My Story
When we got orders to Okinawa many things happened in my little world. The question of whether I would work or not really intrigued me. I am an airplane mechanic by training and I wondered what my opportunities would look like on this small island. At first the prospects looked bad, then I dug a little deeper and things looked good, really good. I was excited to work and keep my experience up to date. Then the opportunity abruptly closed in my face. I wondered what God had for me to do during this time. A few days later I found out I was pregnant. One of the first things I thought was, "this means I will have to give birth". I knew I wanted to have a natural birth but the thought of the pain was scary. We decided to hire a doula and with her help I started digging in, learning and preparing for this birth and the baby to come. I would say there are four things I did that had the biggest impact on my birth, I read two books, "Supernatural Childbirth" and "Ina May's Guide to Natural Childbirth", we took a hypno-birthing class and hired a doula. Those four things exposed me to a different side of chilbirth that I had never seen before. Birth wasn't scary, God designed a woman's body to do it, and do it well! Birth wasn't an emergency, it was a normal bodily function. Our doula provided us with lots of evidence based options that were available to us and was an emotional pillar for me and my husband. After embracing these truths and knowing our doula would be with us I went from being afraid of birth to legitimately excited to go through the experience.
I went into labor Wednesday evening. The contractions were mild enough that I was able to go to bed. A few hours later I woke up and wasn't able to go back to sleep. I spent some time meditating on this truth, "God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and sound mind." 1 Tim 3:14. Not fear, but power, love and sound mind. After a few hours I got my husband up and we hung out timing contractions together. He called our doula and she told us she would be over in a little while. It was a quiet morning we spent together. I labored on the couch, with the exercise ball, trying different ideas that the doula recommended. After a few hours we decided to head to the hospital. We got to the hospital and I was 4 cm dilated. They monitored me for half an hour, checked me again and I was at 6 cm so they took us back to the room. Nurses were occasionally in and out but mostly the three of us worked together. My husband and I started counting together as the contractions were building and that worked really well. I think you can just about do anything for 10-15 seconds which were how long mine took to get from strong to peak. After my water broke things got real. We went to the shower for an "aqua-diral" and got through transition with me praying a prayer I had recently heard from the movie Hacksaw Ridge, "Lord, help me through one more". And He did. Each contraction came and went. I loved that I never had to face the same one twice. Eventually it was time to push and our little girl joined us. We waited to find out the gender and it was a wonderful surprise.
We left the hospital a couple days later and settled into life as a family of three. Some things came so easily and some things were unexpectedly difficult. But as the days turned to weeks and weeks to months we learned. Lots of patience, grace and tears went into that postpartum season. But God is faithful. Despite the tough transitions (from transition in labor to transitioning to a family of three) I really felt like no one told me how wonderful it is to be a mom. "Don’t you see that children are God’s best gift? the fruit of the womb his generous legacy? Like a warrior’s fistful of arrows are the children of a vigorous youth. Oh, how blessed are you parents, with your quivers full of children!" Psalm 127
