Worth The Wait
The first quarter of this year I have been blessed to attend numerous beautiful births. I have reflected on what I have learned with hopes of passing it along as a relevant tool to expecting families. While thinking, processing, and reflecting, I keep coming back to the phrase “worth the wait”. Something being worth the wait tests our patience in balance to knowing the outcome is greater than we may even know. In the birth space in particular, this outcome is the love that comes with a new little life, relief from labor pains, joy, business, and adjusting to a unique a new chapter. But it tests our patience to allow natural processes and life to unfold slowly and surely.
The wait of anticipating meeting your little one, counting their toes, and seeing whose features they have is brought to the ultimate test during labor. Where hours typically go by, working ever so hard to bring a baby Earthside. For a laboring person, these hours can feel like days. For a partner supporting their loved one while making sure they feel safe and the baby is safe as well, it can feel heavy as they wait for the delivery.
At the most recent birth I attended, a Labor and Delivery Nurse, who was quite the joy to work with, kept emphasizing Patience. She emphasized the patience of waiting for contractions to come into a consistent pattern. She reminded me and the family to honor the baby’s time as the baby works for hours to come down the pelvis. And finding peace in knowing that when the baby is born, the laboring, waiting for labor to progress, and the unique timing of that birth will be revealed as something much greater than we can comprehend at times. We make sense of it by saying, “It was worth the wait”!
Think of it this way, when we talk about pushing, there comes a time when the baby is crowning and pushing takes a pause. During this time, the laboring person, medicated or not, feels the pressure of their baby’s head and breathes through the sensation. This allows time for the baby’s head to form in the birth canal to find just the right position for the final stretch of their descent, ever so close to coming into the world. It also allows the body to stretch to protect the uniquely, naturally designed anatomy. Together, this very final waiting allows for physiology, “the normal functioning of an organism and its parts”, to unfold in a way that is so much more beneficial than if everything were rushed.
When we apply this same concept to pregnancy, we can see how each day since conception, the baby develops from a single cell into the baby you meet on the day of their birth. Typically, over the course of 9 months. 9 months of preparation, filled with tiny clothes being prepared, plans for postpartum being made, and talking with loved ones, guessing just who the baby will be once they arrive. 9 whole months of what - waiting!
Then, in birth, the waiting is almost over, but it isn’t done yet. Early labor takes time - even a whole portion of a day to days sometimes. For those who choose to have cervical checks, hearing what dilation, effacement, and station are at takes time to change and progress. Inductions even take time. Same with cesareans, where the prepping of the operating room forces everyone to wait a few more minutes before a Birthday has occurred. It’s only natural for a parent or parents to wish it were all over and their baby would be in their arms already, because after all, that is what they have been waiting for after all this time, effort, and work. But I wish they all could know how it is worth the love and worth honoring the time that it takes.
When we go into birth with expectations for time, we are often surprised that it didn’t meet our timeline, whether anticipating a longer or slower birth. When there is never any way of telling just how long it will be. No cervical check, monitoring, or intervention can tell us the minute labor will end and postpartum will begin with the first cry of a new being. Our intuition, the sensations a mother feels, and expressions or actions she has may be picked up by the care team or their partner as an indicator of where the baby is at or what stage she is in. Yet still we are tested to give it time, to respect the mother and baby as they work together. We are forced to be patient.
As a doula, I remember my first births that happened to be longer. Some even demanded 36 or more hours of my attendance with little sleep, some caffeine, and a whole lot of patience. However, there is and has never been a time when I felt otherwise that birth was going to unfold on its own, perfect clock. No matter how long I have been there, there is never a time when there is anywhere else I’d want to be or any other feeling but peace that the baby will come right when they need to. To this day, when the first cry is heard, the family sees their baby’s face for the birth time, and gets to hold their new addition, tears flow or fill from my eyes. Because I know in that moment they know what I knew all along - that it was worth every minute.
Sure, we can do things to help labor along, to progress more, sometimes even faster or slower. After all, it is my job to support this and the needs of both the laboring person and baby to have a healthy, safe, and positive birth journey. Though keeping it in mind that things take time to unfold the way our bodies were designed for them to, the way that a baby needs to come down and out, and for a mother to “soften, open and release” comes with allowing each contraction to come and pass - the same way each day then week and month of pregnancy does.
Thus, the Labor and Delivery Nurse was right in every way - birth is the ultimate test of our patience, but in its conclusion, every effort made by the parent to honor themselves and their baby’s feelings, sensations, needs, and hopes is worth it. When we can take a step back and truly evaluate what is going on physically, we can frame our experiences in a way where respect, honor, and safety are the center of how we react and respond - birther, partner, and birth doula included. Birth is natural, and it takes TIME, it was designed to, and was always meant to.
