is met face to face. It is here where woman participates in the creative power of God and where father and mother meet the new person that they, with God, have called into being.
Every birth looks different because we are all different. God calls each mother to have a unique pregnancy and birth. So, the idea of integrating our faith into birth is not meant to outline a specific formula for a holy birth. It is not meant to tell you the correct way to give birth or to pass off as doctrine what can be changeable — each woman’s circumstance is unique. While we will talk about some, this book is not meant to go into every specific choice you will need to make when it comes to the birth of your baby, and it is outside the scope of this book to go into the risks and benefits of every single option in your pregnancy and birth. There are several great books that already do that, many noted in Appendix D. It is highly recommended that you pick up one of those books to complement this one, and consider taking a quality birth class, especially if this is your first baby. A good birth class will help you know the landscape of birth practices in your area and the providers that are better at giving compassionate, dignified, and evidence-based care, and will help you enter more fully and intentionally into your birth.
What this book is meant to do is talk about how we can allow God to transform our pregnancies and births into something beautiful, redemptive, and truly supernatural. It is meant to help women understand the design of their bodies and birth as well as some of the choices available so that they can best respect their own dignity, that of their babies, and the design of God’s plan when it comes to birth. It is meant to help women access the tremendous redemptive and transformative power of birth. It is meant to give tools to the mother who wants to approach her birth in the light of her faith. We do nothing in a vacuum. The light of our faith has the power to transform everything we do — even, and in an especially profound way, birth.
Birth is an incredibly sensitive, personal, and emotionally charged topic, which only serves to highlight the point that it is important, it matters, and it affects us deeply. Because of this, there is no room for judging other women when it comes to birth choices. There is room only for listening, encouraging, offering valuable information when appropriate, and providing support, respect for others’ situations, and genuine love. While we, of course, need to judge our own situations, be informed, and make the best choices we can in our own circumstances, it is not our responsibility to do that for others. My humble prayer is that as you read this book, defenses are laid down. I pray that you will be open to the idea that perhaps birth is such a sensitive topic precisely because birth is so central to who we are as women. Perhaps at the core of our being we know how much it truly does matter. And perhaps that is exactly how God designed it.
Six birth stories, each one different. I’ve been blessed by all of them, both by my babies and by my actual birth experiences. It’s clear to me now that each birth was a lesson in virtues that I desperately needed. My first taught me acceptance. My second gave me courage. My third forced me to have faith and trust. My fourth required patience. My fifth was a lesson in humility. And my sixth was a refresher course on each virtue of my previous births. I would not be the same person without each of these births.
Yes, a healthy baby and mama are the most important things. But beyond basic survival, the ability to thrive and grow and change in a birth experience is important, too. For better or worse, a couple will carry the experience of their baby’s entrance into this world forever. It only makes sense to hope, seek, and pray for a birth in which those first moments together as a family are ones that strengthen the family bond and promote love between the parents and child, and awe and gratitude to God as Creator. I’ve been blessed by six of those experiences, and I pray that every mother has the same.
Babies matter. Mamas matter. And birth matters, too.
— Micaela Darr, mom to seven on Earth and two in eternity, birth educator
A Culture of Life Is a Culture of Birth
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.”— Jeremiah 1:5
When it comes to the overall culture of birth and specific practices and protocols, we might wonder if it is really a topic that concerns the Church. After all, “as long as the baby’s healthy,” right? However, the gift of a new baby is seen by the Church as the highest sign of blessing for the husband and wife and the visible reality of two people becoming fully one. Entering into the Sacrament of Matrimony, husband and wife oblige themselves to be open to life. Their “yes” to the question, “Will you accept children lovingly from God?” binds them to that promise. Babies are meant to be intimately tied with the sacrament of marriage, and every single one of those new babies enters the world by way of birth. By truly honoring birth and recognizing God’s design for new life from conception through its fullness in birth, we also honor and recognize the dignity of marriage, the dignity of each human person, and the beauty of the One who planned it that way. When we honor birth, we honor marriage. When we honor birth, we honor God.
This doesn’t mean that a good and beautiful birth is reserved for the “perfect” nuclear family, of course. Every mother and baby, regardless of their circumstances, deserves the best possible care and experience of birth because they are made in the image and likeness of God. Part of building a culture of life is advocating for the dignified treatment of every man, woman, and child at every moment, no matter the circumstances. This doesn’t end in the birth room. As pro-life people, we are obliged to care about birth practices and healthy, dignified, evidence-based birth, fighting the stigma that the pro-life community only cares that babies are born but has no concern for the way mothers and babies are treated during the process and after.
We cannot be satisfied with a baby and mother who simply survive. We need to be concerned that babies are welcomed into the world healthy, with joy, and treated in a way that recognizes their God-given dignity. We need to be concerned that the dignity of every woman is respected, especially as she actively takes on the role of motherhood. We are bound as the body of Christ to help create a culture of birth where the totality of woman and baby — mind, heart, body, and soul — is respected and where the most vulnerable among us, the newborn baby and the mother giving birth, are treated with love and evidence-based care.
Catholics and Evidence-Based Birth
Catholics should be at the forefront of the movement in our country for respectful, evidence-based birth. The Catholic Church declares that the faithful should “distinguish carefully between the rights and the duties which they have as belonging to the Church and those which fall to them as members of the human society. They will strive to unite the two harmoniously, remembering that in every temporal affair they are to be guided by a Christian conscience, since no human activity, even of the temporal order, can be withdrawn from God’s dominion.”2
This means that the Christian has an obligation both as a follower of Christ and as a plain old human to show concern for these types of life issues. Even issues that might not necessarily seem like “religious issues” are, in fact, still under the dominion of God, and his plan and law must be respected. We are called to use our well-formed consciences to discern how to live in this world, taking care to apply what we know to be true to every aspect of life. We don’t leave our faith at the doorway of the labor-and-delivery room. However, because our approach to birth and the choices we make are not specifically an issue belonging to the Church, we are free to determine the answers and approaches that best suit our particular circumstances, always doing so with the basic laws of God and the teachings of our faith in mind.
Approaching life from a Catholic worldview, we know that every mother and baby has dignity and deserves to
