That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ –1 Peter 1:7

I had gotten cocky about birth. After giving birth to my first child: 8 pounds, 9 ounces of pure posterior labor right through to the end, I had had two exceptionally fast and relatively easy births. The days had been spent savoring the delicious anticipation of early first stage, transitions had been quick (just one contraction for my third baby), pushing had been a little wild, but short, and then, oh! What a wonderful reward at the end! I had it through my head that first labors are hard, but that after that, you just pop ‘em out like nothing. Or, at least, I thought that was how my body worked. It was actually a form of pride, although I didn’t realize it. And leave it to the Lord to confront us with our sins–even the ones we don’t know about.

Through the end of my pregnancy, the Lord’s big lesson to me seemed to be about waiting on Him. I wrote a post about it and closed with these thoughts:

Maybe it’s just proof that I have a long way to go in actually learning to rest in the Lord instead of in my own schedules, devices, and plans. I should be glad for this chance to step outside of my own created order, glad for this chance to be reminded of Who it is who really runs the universe, this chance to work at being joyful and peaceful when I don’t get my way, to practice trusting, hoping, resting, waiting.

As it turned out, waiting for that first contraction was just the warm-up. The real test was still to come.

It all started at my father-in-law’s (day early) birthday party. We were in between the games and cake when I had a contraction, a big one. Hmm. And then I had another one.

As everyone was leaving, and saying how we’d see each other in church the next morning, one man said, “Maybe you’ll have the baby and you won’t be there.” I smiled, and said, “Hey, wouldn’t that be great! Let’s hope I’m not there.” And inside I thought, maybe, just maybe I wouldn’t be.

I kept on having contractions.

We got the children to bed, and as usual, I stayed with them while they fell asleep. The contractions were getting strong enough now that I was starting to feel like I needed to breathe through them. I put on music for the children and paced their room, leaning on the bunk bed rail for each contraction. They were pulling really hard. Things were moving very fast.

But when I left the focused darkness of the bedroom, and came out into the bright lights of the living room, my contractions began to space out and weaken. I kept walking to try to keep things going. My husband and I talked about baby names. We still needed a middle name for a girl.

It wasn’t long before I was really sleepy. I called my cousin whom I had invited to the birth to let her know that I thought I was in labor. And then I went to bed. The contractions had all but stopped.

I woke up a few hours later around 2:30.The house was dark and quiet. I decided that I wanted to have this baby, so I got back up. As soon as I stood up, the contractions started again. I paced around the living room, leaning on the back of the upright piano or the couch depending on where I was when the contractions hit. They were pulling hard again, and things seemed like they were getting serious. I called my cousin again at around 3:30 and told her to come. Then I got a pillow and sleeping bag ready for her on the couch. When I turned the light on in the guest room to get the pillow, things started slowing down again. I woke my husband up just to let him know what was happening, and he decided to get up and take a shower since he might not get one later that day.

My cousin arrived. I paced, talking to her about birth and labor. My husband came out and showed my cousin pictures from previous births, made coffee, and continued to share our natural, low-intervention, home birth philosophy. I walked. My legs were getting tired. And my contractions were getting lighter. Lighter. I was starting to feel a little frustrated, not to mention more than a little embarrassed that I had gotten everyone up from a nice, cozy sleep.

We started making plans for having my husband’s parents come and take the children to church, so they could have a normal Sunday morning. I fully expected we’d have our baby before the end of the morning meeting. But by 6:30 I was sleepy again and not much seemed to be happening. Despite the embarrassment, I went back to bed and promptly went to sleep. My husband and cousin sat on the couch in my room while I dozed in and out of consciousness catching bits of their conversation. At 7:30, I got up. It had been twelve hours since that first contraction, and as soon as I was out of bed, more contractions hit me again, and this time, I was shaking a bit, too. Shaking has historically been my “call the midwives NOW” sign, as the baby had followed in under an hour the last two times I’d given birth. But I was oddly not deep into myself the way I usually am when I shake. We thought we should call them anyway, though. So before long, two midwives and an apprentice were in our room setting up supplies while I sheepishly paced. Everything had slowed down again.

They checked the baby. Fetal heart tones were good, but the head was still high and ballotable. Our little one hadn’t dropped.

The kids went to church. The apprentice, tired from attending another birth over night as a doula, fell asleep on the guest bed. The midwives and my husband and cousin sat at the kitchen table, while I went back to bed, hardly in labor at all. The words failure to progress were doing battle in my head with the much more friendly term we learned way back in my Bradley Birth class, natural alignment plateau. I hoped this was “natural,” but mostly I felt like a “failure:” stupid for not knowing when I was really in labor, guilty for wasting everyone’s time, and totally incapable of bringing forth this child.

I fell asleep again in the contractionless stillness of that bright Sunday morning. When I woke up, we all had a chat. The midwives offered to check my dilation if that would make me feel any better. I didn’t really think it would. Finally, everyone decided to go home.

And there I was. I had gotten my cousin up at 3:30 in the morning to “hurry” to a birth that hadn’t happened by noon. I had sent my children away hours too early, and now it was nap time, and they weren’t at home. My entire church was waiting for news about my baby that hadn’t come.

But perhaps a little breathing room and a rest would start things up again. And it was nice to be alone with my husband for awhile. He went out to Taco Bell for some lunch for me. I went to sleep on the couch while I waited for him. We walked around the yard with our dog, pulling weeds here and there while I had quiet little contractions in the background. We came in, and I fell asleep again on the couch.

Around 3:00, my husband thought he should check in with the midwives again and let them know that nothing was happening. While he was on the phone, I had a huge contraction, the kind where I had to fight the urge to panic. And then I was shaking so hard my teeth were rattling. I went and sat on my bed while my husband called the midwives and my cousin to come right back. But the shaking slowly subsided, and I didn’t have any more big contractions. Everyone rushed back in to quietness.

This time, the midwife thought it would be a good idea to check me because, as she said, if I was only dilated to one, then we would know not to treat this like labor. I waited, breathless, to hear the pronouncement. I was complete. The baby was just so high that I had no urge to push.

We tried various positions. We bound my belly. I kept walking even though my legs were killing me by that point. The baby didn’t drop. Everyone else had dinner but I didn’t want anything. I was exhausted mentally and emotionally. I just wanted to have that baby. At 6:00, our oldest called. She wanted to come home, but the baby hadn’t come yet. I paced and paced in our bedroom until at last I crawled back into bed and fell asleep again. When I woke up, my cousin was gone. She had run out of time. Failure to progress. Failure. The midwives wanted to go for a walk. I lay there and cried. I missed my children. I missed my breezy confidence about birth. I wanted my baby. I felt like I was letting everyone down. Today was my father-in-law’s birthday, but what if I couldn’t give birth that day? What if I missed it? The midwife brought me tissue for my nose. “Stalled labors can be very humbling,” she said.

Finally, we decided to stop trying so hard. “Get your children home and tucked into bed,” said the midwife. “Maybe everything will pick up again once you know that everyone is OK. Just try to rest and be comfortable until then.” My husband suggested I get in the shower. He made arrangements for his parents to give the kids a snack after the evening church meeting and then bring them home for bed.

At first, the shower was relaxing. I kept crying and tried to talk to my husband about how I felt. A snatch of 1 Peter 1:7 was going through my head, “That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire…” …tried with fire…precious faith. My faith was more precious than my cocky confidence about my own ability to give birth. I had to trust the Lord. I had to have faith in HIM, not in myself.

Gradually the heat of the shower became irritating during contractions, and I went and sat on my bed. My husband wanted me to eat something. He suggested instant chicken soup and said he had some out in the car. I said that didn’t sound too bad, and he left to get it. As soon as he was gone, I had a sharp contraction. The minute it was over, I scrambled off the bed calling my husband’s name. It seemed like forever until he got back down the hall to our room. “I don’t want you to go,” I said. “Contractions are uncomfortable.”

It was a little after 8:30. I had been in labor for 25 hours, and finally, finally, the contractions were overwhelming, awkward, making me climb out of my skin. And then my water broke. Somewhere in my mind there was relief but it was swept away in the pushing contraction that followed hard after. I pushed like I had never pushed before. My children were coming home. I had suffered for hours the pain of failure and helplessness. And I was going to push that baby out. The apprentice kept adjusting things. I didn’t want to be bothered. They wanted to listen to the baby, but all they got was my heartbeat. Then they were pushing on me. “Don’t do that,” I said. I hadn’t realized that the baby was crowning. And then, at 8:59, just 14 minutes after my water broke,  my baby wiggled free. And the midwife was telling me that she was going to pass me my baby. “It’s pink!” my husband announced. I was shocked. I had thought all along that I was having a boy. But there she was, so tiny and beautiful, and I was desperate to hold her and cuddle her. “So precious!” I said over and over as I sank onto the bed with our baby daughter. “So precious.”

I had not done it. The Lord had, in His perfect timing. He had brought forth this infinitely precious child and brought me through a humbling brokenness to the moment of her birth. And at last our baby was in our arms. We named her Faith.

This is an unusual birth story, one that likely doesn’t happen very often, and that has led to some surprise over why we didn’t step in medically, why I went through this when I didn’t “have to.” For those who are wondering, here’s a brief glimpse into my husband’s and my personal view of my “failure to progress.”

The average hospital would never allow this kind of labor. They would certainly have broken my water hours before it broke on its own. They might have given me Pitocin when things slowed down. And I might even have wound up with a c-section when it appeared that I couldn’t do it on my own. Would that have been better? I don’t really think so. Faith and I were fine. (They kept checking.) I was suffering emotionally, but hardly going through anything physically. There was no emergency, just long, quiet hours of disappointment and waiting. I understand the desire to “do something.” (Boy, do I ever!) But in the end, I had a simple, uncomplicated birth with no tearing, no trauma, no problems at all for me or little Faith. Intervening simply to save everyone the wait might have turned out fine, but it also might not have. All interventions have risks, and many times one intervention leads to another, and another, and another. Eventually, I hope to write more about this. But for now, suffice it to say, that despite all the raw emotions, I wouldn’t really change anything.

The midwives told me after the birth that my baby had been born posterior. She was smaller than my others, too, and those together might have had something to do with her not dropping. But in the end, we’ll never really know for sure why this labor turned out the way it did. It’s just one more thing I have to have faith about, trusting the Lord to turn this trial “unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.”

I’m still pregnant.

This should not be too much of a surprise since I’m not even due until May 9th. But even though it’s not surprising, it is a little…disappointing, frustrating, wearying. Every morning I think, “I just wish I knew when the baby was coming. Then I could pace myself.” I keep telling the Lord that this or that would make a good birthday, but He, being infinitely wiser than I, has thus far disagreed. And I am waiting.

We get few chances in life for this kind of waiting. Usually, we have some kind of information, a tracking number for our package (look, it’s made it to the depot!), a date for our wedding (like my cousin’s delightful fiancee, who posted recently on Facebook that it was “four weeks and six days”). But when we’re pregnant, only God knows the schedule. We have a due date, of course, but it’s just the center of one of those old fashioned bell curves. We could easily be early, or late (sigh). A due date doesn’t define a day so much as an entire month of possibility. And all that month we sit on pins and needles, waiting.

And what are we waiting for? A baby, yes, but we’re also waiting on God, learning to trust His timing on something we earnestly desire, but have very little control over (the temptation to lace our cookie dough with Pitocin, notwithstanding), learning to say, “Yes, I thought April 28th would be a great day for a birth, but You know better than I do, and I’m just going to rest in Your knowledge and judgment, Your wisdom and plans, even when I’m waddling around like a scatterbrained duck, even when my hips ache, or my hand falls asleep (again!), even when a promising contraction is followed by…nothing. Even then, I have no other choice but to go on, waiting.

You would think that since I’ve done this three times before that somehow I would have already learned this lesson. Apparently, I haven’t. In fact, I’m more impatient than ever. Maybe it’s because I feel so prepared (“oh, yeah, bring on the baby; we got clothes; we got diapers; I know what to do with an infant!”). Maybe it’s a sense of entitlement (“my first baby was two weeks late; my second was two days late; my third was on her due date; so if we follow the trend, this one should be early!”). Maybe it’s just proof that I have a long way to go in actually learning to rest in the Lord instead of in my own schedules, devices, and plans. I should be glad for this chance to step outside of my own created order, glad for this chance to be reminded of Who it is who really runs the universe, this chance to work at being joyful and peaceful when I don’t get my way, to practice trusting, hoping, resting, waiting.

Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD. –Psalm 27:14

I had been thinking about writing a post about natural birth for a while, but then I discovered that Daja over at In Other Words has already done it so well that all I have to do is provide links to her excellent series. Daja is a doula and childbirth instructor who wrote this series after Kelly of Generation Cedar, a self-proclaimed epidural lover, challenged her to convince her of the superiority of natural childbirth.

Part 1 describes medical reasons for choosing to go drug free for labor. Part 2 covers religious reasons. And Part 3 examines cultural reasons.