Mother Surrender

Full disclosure: This birth is uncensored and bravely shown in love to help eliminate fear surrounding birth.

Anna and Alex found me last year.

It was a windy day and the planes of DFW were soaring over us in Starbucks.

I remember noticing Anna's calm demeanor and Alex had more questions than her.

I appreciated it.

More often than not, dads feel excluded from the conversation because in truth...they are.

His specific questions regarding her well being and things he didn't understand about what I do instantly made me hope that they would work with me.

They were supportive of one another.

The plans that they had described to me for their child was refreshing.

They did not want to know the sex of the baby.

Anna wanted her baby to be placed immediately on her chest as soon as it was born to just soak up the love of who he or she was before knowing.

No gender reveal.

No pressure.

Just a sweet child to look forward to.

When their due date was nearing, I got the call early in the morning.

They were headed in.

I arrived to find the usual scenario.

Mother in the throws of labor while her team helps.

Statistically speaking, first time mothers have long labors.

Sometimes they can labor for days.

Our bodies go through the slow and intentional process of shifting to move our children down.

This takes time.

Especially when attempted naturally.

This was not the case for Anna.

She was the poster child for labor.

The amount of focus she was able to muster was unreal.

During her sideline release, she absorbed the shifting in her uterus.

She never fought it. I was just impressed at how well she was doing it.

She breathed in and out.

Waited for each contraction and completely surrendered to them.

She wasn't fighting anything.

Anyone who has ever been in labor knows how difficult it is to surrender.

Nothing was stopping her from breathing through the contractions.

Occasionally her brow would furrow but she would smooth it out again to let the contraction be there, undisturbed.

She did this for a couple of hours.

All of the sudden, we heard the grunt.

I looked at Debbie, her midwife.

No way.

Surely that was just a differentiation in her breathing...not pushing...we've only been here for a couple of hours...

She did it again.

Wow. That was definitely a transition grunt.

Baby was getting closer so Debbie and Kim advised her to get into the water.

They were definitely getting stronger.

Even still, as the contractions heightened, she would catch herself mid moan and throw her head back inviting it all to take over.