If you’re wondering what on earth is a birth altar, and why would you want to build one, then please go away and read another post. I don’t have time to explain the nitty-gritty of spiritual practice, you either get it or you don’t. Birth mamas who get it, please read on…
First of all track down a special place in your home – a shelf, a windowsill, a table, a corner of the floor. Size doesn’t really matter nor does the location, so long as it feels right. I’ve got mine in my bedroom, on the shelf above the fireplace. The bedroom is a good place since it’s private and quiet, and hopefully no nebby-noses are going to poke around to see what’s up. Plus the bedroom is already a spiritual sanctuary of sorts, a place of dreams, sleep, and if you’re lucky, great sex. All top notch ingredients for bringing in the energy of a positive baby birth.
Once you got the space in place, start digging around for some sacred stuff. Candles and incense are the quintessential altar items, used for aeons in meditation and healing practices. Candles represent the spark of life, the soul of creativity, the essence of spirit, and you are bringing in new life, my friend, so what better way to celebrate this than with the lighting of a candle? I have natural beeswax candles on my altar, since I like the smell and won’t stand for poisonous petrochemicals burning in my boudoir. Be warned, most candles are not environmentally friendly! Green mama says no!
You can put anything you like on your birth altar – stones, shells, crystals, special cards, birth art, inspiring quotations, amulets, flowers, plants, photos. Whatever makes you feel strong and connected to your inner birthing goddess, and the baby that wants to come through you. I have all kinds of nic-nacs on mine, including a few weird items like my sister’s mermaid purses, which I think a couple of shark and ray’s eggs. Plus I have a couple of Zuni fetishes (not to be confused with other sorts of fetishes).
Go ahead and place a baby picture of each parent-to-be up there. I have a couple of me, looking cute as a button, and then some other photos of my mum, and my mum’s mum, and my dad too. Ain’t no photo of the F.O.B. though…I prefer to keep him out of the picture.
Then there’s two birthing goddesses in place, as recommended by my pre-natal therapist, 
to call upon in my hour of need. There’s a gorgeous Black Madonna (bit controversial) and (even more shocking) a Sheela-Na-Gig with big goggle eyes, stretching out her vulva to give birth. Sheela’s my personal favorite, being a decidedly disturbing goddess from darkest, pagan Celtic Britain. I thought about putting Kali up there, then thought she’s probably a bit too full-on what with her wielding knives, severed men’s heads and necklaces of skulls. Death and destruction is not exactly the sort of energy I want for baby’s birth. I’ve had enough of that in my life already.
Finally, I have a birth bundle, which is a mini-birth altar in its own right. We made one of these a couple of weeks back in one of my birth classes. It’s a bit like a medicine bundle. You need to find something that symbolises your uterus, a bag like object with a neck which you can open and close easily. Then get three objects to place inside: a symbol for you, the mother, a symbol for the father (in my case I just put a seed in there), and a symbol for the baby. Close the uterus bundle and place on the altar. When you start labor, you then open it up to help open up your own cervix, ready to birth your baby. Now if that ain’t magic, I don’t know what is.
Tue 24 Feb 2009 at 10:01 pm
[...] birth, practising my breathing and birthing positions, attending birth classes, and building a birth altar in my bedroom. And in the end it all went totally tits up. There’s a lesson to be learned in [...]