time is right, it just does. That's how I felt. Before going to Rainbow, the thought of having a child terrified me. My mind was full of impossibilities. I thought I would definitely have to stop traveling and I couldn't imagine raising a kid in such a confusing, crazy world. But then I met Meadow, a little 5 year old with a brilliant mind, who travels with her mom around the world. I also met Cornelia and Dennis, from Lithuania, who were hitchhiking with their 2 year old daughter through Cental America. And many other children and parents who were beautiful, smart, free and inspiring, being raised outside of society's conventions.

I realized the time is right now, and I although Adam and I might not have many material possessions or economical stability to offer a child right now, we can offer the freedom that we have gained in the past years, the freedom that comes from trusting the universe and knowing that despite the news, despite civilization and war and fear, there is still so much goodness, kindness and abundance out in the world. We know it's not gonna be easy, and we know many big changes will come, but we see it as a huge growth opportunity. We are gonna have a new little teacher.

We are making a lot of important decisions right now and we are happy to have each other and the many friends we keep finding on our way every day.
We are planning on getting married around August, probably in Montana, and we would love to have as many of our friends around for this celebration. So to all my dear, dear, dear friends around the world, if it's possible, I would love to see you guys at the end of the summer.

The Way to Paradise: The Impossible Dream

Waterfalls and mountains became jungle and starry skies with impossible color comets. A new era started with secret missions, hidden doors, brothers and sisters singing together to the absurdity of the money they demanded to let us visit our grandparents graves. Nobody stopped us. Nobody can stop us now, because we keep on finding each other, and together we are very strong. We were many and we were united, laughing in Babylon and its endless sources of waste, singing, yelling, celebrating the beauty of the family we had always been, but that we discovered little by little. Then everything became city, roads, yellow lines on the ground, fog, more mountains, maps, lice, and the same affectionate arms and eyes bright with curiosity of the many strangers that invite us into their homes, feed us, and gift us their kind encouraging words. We separated, knowing that separation is an illusion, and that life would bring us together again. City then became beach, which illuminated by the strong moonshine welcomed the slow mothers, making their paths by strongly pushing the sand that would protect their eggs. The beach kept, for many days, gifting us impossible sunsets, painted on pink and gold, round suns sinking in the ocean with an orange howl, while the full moon peeked behind it over the hills. Children. Children. So many children asking, surprised! Where is your home? My home is the world, little sister, and yours too! Ah... More yellow lines turned the beach into desert, forest, night, desert again. And the desert brought us here... To Chihuahua. Land that was so familiar in the past, and is now so foreign.

This new era has delivered, at least for me, exciting evidence that those dreams that we had been imagining for such a long time are not impossible, as we always thought. They are so close that we can feel their breath and our skin shivers at their touch. So much wasted time in tiny Manhattan apartments, in empty midnight streets in Mexico City, in overnight trains in Europe, arguing about the endless impossibilities of the utopias dreamt by the ones before us, and our very own! Impossible! Impossible? What's impossible? Rainbow gave me many important gifts. When I first arrived to this encounter where I had to face naked nature, pure earth, I was full of fear. What if I fall and get hurt? Mud, mountains, the strong current of the river where we bathed: everything scared me. At first, I walked very carefully, but one day, while swimming, I hit my foot with a sharp rock that made a deep, painful cut. There was no way to keep that cut clean and dry in the mud pools that were the paths of that land in Cobán, the rainiest zone of Guatemala. The cut went straight into the mud, and the mud healed, in a few days, the cut. Of course... How could I have forgotten something so basic? Wounds heal. The body regenerates itself. Why then should we fear to try new things? When we fail, we learn from those mistakes and we keep building and improving what we have. Rainbow was, and still is for me the reminder that Anarchy is love. And it's also possible! Many texts arrived to my hands with a wonderful synchronicity that makes me smile to this new era. Fighting for our Lives, Off the Map, many other texts by Crimethinc, and an unexpectedly appropriate novel with the title "The Way to Paradise." After reading "Los Cachorros," in Nicaragua, I was craving reading more of Mario Vargas Llosa's work and after many hours looking in Morelia's bookstores, I finally chose a fat book which synopsis described a double novel. The story of two opposite characters: Paul, a painter that escapes the suffocating bourgeoisie of Paris to search in the Pacific Islands a more savage world, and therefore, more pure; and Flora, a strong activist that fights for the rights of women and workers, and who dreams of a more "civilized" world. She rebels against the conventions of the XIX century society, which reduce women to second class citizens, with no right to identity. Even though the characters are indeed a little opposite, I felt deeply identified with both of them, and felt, towards the ending, a profound reconciliation between my spirit of artistic creation, and my will to dream for a more just world, more loving, more horizontal. Since Flora Tristán's times, women's condition has improved enormously, and the rough, sometimes extravagant fantasies of the first anarchists, have become more sophisticated, and not only realistic, but real. The world changes and changes, like the rivers that flow whether we sail on them or not. But, would humanity's path have changed for good without the people who stood before us, fighting and building, in solidarity and also with doubts, the paradise that is never perfect? Trying and failing. Over and over again. Staring at the straight road in the middle of the desert or the jungle or the mountains I heard many drivers asking... Until when will this crazy coming and going will continue? At some point you will have to stop... Go back to society. I also used to think that way before I found Rainbow, where I met so many that are a lot crazier than me, traveling on horses or walking, on boats or motorcycles, with dogs and cats and children and proving at each moment that NO! It's not impossible! The only real limitations are the ones in your mind! I'm not getting married with the traveler's identity. And I also can't know how I will feel tomorrow, or in three years, or in ten years. But right now I see no reason to go back to the monotony of work, of conventions, of society. It's not you Babylon, it's me. And we are many the ones who dream of that paradise that is not easy. The paradise that can be here, in Earth, where we can create, embrace the earth naked, be brothers and sisters even when our energies don't synchronize, where we can finally get rid of oppression and slavery. The next short term project: Food Not Bombs Chihuahua. To keep dreaming the impossible dream until it becomes a reality.