Hannah Brennan

Always giving me the lead, she would ask me questions that made me reflect.

In one of our early prenatal sessions, with my characteristic desire to know and understand, I asked the questions that you ask when you've never had a baby before.

How will I know when I'm in proper labor?

When will you come?

What will happen next?

She sat on her stool in front of us, swaying slightly, thoughtful and attentive, and said,

You are not going to do labor.

Labor is going to do you.

For this birth to go the way that you want it to, you are going to have to get out of your head and trust your body's wisdom.

Trust my body's wisdom?

Trust the wisdom that doesn't come from my head?

What does that mean?

How do you do that?

As I reflected more, childhood memories began to return.

As a child and a teen, kids had ruthlessly teased me.

Teased me for being sensitive and overweight, treating me like something comic and unfeeling.

Because I was overweight, men would shout mean things at me in the street.

No one in the magazines or on TV looked like me.

I received the clear message that I was neither valuable nor desirable.

This indelible part of me that everyone could see, my body, I considered a failure.