Birth Roulette

I ran into my midwife the other day and we talked about how much we don't get to decide how things go. Every factor of this whole perinatal process is a roll of the die. You probably won't get all 1's or all 6's -- you get a mix. That's all you can know for sure: that you have no control over the cards you're dealt. I wish that I had mentally prepared for this truth. Instead, I took the approach of focusing on the outcomes I wanted and hoped to manifest those through prayer and intention. That plan backfired because when things didn't go the way I had hoped, I was not only disappointed about that, but also felt slighted... and mostly I felt shocked.

Before the baby, my spiritual framework was, I suppose, more of the Santa Claus model of spirituality: If I'm a good girl and ask for what I want nicely, I'll get what I want. I know I'm being snarky, but truthfully I feel jaded. The trauma I experienced really shook me and made me question my spirituality, in the "how could God let bad things happen?" sort of way. My spirituality has shifted. I take a page from a lesson learned during my travels in India: The Goddess doesn't give you what you want; She gives you what you need. There may be a grand plan, but we can't possibly see it or understand it from our tiny human perspectives. If there is a reason for why things play out the way they do, we're lucky if we ever get enough perspective to understand it. My baby is 10 months now and I feel like I'm just starting to understand how the rough time we had in the beginning shaped us-- shaped me-- into the parent I am, the therapist I am, etc. I'm glad my Santa Claus spirituality got disrupted. It needed disrupting. But I can only see that now, after some time has passed.

—Ellie L.