Cherisse Moe

Mariel D’Or­nel­las de­liv­ered her ba­by on her liv­ing-room so­fa.

The Trinida­di­an na­tive, who now lives in An­tigua, had even put to­geth­er a spe­cial birthing playlist—trib­al, spir­i­tu­al and pri­mal sounds she wouldn’t usu­al­ly lis­ten to on a reg­u­lar day.

“There was no mu­sic with words or singing. There were lots of drums and chant­i­ng. You could say that it was very in­tense but at the same time, it was so em­pow­er­ing and ground­ing.”

Her mid­wife, Mar­jolein, who flew all the way from Hol­land, pro­vid­ed ex­pert sup­port, while her hus­band, Jef­frey, was right by her side to at­tend to her phys­i­cal needs, pass­ing her sips of an adren­al cock­tail and keep­ing the en­vi­ron­ment calm with es­sen­tial oils. At one point, she even fell com­plete­ly asleep for a few min­utes be­tween con­trac­tions.

“I pushed my ba­by down a lit­tle fur­ther, and then a lit­tle fur­ther, re­al­ly slow­ly and in­ten­tion­al­ly,” she re­calls. “There was no pur­ple face, eyes pop­ping out my head, peo­ple scream­ing at me to push, like you see in the movies. It was calm, gen­tle, and slow. It was at my own pace, it was per­fect. Oxy­tocin is flow­ing dur­ing this phase and when the body is undis­turbed, it acts as a nat­ur­al painkiller. It’s amaz­ing, I felt like I was in a trance-like, high state, the en­tire time.”

Labour start­ed the evening be­fore while she was eat­ing din­ner on the pa­tio and play­ing Fort­nite with Jef­frey. When the first faint signs be­gan to reg­is­ter, Mariel kept it to her­self for just a mo­ment, re­al­is­ing it would be their last night as a fam­i­ly of two.

By 3 am, things be­gan pro­gress­ing, and she used wood­en birthing combs to cope with the in­ten­si­ty. She re­mem­bers ly­ing on her side, let­ting her body guide the process.

When she fi­nal­ly gave birth, the cou­ple, who had cho­sen not to find out the gen­der be­fore­hand, were sur­prised to dis­cov­er they had a girl. They named her Is­la.

“Truth­ful­ly, I was so shocked, I even think there was a brief mo­ment where I was dis­ap­point­ed,” she says can­did­ly. “Maybe be­cause I had spent so long vi­su­al­is­ing a boy. But if I did feel that way, it van­ished in a sec­ond and I was just in awe of what I had just done and the lit­tle beau­ti­ful hu­man that was now in my arms and mak­ing noise. I looked at my hus­band and smiled and laughed and said, ‘she’s a girl!!!’”

Mariel, a Holy Name Con­vent and Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol grad­u­ate, lat­er shared her in­spir­ing jour­ney on Tik­Tok, where scores of women were amazed by her gen­tle birthing ex­pe­ri­ence. Many said they had on­ly ever heard trau­mat­ic and chaot­ic sto­ries as­so­ci­at­ed with child­birth.

“Wow! This gives me so much hope if I ever want kids. I’m shocked to know that you can have a pos­i­tive and peace­ful preg­nan­cy and de­liv­ery,” one com­menter mar­velled.

The pow­er of sup­port

If you’re won­der­ing why Mariel opt­ed to have her ba­by at home in the first place, she says ear­ly doc­tor ap­point­ments had left her feel­ing dis­con­nect­ed from her own phys­i­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

Seek­ing a care struc­ture that aligned with her val­ues, she sought out Mar­jolein through a rec­om­men­da­tion from a friend and start­ed mak­ing arrange­ments to fly her out to An­tigua for the de­liv­ery.

Through ex­ten­sive Zoom ses­sions dur­ing her preg­nan­cy, Mar­jolein taught the cou­ple about the se­quence of events that oc­curs to ini­ti­ate birth, which so­lid­i­fied Mariel’s faith in her own in­stincts.

The prepa­ra­tion al­so delved in­to the psy­cho­log­i­cal and prac­ti­cal side of tran­si­tion­ing in­to par­ent­hood to en­sure their ba­by would have a se­cure foun­da­tion. She al­so es­tab­lished firm bound­aries for vis­i­tors and me­thod­i­cal­ly mapped out how they would man­age her post­par­tum care.

“Once I un­der­stood the del­i­cate dance that a moth­er’s hor­mones have to do in or­der to birth a ba­by suc­cess­ful­ly, I could see that a cold room, un­der flu­o­res­cent lights, with strangers in and out, was not the place to do it.”

The mid­wife al­so stayed for sev­en days post­par­tum, pri­ori­tis­ing the new moth­er’s re­cov­ery.

“She cared for me around the clock, cook­ing me the most nour­ish­ing, heal­ing, warm­ing and soul­ful foods. My pantry was stocked based on our plan­ning, and she used it to make bone broths, an­ti-in­flam­ma­to­ry teas, gold­en milks with fat­ty co­conut milk, and hy­drat­ing, min­er­al-re­plen­ish­ing adren­al cock­tails,” she tells WE.

“Ear­ly on my ba­by had a latch is­sue that caused my breast­feed­ing jour­ney to come to a halt be­cause my nip­ples were too dam­aged to con­tin­ue, and her sup­port through that is the rea­son I am still suc­cess­ful­ly breast­feed­ing my ba­by, one year lat­er. I called on many lo­cal doc­tors dur­ing that time to help me with my sit­u­a­tion, each one triv­i­alised it, ig­nored it, or sim­ply wrote it off as a non-is­sue.”

Mariel read­i­ly sym­pa­this­es with moth­ers who ex­pe­ri­ence post­par­tum de­pres­sion. While she did not suf­fer from it her­self, she em­pha­sis­es that get­ting through dif­fi­cult days re­quires a part­ner who is ready to share every load.

The hor­mon­al crash af­ter giv­ing birth is in­evitable, and ex­pe­ri­enc­ing those low mo­ments doesn’t mean you are fail­ing, she says.

“Hav­ing Jef­frey there made all the dif­fer­ence. It al­lowed me to ex­press my emo­tions freely with­out any judg­ment. Ex­pec­tant par­ents re­al­ly need to sit down and dis­cuss these post­par­tum ex­pec­ta­tions and emo­tion­al needs be­fore the ba­by ar­rives.”

Life and moth­er­hood

Bal­anc­ing life as a stay-at-home mum with run­ning An­tigua’s first Pi­lates space, Mariel has em­braced the chal­lenges of busi­ness own­er­ship since launch­ing the stu­dio two years ago, just as her preg­nan­cy be­gan.

She re­jects the idea of main­tain­ing per­fec­tion, choos­ing in­stead to fo­cus on her pas­sion and stay present with her daugh­ter.

“I don’t ever ex­pect to have every as­pect of my life go­ing one hun­dred per cent at all times. I have come to terms with the re­al­i­ty that there will be many tem­po­rary mo­ments where I am not work­ing to the ca­pac­i­ty that I used to be­fore I had a ba­by. I know what my pri­or­i­ties are and I just do what I can to find that bal­ance in my life,” she con­cludes.