In His Image: Thoughts While Creating My Personal Birth Philosophy

Here is a beautiful mother-baby moment just after she pulled her baby up from the waters and cuddled her close as she experienced the rush of hormones. Rustic Iris Photography

As I work through writing out my personal birth philosophy, I felt that journaling my thoughts on birth was a great place to start.  Then I decided I should add these thoughts to my blog so that I may share my heart with the women I currently serve and may serve in the future.  With the overwhelming majority of women in the United States suffering from birth trauma, it has become my mission to facilitate the movement in giving the power back to women by bringing faith, ceremony, and beauty back to birth.  While there are many radical ways we may begin to end the birth trauma epidemic, it all starts with bringing it back to God.

Our Creator.

God the Father.

Christ Our Lord and Savior.

The Holy Spirit.

The Great “I am.”

Jehovah Raphah/Nissi/Jireh/Raah/Sabaoth.

YahWeh.

Abbah-Father.

Emmanuel.

The Great Midwife.

The instinctual pause just after the second stage of labor as your body recovers from the intensity of labor, and your baby gradually transitions from womb to world.

I trust in God’s beautiful and perfect design, and I respect the physiologic process of birth.  I believe that women were designed to birth their babies safely, and that birth is best left undisturbed.  I believe women have been gifted and entrusted with the radical responsibility of creating and bringing forth life.  I believe in the importance of each mother feeling safe and comfortable in her labor and birth environment, and that confidence in her body and her baby’s ability to work together is key.  That, in birth, when women are supported by women, when the birthing mother’s authority, instincts, and intuition in the birthing room is not only recognized, but respected, birth works.

My beliefs surrounding the gift of life are rooted in my Christian faith that our Great Creator loves us and has entrusted us with the sacred ceremony of life-creating and life-bringing.  Our God created the beautiful intricacy of the mother-baby dyad and His presence in the entire process is inherently integrated into our core understanding that a woman growing and birthing life is a transformative, otherworldly, and soul-altering experience.  

While there are many good and holy aspects to birth, I am not naive enough in my faith to believe there will never be heartache and sometimes cause for intervention in God’s otherwise perfect design.  For where there is good, there is also evil.  Where there is light, there is darkness.  Where there is life, there is death.  And it is our radical responsibility when facilitating and bringing forth life to wholly trust in God’s design.  Birth is not a medical event.  It is physiological.  Just as our bodies don’t need to be told to heal itself, adjust the body temperature to fight off infection, to produce tears, to sleep, to dream, to sweat or shiver, or to provide everything our babies need in utero to survive no matter how we nourish ourselves.

Let’s break down Genesis 3:16 a little bit:  “Unto the woman He said: I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy conception; in pain thou shalt bring forth children…” (Genesis 3:16)  “Pain,” from the Hebrew words, “itstsabon,” meaning: pain, toil, sorrow, labor; and “etseb” meaning: earthen vessel, idol, labor, sorrow.  Both itstsabon and etseb come from the root word “atsab,” meaning: displease to hurt, pain, grieve.  Other translations throughout the bible of these words include: labor pains; sorrow; diseases; trouble; in sorrow; in anguish.  “Conception,” from the Hebrew word “heron/herayon,” meaning: pregnancy, conception.  

God never cursed women, he cursed the ground and the snake.  He promised us that through conception, childbearing, and birth, there would be pain.  But, he also promised that through childbirth we will be saved.  I believe that birth can be (and in most cases today) physically and mentally painful.  However, just as we contract and strain our muscles while exercising, so does our uterus contract and strain in birth.  Does this mean the anguish of exercising is bad?  Of course not!  Many people enjoy the burn of working their muscles.  Our body was perfectly designed to communicate with itself as oxytocin crosses the blood-brain barrier and adjusts its release as our body can handle each contraction.

Just as the act of conception can be beautiful and intimate and holy, we also have conception through sexual sin (such as extramarital sex, non-consensual sex, and abuse/molestation).  Just as pregnancy can be a dream and wholly embraced and welcomed, it can also be a miserable experience, physically and mentally.  Just as a mom and baby can be perfectly healthy in pregnancy, there can also be loss, heartache, and disease.  As such, just as there can be beautiful, pain-free childbirth, there is also painful and traumatic childbirth.  We can’t always control the outcome of each of these, but we have been given a holy handbook of life to best protect ourselves against the evils of the world.  

That all said, God also promises that we are never alone.  He is all around us.  All-knowing.  All-encompassing.  He suffers and grieves with us.  He holds us through the joys and sorrows of life.  He is our friend, our Father, our fierce protector.  So, why wouldn’t He be present in birth?  I would argue He is most present in birth, if we so choose to invite Him in!  Allowing Our God to labor alongside us, leaning on His strength and wisdom to guide us through the sacred and holy process of birth.  Worshipping Him through each stage, and celebrating Him and thanking Him for the joys of labor and birth, the gift of life, and even the sorrows of death.

Even the most faithful Christians have chosen to put their full trust in a provider rather than surrendering it all to The Great Provider. We have handed over the most holy experience and process of birth to be managed and intervened by the medical model, and have inadvertently ignored God’s authority in doing so.  We as a society have idolized medical professionals and believe that they have found a way to take away the pains of childbearing and childbirth, yet we have completely ignored (intentionally or not) the serious repercussions of doing so.  The intricate hormone cocktail God designed for us in birth are disrupted, women are suffering from life-long trauma, our bodies have been mutilated and dehumanized.  We have been robbed of the beautiful, transformative birth experience, and we have yet to fully understand our sacrifice, in the name of western medicine.

Women now fear birth, and in that fear breeds more pain.  So we seek help from things like nitrous oxide, epidurals, and elective cesarean sections and inductions rather than finding our strength and peace in God, and we are inadvertently causing ourselves a different pain we must now learn to overcome. The physiology and holiness of the mother-baby dyad is being destroyed.  We trust medical intervention to deliver us from the “evils” of labor pains, rather than trusting our Father to guide us faithfully and ceremoniously through them.

“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10

We must now re-learn the sacred ceremony of birth in His image.  He is a God who finishes.  Why do we now seek medical and even “natural” induction rather than trust in God’s perfect timing and His design of birth? Our babies know when to be born.  We would rather our babies be born before they are ready because we are impatient and uncomfortable. Haven't you ever felt "done" with being pregnant?

“Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?” says the Lord.  “Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery?” says your God.”  Isaiah 66:9

Birth is a very sensitive topic in today’s society with all the trauma and, unfortunately, trauma bonding surrounding it.  Not all hearts will be ready to receive some of the statements above, and that is okay.  I can only pray that we will find the path to healing and understanding through Christ, whatever that looks like.  Only God can truly know and heal our hearts.  Some may even be completely satisfied with how their medicalized birth went, and that is okay too.  It should always be a celebration when there is a positive birth experience no matter the circumstance.  Every woman has her own journey.  The only constant answer surrounding birth is this:  God is in control in a room He has been given the authority.  Let’s welcome Him back into our birth space so He may carry us through the holy, wild process of labor and birth.

Much love from your faithful Birth Keeper,

Sydney