Reflections on Sawyer's Birth: Fight or Flight..or Something Else Entirely

So I've been reading tons of birth books (or, for the last month, the same long one) and kind of mulling over Sawyer's birth while thinking about this upcoming one. Why I am, like last time pre-birth, excited about labor even after going through it, I don't know. But I am excited. Especially to meet this little kicker and mover, but also excited about the process and about having another try to have a healthy baby at home, and to make it through this crazy physical and emotional event. I think I see it kind of as a marathon. I'm in training now, but the training for birth is not like the training for a marathon because it's more mental--you can't work up to labor in the same way you can run a few miles here and then more and more as you approach the day. Heck, you don't even know when the day is!

One big thing that has struck me in my reading is the connection between fear and pain. I did read about this the first time as well, but now it means something different after going through it. The books keep talking about a need to give in to the pain, to surrender to it rather than fighting or fearing. There are physiological things that happen in your body as a response to your emotional state about it. (I'll do a post later, because it's fascinating.) Fighting and fearing have been linked to stalled and slower labors, because of what they signal to your physical body.

I am definitely not looking back and judging how I did in labor, but when I read the words, "Surrender to the pain," I know that I did not do that last time. I don't remember necessarily being fearful, but labor came up on top of me so fast and furious that I definitely wanted to flee. I had surrendered in the sense that I was in that crazy place you go when you're in pain that's kind of a weird fog--where minutes can seem like hours and vice versa, and where you're not really aware of who's around. There were a few people at my birth that I never saw or remember being there. Yet something things are so clear to me.

So this time, I think my number one thing to kind of focus on is to give in to the pain. To embrace it and know that it's doing the work that needs to be done. I don't want to try and think of ways out, or panic as another hard contraction sets in, or tense up to try and brace myself for it. I remember doing all three of those things before.

I don't know exactly what it looks like to surrender, but I do think it's a mental thing. I can compare it to times where I have really fought with the Lord about things--things he was calling me to that I wanted to refuse, or things he wanted me to cut out of my life that I clung to. That fight is also one that takes place on an emotional and mental level--no one else can visibly see it. The effects on your life can be huge, but again, invisible to others. You can't measure it. The only way to really know when you haven't surrendered to him is the feel of that pull and struggle and restlessness in your mind. The surrender doesn't mean escaping hardship, just as surrendering to pain in labor doesn't mean my pain will diminish. Surrendering to God doesn't necessarily make your circumstances easier or better. And yet...surrender to God I think is a great picture of what the surrender in labor accomplishes: a peace that washes down over everything and, while it doesn't take away your circumstances, it gives you the strength and ability to stand up under them.

This is all theory so far, since I haven't experienced this yet. But I do feel that when I look back and reflect on labor, I can see where surrender would have fit in. I don't know that my labor would have sped up or any circumstances would have been different. They may not be this time--I could have the same exact labor greet me again. But I think the color of it might have been different, the tone, the feel. Maybe not in ways other people will see, but I'll know.

So there is my focus for this upcoming labor and birth: total surrender. I'll let you know in a few months how that goes. :)