Take Up Space with Your Body and Your Person

"We women are often worried about taking up space with our feelings and our bodies, about moaning, screaming, and letting our birth take the time it takes even if everyone else would rather go home and go to bed. All women who give birth deserve time, patience, love, and complete space and support to express all the emotions that childbirth can bring forth.

Giving birth is intense, but it's also a day in your life when you simultaneously experience a lot of strong emotions. A day when you cry, laugh, curse, and rejoice. Our lives are full of days we forget, not because they were bad in any way, but because they were ordinary and part of our everyday life. The days we remember are the ones that hurt and the ones that were fantastic.

The day you meet your child for the first time is forever imprinted in your memory precisely because it contains all the emotions that come with being alive, being in the world as a whole and feeling human being."

From the birth preparation book Föd på dina villkor (Birth on Your Terms), by Maria Bengtsson and Victoria Häggblom (MiMa förlag 2019).