Birth plan // Natural Birth // Pain

I didn’t have a “birth plan” for either one of my sons. I had a mental picture of what birth looked like, but I was more interested in the outcome than the methodology. My first one went close to the plan I had envisioned and the other did not. With one my water broke and I powered through contractions until beyond when I wanted to because the anesthesiologist was busy until I was 8cm dilated. Then, I napped. When I woke up, I was ready to give birth and within a few pushes I had a baby boy. From the moment I woke up to holding him in my arms was eight hours. My recovery took a few weeks. 

My second one, I felt more prepared, and throughout the pregnancy I had a firm stance on the epidural. I wanted one. I asked for one the moment we arrived at the hospital, but my second son had other plans. The whole birth experience was a rush. I hadn’t even changed into a hospital gown or had an IV put in when he was born. There wasn’t time for an epidural. Even as I was pushing, all two pushes, I asked for one. From the moment I woke up to holding him in my arms was less than two hours. I was sitting up cross-legged in bed within a few hours. 

It’s not that I didn’t believe I was capable of a fully natural birth, I was just uncomfortable. 

Having experienced birth with and without an epidural, I would still prefer one. But it’s a short term pain versus long term recovery. But it’s the pain of a sweet little one ripping out of your body. There is no other experience quite like birth because the pain leads to the birth of a child. The pain has an incredible purpose. The full awareness of the way our body feels is informative in ways that the slight discomfort of a muted contraction on an epidural is not. It is an informative pain. A necessary pain. 

I’ve felt purposeless pain. I’ve felt pain with the sole purpose of teaching. Pain and discomfort are very different feelings. I feel uncomfortable talking to people or walking through crowds. I find specific places or situations that elicit memories of a past mistake painful. Gut-wrenching regret from choices I made. During the #metoo movement, I carefully culled though the curated journals of my past experiences to relive a few moments of regret and shame. My discovery physically sickened me and I was astonished at my pride more than anything. So much of my shame and sin were fruit of my pride and desire for independence rather than my dependence on God and on others. In the nine months between conception and birth of my first child, I grew a lot. I accepted that asking for help was not a weakness, but a strength. It was uncomfortable to ask for help, but it was painful to face the mistakes. 

My pain has molded me into the person I am today, but my avoidance of pain has directed far more of my actions than pain itself. My fear of facing the painful and the uncomfortable has dictated my path more often than I’d like to admit. Just as in giving birth though, the short term avoidance of pain can have more pain in the long run. Pain management is not always an option. Sometimes we’re too far into our labor to mitigate the pain so we ride it out and feel it all. Sometimes we take the blow, not because we didn’t try to avoid it, but because pain is inevitable. It’s about what happens after the pain subsides. What have we gained? What have we lost? Are we changed?