As my due date approaches, I have been feeling more and more apprehensive at the idea of giving birth. It’s all fine and dandy to be romantic and idealistic about it when it’s months away. But when the countdown can be done in days (very likely, since I am exactly one week from my due date and M came the day after hers), it starts to seem a lot more real … and a hell of a lot less romantic.

I know that fear in the face of so many unknowns (When will it happen? How long will it last? How much will it hurt?) is very normal. But this felt like more than that. It felt like … baggage. So I went into my CST appointment on Wednesday with the idea of trying to ferret it out. I told my CS therapist (Kelly) that I was feeling a lot of fear, and it wasn’t long before she zeroed in on the locus.

What’s going on with the cervix? I feel fear there.

I felt instantly that she was right, took a deep breath and tried to connect with my cervix. It’s not surprising that fear might sit there … this is the doorway that must open, the part of my body that will go through the greatest change, face the greatest challenges. I thought about how hard M’s birth was, how long it took my cervix to open, how this was complicated by M’s poor positioning and the scar tissue. The scar tissue. My mind kept wandering back to those words and couldn’t seem to let them go. I had an image of my cervix struggling to open and being held back by the scarring. There was something there, and I voiced this to Kelly. We talked about the scar tissue, how it surely made things difficult, but it was gone now. That doorway has opened, the scar tissue dissolved … it won’t affect this birth.

Does your cervix feel like it was somehow a failure during M’s birth?

The answer was yes, but I could tell that wasn’t the full answer. My mind wandered further … back, back, back in time. The scar tissue was there because I contracted HPV. Because it wasn’t caught due to the incompetence of my OB (“Oh, don’t worry, that abnormal pap is just due to that abortion you had. We don’t need to follow up on it.”). Because it was allowed to grow and spread until it coated my insides and outsides and the only remedy was laser surgery. An unspeakably painful experience that coincided with the beginning of a two year nightmare that I won’t detail here at the moment. Let’s just say it involved an abusive boyfriend, rape, suppression of memories, physical and emotional numbing, complete loss of self and the hitting of absolute rock bottom. Which sadly had to happen in order to get to where I am today, but it still wasn’t pretty.

These thoughts floated and my mind spiraled closer and closer until … I had it … shame. My cervix was completely bound by shame. Shame that I had HPV. Shame that I had let someone do those things to me. Shame that cinched around it like a wire around the neck of a bag. Shame that has been discussed and processed and released over and over, and yet here was a fragment, overlooked, hidden in my body, waiting for over 15 years to be discovered.

I let these thoughts and feelings float out of my mouth on words, and we talked about the shame and how it isn’t serving me anymore.

What do you want to do with the shame?

I want to tell it goodbye.

Kelly, her hand hovering near my pubic bone, talked me through unwinding the wire, releasing my cervix from the prison of this shame.

Do you feel that? she exclaimed.

I didn’t feel it so much as sense it. My cervix was like this, I said, and held up my hands, fingertips touching, pushed up high like an inverted “V”. And now it’s like this, and I let my fingers relax until they formed the shape of a shallow dome.

Yes, yes, exactly! I’m not going to have to catch a baby here, am I? she joked, and we giggled.

I felt the fear – shame – drain away from my body.

Is there anything else your cervix needs from us?

I tuned in and was rebuffed. Cervix and baby had discovered each other and were doing their own thing. Whereas before my cervix had been hanging out in the middle of nowhere, unsure of what was going on, now it felt the baby’s head pressed against it, the long muscles of the uterus connected to its edge. It was suddenly aware of its place in my body, and how these things would work in concert to help it open when the time came. I’m cool, it said. I’ve got it now. Well alright then.

Fear? There is still fear. But it no longer feels like baggage. It is no longer holding a part of my body hostage. It’s just there … healthy, normal, “You are about to go through a huge transition” fear. I’m okay with this fear. And now I finally feel ready.