In every birthing class I teach, we do a little art exercise that I use to sniff out any fears the student might be having related to birth. Sometimes, it’s what they have drawn into the picture that tells us what they are afraid of. Sometimes the clue is what gets left out. Recently, I had a student express a fear of losing control. She was worried about being too loud, too forceful. This is not in her nature, so the thought that it might happen during birth was very stressful for her.
This is a fear that SO many of us have. I had this fear too. It was one of my biggest fears. But instead of being afraid of losing control of my voice, I was afraid of losing control of my bowels. Then, horror of all horrors, it happened during my second birth. I’m OK. Nobody ran out of the room screaming, and nobody hates me for it.
Every time this comes up in a class, I wonder if there is something I can do to prepare the student for the likelihood that something will be out of their control during birth. It’s easy to tell people to let go, be in the moment, go with the flow, live and let live, surrender. It’s much harder to show them how to do this. I think losing the fear is an individual process, and most of us won’t be free of fear at the time of birthing. I’m just starting to realize that I can’t prepare for every possibility in life. Sometimes, I have to be OK with releasing the fears by experiencing them. The more this happens, the more I believe that the fear of something can be much more intense and awful than the reality. The more this happens, the less fear I have. I know I can face and experience something I am afraid of and come out stronger and better. For me, birth was the best illustration of this fact.
We will go into birth with some fears, and we will lose control in some way during birth. It might be that our location gets changed, it might be that our doctor is unavailable, we might scream at the doula or nurse, we might decide that clothing is unacceptable, we might poop on the bed. Whatever happens, the fear of getting out of control is usually worse than the reality. We will be there, we will live it, we will survive it. If we can accept our reality, we get stronger for it. And if we know that strength is the outcome, maybe it won’t be so scary.
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Ali, this is beautiful! Thanks for posting. Good thoughts for all phases of life, and not just childbirth. We are often SO not in control of circumstances but I love to learn new tools to cope.