At thirty six weeks along, you are still my squirmy one. So squirmy in fact, that we have to get a sonogram this week, to see if there's anything in particular that is preventing you from getting positioned properly. We have been praying every day, and have people praying for us, and I've been talking to you and doing little exercises, in efforts to get you either head-down or butt-down into my pelvis. You seem to enjoy flipping and swimming a bit too much at this stage where we are nearing the time of delivery. I'm praying you will cooperate soon! We really want to be able to birth you safely in our home, and we need you to be properly positioned in order to do so.
Your Daddy had a dream about you not too long ago... in the dream you were born easily and quickly. He didn't know if you were a boy or a girl.
I had a dream a few weeks ago as well, after his dream, about your birth. In my dream your Daddy was with me, and your Grandmama, and I was laboring peacefully. Your big brother Jax needed to go potty, and for some reason it was our midwife Robin who took him to the bathroom. While they were gone, you slipped out of me in an easy delivery. You were a boy - I remember looking between your legs to see, first thing. You were smaller than your brother was when he was born, but still chubby. I looked in your face, and you looked like him too, but yet different at the same time. Robin and Jax came back into the room, and I was apologizing to them for delivering you so quickly while they were gone. I was trying to get Jax to come over to see that you were a boy!
Then just a couple days ago, I dreamed that I was holding two boys in my arms - you and Jax. He was a baby, like I was re-seeing him as a baby, and you as a baby at the same time, but he was still older than you.
The funny thing is, while I was pregnant with Jax, your Daddy and I both had dreams of having a girl baby! So despite these dreams, I'm not convinced of your gender!
I AM convinced that the Lord wants to encourage me in this season, to trust Him to bring you safely and easily into the world.
I've been kind of drowning in fears... in the what-ifs.... what if you will not turn properly and we have to go the hospital and have a cesarean birth. What if the placenta is in the way and you can't get in a good position, or they can't even do the cesarean properly, and have to do some crazy incision that will prevent me from having more children born naturally in the future. What if I go into labor and you aren't in position, and we are in a hurry, and something scary happens to you.
I've been praying and asking the Lord for your safety, and for a safe home birth, trying to trust him and not allow these scary stories and images to flood my mind. One thing I realized, is that after the birth of Jax, I felt a bit invincible. My body had grown a healthy 10 lb 4 oz baby, and my body had delivered him safely at home, without medication or intervention. If I could do that, I could do anything!
Natural birth, and even home birth, has been such a goal for me, and something I'm passionate about. Perhaps it had even become something like an idol. That there's no way you would find me delivering my babies in the hospital, or by any means other than God's created means of my body. As I talked with God, I realized I needed to surrender that too.
I need to surrender my hopes and dreams and my passionate soapbox, and be ready to surrender this birth to whatever it needs to be. To say, Yes God, I will serve You and believe You even if I don't get to deliver this baby at home. I can still love and follow You, and trust You, even if I have a cesarean. Even if something happens and this has to be my last biological child.
Even if I were to lose this child.
I will be able to find a way through the grief and devastation, to keep believing You are God and You are good, to keep giving up my life for You and Your cause.
I don't say any of this tritely, because it's one of the hardest prayers I've prayed; one of the toughest journeys I've walked through in my mind.
The amazingly beautiful privilege of delivering you in our home, in front of the Christmas tree, surrounded by peace and family and friends and tears and laughter... is one I still pray and hope to have. But I have to be willing to surrender that image for a sterile, lonely, medicalized one, and still know that God loves me, loves You, and is taking care of us. My heart has to be tender before Him, and this is what a tender heart looks like - full surrender to Him. Yes, faith and belief that He can do anything, that He listens and responds to our prayers, that I won't give up asking for what I believe is His perfect plan, but that I will also be ready to love and serve Him if it ends up differently than what I prayed for.
So this dream I've had, I'm allowing it to die. The dream of dim lights and soft music and warm water around us. The dream of pushing you out into my arms, and everyone discovering your gender together with a gasp of surprise. The dream of my family surrounding me, and photographs capturing twinkling lights around us, while our eyes well with tears and our throats with laughter, as you enter this world in the coziness of our own space. The dream of your big brother being there to watch you arrive, to see you coming out Mommy's bottom, like we've been explaining and talking about. The dream of uninterrupted time with you that doesn't involve a host of sterilized strangers and you being taken away from me for even a split second of time. The dream of you coming into this world without a drop of medication in your tiny system.
These dreams don't need to die because they won't ever happen. We are praying with gusto they still will indeed happen. They need to die because they can't be my idol. They can't be more important to me than trusting God with my life and yours. They can't prevent me from loving and seeking Him if they don't come true.
So I love you, dear, dear, dear Noel. I love you as much as it is possible for me to love you while only being able to feel you squirming inside me, and caress from the outside of my body what might be your foot or your forehead. And I surrender You to Jesus. I surrender Your birth to Jesus. I surrender my body to Jesus. I surrender all our hopes and plans and dreams, to His glorious and amazing power. I trust that He can get us through anything.
I trust that in anything, we will make it because He Is and He Was and He Always Will Be... God. I trust that HE is the best gift. Indeed, you are not the best gift. A beautiful natural birth is not the best gift. HE is the best gift. Knowing Him, being loved by Him, being close to Him. So we draw near. I draw near, your Daddy and Jax and I, we draw near to Him and His love, to have HIM.
He is all we need. He loves you more than we do. He can be trusted.
