Pain Expressed Heals, Transcends, Motivates. Pain With a Purpose.

  In the midst of my childbearing decade, I taught natural childbirth classes out of my home. The first-time parents who sought me out were older--knocking on forty in most cases--highly educated, mostly crunchy. The women needed haircuts, the men wore either Birkenstocks or ties. They sat on my living room floor in the lotus position and tried to visualize pain. What it would feel like. How she would accept it and work with it. How he would help her during labor.
  Once in a while, a nervous couple would ask me to be with them during labor and delivery as a doula. I would get a call late at night, drive to the hospital, spend eight to twelve hours coaching the mother to breathe through each contraction and showing the father how to press on her back and give her encouragement. I must have been a decent childbirth instructor because no one ever mentioned postpartum that the pain surprised them or that it was more than they could handle.
  My own childbirth pain was unbelievable, particularly my one induced labor on this day twenty years ago. When the contractions became five minutes long, all reason, all my so-called training, went out the window. I screamed though transition because there was nowhere else for the pain to go. The mothers I coached never screamed. I'm not sure how I could have helped them if they had screamed.
  Does pain have a purpose? Yes, sometimes. Today the pain of delivering my third child is a distant memory, but now I get to experience a different kind of pain: mental, emotional, and spiritual. The physical pain was a breeze, in comparison.
  Here's a photo of my four "pains" in chronological order: C-section, natural childbirth, the induced labor birthday boy, and C-section. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, but I thank God I don't have to do it again!