Last night I decided to have a conversation with Merritt about coming. I have known for some time that Havala is anxious and Merritt is the recalcitrant one. A few days ago I had a talk with him about getting ready, and he moved from my right hip to the center, switching places with Caradoc and shoving Forrest into Laird. It was a very cool sensation to feel this mass movement, and Kevin said he could see the whole thing from the outside.

So, with this in mind, I reached to touch Merritt. I was immediately overwhelmed by the most mind-numbing, paralyzing, throat-clenching terror I have ever experienced. I was frozen, unable to move, breathe until I let go of Merritt. I asked my husband to ask him some questions as his fear was too overwhelming for me to be able to communicate. My husband put his hand on my belly, and after a few minutes told me that he was afraid of the cold.

We spent some time re-explaining to Merritt the birth process, emphasizing the warmth of the water, and how he would be held immediately. This only vaguely reassured him. After my husband spent some minutes talking to him, I was able to touch him again without being frozen, just very afraid.

Then it hit me. How would Merritt know about the cold? My womb isn't cold. There is no physical frame of reference. We believe that we existed as spirits before this life, and that we do not cease to exist with death. We believe that one of the reasons that God sent us to this earth is to learn the things that we could not hope to comprehend without a physical body; things like pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, hot and... cold.

How then could he fear cold so absolutely? Kevin made the suggestion that maybe he had talked to someone who had already gone through life or a "ghost teacher" as he put it. That made sense, so I asked him about it. The answer was a resounding "Yes."

He told me that it was my brother, Nephi, with whom he had been talking. Then he showed me Nephi's birth. I saw a tiny red baby, held out in the air by doctors who had just taken him by Csec, ripped from a warm womb into a terrifying and overly airconditioned operating room. I never believed in birth trauma before, but to feel my brother's birth like that, the overwhelming terror and sense of all pervasive cold.

It was quick work to explain to Merritt the differences between a home waterbirth and a hospital Cesarean section. Calm and tranquility filled him/me. Once again I am so grateful for the birth choices that I am being led to make.