On Your Edge

There was a defining moment during the birth of my first child. I was labouring in water. The birth team were next door so it was just me and my baby and the contractions that were thrashing me. It was getting too much, I was on the edge, starting to drown with the waves of utter pain and I wanted out. Not out of the birthing tub but out of my body. To take flight. It was an intense combo of pain and fear that was threatening me on every level. I had also tried to fight...At each quickening and lengthening contraction I’d tensed and battled against what was happening to me. My window of tolerance was shattering before me. 

And then, before the last shard dropped, the defining moment! In between contractions, a pause. I don’t know what it was, perhaps an inner voice, but something made me go utterly still and listen. I saw/heard/sensed there was another way and that I had a choice; to turn towards. To go fearwards. To go painwards. When the next wave came to dunk me, I rolled with it, I surrendered, I imagined myself going inside it, merging with it. My neo-cortex thankfully stepped aside and allowed my limbic system to do her thing. The pain was still the same (and later intensified) but my fear of it dissipated as I dissolved into what my body knew how to do. I was so ‘dissolved’ that in between contractions I slept, micro power naps to see me through. I was aware of the people and sounds around me but was somewhere else altogether.

That moment during my labour was a defining moment. It’s an extreme example I know, but we have moments like this daily, where we can choose. To go towards the new, the fear, the other or, even the pain if it’s functional. Or to stick to our well worn path of comfort and habit and safety. One certainty about uncertainty whilst walking the fine blade of our edge—If there’s fear involved, then that’s likely where the energy is. 

Go fearwards!

Image by Tim Marshall on Unsplash