will be shaken, humbled, stretched, and broken. And it will make you a mother.
— Haley Stewart, mom to three
Mary, Our Lady of Childbirth
“Mary’s maternity is the model of all motherhood.”— Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
In the Incarnation, God was born of a woman. God chose to enter humanity through the rite of birth. If nothing written thus far has convinced you that birth is beautiful and has the capacity to be holy, this truth should.
The Son of God could have chosen any way to become human. But he chose, from all eternity, to be conceived and grown in a human woman and born from her very body. In Mary, childbirth is reclaimed again for God. In her “yes” (fiat) to the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation, Mary became the new woman of Genesis, the archetype for all women. Her “yes” is the reversal of Eve’s “no.” She is the new Eve. The consequences of Eve’s disobedience can now be redeemed and made new through Mary’s obedience. Willingly and freely Mary chose to offer her body as the vehicle for God to become man and bring eternal life to the world.
What an example we have in Mary’s beautiful and bold openness to the will of God. What’s more, we have the opportunity to do the same. United with her, we can give God the offering of our very body to bring new life into the world. Mary can be the model we need to open our hearts, bodies, and souls to new life. Even those experiencing a pregnancy unexpected or less than ideal can see themselves in her, for certainly Mary’s situation was considered less than ideal on the surface! “In Mary, Eve discovers the nature of the true dignity of woman, of feminine humanity. This discovery must continually reach the heart of every woman and shape her vocation and her life.”50
While Mary probably did not experience pain during the birth of Jesus, she certainly suffered as she stood at the foot of the cross, united with her Son in his work of bringing eternal life into the world. Calvary was her labor. As his mother, her “yes” opened her up in a unique way to the pain and suffering that was necessary for humanity to be redeemed. We can look to her as we share a piece of that in our pregnancies, births, and the rest of motherhood.
There is a beautiful sculpture of Mary in the Church of Saint Augustine in Rome called Our Lady of Childbirth. Beneath the statue are hundreds of pictures, testimonies, and offerings of thanksgiving from mothers who prayed there for healthy pregnancies and births. For centuries women have begged intercession from Mary under this title for healing of infertility, for help in pregnancy, and for healthy and even happy deliveries. This devotion is a tremendous witness to the importance and beauty of a woman’s experience of birth — and heaven’s concern for it. Not only should we pray for a healthy birth, but we are invited to ask that it be a “happy” one.
As a mother herself, Our Lady surely experienced profound joy, power, intimacy with the Trinity, and perhaps even ecstasy during her own childbearing, though her outside circumstances were far less than ideal. She offers us a share of her joy. Christ gave her to us, after all, and the Church declares that “she is a mother to us in the order of grace.”51 She is our heavenly mother, a good and devoted mother who wants the best for her daughters, and we can be assured that she desires and prays for us to have healthy, holy, and truly joyful births.
Our understanding of Mary as mother and the model for all women means that we can see in her an invitation to enter deeply into this time of pregnancy and birth. She can be our guide, model, intercessor, and comfort as we bring these newest sons and daughters of God into the world. Many women find that their relationship with the Blessed Mother grows deeper during their pregnancies and as they enter into their roles as mothers. In her, we have not only the inspiration but the powerful prayers needed to become the mothers that God created us to be. And she can mother us as we mother our babies.
I was due with two of my children around Christmastime. It helped to picture Mary pregnant with Jesus, especially toward the end. When pregnant with my son, I was getting very close to my due date on Christmas Eve and VERY ready for labor. I went to Christmas Eve Mass and sat toward the front. My priest saw me and at the end of Mass he mentioned to the congregation that I still hadn’t had my baby. I responded, “I’m so glad I’m not riding on a donkey!” Mary trusted God so completely, not only to agree to give birth to God’s Son, but also to trust when she had to travel to Bethlehem and then give birth in a stable! It helped me to be grateful for my clean birth, doctor, doula, etc., and also helped me to feel calmer as I meditated on her trust.
— Amanda D., mom to four
The Design of Birth
“For you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am wondrously made. Wonderful are your works! You know me right well.”— Psalm 139:13–14
Knowing how our bodies work gives us a better understanding of the basic design of birth. Basic knowledge can play a tremendous role in dissolving the fear that creeps into our view of birth as a result of media portrayal, horror stories we’ve heard, or simply our own ignorance of the female body’s design. Understanding also gives us more confidence in God’s design for our bodies and helps us make decisions well so we can have the best birth possible.
It’s amazing that many schools today cover the gamut when it comes to contraceptives and sexually transmitted diseases and all sorts of disordered sexual activities, but most high school students walk away from their biology and health classes with no idea how birth works, or even that sex and babies are designed to go together. Not only that, many have never studied the basic fertility cycles of the woman or the formation of the baby in the womb. They know about abortion but rarely know about normal birth.
In today’s culture fertility is a liability. Even the government continues to seek to make contraception universally available as “preventative medicine,”52 with the underlying assumption that the healthy female body somehow needs to be fixed and medicated. For the majority of parents today, their education in normal fertility, biology, pregnancy, and birth begins when they are actually going through it themselves.
This education vacuum is filled by the idea of pregnancy as punishment and birth as terrifying. The media’s depictions of birth, filled with screaming, the mother’s water breaking in some embarrassing place followed by immediate agonizing contractions and pushing, certainly don’t help. Most new mothers and fathers need to be told that it’s not usually like that.
When we understand how something truly works, we become empowered to utilize it. This is true with our fertility. In recent years, more and more women — Catholic and non-Catholic — have begun to realize the power and advantage they have when they better understand their fertility and monthly cycles. Our cycles are designed by God and we function best when we work with that design rather than against it.
There is a growing grassroots movement against the onslaught of contraception as women question whether it makes sense to tell their bodies not to function as they were designed. There are consequences to contraception that have become better known and studied as they’ve arisen. Intervening in the design of the woman’s healthy body with chemicals and intrauterine devices can greatly jeopardize both a woman’s short-term and long-term health, not only physically but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.53 When a woman understands her fertility, she can make better, informed decisions about healthcare, her prospects for a future pregnancy, when to be intimate with her spouse, and when she might not be fully healthy. There is a beauty and dignity to women’s understanding the design of the Creator for their bodies and claiming and using that knowledge.
So, too, with birth. Having a greater understanding of how her body is designed for birth gives a woman greater ability to make decisions and foster better short- and long-term health outcomes for herself and her baby. Respecting a mother’s intellect and her right to have good information recognizes her dignity as a woman and enhances her satisfaction with her birth.54 Similar to fertility cycles and related decisions,