When learning to breastfeed my newborn, I really needed that La Leche League group leader to spell it all out for me very distinctly: Take to the bed with your baby, maintain skin-to-skin contact and allow her free access to the breast as often as she likes. Period. Throw away the complicated feeding charts and the "top-ups." Nevermind the nurse's long-winded directives to feed the baby for twenty minutes, then burp her, then swaddle her, lie her down in the cot, etc. etc...... Just do the thing that you are trying to do. It's not easy, but it is simple.
Likewise, I hoped I would be able to VBAC, and I listened to my affirmations for about 10 or 20 minutes before I went to bed every night to foster a positive attitude and self-belief. I realise now that hope is not a plan. When my VBAC failed, I analysed everything time and again in an effort to determine what went wrong and why all of my plans unraveled so quickly as soon as I encountered the first obstacle. Again, I needed someone to explain matters to me in simple, straightforward terms - a no-nonsense approach.
It was my husband who introduced me to Bob Proctor and his videos on YouTube. Mr. Proctor is often talking about how people can make more money and become financially free, so you may see titles such as, "Make a Million with Bob Proctor." Strangely enough, however, as soon as I heard him speak about his philosophy in his own very succinct and unique way, it was like an epiphany for me, and I realised that I didn't get the result I wanted because I didn't invest enough of myself in the process. In one of the videos I've now watched countless times (see below), Bob Proctor refers to one of his affirmations for wealth and explains, "You don't just say it once. You say it maybe a thousand times a day for ninety days." Then, he says, you will see your thought patterns, and thus your behaviour and your outcomes, beginning to change. Hearing that was definitely one of my "A-ha!" moments, as Oprah Winfrey would say. I was too afraid to indulge in my fantasies because I worried that I would fail and be disappointed. So what happened? I was thinking and feeling more about failure than about success, and that energy manifested itself in my life as another caesarean birth. I didn't want to do visualisations for fear that the actual birth wouldn't live up to my lofty expectations. I didn't want to move myself to tears watching uplifting and inspirational birth videos just in case it made me too sad about my own caesarean or in case things didn't go as planned with my VBAC. I didn't get involved emotionally in a plan, and I didn't develop the "success consciousness" Nancy Wainer Cohen and Lois J. Estner discuss in Silent Knife. Being emotionally cautious isn't going to get you a VBAC. It's like falling in love. You have to be willing to get hurt and jump in with two feet anyway. I believe that there are probably alot of other women like me who are overly academic in reading, studying and preparing intellectually for major life events like becoming a mother but are unwilling or unable to get involved in the messy emotional issues that will actually open them up to the wider experience of allowing vulnerability, faith and the possibility of true joy to come into their lives.
As a result of these two powerful learning experiences that motherhood has given me, I now have a thorough understanding of and an unshakable faith in what I need to do to grow a beautiful, healthy child within my womb and achieve a vaginal birth after two caesareans. Only with a concerted, sustained mental effort over a long period of time with regard to repeating affirmations and visualisations, and a laser-like focus on my objective can I hope to succeed in giving my child the serene pregnancy and the safe, natural birth experience s/he deserves.
"Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve."
~Napoleon Hill
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