Surrender

Having now been helping in births for almost three weeks, I have come to a realization that birth presents us as women with a unique opportunity to grow. As everyone seems to know, the process of labour is painful. And, when I think about it, my normal reaction to pain is to tense up, just like my normal reaction to change in life is to stress or get up in arms. 

Getting back to pain, tensing up usually isn't the worst way to deal with it, but when you look at labour pain, you can only tense up and fight the pain for so. The body can only handle so much stress before it gives up. I've seen it quite a few times where the mother comes to the clinic in terrible pain, fighting the contractions, tensing up for every one, and finally she comes to the point where she realizes that she can't do it. She doesn't have the strength or energy left to continue. She's done for. She wants out. 

The first time I saw a mother get to this point, where she had lost hope of being able to go through with labour, where she was frantic in her exclamations of having failed, I didn't know what to think. Here I had gone to class and heard that our bodies are made to withstand the strain of giving birth, and now I was faced with what looked like the opposite. I looked to the midwife to see what her next action would be, but she didn't seemed to be inclined to do anything. She was just sitting there with a big smile lighting her face as if nothing could be better than hearing that this woman was giving up. 

As oxymoronic as it sounds, it's true. Giving up is what allows us to keep going. In birth it is necessary to surrender to the work that the body is doing, and relax into it, working together with the pain of contractions. It is only after a woman stops fighting the pain that the contractions are able to really finish well the work that they are intended for. In life it is necessary to surrender to the will of God, not to fight the discomforts and hard times, but to work together with God to make something beautiful out of the pain. When we give up, God steps in.