Labor, Take Two

“There are three things that are givens about labor: it’s hard work, it hurts a lot, and you can do it. That’s the bottom line. All the rest you learn about is icing on the cake.” –Suzanne Stalls, midwife

"[I]t does no good to imagine the evils that await us! And for the unimagined ones the Lord is sufficient. So let us be at peace." –In The Arena, autobiography of Isobel Kuhn, missionary to China in early-mid 1900s

I think the point of the last month of pregnancy is to make you so tired of being pregnant that you’re actually willing to consider the thought of going through labor. I reached that point about a week ago.

But contemplating labor is a scary thing. At some point you go from thinking how charming it is that the wee thing is growing into the size of a pea or mango, to realizing that whatever keeps getting bigger in there is going to have to make it out of your body at some point. Which is really quite barbaric if you think about it.

You would think it’s less scary having been through it once, but if anything it’s worse. There was more mystery the first time, certainly more unknowns, but thus more reliance on taking it moment by moment in a way of deep faith. I thought about what it meant to bear this sign of the fall; to identify with Christ in bringing new life through suffering. I thought about what it added to my view of what my body could do, to how precious her existence meant because it had really cost me something. I gathered practical ideas on how to ease the pain, did most of the labor at home with D before arriving at the hospital to push, and stayed in a relatively good mental state the whole time.

For some reason, this time around, all I can think about is the reality of how the pain felt. I keep getting flashbacks of the worst contractions and the pushing. And how sore and just abnormal everything was down there afterwards.

My fears this time are more concrete. Less concerned with theoreticals like a thirty-hour labor or possible surgery, and more with the remembered reality of a pain and body-battering I’d rather not go through, however temporary it was. And somehow these fears are worse, because they are more real. The labor could be better; it could be worse—but either way I know the basics of the inevitable and looking it in the face is harder.

I didn’t realize I was carrying all this around until a few days ago, when I went into a bit of false labor and realized I wasn’t ready to go through with it. We prayed and I dumped all these fears on God and said, look, you take care of it. I believe you can. I’m just going to try to take it one moment at a time. And that has helped. And I have thought more about meeting this little boy inside, how it might feel to love him in the flesh, and that has helped. It also probably helps that I feel practically too pregnant to walk sometimes.

At least I feel like whenever this happens, I will be okay, in the inner part of my mind and spirit that really matters. I might even be a little happy that it’s finally happening.