Surrendering to the Miracle

I’ll admit, this is the hardest part for me.

I am really good at visualizing, and creating a state of gratitude for the thing before I physically experience it. I am really good at taking actions that come from intuitive hits. I am especially good at over-achieving and staying a course day in and day out.

The part that can be hard for me is releasing the need to know how the desired outcome will manifest. I am willing to admit this only because the times I’ve struggled with this and then been able to overcome that struggle and surrender, have proven to be the times of my greatest miracles.

Surrender can come in many forms. One of the most recent times I experienced this surrender was the day my youngest son was born. I had intuitively known he would come early as his brother did. (My older son was two weeks early) Because my children tend to be on the larger side, my doctor made it clear he would be very happy if my younger son came early too. I resisted asking him why he thought that for a long time, because I knew his answer wouldn’t serve my confidence in manifesting an ease-full and uncomplicated birth. But when the two-week mark came and went, and my vision of having another baby at 38 weeks gestation vanished, I did the unthinkable.

I asked my doctor why he wanted this baby to come early.

He went down the laundry list of scary scenarios that could arise when a baby is “too big” and luckily because I trust my doctor and myself, I was able to take it with a grain of salt. I didn’t feel fearful, or so I thought.

I went home confident that my intuition would be correct and I would go into labor well before the 40-week point because that’s what I wanted. From that point, I consumed myself with every technique in the book on how to induce labor naturally. A week later, nothing had happened. Still pregnant, I work up on week 39, for lack of a better word, mad as hell. WHY had this baby not come out?! Didn’t he know my plan was to deliver early? Why wasn’t the pineapple juice, dates, long walks, and hot sauce working?! I was obsessed with knowing every little nuance of how this birth was going to happen, and I was sick of it. I realized at that moment that obsession came from a fear I had not admitted to myself. That fear was consuming my energy and I was tired of it. I screamed out loud from my bed, “I AM TIRED OF BEING AFRAID OF BEING AFRAID!”

Because I knew that fear was likely to slow or even stop labor, I was burying my fear and refusing to look at it. The fear that I would not have the beautiful birth I imagined turned into an obsessive and depleting need to know every detail of a situation that by definition is unpredictable. When I realized that not only was I afraid but that I didn’t need to fight that fear, something switched. I went into labor that very night.

The labor was fast and [relatively] easy, beautiful, and emotional just as I had pictured it. But I had to learn the lesson of surrender before I could have that experience.