Jul 31, 2011

Transition Stage

Bear with me as I mount my soap box here.  I've always wanted to write an essay entitled "How Laboring Naturally Better Prepares You for Motherhood."

Now I would say it just plain better equips you for life.  Here's why I think that's true:  You can't numb away your pain all the time.  This seems to be the way we try to do it.  We mask our pain with anger, we take anti-depressants or self medicate.  We run away.  Well, I personally feel that I have learned a thing or two by just letting pain hurt.  You learn that the only way out is through..  And you learn that you do get breaks, and eventually there is an end to it.  I'm not going to lie, it HURTS so freakin bad.  So bad.  So bad that I enter a place in my mind that I've never been before.  That you can only get to through immense pain.  And the door that opens remains open, granting wisdom and confidence whenever needed.  Yes, you become the rockstar you always thought you might be.

The greatest lesson for me in feeling the pain of labor is the truth of the Transition Phase.  You can't bear the contractions anymore.  You feel hot, you feel like you're going to faint.  Like you are dying.  Like you can. not. go. on.  That's the phase!  And when you feel these things it means you're almost there.  Trust me, when I'm in this phase I don't care that I'm almost there, I want to turn back, I want to stop, I would like a mallet to my head please.  But you can not possibly stop.  Your body won't stop.  You have to push through.  And push you will. 

Mothering little ones, that's all I've done so far, I liken to being in the trenches, in the front-lines. It's hard. Ridiculously hard at times. It's lonely. It's exhausting. It can make you feel totally inept. And you can't quit. You need to find patience. I can't find it. You HAVE to find it. You have to pull from every resource you never knew you had.  Whenever I feel that way, I trust that this means my break is on the way.

Have you ever felt the transition phases of life?  Maybe you're moving and you can't pack one more thing into one more box.  Or there is a situation in your life that is unbearable and you see no solution and you're panicked about it.  I recognize that now as meaning I'm almost there.

I am truly grateful for the privelage of birthing three precious beings, and the wisdom and strength I've gained through feeling all the pain.  I have to believe, I'm holding on to the possibility that feeling all of the pain in life without running away from it, will lead to feeling all of the joy that a numbed mind would not have access to.

I wanted to add something here, months later.  I can see how any type of birth experience prepares us for motherhood, as long as it doesn't go as planned, is much more intense and painful than we imagined, or in any other way tears our previous notions to shreds.  Birth is at its best a humbling experience.  I am so grateful I got to experience it three painful times.  The power of a body thrusting out is just, there's no word for it.

ever after

i've wanted to post earlier.  my hands have been full.  Noah is the easy baby I always imagined him to be, but he is still a baby, and requires hands to hold him, change him, feed him, rock him, and hold him some more.  He has healed the wound a great deal.  It's a strange thing to say, and unless you've been through grief it may not make sense, but I don't feel ashamed of our story anymore.  Not that I felt shamed for anything that happened, but that, I guess a better word would be embarrassed.  It's not as embarrassing to say my daughter died, whilst holding my baby son in my arms.  The story is not as tragic.  It has a happy ending.  It is way, way better.