Crossing the Line

A line was crossed last night.

And again this morning. But not again.

I have been enjoying my pregnancy in silence. Opinions and research I would have longed to have shared have not been expressed for a few simple reasons: I did not want to offend, nor hurt anyone with a traumatic, difficult or otherwise negative birthing experience. And I want to begin this post and subsequent posts with this statement to those individuals:

I am sorry. I am sorry that you had to endure hardship; that perhaps your birthing experience was perhaps not as you planned or dreamed it to be. I am sorry that you had to sacrifice of yourself by raw, pained and emotions plagued by fear and physical scarring for such a situation. I am sorry that perhaps the experience you endured was so distressing that you have now vowed that “one is enough” and you no longer wish to ever be pregnant again. I am sorry that you may have received information or had decisions made from your doctor, attending nurse or other caregiver that instead of benefiting you and your forthcoming child, benefited their own pockets, their insurance policy or the overhead of the hospital. I am deeply sorry if the experience you have lived through caused you to be separated from your child, your spouse, your family and thus diminished bonding moments that will never be achieved again. I am even more increasingly sorrowful for those whose experience was so poor and ended as such that they lost their child. My heart mourns on this side of eternity with you.

For anyone who has asked, I have been free with my intentions in pregnancy, labor and birth. I have not posted them online however, as I have become increasingly aware that my blogging of “random musings into cyberspace” have readers. These readers are my friends, their coworkers and people who perhaps aimlessly find me through a Google search. With a personal history of being less than tactful and acting less out of grace and compassion than is more than duly necessary at times, I have erred on the side of caution and remained silent. However, for the first time in my pregnancy (all 31 weeks of it), a line was crossed that I had not even approached yet:

I felt fear.

This afternoon as I sit here and write this, I am angry. I should never have let the lies that led me to that fear enter my mind. Joshua and I have been adamant from the moment we began discussing children to keep a “fear-less” perspective. So I want to detail out my birthing philosophy. I want to post it on the internet and I want to act in faith, a faith that believes that “perfect love casts out fear” (I John 4:18, NAS) and that fear was not given us by God, but instead a spirit of “power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (II Timothy 1:7, KJV).

Today ends the silence.

Today begins the research, the opinions and the conclusions that I have drawn and have been desperately wanting to share: with my friends considering children, my friends who are pregnant who are considering natural childbirth and those who have been looking for another option... I want to offer that point of view. I thought that I was supposed to wait until I experienced it, so that in some way, my opinions would be more validated, but I am realizing I need to verbalize these things to help me make my own birthing experience positive. My birthing "worldview" is not for everyone and I recommend taking it with a grain of salt. The decisions I have made and the conclusions my husband and I have drawn for this pregnancy (and hopefully subsequent ones) are the result of study, research and much interaction with the local natural birthing community and their respected resources. I did not come to these decisions lightly, nor should I expect you to. Please come and go as you please on my blog... and realize that most of what I will write in the days preceding the birth of our first child is reaffirmation of that which I will need to assist me during this process.