I can't remember staying anywhere longer than three weeks during the whole pregnancy. We wandered here and there, east and west, put on an exhibition in London, traveled around South America and celebrated New Year in New York. I finished my last stretch of work two weeks before my due date and waited for the next full moon. It was Thursday, the First Day of Summer, I waved goodbye to the fjord in a snowstorm, and Arnaldur and I drove together to my mother's home in Egilsstaðir.

Fertile lovemaking on a Friday morning set the process in motion. A spring storm had blown in, and we were meant to drive to Seyðisfjörður, but the she-wolf in me sensed that today it was too risky to get stuck on the other side of the mountain pass. Around dinnertime my body called me to lie down. I obeyed and handed the work over to my body in trust and serenity. Midnight approached, and irregular pains moved through my body like waves. I was on all fours, softening into the pillow in time with big rocking movements back and forth, into child's pose and up again. Night came and the pains came. I felt I needed to sit on the toilet when the pains hit, and danced over and over from the bed, out into the hallway, leaning on the same spots, sitting on the toilet, rocking, and then dancing back to bed. It wasn't a remarkable dance to look at, but exactly what the moment needed. I obey my body but know little. Is this birth?

Ari was close by with his healing hands and his beautiful voice. He sang Hjartaljúf, the song he wrote into my belly on our travels during the pregnancy. He laid me in the bath. I lay in the bath and found my center when I smelled passion fruit. The fruity scent flowed into my bloodstream and filled me with beauty. The scent, the taste. I was in love and enchanted, flooded with oxytocin and passion fruit. I lay in the bath, and we heard a thick pop as my waters released into the water and surrounded me. The feel of my skin softened. This is birth.

Ari has midwives on the line. My home birth midwife is up north, so a trip to Norðfjörður is unavoidable. Either we drive ourselves or go by ambulance. I wanted neither, and here is the only moment the flow stumbled. I just want the midwife to come to me. Before I know it I'm on all fours in the back of our car, a little like a ewe giving birth, and we race up Fagridalur. I look up between contractions and see black, there's light at the end of the tunnel. The light comes closer, until the snow-white mountains dazzle my eyes. And I remember what I was doing.

11:10, and the midwife welcomes us in Norðfjörður. I want a bath, or even to sleep for a moment. "You're 10 cm dilated and the head has come down 'this' far. If you want a bath we have to do it right now." I never knew what "this" meant, but the bath was warm and cozy. Then everything became so funny and fun. Ari took photos. I giggled. Breathed. Relaxed. Enjoyed the contractions, they were like a high. A sang and I relaxed into the contractions. "If you push a little, the baby will surely be born with the next contraction." Should I push? Auður told me just to relax. I do pelvic floor exercises with the next contraction. "Try pushing as if you're having a poo." Oh, like that. I push through the contraction and a little head moves down the birth canal, I push again and the little body slides out. My little seal pup swims into my arms, sings through his crying and grabs the anchors hanging around my neck.

I hold him and Ari holds us. A circle within a circle within a circle. After a good long while together, I learn that my little seal pup is a boy, born at 12:00 noon when the sun is at its highest. The cold spring when the lambs were born in a snowstorm.

At around 30 weeks I stayed in Reykjavík for almost a month and happened upon Auður. It was a gift. Exercises and breathing are one thing, but understanding, sensitivity and trust are something else and more. After the first class Auður asked: "Are you a dancer?" But I'm not a dancer, I just listen to my body. Throughout the pregnancy my body and intuition have been in charge, and I follow in humility. A woman's body in pregnancy is a sensitive and delicate dancer. And so is the soul. And my pregnancy is a lesson in welcoming the pain, receiving it, making peace with it. Letting feelings and thoughts pass through us so they can leave, experience is soil. No mud, no lotus.

Holy Mass

It was a busy spring. I finished my projects and traveled west, south, east, intending to be ready this time, not prepared but ready. I grew flowers. Repotted, watered, loved the flowers, and they loved growing with me. In the evenings I kept getting signs that birth was beginning, but they always faded. The longer we waited, the closer the chance came that my home birth midwife could be with us this time. She was abroad. But she came back to Iceland, and she came east, and the baby was still unborn. We got a message from her on Tuesday evening that everything was ready, "and sleep well," she said. A and I weren't quite in tune that evening, and I took a bath. With a pomegranate. I filled the bathroom with steam, played the piece my sister composed about our relationship with our father, who has passed. And I picked the seeds from the pomegranate, and they fell into the triangle between my breasts and the hill that holds our baby. There I lay, breathing like a whale, making friends with the world and our home.

At three o'clock I wake. Fall asleep and wake, fall asleep and wake. 3:20. I text the midwife and my mom, but I don't know if this is the call, or a cry of wolf. Just after half past three my husband and I get up, our one-year-old boy sleeping in our room. My mother-in-law and nine-year-old stepson in another room. A leaps into tasks between caring for me; blowing up the pool, connecting the hose, putting a record on. Mom gets a message to prepare for my mother-in-law and the boys to come to her. "Then everything will be just as we discussed." The midwife on the line, the midwife on her way. I can't wait. A runs a bath, and I'm in such a hurry that I lie down in the empty tub. It fills slowly. A knows I'm in labor, because he knows the current from last year. He knows, but I have long since gone somewhere else, so deep inside myself. I feel things must move faster; talk faster, tell her to come quickly, fill the pool faster. But I can't come out of the slow, heavy trance, and I begin to chant. My voice travels down my vocal cords, deep into my belly and down into my hips, and pushes back up with great force. I sing and my body sings three contractions. I stand up and look in the mirror. I have never seen my face so relaxed. I am in a complete trance, rocking my hips. My husband appears in the bathroom doorway with a garden hose in his hand. In that moment it's as if my body collapses inside me, from my chest down the birth canal. Water splashes onto the floor and soft, creamy baby hair lies in my palm. "It's going to be just you and me, my love," I say, and the bathroom turns into a forest floor. It is damp and warm and smells of fertility. I am no longer in control. My body takes over and guides with courage and love. I step wide, lower my hips, lean on an old fallen tree trunk. My arms dip with my hips, catch the baby girl and slide her up into my arms. A catches us. There we are, one moment, one eternity. A circle within a circle within a circle within a circle.

The tree trunks stretch up to the sky, a glimmer of sun shines on the tip of my nose. The girl cries her cry of life, I giggle. The midwife is on the line, and A calmly looks for a clean shoelace to tie the cord. Everything is so sweet and so funny. Oh, so this is how she wanted it to be? My mother-in-law appears. She is upset. But why? She is half embarrassed and pulls herself together. We hear a call from the bedroom, and she fetches our little boy, who is so overjoyed to find his sister in my arms. Mom arrives and my stepson crawls out of bed, and everyone gathers around the wonder on the bathroom floor. Our dear midwife, who guided us through it all with such tender care that no one had anything to fear, arrives at our little home and blesses everything with her warm hands.

The soft, poison-green moss I'm lying on is an inflated plastic ring that looks like a tire. My son hits me on the head with a garden hose. A half-inflated birth pool sits like a badly made object on the living room floor. There's a placenta on the kitchen table. And our baby girl is born, on the feast of St. Margaret. The feast of Margaret, patron saint of women in labor. We fall asleep into a rising moon and wake into high summer. A circle within a circle within a circle within a circle.

For the second time I had the chance to meet Auður during pregnancy. She looked at me intently and warmly and said: "Are you thinking about a home birth?" She knew that I knew that my body knew it would be something like this. A woman's body in pregnancy is a sensitive and delicate dancer. And so is the soul. And my pregnancy is a lesson in welcoming the pain, receiving it, making peace with it. Letting feelings and thoughts pass through us so they can leave, experience is soil. No mud, no lotus.

Karna Sigurðardóttir.