Be Still My Soul

Several weeks ago I started to memorize the first verse to the song “Be Still My Soul”. I planned to use it as comfort and strength through my labor. Each line jumped out at me as speaking directly toward different aspects that I would be experiencing through the process. Almost every night for the past four weeks I have sung the verse to myself over and over envisioning using it to focus through contractions.

Be still my Soul the Lord is on your side
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain
Leave to your God to order and provide
Through every change God faithful will remain
Be still my Soul your best, your heavenly friend
Through thorny ways brings to a joyful end

Yesterday, I was told that I needed to have a c-section. At 40 weeks and 6 days pregnant, I have a baby that is not descending into my pelvis and remains “high” in my uterus. I also have a cervix that looks no different today than it did 9 months ago despite trying many different methods to get both situations to change. In a quest to discover what could be going on, I went in for a very extensive ultrasound. It showed I have a very healthy, happy baby who moves A LOT, with a strong heartbeat. From what we can tell, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the baby. But the umbilical cord is clearly wrapped around its neck which is what they suspect is holding the baby up so high, preventing the pressure needed for effacement and dilation to have started to occur by now.

On top of this, the baby was measuring at 9 lbs 11 oz. Ultrasounds can be inaccurate on this, on average +/- 1 pound. However, that still leaves a baby that could be around 8 lbs 11oz if looking toward the lower end of possibility. Definitely a baby I could deliver (my son was 8lb 9oz), but it was felt that it was still a heavy enough baby that if it suddenly dropped into my pelvis with the cord around its neck it could create a bad situation. If left to go into labor on my own, there could be a strong possibility, that at the very least, the baby could be choked and have a very stressful birth. At the worse…well…we can all imagine. Of course there remains the possibility that the baby could be born vaginally with no problems. After all, babies are born with cords around their necks all the time. And who knows what could change in the days ahead? However, my husband and I had to weigh one set of risks against another and ultimately concluded that the risks of having a vaginal birth outweighed the risks of a c-section. And so, we scheduled the surgery for today.

But this decision didn’t come without disappointment, anger and grief.

I know that many of you reading this don’t understand that at all. I know many of you have only experienced c-section births and thought it was great. Little pain, except for healing. Quick delivery. Baby with a perfectly round head. Whole process over in less than an hour. My daughter was a c-section. And despite the complications I experienced with mine, I understand where some of you are coming from. Especially if you’ve had one c-section, doing the same with subsequent births seems easier than trying for a VBAC.

Some of you kinda get what I feel. You have had vaginal births and know that it can be an amazing experience. Fortunately, many of you have never had to make the decision whether to deliver this way or not. But maybe you still don’t understand why I would WANT to go through labor. After all, it can be long. It hurts. A lot. It’s tiring. I know many parents who don’t see the process as a highlight for them. That the baby at the end is all that matters. Bring on the drugs and let’s just get to the baby. I get this point of view, too. My son was a VBAC. I was in labor for 32 hours. It was long and hard and in the end I ended up with an epidural, which really did make the last eight hours wonderful as I got to rest to prepare to eventually push out a very healthy baby.

I don’t in any way want to imply that anyone who has had only c-sections is any less of a parent because of that. Or that a medicated birth makes you a wimp. That if you never tried a VBAC when the opportunity presented itself that you just caved into your fears. We all have our own stories. We all have our reasons for doing things the way we have done them. And regardless of the birth experience you have, you can still be a wonderful parent to your child. Please hear me loud and clear on that one. I am just explaining my personal reasons for why I am grieving. What I feel I’m missing out on. Why having a natural birth meant so much to me.

For me, birth is more than just a healthy baby in the end. Of COURSE this is the most important, but it’s not the ONLY thing that is important to me. Birth for me has so much more meaning than just getting the baby out of my belly. I strongly believe that God designed the process of birth to be the way it is for a reason. I think it prepares us for parenthood in an unique way that only labor and birth can. I think there is something spiritual about trusting God’s design of your body… that it WAS made to birth. It forces you to release fear and surrender to a process that you can’t control. There are only a handful of opportunities in a mother’s life to experience this amazing design the way it was intended. And for someone who values meaning and connection to generations before me, there is something about joining in with the millions of women before me who successfully birthed babies, some in the dirt, not with drugs, and they did it. And I wanted to do that with them. I think of all my reasons for a natural birth, this is the most difficult for me to articulate. So, I’ll just leave it at that.

There is also a bonding I felt with my son as we labored together knowing that he was working just as hard as I was to be born. The two of us were in this together which led to this feeling of “we did it” as I held him for the first time. And while I definitely don’t love my daughter any less than my son and absolutely was able to bond with her after her birth, there was something significantly different in how that all came about with her compared to how it happened with my son.

And so my plan was to experience the birthing process again with this baby. I wanted a chance to even “do it better” by my standards. Knowing what to expect, knowing what I could have done differently to make my labor even easier, knowing ahead of time that “I can DO this”…I was excited to do labor and delivery again, this time with the goal of staying home as long as possible to avoid drugs and the interventions that can come when the hospital staff discovers they’re dealing with a VBAC.

So many people are always surprised when I tell them I had a successful VBAC and that I would do it again. And so there is also a part of me that wanted to show that not only can it be done once but twice!

As a result, in the last 24 hours I’ve cried a lot. This is not what I had planned. But as my good friend pointed out to me last night, I have to still surrender to this birth. I have to surrender my expectations. I have to surrender my control. I have to surrender my perceptions and let go of the pressure I put on myself regarding who I think I need to be for others. It’s hard. But some of that process is what I believe birth does for a mom anyway. I’m just having to do it from a different approach.

Last night, the words to my song came back to me. I was immediately struck how line by line it still spoke to me but in a whole different and new way. As I work on releasing my anger at the unfairness I feel toward my situation I’m reminded the Lord is on my side. As I grieve the lost opportunity of a vaginal birth knowing this was my last child, I stay patient. And though this is an unexpected change in plans, God remains faithful. I believe He is a friend that will take this difficult situation and turn it into joy. Because in less than eight hours, I will be holding my new precious little one and my soul will be still.