Gospel Hope and Our Birth Plans
My daughter, Thea, was born at 2:56 a.m. in a hospital operating room under bright fluorescent lights. After a long labor that didn’t end the way I had hoped, her cry was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.
I’d entered this first pregnancy determined to learn all I could about achieving a natural birth. I took a natural birth course, I declined every unnecessary intervention, I ate all the right pre-labor foods and did all the right pre-labor exercises. My care team was in complete support of my desire for a birth without an induction or intervention of any kind, even with traumatic complications earlier in the pregnancy. I was hopeful. When the day arrived, I labored unmedicated for nearly twenty hours and then pushed for three unusually long hours after that. I didn’t take anything for pain relief, regardless of how much I may have wanted it.
I prayed and prayed that God would grant my daughter a natural birth with no complications. But really, I told myself to just be strong enough to do it. I told myself it didn’t matter that my pelvis may be genetically too small—or that I’d had two previous hip surgeries and two emergency abdominal surgeries during my pregnancy.
After trying everything we could to keep baby descending, though, it was clear she was stuck. Progress stalled, even with seemingly perfect conditions. So, we walked through the options with our doctor. A C-section was the only answer left, despite how much I didn’t want it to end this way. I begged for relief. A long, painful hour later, they pulled my daughter out, precious in our eyes despite her wildly misshapen cone-head from her time wedged into my pelvis.
While I was pregnant, a wise friend had reminded me, “God will give you the birth you need, though it may not be the one you want.” Looking back, I wonder: Did I care so much about the type of birth I wanted that I forgot God would give me and my daughter what we really needed? Did I really trust in him to care for me as his own?
Thea’s entrance into this big world was no less miraculous because of how she was born. Our Creator God was at work, just as he had been since the very beginning of her little life; just as he had been since the very beginning of mine.[1]
Making Our Plans
Despite my deep gratitude to God and awe-filled knowledge of his care throughout this process, I still hesitate to share my birthing experience. Merely days after my daughter was born, I shared my C-section story with a friend. The response was: “You can always try for a VBAC, I guess.” Another mom skeptically asked how my birth was without a doula and then booed me when I disclosed it ended in a Cesarean. I’ve seen eyebrows raised and my doctors scoffed at, as if my daughter’s birth was a case of malpractice (despite knowing it was a necessary choice for both mom and baby).
No doubt, birth is hallowed motherhood-ground—an intimate and deeply personal process. Our desires for a certain birth experience can be good—perhaps we just hope for ease and bodily health to recover quickly or to safely birth more children in the years to come. But we can easily shift our hopes to rest on these desires in place of God. We may become fixated on them with anxiety and anticipation. Tightly held plans may become an obstruction from trusting in the Lord’s carefully guiding hand and sovereign provision. They may ever so subtly become our idol.
Bearing Our Pain
I’ve often heard women say something like, “This is what your body is made to do.” At its heart, this statement isn’t wholly wrong. Since the beginning of creation, women were, indeed, made to birth. God created Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). Together, they became the stewards and co-creators of God’s good world. Even our bodies remind us of this role and woman’s inherent fruitfulness on a monthly basis! According to both Scripture and biology, woman is made to multiply.
But I wonder—have we so quickly forgotten the curse? Just one short chapter later in Genesis, Eve bites the forbidden fruit and sin penetrates our world, pierces our hearts, and infects our bodies. Work becomes toil. Childbirth becomes pain. As much as we can hope our bodies will do “what they are made to do,” the natural design is fatally marred. No matter how much we may wish to get pregnant, we might battle with infertility for years. No matter how much we may will our bodies to naturally birth—as I did pushing for those three hours with every fiber of strength—it may just not be possible.
“To the woman [God] said, ‘I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children’” (Genesis 3:16). The fall has affected pregnancy and birth in a myriad of ways, including everything from swollen ankles to significant medical complications. Postpartum moms’ minds may battle depression. Devastating miscarriages remind us that death has now entered into creation. Infertility burdens many hearts with shame and grief. Labor and delivery is often accompanied by excruciating pain and, yes—giving birth in ways we didn’t plan. Pain has been multiplied, indeed.
Historically, childbirth has been the leading cause of death for women. Many of us wouldn’t be here if modern medicine didn’t exist. We are privileged in our modern age to have options before us that make childbearing safer when issues and emergencies arise. And while we long for every mother to have the opportunity to conceive children and experience the birth she hopes for, we must remember that the fall continues to specifically impact this very thing: childbirth.
Trusting in the Promised Hope
And yet, it is within this very same curse that God makes his greatest promise. God placed enmity between the Serpent’s offspring and Eve’s, pledging that her Seed would be the one to crush his head, once and for all.[2] It was through this wildly uncomfortable and laborious hostility that our blessed Savior entered this world. Jesus became man in the womb of a woman. Christ entered the world amidst this pain—pain that he would one day defeat by willingly receiving his own wounds of love.
Doesn’t Christ’s defeat of the curse give us great comfort amidst our birth pains? Doesn’t this reality ground our trust in the Lord however he chooses for our children to enter this world? We have been promised a coming redemption with new bodies and a God who will wipe every tear away.[3] The groans we feel through childbirth are but an outward expression of our inward longing for redemption. Thanks be to God that we have a high priest who sympathizes with our weaknesses but doesn’t leave us in them alone.[4] He really will give us all we need.[5]
As I stare at my once-again growing belly, I pray that God would stir my heart to hope in him alone. And that I would act like I believe him at his Word—even as I hope for a boring pregnancy with no emergencies and a VBAC.
By all means, we can try for a home birth or a hospital birth—with or without pain meds, epidurals, inductions, or other interventions. We can surround ourselves with the most knowledgeable birth team we can find, research all our options, and be informed and convinced of what we want. But we must do so sober-mindedly, remembering that our once made-to-birth bodies groan under the curse of this bitter earth—until the day they are redeemed and perfected (and what a day that will be!).
Here in this already-but-not-yet, we endure birth pains with hope on the forefront of our minds. Despite the harsh truth of the curse and the weight of sin, to God be the glory that human bodies reproduce little image bearers regardless. No matter how our children are born, it is a gift to participate as co-creators in this miraculous act. Praise be to God.
[1] Psalm 139:13-16
[2] Genesis 3:15
[3] Revelation 21:4
[4] Hebrews 4:15-16
[5] 2 Peter 1:3
