of Mary as mother and the model for all women means that we can see in her an invitation to enter deeply into this time of pregnancy and birth. She can be our guide, model, intercessor, and comfort as we bring these newest sons and daughters of God into the world. Many women find that their relationship with the Blessed Mother grows deeper during their pregnancies and as they enter into their roles as mothers. In her, we have not only the inspiration but the powerful prayers needed to become the mothers that God created us to be. And she can mother us as we mother our babies.
I was due with two of my children around Christmastime. It helped to picture Mary pregnant with Jesus, especially toward the end. When pregnant with my son, I was getting very close to my due date on Christmas Eve and VERY ready for labor. I went to Christmas Eve Mass and sat toward the front. My priest saw me and at the end of Mass he mentioned to the congregation that I still hadn’t had my baby. I responded, “I’m so glad I’m not riding on a donkey!” Mary trusted God so completely, not only to agree to give birth to God’s Son, but also to trust when she had to travel to Bethlehem and then give birth in a stable! It helped me to be grateful for my clean birth, doctor, doula, etc., and also helped me to feel calmer as I meditated on her trust.
— Amanda D., mom to four
The Design of Birth
“For you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am wondrously made. Wonderful are your works! You know me right well.”— Psalm 139:13–14
Knowing how our bodies work gives us a better understanding of the basic design of birth. Basic knowledge can play a tremendous role in dissolving the fear that creeps into our view of birth as a result of media portrayal, horror stories we’ve heard, or simply our own ignorance of the female body’s design. Understanding also gives us more confidence in God’s design for our bodies and helps us make decisions well so we can have the best birth possible.
It’s amazing that many schools today cover the gamut when it comes to contraceptives and sexually transmitted diseases and all sorts of disordered sexual activities, but most high school students walk away from their biology and health classes with no idea how birth works, or even that sex and babies are designed to go together. Not only that, many have never studied the basic fertility cycles of the woman or the formation of the baby in the womb. They know about abortion but rarely know about normal birth.
In today’s culture fertility is a liability. Even the government continues to seek to make contraception universally available as “preventative medicine,”52 with the underlying assumption that the healthy female body somehow needs to be fixed and medicated. For the majority of parents today, their education in normal fertility, biology, pregnancy, and birth begins when they are actually going through it themselves.
This education vacuum is filled by the idea of pregnancy as punishment and birth as terrifying. The media’s depictions of birth, filled with screaming, the mother’s water breaking in some embarrassing place followed by immediate agonizing contractions and pushing, certainly don’t help. Most new mothers and fathers need to be told that it’s not usually like that.
When we understand how something truly works, we become empowered to utilize it. This is true with our fertility. In recent years, more and more women — Catholic and non-Catholic — have begun to realize the power and advantage they have when they better understand their fertility and monthly cycles. Our cycles are designed by God and we function best when we work with that design rather than against it.
There is a growing grassroots movement against the onslaught of contraception as women question whether it makes sense to tell their bodies not to function as they were designed. There are consequences to contraception that have become better known and studied as they’ve arisen. Intervening in the design of the woman’s healthy body with chemicals and intrauterine devices can greatly jeopardize both a woman’s short-term and long-term health, not only physically but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.53 When a woman understands her fertility, she can make better, informed decisions about healthcare, her prospects for a future pregnancy, when to be intimate with her spouse, and when she might not be fully healthy. There is a beauty and dignity to women’s understanding the design of the Creator for their bodies and claiming and using that knowledge.
So, too, with birth. Having a greater understanding of how her body is designed for birth gives a woman greater ability to make decisions and foster better short- and long-term health outcomes for herself and her baby. Respecting a mother’s intellect and her right to have good information recognizes her dignity as a woman and enhances her satisfaction with her birth.54 Similar to fertility cycles and related decisions, there are also often unintended consequences to intervening without necessity in the natural design and process of birth. There is, of course, not a moral equivalency. There is no Church teaching on how a woman should give birth or make specific birth choices, as there is with contraception. Sometimes we can and should intervene in the natural process of birth. But learning how our body is designed to birth allows us to work better with that design and have a better, healthier, more informed experience for ourselves and our babies.
The Most Important Lesson
So what should a woman know about birth?
The female body was designed to give birth. Even if she never understands the precise logistics or anatomy of how it happens, a woman who has the confidence that her body was naturally designed to create and to bear life is at an incalculable advantage. As Pope Saint John Paul II expressed it: “The woman’s motherhood in the period between the baby’s conception and birth is a bio-physiological and psychological process which is better understood in our days than in the past, and is the subject of many detailed studies. Scientific analysis fully confirms that the very physical constitution of women is naturally disposed to motherhood — conception, pregnancy and giving birth — which is a consequence of the marriage union with the man.”55 The pope reaffirms this truth: Women’s bodies are designed by God to birth. A woman’s fertility, her ability to carry, birth, and nurse a child, are all representative of good and normal health. As Catholics we reject the contraceptive mentality that tells us fertility is a disease to be cured and the birth of a child a punishment to those who haven’t been “responsible.”
For good or for bad, a woman brings her past, her social environment, and her deepest beliefs and fears into her birth. When a woman comes from a line of women who have successfully and confidently given birth, when she maintains a healthy body image, when she views her marriage and motherhood as a calling from God, when her husband has confidence in her ability to give birth to their baby, and when she hears confident and beautiful words about her womanhood and motherhood from her provider and even leaders of the Church, she will then have deeper confidence that she was truly made for and capable of this work. On the opposite end, if a woman has only heard horror stories about birth, if she has never seen a woman undergoing normal labor, if her husband doubts her, or if she has come to believe that her body is broken, then she will often bring that into her approach to birth.
We know that the effects of original sin mean everything does not always go according to God’s original plan. Infertility occurs. Miscarriage happens. Birth complications do happen. We know that the original design is the healthiest way for a baby to be born. When complications arise, intervening for the sake of the mother or baby also should be considered part of God’s plan. Science and medicine are meant to be a gift to the world — at the service of life. We thank God for the obstetricians, doctors, and midwives who use their gifts to serve women and babies and intervene when appropriate.
Still, we trust that God planned birth, and he knew what he was doing. His design has been bringing
