Letting go of control has been a very hard thing for me to learn over the years. I rarely mention it anymore because it’s rarely an issue, but many years ago I was diagnosed with OCPD – Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. This is not the same as OCD, but it’s related. I don’t have rituals or compulsions, but I had serious control issues and a lot of anxiety stemming from it. Plans were very important to me. When I first started dating Denis I remember crying in the car a few times because our dinner date plans changed. I look back at it and it seems quite ridiculous, but at the time I just couldn’t let go, and I couldn’t adapt. I haven’t dealt with that for a long time – apparently infertility, IVF, losing a child and then having a live one really does wonders for adjusting your world view and making all the small stuff seem like, well, small stuff. I think I am a much different mother now than I would have been 5 or 6 years ago. I am also a lot happier since I’ve been able to just let things go and accept life as it comes.<\/p>\n
So here’s the big “but”: there is a part of me that has been trying to control this baby’s labor from the start. It seems kind of bizarre to me because I don’t recall having this issue when pregnant with Kate. Yes she was born before her due date, before I really expected her, and that certainly made it easier to avoid the wondering and waiting around. This one for some reason is really bringing back out my old planning habits since the time I found out I was due on Kate’s birthday. At first I was upset to be having the girls born in the same month, I felt that was unfair to them. I got used to that idea but definitely didn’t want them born on the same day. Then there was not wanting odd number days and getting upset about getting closer to June. Now it’s June, I’m having to adjust to that, but there’s that countdown to induction that is stressing me out.<\/p>\n
Now this is all entirely ridiculous. Obviously she’s going to be born when she’ll be born and it won’t matter in the end at all. I do want a good birth experience, but I have no idea how this one is going to go. All along I’ve been thinking that once the contractions start coming it will give me focus and I’ll be able to slip into my meditative labor state and let it all go – which may very well be true.<\/p>\n
I’ve been thinking that all this unnecessary stressing could be one of the reasons my body isn’t going into labor. And even if not, it’s certainly not very helpful to be stressing. This is not how I wanted to spend my last weeks of pregnancy. I’m letting all kinds of external, irrelevant thoughts get in the way of focusing on what’s important. Ember will come when she is ready. I need to give up control. I need to talk to her and let her know that I am ready. And if I do get to Thursday I need to believe that my body (and mind!) will handle it.<\/p>\n
Last night I downloaded the HypnoBirth track Come Out Baby. Its focus is on relaxing your body and mind and releasing control. I listened to it last night after I got Kate to bed but I was so tired I fell asleep halfway through! (That’s one reason I like having some meditation scripts – they calm my thoughts and let me actually fall asleep!) I’m not expecting it to put me into labor suddenly, I just wanted something to focus on, something to center me and help me to let go.<\/p>\n
My body is telling me it will be soon. After having no signs of impending labor for weeks I have started getting little crampy twinges down in my cervix, and some of my braxton-hicks have felt stronger. Yesterday I also had contractions roughly every 10 minutes for an hour or so, but they stopped when I took a walk. The walk felt fine for a little bit, then my belly started hurting and I barely waddled home; I had to lay down for a while to let the ligaments ease off. So things do feel a little bit different. Just nothing obvious, nothing major. I’m going to stop looking at calendars, stop thinking about Kate’s and her cousin’s birthdays, stop thinking about events and Den’s work schedule and try to just start living inside my head, present with my body and my baby. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Letting go of control has been a very hard thing for me to learn over the years. I rarely mention it anymore because it’s rarely an issue, but many years ago I was diagnosed with OCPD – Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. This is not the same as OCD, but it’s related. I don’t have rituals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kates-second-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4146,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4145\/revisions\/4146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}