The Labor of Waiting

Photo taken over the Cascade mountains, northern Oregon, August 2009

I absolutely love my work as a labor support doula. I get so excited, so charged with energy when I talk about birth, my own birth experiences, and helping other moms to educate themselves. Developing a relationship with a client and seeing her through to the grand finale of her baby's birth is a sublime experience. Tears actually come to my eyes when I think about that moment of birth. So with each client, when we get down to those weeks when labor could start at any moment, those days have a special energy for me. It is the energy of waiting and of expectation.

I am fully in that place right now, today was the due date of my current client.
Each time my phone rings there is a jolt, is it her?
Each night I sleep with the phone tucked next to me, fully expecting to be awakened.

I am reminded of so many things at this time...
I am reminded of my own times of waiting when my whole body was so full with child that I ached to go into labor and days passed without that relief.
I am reminded that we are all always waiting for something, and I am awakened to how that effects our present. "What am I waiting for?", is a really good question.
I am reminded to breathe, to check in with my body more often and to consciously let the tension of waiting go.
Most of all I am reminded that even in our waiting we are laboring, constantly preparing for what is to come, for what lies barely glimpsed on the horizon.

And so I am ready. Ready at any moment to drop everything and to suddenly play my part as the drama of labor and birth unfold, and the divine enters the room.