They don’t call it the ring of fire for nothing.
The baby’s head was crowning, and my midwife could see his full head of curly brown hair.
“Push,” she said for the fifteenth time. The pain was immense. So was the fear, and as I sat fully dilated in tub of warm water, this wasn’t a great time to lose my faith in natural birth.
I was seconds away from holding my baby if I could just push a little harder…
But instead of pushing I wanted to give up. I questioned my ability to give birth to this kid, and the soundtrack in my head went a little like this:
You’re incapable.
You can’t do it.
They’re going to have to cut this baby out of you.
Almost as soon as I heard those thoughts, they were coming out of my mouth.
“Maybe I need a C-section. I don’t know if I can do this.”
Thankfully, my midwife and nurses believed in me, even when I didn’t. My husband and mother believed in me too.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, God believed in me.
“Push,” she said again. So I did, not the test-the-water, half-hearted pushing, but the real, let’s-get-this-baby-out kind of pushing.
I knew the difference then, and I know it now. Sometimes I want to dip my toe in the water and talk about doing hard things, but other times I do those hard things.
There’s pushing in fear, and then there’s pushing past fear.
Are up against something tough? Or maybe God made you mayor of Toughville? Don’t bow to fear. Don’t give way to panic.
When fear crops up, find friends to ground you. Find a community to believe in you.
A friend recently reminded me of the ugly, beautiful chaos of birth. She’s helping me stay grounded and give birth to my own little bundle of a book.
What dreams are you wanting to give birth to? What tough things do you need to push through?
Find a way to silence the self-doubt and the mental fortitude to bear down and push past the pain. I believe in you and so does God.
It’ll all be worth it.
