Are You Too Comfortable?

My dear friend,

I was recently listening to a friend of mine, talk about control and comfort zones. And it made me think, and of course I can relate everything back to birth. So in this conversation I was listening to, she talked about comfort zones and how we like to stay in them.

Obviously, right? We like to feel comfortable, but by staying in our comfort zone are we creating more discomfort because we're staying in the same place, or is it worth being uncomfortable to get the tools and the knowledge and the wisdom and then learn the lessons that we need to learn in order to move on to the next level or next phase of our lives?

And I thought that was really interesting and very eye-opening to hear. And it made me question myself. Am I doing things to stay comfortable or am I pushing me outside of my comfort zone? I feel like I'm pretty good about doing that, but it's always good to check in and just see, am I doing things that will get me to where I need to go?

When I'm relating that to birth, I think of those that want to go with the flow and don't really want to open a book or are afraid to learn because it's too overwhelming or they don't even know where to start. So its easier to trust in their providers to take care of everything, which is what we should be able to do right?

But it's not, because they don't have your intentions at the top of their priority list. What is at the top of their list is an alive baby and an alive mom, because that's, that's the goal right? But that's only two main components, obviously we want mom to be alive and we want baby to be alive, but that's not the whole picture.

We want it to be empowering. We want it to be fun. We want it to be transformative. We want it to be safe. we want mom and baby to have no trauma when they come out of the other side of the birth. And so comfort levels can look different. But when we look at it through the lens of preparing for birth, what makes you feel uncomfortable?

A lot of the times, it's what we're afraid of and what we're afraid of we like to block out. We like to ignore it and shut down. We like to avoid it because we just want to focus on the end goal. We want to focus on what is exciting or what we know we can control what we know is going to be okay and to let go of what we can't control, which I'm a big advocate for letting go of what you can't control.

BUT fear doesn't go away. Fear actually, if you ignore, it gets louder and louder and it can manifest as anxiety. It can manifest as health issues. So really recognizing what those fears are and, exposing them.

A personal example

When I was pregnant with Freya I was very fearful of having to transfer because I desperately wanted a homebirth. I knew this was my last baby and I wanted this to be in a healing, transformative experience for me. I was so scared that I was going to have to transfer to the hospital because either one, I wouldn't be able to handle labor or two, something would happen health wise to her or I that would require us to need hospital assistance.

That was a big fear of mine. So in this book I was reading, one of the things that they asked me to do was to write down that one fear in detail and I avoided it for weeks.

I did not wanna do it, but I knew that if I avoided it, it wasn't going to go away. That fear could creep up in birth. It can creep up in labor and it could stall labor, it could have made labor harder, longer, more painful, and it, also could have prevented me from going into labor because my body would not have felt safe enough to do so.

So, I put my ego aside and let my fear expose itself. I wrote it all down on this paper, it was so freeing to get it out of my head and to get it on paper where I could look at it and I could decide what information from that I could use to help me into the next journey.

What would I do if, I had to transfer, how could I still be okay, how could I still keep going? How could I still use the intentions that I wanted for that experience and bring them with me to the hospital or to the car or to wherever my birth took me.

I wanted it to be fun, empowering. I wanted it to be raw. I wanted to learn how to use my voice. I wanted my voice to be stronger, at the end of this.

So how could I still use all those elements that I wanted, even if the thing I didn't want to have happen happened?

Back to you

When you are exploring your comfort zones in labor, in birth in pregnancy and postpartum, I want you to ask yourself, is it going to create more discomfort in the long run to stay comfortable now?
OR

Is it going to create more discomfort in the long run if we jump beyond our comfort zone and see how much we can actually expand?

Birth asks you to jump of a cliff blindfolded…. into the unknown, trusting that the wind will catch you and take you where your meant to go.

The journey might be foreign to your logistical mind but as you remove the blindfold you start to see that your being carried by your own intuition. Your body starts to take over because it knows the way. It is deeply rooted in you, as old as time itself. Your mind can stop trying to make sense of it all and you can just TRUST.

My love, are you ready to step beyond the comfort of the knowing and dive into the unknown to see what you are capable of?