One of the most delightful and humbling things I’ve learned from my children (and learn anew every day) is how deeply they are their own people.

Don’t stop reading – I know I am not original here. It’s one of those concepts I must have heard a million times in a million ways. The experience is still fresh and indescribable.

If we accept the premise that our child is their own person, that what we nurture in them is only part of who they are (and possibly a very small part), might we accept that our birth has a nature of its own?

If we accept the premise that part of the gift of our nurture is to support the emergence of our child’s nature, could we consider nurturing the emergence of our birth’s nature?

If we accept the premise that our relationship to our child includes embracing and working with the parts of them that we don’t particularly like and probably wouldn’t have chosen, dare we approach birth with this same commitment?

What if, in preparation for birth, you had a conversation with or wrote a note to your future birth that went something like this:

Hey birth, I’m excited and nervous to meet you. I hear you’ll be with me for the rest of my life, which is a big deal. I want to take care of you and have some ideas about how I can make things good for you. I also know you will have qualities that I can’t yet imagine. I promise to stay curious and to work with you and your surprise elements and qualities. I promise not to reject you or criticize you, no matter what. You are of me, yes, but you are not me, so I can claim you and let you be you at the same time.

In order to take this perspective, it helps to know that we, our children and our births are nature. Not connected to or inside of or including elements of, but nature itself.

Rivers have banks that hold them, and they are a powerful force right up against their banks, with mysteries in their depths. Rivers are not their banks, though they change and are changed by their banks. Children are not their parents. Birth is not its parents either. Children and birth are their own forces of nature. Birth and children are changed by and change their parents.

If your birth or births are behind you, I don’t see why you couldn’t have this conversation with them anyway. They might love the attention and embrace.