Some Moms Say Natural Childbirth Is Labor of Love _ and Faith

c. 2007 Religion News Service (UNDATED) While Jane Ellen Hannaman labored to bring her son, Weston, into the world last February, she could hear her husband, Ryan, praying. She joined him, she said, in between contractions. And while childbirth entailed “the most intense pain,” Hannaman relied on her faith and eschewed medications designed to ease […]

c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) While Jane Ellen Hannaman labored to bring her son, Weston, into the world last February, she could hear her husband, Ryan, praying.

She joined him, she said, in between contractions.


And while childbirth entailed “the most intense pain,” Hannaman relied on her faith and eschewed medications designed to ease her discomfort.

After all, she reasoned, God didn’t just hand Jesus to Mary in a bassinet. If the Nazarene teenager could handle giving birth in a less-than-sterile stable, Hannaman _ who prefers to avoid needles _ decided she’d try it at a hospital in Mobile, Ala.

Six months later, Hannaman described childbirth as an intimate experience with both God and her soulmate.

In an age when many count on anesthetics to cope with the pain of childbirth, some women have used their faith to sustain and comfort them as they’ve endured labor’s pains.

Lisa Rush of Mobile said the seed for natural childbirth was planted before she was even married. A college friend mentioned that she wanted to try to give birth naturally as she believed that’s what God intended for Eve.

“Who am I to go against that?” Rush wondered.

“The Lord designed us to have babies naturally,” she said. “Our bodies are rhythmic.”

So throughout her first pregnancy, Rush said she and her husband prayed and planned for natural childbirth. But when she came to the point of being overdue, Rush said, her doctor recommended that she be induced.

Initially, Rush agreed. But after a day filled with research and prayer, she called her doctor to cancel the procedure. About six hours later, she went into labor.

“It was not the most pleasant experience,” she admitted. But she’s grateful for it nonetheless.


“God was so good to let me experience all the sensations in the natural timing and how he designed our body to work,” Rush reflected in an e-mail. “For me, it was a matter of listening to my body and trusting God to do his work in and through my body.”

Yalanda Taylor echoed such sentiments, noting that when it came time to deliver her baby, she wanted to put her faith in God. Each night, she said, she prayed she wouldn’t have any complications. She also hoped to avoid much medical intervention.

In a weird way, her prayer was answered, said the Semmes, Ala., resident.

About seven months ago, she gave birth to her daughter, Kristiny, in her car while she and her husband, Dwayne, were stopped at a red light on their way to the hospital.

Lee Beth and Scott DeGraeve’s trip to the hospital before the birth of their oldest daughter, Chloe, was less dramatic but nevertheless eventful: It was somewhere between their home in Daphne and the hospital in Mobile that Lee Beth realized how calming her husband’s voice was to her. So, she said, she asked him to read Scripture _ primarily from the Book of Psalms _ to her during the course of her labor.

“It helped me really focus,” she said.

Alison Chatel of Mobile said there wasn’t time to consciously employ spiritual techniques during her labor. But all the preparations she’d made in the months before gave her the courage “to just fly with it,” she said.

Childbirth, she admits, was pure agony. “But it’s life-producing agony,” she said. “Our pregnancy was a miracle. We were going to experience it 100 percent.”


For the Chatels, expanding their family hadn’t come easily.

More than a year before she learned she was pregnant with Natalie, Chatel suffered a miscarriage. Several months later, plans to adopt fell through. It was then, she said, that she knew they couldn’t choose between adopting and having a biological child. So, she said, they prayed, asking God to give them “both in his timing.”

A few months after the Chatels learned she was pregnant with Natalie, the couple received an anonymous donation to help finance their adoption effort. When Natalie was 6 months old, the Chatels traveled to Guatemala to bring home their son, Ethan.

“God had a plan for us to have Natalie and Ethan,” she said.

“Each one of them,” David Chatel added, “was a miracle in their own right.”

(Kristen Campbell writes for The Press-Register in Mobile, Ala.)

KRE/PH END CAMPBELL

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