Day of Surrender

Right now it's 7:30am and today at 5pm Ben and I will march into the hospital, go up to the 7th floor to labor and delivery and tell them that we are there to begin an induction.  Much heartache and remorse has already been shed for this.

As I type Wolfie is doing  the twist.  I swear, I can almost feel him blink, almost feel every little movement of his tiny fingers even. 

Fear.

I didn't have the fear until about 4pm yesterday.  It was then that I realized that I had about 24 hours to "make it happen naturally" or face the march of shame into a place that I personally find scary as hell...the hopsital.  Heh... the march of shame.  I'm glad I've had the last 12 hours to think about that mindset.  As soon as the sun went down yesterday, my nerves were tingling... I thought I caught a glimpse of my 15-year-old self.  The one who had panic attacks every night.  The one who's fear ran so rampant it gave her walking nightmares that she couldn't escape from.  The one who's skin crawled at 3am while her exhausted mother rolled down the edge of a paper bag for her to breath into (in case I began to hyper-ventilate).  The one who  for no reason was convinced she was going to die every time she had one, whose face turned pale, whose palms began to sweat, whose stomach turned and all the world seemed to be hurdling itself in her direction.  That 15 year old girl... the one in the middle of panic-attack hell. 

No no.  I am not the same person.  Maybe it's pure coincidence but since I found God at around the age of 23, I have not had one single panic attack.  Maybe it's because my mid-20s calmed my hormones, altered the chemicals in my brain just enough to give me control.  Maybe by then I'd learned to nip them in the bud before they became full-on swells.  Or maybe God was able to work a miracle for me.  Or maybe all of the above. 

Regardless, as Ben and I sat eating some Yoforia at around 8pm, I warned him that one might be on the way.  I warned him that I might wake up in the middle of the night in pure terror. 

Well, that didn't happen.  Granted, sleep was not the best to me... I had to stay up til around 1am before all the sleep angels were able to overpower the nervous monsters on the horizon of my mind.  And then at 2:30 I had to move myself to the couch.  I find that watching something pleasing, even just for 5 minutes,  and listening to it as I drift off to sleep really helps me to avoid allowing my mind (the monsters in my mind) to overpower and dictate my sleep.  So, Robin Hood: Men in Tights it was and off to sleep land I went.  It must have been many hours later but I awoke again.  Cable Guy went on.  Another hour of sleep and now here I am.  Jim Carey is currently giving his final lines and I'm blogging... Wolfie is poised and ready to come out.

So, OK, not getting much sleep may actually be a good thing for me.  I find that it's much harder to upset me when I'm tired.  If I just don't have much energy, I have a hard time producing the nerves that activate the fears.  In other words, I just don't give a crap if I'm tired. 

But miraculously, I find that I'm mentally much more at peace for some reason.  I'm bummed, sure, that this probably won't be the "dream" birth... the super hippie-dippie au-natural birth... that I was hoping for.  And I understand the risks involved with everything now so of course there's the fear of something more unexpected going wrong.  But I'm now a little, dare I say, "excited" to get things going and hold my baby for real.  I'm focusing hard on the grateful things, the thankful things.  I feel I did my best.  I held out for a really long time.  I read every single book.  I tried everything under the sun.  God had other plans.  I weighed the pros and cons of inducing today (14 days past my due date) and the pros and cons of waiting a few more days and I just didn't feel that it was necessary to take on the additional risks of waiting.  Before anyone gives me the lecture about due dates I will say that Ben and I were 100% sure of everything to do with the conception of this child... including my cycle (because I had been charting and knew myself to be regular), the actual date of conception, and the fact that Wolfie's first implantation as a little 2-celled creature must have happened within 3 days of that day...it's basic biology.  So after confirming it with an early ultrasound which basically totally pinpointed the same due date we know for sure that there's no question about the fact that I am now absolutely at 42 weeks.  Some mammas tell me "Oh I went to 43 weeks no problem."  Here's the question, though... how sure was she that she was actually at 43 weeks? 

Anyways, going past 42 weeks comes with some risks to Wolfie.  Fetal stress, low fluids, dry skin, low heart rate, additional odds of meconium, additional odds of placental calcification... in a nutshell, baby just doesn't want to be in there once he's done.  It's not his fault that my contractions haven't kicked in.  I just don't think I could live with myself if for the sake of having this natural birth I waited a few more days and that was all it took for him to freak out, possibly causing some kind of super scary emergency situation.  I decided I'd rather have that "walk of shame" than that "mad dash of fear".

Back to this shame thing... and the title of my post....

Surrender.

I got to a point a few days ago when it really began to sink in that God may have other plans for my birth (plans that were different from the way I thought it would be).  Surrender is somehow a little easier when faced with an emergency, isn't it?  In the heat of the stressful moment, we almost act on instinct.  But when you are allowed to surrender at your own pace ahead of time, when the complete act of surrender is placed in your hands for you and you alone to decide when and how, it's mindblowingly difficult to do.   Tough decisions were made.  Surrender it all to God and have faith... that's all I can do.  I have no control over this... this much is clear to me now.  No castor oil, no sex, no walking, no birth balls, no pineapple juice, no red raspberry leaf tea, no evening primrose oil, no nipple stimulation, no orgasms, no stair walking, no curb walking, no avocados, no eggplant parmesan, no relaxing... no... NOTHING will work save the grace and timing of God.  Believe me, I tried all of this and more!   Even my prayers, my pleading prayers all in the good interest of providing Wolfie with a peaceful birth, a drug-free entrance into this world, a chance for mommy and baby to experience an age-old sensation of being isolated in that experience together and having felt the awesome power of the perfection of God's design for our bodies to work perfectly... no... God has other plans for sure.  I just have to surrender and allow him to work His magic in my life.  Perhaps there are big, big reasons for this day.  Big big reasons for my 5pm curtain call that I will never understand or know. 

This won't be a walk of shame.  I am walking up that ramp and in through those sliding doors today with all the millions of other women who have had to make tough decisions like this.  Who had other options but needed to make a choice.  Who needed to either get off the pot or pee.  Who either had to assume the risks of one path or assume the risks of the other.  Tough decisions that only tough women can make.  Tough women do not walk in shame... do we?

I am hopefully going to also be amongst the millions who began a gentle induction, were phased off of induction drugs once things were going, and able to labor naturally for the most part at the end without pain medication.  At this point, it's the best I can hope for.  The midwives seem very optimistic that all I need is a really gentle "nudge" and my own body will finally kick in... and they are going to allow me to do that.  Praise God!  I am in good hands, I know it.  This just might be the mind-blowing birth I'd hoped for afterall.  Who knows.  Beginning from the moment we leave the house and lock the door behind us I will quite literally be taking every single step one at a time.  I will have to remind myself of strength and happiness nearly every second so I can hold it together. 

I love analogies so I'll leave it with this...  when I go to get tattooed, there is pain involved.  The first time I got one, while I was waiting, I thought my heart would jump out of my chest I was so scared.  Nowadays I approach the whole experience with 0% fear and 100% excitement for the sweet, permanent art I will have when all is said and done.  Sure thing, tattoos freaking hurt, some more than others (certainly not more than birthing a child but I think you get my point here)... why should this birth experience be any different?  I'm intentionally going in somewhere, I've done a great bit of research into what I want (just like a tattoo), friends and loved ones will likely be waiting and chatting in the lobby (although hopefully not waiting to have their turn at having a baby there too, haha), and when I am done I'll have the sweetest thing ever. 

Thank you to everyone for all the prayers and sympathies and encouraging words!  You have literally helped me survive the last week and a half.  I think the statistics will prove that here in America most women don't make it that long if given a choice in the matter.  I feel so blessed to have had all that support.  I feel so blessed for this journey.  But we're only really reaching the climax of the story, aren't we?

I'll leave that for the next post :)