The Roller Coaster: Perspective

This is the seventh post in a special bi-weekly series.  It's a sequel to The Longest Weekend of My Life series.  Please check back next Wednesday for Part 8.

Part 7: Perspective

Sunday was much better than Saturday. Emotionally I was more balanced, and I wasn't having heavy bleeding or physical discomfort other than a headache, which was resolved with some essential oils. We went to church and I enjoyed the distraction as well as the spiritual environment. I found myself struggling to focus, but I accepted that and just tried to appreciate the present and let myself be in the moment. After church I took a nap and focused on spending the day with family.

I was encouraged by the positive feedback I received when various friends responded to my facebook status update and story. Some said they were hoping and praying for us, and some offered information about how bleeding during pregnancy could be completely safe. There were friends I hadn't personally heard from in a long time, and it was wonderful to hear from them in a time when I felt I needed as much support as I could get.

As I thought about things, I had a small revelation. I realized if I hadn't had any pelvic pain things would be very different. If I hadn't gone to Instacare I would have simply waited things out and would have thought I was just having a late period. I'd have had no idea I was pregnant and wouldn't have gone through all of this emotional turmoil. That thought could have made me wish things had played out differently, that maybe I could have just gone through this in ignorant bliss. However, it helped give me some perspective. I felt that everything had happened this way for a purpose, and that I was learning and growing because of it. It also helped me to see the normalcy of my situation and to have more patience in understanding that even though I didn't have all the answers in the moment, the answers would come, eventually.

Part 1: Looking Up

Part 2: Seeing Red

Part 3: Malaise

Part 4: Possibilities

Part 5: Break Down

Part 6: Support

Part 7: Perspective

Part 8: Normal?

Part 9: Hindsight

Part 10: Shift

Part 11: Empty

The Roller Coaster: Looking Up

This is the first post in a special bi-weekly series.  It's a sequel to The Longest Weekend of My Life series.  Please check back next Wednesday for Part 2.

Part 1: Looking Up

The Tuesday after the Longest Weekend of My Life I decided to call my midwife. After telling her what had happened over the weekend, she told me she thought the immediate suspicion of ectopic pregnancy based on my pain and proof of pregnancy alone was a bit of a leap. She said that with my history and having had absolutely no pregnancy complications and no risk factors, it was unlikely to be an ectopic pregnancy. I told her that I'd made an appointment with the OB for a 10 week ultrasound for my husband's peace of mind, and she told me that her birth suite now has the capability of doing ultrasounds and billing my insurance. I almost jumped for joy! I felt much more comfortable going to her for an ultrasound and canceling the OB appointment altogether. I told my husband, and he was very supportive of my choice.

I called the OB's office on Wednesday to cancel the appointment. The receptionist, who'd been working there for the past 10 years our family had been going to that office, seemed disappointed. She said “So you're not going to go with us?” I said no and explained that since my home birth midwife now offered ultrasound I would be seeing her for all of my prenatal needs. The receptionist, who had asked me about my home birth experience last year, didn't say anything else. I think maybe she didn't know what to say.

I thought about it. I wondered why the receptionist was sad that I wouldn't be going to their office for my pregnancy. After all, home birth is what I felt was safer and more beautiful anyway, and I couldn't have been more thrilled about my plans. I also felt much happier knowing I wouldn't need to have any unnecessary pelvic exams or other tests or interventions for the sake of routine. I hung up the phone feeling very good about my future.

That night I talked with my husband. He told me that his feelings of fear were easing and he was starting to feel a lot better about the situation we had found ourselves in. In fact, he was feeling hopeful, optimistic, and excited about the pregnancy for the first time since we'd discovered it. He had even confided in a close friend about what we were going through. This was great progress, and both of us were feeling like we were now in the clear with smooth sailing ahead.

Part 1: Looking Up

Part 2: Seeing Red

Part 3: Malaise

Part 4: Possibilities

Part 5: Break Down

Part 6: Support

Part 7: Perspective

Part 8: Normal?

Part 9: Hindsight

Part 10: Shift

Part 11: Empty

The Longest Weekend of My Life: Preface

This is the first post in a special Saturday series.  Please check back next Saturday for Part 2.

Part 1: Preface

My husband and I wanted another baby, but we'd been planning to wait a few years. The last two kids were born pretty close together, and with 5 kids we definitely felt we had our hands full. We probably would have decided to stop having babies by now if we hadn't been strongly impressed that there's another little girl who is waiting to come to our family. In spite of all logical arguments, we planned to have another baby... just not yet.

We've learned with the last few pregnancies that our plans don't always work out the way we think they will. God often has a different plan or schedule in mind, and that usually trumps anything we've got in mind.

We absolutely love our big family, and we wouldn't trade that for all the riches in the world, and yet I found myself worried about what other people will think if they knew we were planning to have a 6th child. I'd even told myself that when I finally got pregnant again I wouldn't say a word to anyone, because I'd been afraid of the comments I might get. All I wanted was for our friends and family to support us, tell us congratulations and wish the best for us, but with each subsequent pregnancy it seemed they were less and less excited for us. With each pregnancy, as we strived to depend on the Lord for guidance more and more in our lives, we'd been both apprehensive and excited at the same time. With the last few being surprises it took a little while for the reality of the situation to sink in, but once it did it seemed like we couldn't stop smiling, and we got very excited to have another little one in our family.

Babies are precious, and they bring a light with them that nothing else in the world can compare with. I really like this quote from Larry Barretto:

"Babies are bits of star-dust blown from the hand of God. Lucky the woman who knows the pangs of birth for she has held a star."

When I was personally attacked online for having a big family I was told I should “stop having babies and find a new hobby”. This was from an anonymous person who apparently was very worried about global overpopulation and planned to never give birth to her own offspring. After recovering from the initial shock, I realized it wasn't a personal attack afterall, and I had simply fallen between the cross hairs of this jaded individual.

In my polite response to the anonymous attacker, I quoted Liz Armbruster:

"I brought children into this dark world because it needed the light that only a child can bring."

How can you NOT bring children into this world? When you've known the incomprehensible joy and love that comes with nurturing and growing a developing fetus in your womb and then birthing it peacefully as a newborn babe into your arms, how could you even think this isn't a miracle? Children are a wonderful, blessed gift from God, and I feel honored to have been blessed with so many beautiful babies.

Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. - Psalms 127:3

I'd been learning Fertility Awareness after our 5th child was born. I felt strongly a few years back that I shouldn't take hormonal birth control any longer, and I'd been pushed to find a more natural way of approaching family planning. I know some people who don't use any form of family planning as they pray and trust that God will give them what is right for their family. I felt I needed something to help me plan. I am a planner, afterall, and it gave me peace feeling I was doing something positive for my family.

I had a few odd cycles as my body adjusted back to normalcy after my baby's birth. A couple of my cycles had been about 45 days long, while one had been only 21 days long. So I didn't think much about it when my expected period didn't come. I decided instead of worrying I'd wait it out and see what my body was doing. I wasn't feeling emotionally ready to be pregnant again with my baby only a year old. Afterall, my husband had decided 3 years would be a good gap and I had agreed and supported him in that decision. This is where we always seemed to learn the Lord has other plans for us. 


Part 2: Bittersweet
Part 3: Numb
Part 4: Peace
Part 5: Waiting
Part 6: Writing and Reading
Part 7: Decisions

The Raw Truth About Power and Control

Who controls birth?


I came across an article on MSNBC by Taffy Brodessor-Akner called Who controls childbirth - expectant moms or doctors?


In her article, Ms. Brodessor-Akner talks about the extremely traumatic birth of her first child and the impending birth of her second child. She opens up with her raw feelings, and it's powerful. She talks about her journey, of trying to heal and move forward, of facing the future with the hope of something better.

The author also talks about home birth but admits that she's not comfortable birthing anywhere but in the hospital.  The feelings and questions that she brings up in her article are so poignant, and I think they bear careful consideration. This article reminds me of how each and every birth is individual and sacred, and should be handled with appropriate care. Each mother and father should make the choices they feel are best for that birth, regardless of what happened at previous births or what so-and-so says and what everyone else thinks they should do. It's a personal decision, each and every step of the way.

In response to the article, Sheridan at Enjoy Birth asks the same question: Who DOES Control Childbirth? She argues that it depends on who the mother chooses as her care provider. She also provides a library of information to help women make the best choice in care provider for their child's birth, and lots of reasons why they should be judicious in their choice.

She has a point. Afterall, the woman's choice in her care giver determines how much power and decision-making she will give up. Giving power to someone isn't bad, if that person truly has your best interests at heart and understands and supports them.

In my personal experiences with birth, it has all been about control. Whether I have a positive or negative experience depends largely on how much I feel control was either respected or taken from me. I feel this was dependent on how much control I gave to others, and in whom I chose to trust with that power.

In this respect, I think Sheridan is absolutely right, and I also feel a woman's realm of control in birth extends further than her choice in a provider. She also has the power to choose her support team, the location and circumstances under which she wants to labor and give birth.

Can you really determine the circumstances of your baby's birth? In her MSNBC article, Ms. Brodessor-Akner talks about how unpredictable childbirth is, and how birth plans are a waste of time because of this. Yes, birth is unpredictable, but women still have power in the interventions they choose to accept or avoid. They can choose under what circumstances they want to labor and birth by choosing whether to allow a medical induction or augmentation, or to wait for spontaneous labor to start on its own. They can choose whether to birth in a place where certain things are required as "protocol", such as electronic fetal monitoring, breaking of waters, IV placement, and more. They can decide which interventions to accept or decline, and their decision in care provider and location will have a large impact on these other aspects.

I believe as we attempt to exert control in pregnancy and birth, we must also come to terms with a certain lack of control. This is where faith comes in. I do everything possible to educate myself to make the best decisions, and as I move forward knowing I've extended the limit of my personal power, I trust in something bigger, more powerful to guide me through. For some people this is a trust in nature, in our bodies to perform as they were made to.

For me, it's faith in God.

As I see it, God created the world and everything in it. He is nature. He created me, and He knows what I'm capable of. God has control in things I don't, and He has my best interests in mind.

"The next moment is as much beyond our grasp, and as much in God's care, as that a hundred years away. Care for the next minute is as foolish as care for a day in the next thousand years. In neither can we do anything, in both God is doing everything." ~ C.S. Lewis

What do you think? Who controls birth?

Quote

"What keeps our faith cheerful is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music, and books, raising kids up; all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people."

- Garrison Keillor

Finally, to take a step without feet

by Amy

"This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet." -Rumi

I keep re-reading this quote, over and over.

This quote perfectly describes what the conception of this baby and this pregnancy is for me. It came out of so much sadness and heartbreak, after being pregnant for 12 weeks then suddenly no longer pregnant. After trying desperately to fill my womb again with another baby for more than half a year with no success. Desperately wanting to be pregnant, yet absolutely terrified at the same time.

This is love.

Facing your worst fears of painfully losing another baby because you love your unborn child so much, before it is even conceived.

To fly toward a secret sky.

Trying to conceive. You don't have the power to control it. It's deep, dark, secret. There's no way to see what goes on inside of your own body. Waiting, waiting to find out. Waiting and flying all the time towards that secret sky...

Then, not knowing if the baby you conceived is alive inside of you, or if it has died. Perhaps the sky is dark and secret for a reason.

To cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.

Realization dawns upon the secret sky. You cannot be in control. Struggling with faith, fear, doubt, and then faith again, while your baby silently forms in that secret place within your womb. Each moment brings a new wave of emotion, new thoughts, new fears.

First to let go of life.

I cannot control fate. The only way to escape the constant anxiety is to let go of life. Nothing is my own. Not my life. Not the life of my children. If it is possible to let go of life, it's possible to see everything in a new light. To breathe deeply just for the sake of enjoying a deep breath. To know that here, in this moment, I am breathing, I am alive, and everything is ok. My baby is alive and in the safest place she can possibly be at this moment. What happened yesterday or what happens tomorrow has no hold over the perfection of *this* moment, right here, right now. To let go of life means to truly live life, to soak up each second as it occurs.

Finally, to take a step without feet.

Birth.

What could be a more accurate description of birth but to take a step without feet?

This is what I am preparing for. The faith to take a step without feet.

We can pretend there is some control by managing birth, but really is that a substitute? A poor one, if anything.

Rosie's birth was two experiences.

On one hand, it was terrifying. The lack of control--both control of my body as it took over to give birth, and the control of myself I turned over to hospital staff.

It was no longer my choice whether I wanted to eat, drink, soak in the tub, stand up, or sit down. If my body told me to push on all fours, the hospital staff said no. They were in control. Over all, Rosie's birth was not terrible. I was still able to do as I pleased through 80% of the laboring period. But the other 20% where I was not able to made a huge difference. The anxiety caused by simply being in the hospital also had an impact. I had no control over who was in the room, no chance to make totally informed choices for myself or my child once she finally emerged. Her first days of life were in the control of hospital policies, not bonding or motherly instinct.

I was totally unprepared for the trip my body took me on. I couldn't get off if I wanted to. There was no stopping once it started. Contractions came, and I knew they were coming, and I had no way of changing that. Pushing happened, and no one warned me that it felt like throwing up...only in reverse.

I realized something important during this. My body is extremely powerful. It knows something that I don't. It knows how to create a baby in a secret place. It doesn't need instructions from mankind to know how to grow a human being. It just does it from some ancient source of knowing. My body can create a fully formed human being, and if it is capable of that my body is also capable of birthing the human being it created. If my body can create a baby without any instructions needed, it certainly must know how to birth a baby in the same manner.

I could tell, as I was in labor with Rosie, that my body had taken over. Everything was different. Pain registered differently. Time warped. I went somewhere else, either deep within myself or outside of myself. I'm still not sure which. This was the second experience. Something powerful within myself, something I did not know previously existed.

While I was in labor I realized that I had made a terrible mistake by subjecting myself to the hospital. Every time I would get to that amazing deep place, that time warped world, I would be forced back to reality where pain was sharp and intense and anxiety was magnified. It was such a stark contrast. At one point it was so startling that my body reversed progress, from 8 cm back down to 6 cm. No wonder so many women have labor that stalls.

It was the hospital policies that kept causing this to happen. I would have to regularly be violated with a cervix check. Regular time spent in the bed strapped to the monitors for 15 minute periods. People were coming in and out of the room. Lights were too bright. Eventually, against my will, I was forced to get out of the water and lay naked on the bed with my feet in the air and strangers standing around. That safe place vanished completely.

I kept catching glimpses of that place, the time warped world where the pain changes to some sort of ecstatic level of being. It wasn't frightening there. It was powerful, and overwhelming, but it was right. It was where my body--the same body who knew how to grow the baby without any instruction--was trying to take to me in order to birth the baby it had created. The birth was to be the completion of the instructions my body was carrying out, the final step in creating my baby. The finishing touches, so to speak.

You can have a final product without the finishing touches, but is it all that it could have been?

What happens to your body when the instructions are prevented from being followed properly?

Things go wrong. It hurts.

It's painful. It's not supposed to be that painful.

This time, for this birth, I know better. I'm preparing myself to reach the secret place with the ecstatic feelings and the time warp. This time, I'm going to stay there.

I understand now why women need drugs to give birth. The drugs are a cheap substitution for that place. Either use drugs, or suffer horrific pain. That is the choice you have when outside forces prevent your body from completing the final bit of instructions it has been carefully following for the past nine months.

I will not make that mistake again.

There is a third choice, aside from the drugs or the pain, that mainstream society has forgotten. It's been traded for efficiency, for the sake of being modern, for technology, for the illusion of control.

The third choice is still there, still available to choose.

In our modern society there are always voices asking, "what if..."

But what good do those voices do? Seeds of doubt, fear, anxiety. Women love to share horror stories, tell you how much it hurts.

Those feelings cause tension. Tension causes your muscles to tense up. What hurts worse than tensing up a muscle that is working hard to gently open?

I'm purposefully letting those thoughts of "what if..." go. Those thoughts of my own, and of others. "What if..." will be what it is. I'll deal with that if it happens, when it's happening. I have a midwife I trust who will be there, quietly waiting without interference, to recognize a "what if" situation, and that is enough for me.

"What if..." is a lot less likely to happen when my body is allowed to follow the final instructions, to give birth with myself safely tucked deep into that place.

My body knew how to grow the baby. My body will know how to birth the baby.

Finally, to take a step without feet.

*****

"In my experience as mother and midwife, birth is more like a labyrinth than a runway.

When walking a labyrinth, sometimes it looks as if we are going away from the center, even backwards. Yet, eventually all of the twists and turns bring us to the destination. Progress cannot be measured in that realm. What is important is the journey because, once arrival at the center is achieved, there is the walk to get back out again. If you give up, you might feel lost, for in the Western myth of the labyrinth, the Minotaur at the center holds the secret of how to transform fear into the power to give birth.

Without meeting the Minotaur in the center of the labyrinth, that is, confronting our innermost fear, the way back may be more confusing. Tragically, when some women keep trying to avoid the Minotaur, they never make it back..."

--Jeannine Parvati Baker