I wrote my last post quickly, in hopes that I could get most of the details down before i forgot them, but i also wanted to take some time to reflect on the more spiritual and emotional aspects of the experience. So here goes...
When I first found out I was pregnant, I never could have envisioned that by the time our baby was born, I would be such a strong natural birth advocate. I knew next to nothing about the advantages of natural birth, nor the upsetting state in which American maternity care finds itself. When Brent and I first discussed it, I wasn't sure if I'd want an epidural or not. However, before our wedding we had decided not to use hormonal birth control - instead opting to work with my body's natural rhythms - due to a bad experience with it and our growing conviction that it was not God's design for us to introduce artificial chemicals into my body in an attempt to make things more convenient for us. (And after living through the one month I was on it, I'd call the crazy mood swings I felt ANYTHING but convenient!) This decision planted the first seeds of my journey into natural childbirth. I wondered: "If we don't want to use mess with how I get pregnant, should we really be messing with how I deliver a baby?" So, I began researching epidurals and the health risks to mother and baby. The more I discovered about the negative aspects of epidurals and all of the interventions that tend to go along with it (especially induction and augmentation with Pitocin), the more I became convinced that this was something I wanted to do. It felt so similar to when we began researching hormonal birth control, and realized that something that is so accepted and common in our culture DOES affect your body in very significant ways that are often denied or downplayed by the medical community.
Over the following months, the more I learned, the more committed I became to pursuing a natural childbirth. (And the more I tried to talk everyone's ear off about it!) Of course, I wanted the best for myself and our baby and believed that I could achieve that by allowing my body to do what God designed it to do. However, avoiding the side effects of hospital interventions was the least of my motivations. The more God developed my view of childbirth - as He surely did - the more I began to see it as a way to grow in giving up control to Him and going through a challenging experience with faith, rather than fear. Genesis 3:16 reads: "To the woman he said, 'I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children." While this verse is often interpreted as a punishment for Eve's sin, I began to wonder if, in reality, it was "a gift in a black box," as a local ministry says of what we call "negative" circumstances. In the Garden of Eden, sin altered mankind in such a way that we could no longer live in perfect communion with a holy God in a perfect world. However, Brent and I believe that God uses those times of imperfection, and dare we say, outright struggle, to grow us closer to Him. What if the struggles of childbirth are not a punishment for our sin, but rather a blessed opportunity to grow closer to our Lord? The more I came to believe this, the more I knew I did not want to spurn the blessing God was offering me in this experience, however it turned out. I wanted to have the birth that HE wanted me to have, and to give that control over to God.
Looking back, I had a much more difficult labor than I ever imagined when I was pregnant. Two days of stop/start labor, plus 22 hours of steady labor at home, followed by 10 hours of labor at the hospital. When we finally got some rest, neither Brent nor I had really slept in about 72 hours. Sounds like one of those horror stories that women tell unsuspecting first-time pregnant women, doesn't it? Funny thing is, it was one of the BEST weeks of my life and our marriage. We were on cloud nine for several days, and staring into each other's eyes while slow-dancing during labor nearly brought both of us to tears several times. It is still hard to describe the feelings of love and oneness that passed between us that week, and especially that night in the hospital. Though my labor was not easy by any means, it was the best thing I ever did, and was exactly the labor that God intended for me. Considering how slow I progressed (it took those 22 hours at home to get just from 3 to 5 centimeters!), had we gone to the hospital earlier or pursued interventions, I feel CERTAIN I would have ended up with a c-section, as most OBs make fear-based decisions, and I was way, WAY off the "labor curve." As it was, we trusted the Lord with every step and honestly, at the time it didn't feel that difficult at all. At times I even remember being almost euphoric during contractions!
Going through my labor taught me a lot. The neat thing is that the key ways to get through labor - mainly, relaxing through the contractions (rather than fearing and fighting them) and focusing on getting through them one at a time - are how we should approach life as well. I have a tendency to get overwhelmed by focusing on the "wind and waves" and the difficulties that lie ahead; if you focus on how hard labor will get, the same thing will happen, and fear will set in. Brent did a great job of reminding me to stay in the present throughout the whole experience, as there were definitely times when I got overwhelmed or frustrated that I wasn't progressing as fast as I wanted. From now on, all I have to do when I face tough times is to remember the lessons I learned during Amy's birth. And that, perhaps, is one of the great blessings that God intended for women in childbirth. We have a lot to be thankful for!
