Labor is Change

A nurse’s wisdom that transformed the way I birth and mother my babies

Six years ago, I walked into the hospital, confident that I was about to give birth to my daughter. I was forty-one weeks pregnant and eager to meet my baby. My due date had come and gone—I’d spent it crying into a chocolate shake in the Sonic parking lot—and I was more than ready. Ready to meet my baby. Ready for pants that didn’t have an elastic panel that covered my entire torso. Ready to sleep on my back again. And after hours of steady contractions, I was sure my body was ready, too.

But after a quick exam, the nurse informed me that I was dilated to one centimeter and 0% effaced. She didn’t think I was in active labor, no matter how much I really wanted to be. After I walked a few laps around the hospital floor, the team gently recommended that I go back home, get some rest, and eat a good meal.

As I gathered my things and tugged on my too-tight maternity jeans, I confessed a slew of worries to the nurse: What if I don’t know when to come back? What if I don’t even recognize labor when it’s really happening.

She smiled and said something that’s stuck with me ever since: “You’ll know. Labor is change.”

The next day, I walked back through the doors of the labor and delivery floor and gave birth a short four hours later. The nurse had been right. Labor is change. And when it was truly time, I knew.

Now, years later, I find myself back in those strange final weeks of pregnancy—both achingly slow and rushing by. I pack the hospital bag. I wash impossibly tiny clothes. And I find myself thinking often of that nurse’s words: Labor is change.

It’s a change in my body as I prepare to welcome a baby—contractions, dilation, exhaustion, elation. It’s change for a baby who has been growing inside me for months. But it’s more than that. It’s a change for Joseph and for our marriage, and for our little crew at home eagerly awaiting news of their baby brother—and the unveiling of the name we’ve picked.

But giving birth isn’t the only time I’ve experienced this transformative power of labor. The labor my body prepares for now mirrors a deep reality in my life as a Christian and as a daughter of God. My body, and every laboring woman’s body, makes visible an invisible reality in each of our lives.

“We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now,” Saint Paul write in his letter to the Romans. “and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”

All of creation is in labor. We’re all groaning here as we journey towards Heaven because the work of becoming like Jesus is messy and hard. But our suffering doesn’t compare to the beauty and glory that is coming. This labor is changing us. The transformation God is working in our hearts—even when it’s too deep for us to recognize—is his way of conforming us to himself.

I don’t know exactly what labor will look like with this little boy (though I do plan on getting an epidural and am mildly thrilled by the possibility of a good nap). But whether this baby makes his entrance quickly or slowly, whether it’s smooth or complicated, I know this: motherhood—from labor to laundry, from late nights to long days—is an invitation into the kind of labor that transforms me.

It’s a labor where God weeds out the self-reliance still clinging to my heart. It’s a labor that stretches me, literally and otherwise. And it’s a labor that is changing me more into His likeness, more into the woman he created me to be.

Labor is change. And I can’t wait to see the change He has in store—in the coming weeks, and in all the years ahead.