“Dear exhausted, heavily pregnant mother:

Your labor will happen. It’ll happen even if you DON’T have sex or eat spicy food or see an acupuncturist or drink a special tea, or use castor or evening primrose oils. It’ll happen even if you DON’T take homeopathics or measure your cervix. It’ll happen even if your baby is posterior, anterior, vertex, breech, transverse or re-enacting the civil war with jazz hands. Your labor will start even if you DON’T go get that non-stress test every week or allow your OB to “check you” or your midwife to “strip you”. No one is pregnant forever. If you put water over high heat…it’s gonna boil. Even without you obsessively checking on it, taking its temperature and running tests on it.

Stop sending your body the message that you don’t trust it enough to go into labor when it needs to. Stop calling your body wisdom “stupid”. My god- if anyone is going to believe in your ability to labor and have your own baby…let it start with you!” Ashley Neffleburt