Surrender - The Story of My Second Pregnancy

Just over a year ago, God was working on my heart, to make me willing for the sacrifice of another pregnancy, another birth, and a new chapter of motherhood.

This thought came to me the other day, as I sat breastfeeding my newborn. My baby, a gift from God, and a big work of surrender in my life over the past 12 months. 

My word of the year for 2025 was surrender, and consequently, it's also the conception, pregnancy, and birth story of my second daughter:

I started the year so unwilling for what was being asked of me. I wanted another year; time to do some of the things that I wanted to do; I was finally feeling more like my old self in my 2-years-postpartum body. (Interestingly, when I fell pregnant with my first daughter, I also felt like I wanted to wait another year before having a baby!) But that just wasn't part of my journey this year - and so the young horses sit in the paddock a bit longer, waiting to be broken in...

Define surrender: The biblical characteristic of surrender is a transformative act of yielding oneself fully to the will and authority of God. A transformative act of trust and obedience. True surrender is not a passive resignation, but a proactive leap of faith. 

Define sacrifice: to give up something valued, for the sake of other considerations.

Right from the very beginning of last year, I felt the pull to surrender. I fought it for several weeks, and really lost my peace because of it. This past year has been a big one of spiritual growth for me; surrendering to God's plan for my life wasn't easy, but it did bring me peace and spiritual growth once I was willing.

From conception, I felt this baby had a lot to teach me about surrender. Surrendering my body once again. The throes of pregnancy sickness; the stretching; the uncomfortableness; the feeling like my body wasn't mine again, when I had just so soon felt it coming back to me! 

The first few weeks of pregnancy, when I knew but also didn't really know because I chose not to take a pregnancy test this time, and surrendered into the unknowing... I felt my baby, communicated with her. Knew, unwaveringly, that she was meant to be in this perfect timing; knew that she was meant to be born here at home. I leant into the peace that came with that knowing. I built that connection right from the first days of pregnancy. And I'm glad I did, because by about week 7, the nausea hit me, as it had with my first, causing me to slow right down and operate in survival mode.

I was much better at managing it this time around. I had a better understanding of how my body feels when it's pregnant, and what foods are triggering or safe, based on my past experience! I rode the nausea for weeks, avoiding getting too tired, hungry, or hot, as they were all big triggers during my first pregnancy. And I managed to make it through first trimester without spewing! Though still just generally feeling awful most of the day, and resting a lot. Surrender.

My 2yo grew a great love for books in that time. Every day, I'd spend enough time sitting on the couch or resting, that we could get through just about every book on her bookshelf; I would sit down and she would start bringing me books to read to her! She was so patient with me while I wasn't feeling well, and as I was still breastfeeding her, we had lots of cuddles, and boobing, and books, to get us through those hard days.

As much as I love animal based foods and my body (usually) thrives on animal based proteins and fats, I had to turn to a lot more plant based options during pregnancy. I just don't do well on heavy meat based meals, particularly in first trimester. My hearty cooked breakfasts turned to lighter options like fruit, yoghurt, smoothie bowls, or porridge. My filling lunches turned to broths, veggies, or sometimes eggs. And for dinner, I would cook a well balanced meal for my family, and eat a little meat, but mostly fill up on veggies. I'm grateful that during this time I could still handle dairy, and was milking my cow to get an abundance of fresh milk to make nourishing foods with. I also completely went off coffee for a lot of months, and only occasionally have decaf now. More releasing. More surrender. 

Around 16 weeks pregnant, my toddler and I both caught a monster flu bug. She didn't get it as bad as me, probably because she was still breastfeeding - but not for long! I ended up so dehydrated from a couple of days of throwing up, that my milk dried up, and that was the end of our over 2.5year breastfeeding journey. Yep, that's right, I made it through first trimester without actually vomiting, only to get sick and have all the coughing trigger my gag reflex so violently that I spent a couple of days over the toilet. That completely wiped me out and really took the joy out of pregnancy, especially as I had been feeling more well since about 14 weeks and thought I was past the pregnancy sickness! Surrender.

By 18 weeks we were both feeling well again and the second trimester energy kicked in which brought me out of survival mode. My appetite came back, I was no longer breastfeeding, and I was feeling my baby move (it had been hard to identify movement when my tummy was so churned up and sick, though I had been feeling pops and wiggles from earlier on). As I was up and around more, trying to catch up on the months of not doing too much, my toddler hit some kind of energy burst as well and was very full on and over the top! As I no longer had boobing in my parenting toolbox, it was a challenging chapter of parenting for both of us learning to navigate and find our new normal. It got harder to achieve a nap during the day as I couldn't just breastfeed her to sleep, and we had a period of night wakes being harder because she couldn't immediately feed back to sleep. Surrender.

I decided not to engage with the medical system early in my pregnancy this time. I didn't want the early scan or blood test options, so I had no reason to go to a doctor until around 19 weeks when I requested a referral for a 20 week scan. It was so peaceful in those early months, just being able to enjoy being pregnant and feeling in my body without tritty-trotting off to multiple scans and blood tests. Unfortunately this GP visit also resulted in my being referred into the local MGP and my details being passed on to an obstetrician on the coast (due to my local town not having a birthing hospital, women are expected to relocate to the coast for birth and transfer their care to other medical professionals over there), without my consent. This is a story for another blog, but I was able to get it resolved and have the referral revoked, though it brought with it a couple of weeks of stress and upset that I should not have had to deal with.

Choosing to get a morphology scan was interesting for me to unpack. It felt like the responsible thing to do, given that I was planning to birth at home. It seemed sensible to confirm what my intuition already knew about my baby and my placenta - that we were all healthy and 'normal.' But I felt during the ultrasound that my baby didn't like it, and it also felt unnecessary, given that the result was as I already knew. So I experienced a bit of mum guilt for putting my baby through that, and though I don't regret it now; it's just part of my journey; it's interesting to consider how this will affect my choices if I have any more babies.

As I entered third trimester, we headed up north to my grandparents property. My Gramps had organised some work for my husband and the bonus was that we could all go as a family; I got to spend time with my Gran, and they both got the extra time with their great granddaughter! It was such a lovely, soul-nourishing time away. Spending time at one of my favourite places from my childhood, sharing it with my daughter, and getting a break from the day to day mental load of home. I was able to reconnect with my baby once again and it felt like it really strengthened our family unit, as the year so far had consisted of my hubby working away during the week and us only seeing him on weekends. I had more time for reading, journalling, and retrospection; my birth choices became even more clearer in my mind and more of a reality than just a 'one day' scenario. I was also able to catch up in person with my doula (from my first pregnancy) who had been supporting me virtually because we had moved south since my first birth and we no longer lived close by. This included conversations and debriefs about birth, pregnancy, and mothering, as well as some nourishing body work (under a shady tree at the park!) which loosened some of the kinks and niggles I'd been experiencing since my body was working so hard; I was very grateful for the release she done which brought weeks of relief for my hip and sacral pain - though it did creep back in towards the end of pregnancy.

Unfortunately, our time up north was cut short by a week or two due to some family stuff blowing up with my in-laws side of the family. We stayed on for a few more days after it hit the fan, but ultimately, my hubby felt like we needed to be home in order to support his family - though we had no idea what we'd be walking into. The emotional climate was completely unknown and we weren't even sure if home was spiritually safe or if we'd need to find somewhere else to live. This emotional turmoil was the last thing I wanted or needed during third trimester, especially as we'd had such a blissful time away up until that point! Surrender.

Thankfully, the time we took before making the decision to head home, plus the couple of days of travel to get there, allowed things to simmer down and it wasn't as bad as we feared it might be. Our home felt safe, and was emotionally distanced from the main fallout so I still felt ok about birthing at home (but was still ready to pack up and head to north to be near my family and support people for birth if I felt it necessary). This was a big time of surrender, just trying to trust that everything would fall into place as it needed to. 

I leant heavily on my doula for emotional support which was very helpful to have someone outside the family dynamic to talk to, as most of my community around home is my in-laws or family friends of my in-laws. In hindsight, I can see how much I'd come to need my doula, even in terms of my birth plans. Instead of wanting her there, I was outsourcing my emotional responsibility and felt like I needed her there. Free birth is about taking radical responsibility for your own choices, but some part of me had come to believe that it was only possible if she was there with me. So then came the next piece of the surrender puzzle that was 2025: A few weeks after getting home, things had settled back to some normalcy within the extended family dynamic, and I was preparing for birth and postpartum: preparing birth supplies, cooking and filling my deep freezer with prepared meals, and connecting more with my baby and growing belly. Then, my world dropped out from under me once again, when my doula let me know she was feeling like she was unable to support my birth for personal reasons. This was obviously devastating because we'd been working closely together throughout my pregnancy and had plans for her to travel to me for birth and postpartum care, so it all of a sudden seemed as if all of my birth plans had gone out the window. But it mostly felt that way because of the dependence I'd built up, in feeling like I NEEDED my doula in my birth space, rather than WANTING her there. So I had to release, to surrender, once again.

After a couple days feeling very sad about it all, I started doing the work to release the vision for birth I had at that time. It was a long process: the first step was to release the plans we had made for my doula and her family to travel and stay at our home for a few weeks. Though I was still feeling like I needed another woman in my space, and a part of me didn't believe I could birth at home without my doula there; so I pivoted my plans. What if I did similar to my first birth and freebirthed away from home instead of at home? So I reached out to every birth worker I could find in the three closest coastal towns to me, as well as a travelling doula from further south. Everyone was booked out. The travelling doula, and one doula that lived at the coast almost 3 hours from my home could potentially support me, but my guess date window overlapped with their existing clients so that the only chance I had of their support was if the stars lined up and they weren't busy at other births. Although they were both lovely ladies and I was very tempted to take a chance with either one of them, ultimately it just didn't feel right. My intuition and my baby both said no. So it unlocked the next level of surrender: planning to birth alone.

Although I had spent most of my pregnancy feeling like I would most likely want space in labour, and had warned my doula that I may not want her in the room, just as a presence in the house - the thought of birthing fully alone with no extra set of hands was truly daunting. Though I knew I needed to face that possibility with either of the potential birth keepers that I was conversing with. So with that in mind, I swung back to the thought of staying at home - because if I ended up being on my own anyway, why did I need to leave home for that? Every time I would pretty much come to the decision to relocate to the coast for birth and take a chance with a new birth keeper, which would also include a few days of postpartum support before I came home; I would decide in my mind, and have a look at Airbnb's to see what felt right - and then half an hour later, my baby would give me the nudge "just stay home." Surrender.

I wrestled with it for a few weeks. What seemed the sensible and logical choice, just wasn't the right choice for me, my baby, or our family. Then I faced the next hurdle, sharing these thoughts with my husband. Obviously we had been communicating throughout all of this, and both our logical brains kept landing on the "sensible" solution. But he beat me to it: one day he came to me and said, 'so, I feel like we could just stay home to have the baby.' What a relief! He got it. I didn't have to try and explain my reasoning or try to convince him; he was already there.

I have been known to say "it's never too late to switch care providers or change your birth plans" and "you always have the option to just stay home and freebirth without support," and that became my truth too. During my first pregnancy I settled on the decision to freebirth around 34ish weeks, and it was a similar gestation this time that I surrendered into the choice to freebirth at home with just my husband and my 3yo.

Supplies were gathered. Contingencies were discussed. A few chosen people in our community were updated so that we had people we could call on if we felt the need to. Peace settled, as we finally stopped wrestling with the decision and chose what was needed, for all of us.

This decision culminated in the ultimate surrender: birth. But that's a story for my next blog! Add in the first two months of postpartum and 2025 truly was a year of surrender for me in so many ways. 

I've found choosing a word of the year can have a big impact on my life. Do you choose a word of the year? What is your word for 2026??