The Power of Surrender

One of the things I’ve worked on is seeing what I perceived as my failures during my daughter’s birth as surrendering to the medical professionals. Surrendering is choice. Surrendering is recognizing that you’re in a losing situation, and making the choice to cut your losses. It doesn’t require that you like it, enjoy it, or are at peace with it. It doesn’t give the people who forced you into the position as pass or a “get out of jail free” card. However, there’s great power in making the decision to surrender.

So, when did my surrender occur? It happened when the pain consumed me. It happened when I realized that I was incapable of making decisions for myself. The initial moment of surrender came just seconds before the doctor tried to remove the placenta. It came in the moment where I told the nurse I didn’t want to hold my baby. At that point in time, I knew something was wrong, really wrong. I knew that I needed professional medical treatment. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I didn’t know the words to describe the way I was feeling. I didn’t have time to voice my concerns, but I recognized that without further intervention things were going to hell. While I recognize that I was surrendering to the medical personnel at this time, it doesn’t absolve my doctor of his decision. It doesn’t give him a pass on not communicating to me what he was going to do and why he was doing it. He still had a responsibility to communicate my diagnosis, propose a treatment option, and give me the opportunity to consent. Yes, things went to hell, but that doesn’t mean that he was free to do whatever he wanted to my body.

I also surrendered a second time. I surrendered to my fate, and that occurred when they rolled me into the operating room. I remember that moment, the feeling of giving up, of being willing to die, knowing that I’d given life to my daughter. I hate thinking back on it. It’s painful, scary, and hopeless, but it was surrendering. Even before I’d accepted this concept, I’d written about it. I wrote about the pain after my daughter’s birth just after she turned one,

The pain is all consuming. You can't think. You can't breathe. You can't hear what they're saying. You can't process what's happening. It wraps around you smothering you in a cloud of darkness and fear because you know it's not supposed to be like THIS. You can't form the words to question what's happening. You're sucked down into the black void of semi-consciousness not caring what they're doing to you because all you can focus on is the pain. It's the only thing that exists. They're pricking you with needles, people come running in and out, and someone straps a mask over your face. You feel the doctor's hand shoved all the way inside you. How the heck did it get there? The pain sucks you away. You struggle to breathe and continue to fight. Try to breathe through it, but you can't ride the waves. It's consuming your body. Don't quit. Don't abandon the baby. Keep fighting. Some comments break through. You can hear the anger and fear in the doctor's voice, and it scares you even more. But you're sucked back down into the depths of hell wondering what's happening. You feel the bed being wheeled down the hall. You sense the bright lights of the operating room beaming down on your eyelids, but the pain pulls seductively at you. Just give up. Stop fighting. Surrender to your death. Abandon your baby. Just let go. And then the anesthesia sucks all your thoughts away.

In the fourth sentence from the end, I wrote, “Surrender to your death.” Even then, I was recognizing that I had a choice to make. Even senseless, strapped to the operating room table, in agonizing pain, I had the power to surrender. It was my choice to give them, the medical personnel, the power to save me. It was my choice to submit to their will, it was my choice to accept the treatment that would ultimately save my life. Even when I was at my weakest, I had the power. When I felt like the biggest failure, I surrendered. When I believed all was lost, I submitted.

There’s nothing more powerful than making that decision. I surrendered to live. I surrendered to support other new moms. I surrendered to fight for patient-centered maternity care. I surrendered to share my story with others, so that we can all learn from the mistakes of the past. I surrendered to care for my newborn daughter. I surrendered to raise her, God willing, into adulthood. It was always my choice.