The Birth Lasts a Day – The Child, A Lifetime

by | Aug 23, 2011 | Parenthood transitions | 0 comments

Last week, I was doing a search on my computer and I came across this journal entry from the third trimester of my first pregnancy. The entry was hidden in a strange location, otherwise I probably would have included it in my upcoming Birthing a New Mother Home Study Program. I haven’t read the entry since I wrote it over seven years ago, but the questions that I posed are exactly those that I answer in the program. Hopefully, this program will offer the roadmap to other pregnant women and new mothers that I was desperately longing for so many years ago.

 

June 28, 2004

There was a section in The Conscious Bride called “The Wedding Lasts a Day – the Marriage, a Lifetime,” in which I talked about the tendency in our culture to focus massive amounts of energy on this one day – albeit a special day – and fail to focus on preparing for what comes after the wedding. I’m finding the same phenomena around birth and parenthood. Here I am, in my third trimester, nearing my due date, and all of the talk around me and in my childbirth class is about preparing for the birth. I understand the importance of preparing for this day, but could some of our fears and anxieties about labor be a distraction against the anxieties about becoming parents? Some of the issues I would like help addressing are:

1.What kinds of changes can we expect in our marriage and what are some strategies for handling them?
2.How can I prepare or handle sleep deprivation?
3.What are some of the main physical and emotional challenges of those first few months and how we can we prepare for them?
4.These are our last weeks as a couple without a baby and as individuals without the responsibility of parenthood – what rituals can we do to honor that we are on the verge of losing, least for a period of time, a significant portion of our freedom?

I need help and guidance. Since we’ve never done this before, I don’t even know what questions to ask. I need help both on my individual journey into motherhood and in our couple’s journey into parenthood. These feel like two separate journeys, each requiring their own set of questions, rituals, and strategies for preparation.

And maybe part of it is that there are no real tangible ways to prepare, so we gravitate toward that which is tangible: learning how to manage the pain of labor (or thinking we can), getting the stuff together for the baby’s room, learning how to feed, change, and bathe the baby. Maybe the emotional and spiritual preparation is about recognizing that a phase of life is ending, and that’s scary, and I’m entering into the unknown, which is also scary, exhilaration, joyous, confusing, lonely, etc.

***

My free video training, “The Missing Link that will Revolutionize the Way You Become a Mother – Even if You’re Not Yet Pregnant“, will be available on September 13th, and my Home Study Program, “Birthing a New Mother: A Revolutionary Roadmap from Preconception through Early Motherhood to Calm Your Anxiety, Prepare Your Marriage, Prevent Postpartum Depression, and Bond with Your Baby“, will be available on September 21st.

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