Childbirth, From the Other Side

I just came across an old draft in my blog that I never posted. Here it is:

I read that we are most fearful of situations we can't control - that's why people are more scared of flying than they are of driving. I wonder if it will help me during labor to think that it is at least a situation I'm controlling, something my own body is doing - and surely it wouldn't do more than I could handle.

Now that I'm on the other side of that great hurdle, I still look back on it - often - with a glow of pride and excitement. I did it! It seemed so impossible and frightening beforehand, no matter how many empowering natural childbirth stories I read. In fact, just getting pregnant was something I wasn't sure I'd manage, since I knew people my age who were having fertility problems, and I never thought of my reproductive system as particularly robust (I didn't start my periods until I was 16). And before that, I was terrified I'd never find the right guy to spend my life with, and motherhood and family life would just be something I'd never experience. I'd always be on the outside, looking in. It's amazing to me that I've surmounted all those obstacles and achieved the ambitions that were most dear to me.

But back to childbirth. Having been through it, I still feel an awe and reverence for people who do it. It STILL seems bordering on impossible. I look down at my hips and wonder how a baby ever managed to fit through there - and how I had the strength to make it happen. I don't think it particularly helped during labor to imagine that this was something my body was doing to itself. Maybe if I had been scared, that thought would have reassured me. But I didn't find the experience scary. I felt a kind of floating, powerful calm the whole time. It was the same feeling I had the morning of my wedding day. I expected to be jangling with nerves, but instead I just felt - serene. It was almost like a runner's high, when you feel spaced out and gloriously clear at the same time, so that nothing can ruffle you. At no point during labor did I feel frantic or terrified. At the worst point, I just felt like I couldn't breathe - like the pain was an avalanche tumbling down a mountain and I couldn't keep ahead of it. Maybe my body knew I needed to put my energy toward the labor and not spend any on flipping out. Anyway, it was simultaneously worse pain than I expected, probably the worst pain of my life, and also an experience that I felt completely able to handle, and that I look back on as wonderful.