Lean Into It
Life-changing advice from my labor nurse
“You’re going to have to go home if you aren’t far enough along,” commented the blunt intake nurse. Sweaty, crampy, and overwhelmed is how I arrived at Memorial Hospital to have my baby. Determined to have a natural birth, I had labored at home most of the day. I watched panic fill the eyes of my distressed husband as he took in what the nurse had just said.
Naively, I had expected a rainbows and unicorns vibe when I arrived to have my baby. Instead, I was stuck with this all-business and no-smiles nurse. She examined me, declared me far enough along, and admitted me. Hallelujah!
Someone wheeled me to my room, where I spotted the intake nurse again. In my haze, I wondered why she had followed me to my room until she introduced herself as my labor nurse. Seriously?
She was intimidating. I told her I was having a natural birth using the Bradley Method. Nodding, she continued hooking me up to monitors. My husband was nervous and zoned out. My mom’s plane wouldn’t land for several hours. This woman was to be my support system, and I was not feeling it.
The contractions got closer and more painful. Their intensity made me wonder if I had it in me to give birth with no pain medication. It felt like being tossed about in an angry sea all alone.
Screams of agony coming from the surrounding rooms invited my fears to come out and play. The next wave of pain took me under while my husband was out calling family. Gripped in the chaos of pain, I hadn’t noticed my nurse standing by my bed.
“Are you ready for an epidural yet?”
Through my chattering teeth, I made it clear that I would deliver this baby naturally.
Perception is a wild and weird thing when you are in the worst pain of your life. Suddenly, she and I were face to face. Her eyes locked on mine.
“Are you serious about doing this naturally?”
I nodded because I couldn’t speak. All my concentration was focused on keeping my body from shattering into a million pieces.
Her demeanor changed, indicating I must have passed some test. Now, we were part of the same team. A gentle smile came across her face as she told me the secrets. I held onto her every word. In this tempest, her words were life preservers.
Her mantra transformed me: “Stop resisting, lean into it, and let it go through you.”
She reminded me contractions are there to open your body to give birth. Straining in avoidance of the pain only increases it and extends the labor. Less pain and shorter labor? Sign me up!
“Ride it like a wave,” she said, and I did. My body and I started working together instead of trying to split in half. My nurse guided me while I learned to surf the crushing waves of labor pain. I was now in the zone, reigniting my belief that I could do this.
My husband came back into the room; shocked to witness me calmly breathing through a contraction. I heard him ask the nurse if I had gotten an epidural.
“Nope, that is all her,” came her proud response. “She’s got this now.” The rest of the night was a blurry mess of breath, pain, and the triumphant birth of my healthy child.
Planting a seed that night, that nurse sparked a seismic shift in how I would manage hard things for the rest of my life. Each time I faced a difficult and inevitable thing, her coaching rang in my ears. I remembered that resisting pain would make it last longer and the pain would grow and linger. I began leaning in.
Life gave me many opportunities to practice this alternative approach. My father dying after a decade of battling cancer was the first test. We were close and I could not imagine a world without him. My body and brain tensed against the pain of losing him.
My father’s death swept my feet out from under me. Grief poured on top of me, and I thought I might drown. Exhausted from battling my grief for months, the words of my labor nurse came back to me. Instead of resisting, I let the grief be. I sat with it when it came and then allowed it to pass through me. First came the giant waves, making it seem impossible, but I kept on. Wave by wave, grief lost its sharp teeth. Leaning in had given me a healthy path to process my grief.
Wave after wave, life knocks me down. Reader, I know you know this exact experience. We all know the waves are coming. Raising a child during a global pandemic, losing my mother to Covid-19 and my brush with cancer last year were my enormous waves over the last several years.
I still have a strong human instinct to brace up and resist pain and grief. Reminding myself that there is another way, I return to those life-changing words.
“Stop resisting, lean into it, and let it go through you.”
Gratitude fills me because I no longer get beat up and lost in the waves. Thanks to my labor nurse, now I lean in and ride.
Inevitably, the waves calm, and I float.
