Have you had a labor that felt like it took much longer than it ought to have taken? (I’m raising my hand!)
You may have done all the “right” things in pregnancy to set yourself up for quick and efficient labor: Ate the right things, diligently moved your body, did some spinning babies or other techniques to encourage the baby’s optimal position, did your mental work, etc. In other words, you were faithful to do the things you knew to do and therefore reasonably expected short-ish labor.
But then it wasn’t short. Maybe it was twice or even three times as long as you had anticipated. And probably during that long labor, you battled feelings of discouragement, disappointment, and maybe even anger.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, your internal dialogue bemoans.
Ok, hold up. What if it just IS?
What if, in fact, there was so much more going on than meets the eye, and all of it has a purpose?
We tend to go looking for reasons that labor is long, instead of just accepting that sometimes labor is long.
We tend to look for things we can point to that were “wrong” or “off” physically that contributed to it taking longer for our babies to come earthside, and forget to consider the intangible factors that may have contributed to it.
Likely, you didn’t fail, nor did your body malfunction, nor did your baby refuse to cooperate, nor did God abandon you in your long labor.
There is SO MUCH GOING ON in the process of labor — seen and unseen — that contributes to the length and difficulty of labor.
I’ve created a little in-depth video about this, and I’d like to invite you to watch it!
