For me, Labour Day has a slightly different meaning and memory for me than it probably does for most people.

Sure, it’s a long weekend. It’s the unofficial transition between late summer and early fall. It’s back to school.

But for me, in 2017, it had a much more literal meaning as I anxiously awaited the arrival of my first child, who was literally due on Labour Day.

I loved the irony of it. The appropriateness of him being due on Labour Day.

oh, sweet lisa

Flashback to 2017, which doesn’t feel that long ago and yet, when I think of myself in 2017, I feel like I’m talking about a completely different person.

A person who had yet to be completely neurologically rewired by motherhood.

Oh, sweet Lisa.

How you thought you knew everything about children and babies and parenting and what kind of parent you would be, based on all the blog posts and Instagram videos you had consumed.

How you believed you were in control of the process and could make something adorable like a birth plan that would, naturally, go according to plan.

That was a very different version of myself.

All the women in my family give birth late. My mom had four children and was induced overdue with all four. I knew that my DNA was inclined in that direction, but don’t worry. I was wildly overconfident.

I was in complete control of my body, my fate, my future, my destiny.

If I did every single thing I read about in the baby books, my child would be born on my terms, on time, exactly as I had envisioned it.

doing all the things

I did all the things.

I ate the spicy food. I bounced on bouncy balls. I took every piece of advice, whether or not I even believed in it.

At one of my last midwife appointments, I endured a stretch and sweep, which we won’t go into here. But for anyone who has had the extreme displeasure: I have to say it was one of the things I was least prepared for during pregnancy and childbirth, one of the most painful experiences of my entire life, and something I remember far more vividly than childbirth itself.

At that appointment, my midwife joked that I was -1 cm dilated.

I laughed along, but inside I was deeply upset.

This wasn’t the plan.

This wasn’t how I wanted it to go.

I wanted her to tell me I was ready any second.

She sent me for an ultrasound a few days later, as I was going past my due date, to check on the baby.

The lovely ultrasound tech made a joke. “Oh yeah, he’s got plenty of fluid in there. He could stay in there for another month.”

I promptly burst into tears.

I knew she was kidding, and yet the idea of another month of pregnancy was the most horrifying thing I could possibly imagine.

the five-week-early baby

Then, to add a twist of fate, a friend of mine who was also pregnant, and due five weeks after me, gave birth on my due date.

I was still struggling with the knowledge that my baby apparently had no intentions of being born when I got a cute text from her saying that her baby had arrived five weeks early.

Now, she was navigating her own enormous struggle and the reality of welcoming a five-week-premature baby. It wasn’t a competition.

But for some reason, that piece of information took my already fragile mood and put it into a very bad place.

Up until this point in my life, most things had felt within my control. If I want something, I figure out a plan to get it. If I want something to happen, I work hard, learn things and achieve my goals. If I don’t know how to do something, I Google it and then I know how to do it.

Motherhood, as I was about to learn, doesn’t care how much you plan or hope or have visions for how something will go, at the end of the day, it’s not only up to you.

ten days

The ten days between my due date and my son’s arrival are a bit of a fog.

Yes. Ten days.

I did a lot of walking. A lot of bouncing on balls.

Everyone told me to relax. Nap. Enjoy yourself while you can! 

I knew it was a time to savour and enjoy, and yet all I could do was completely fixate on:

When is the baby coming?

What can I do to make him come?

Why isn’t he coming when I want him to?

And so, with tears and a growing feeling of this is not how I wanted this to go, I scheduled my induction.

Looking back, I wish I hadn’t been so afraid of induction. At the time, it felt like the worst possible thing.

Now it feels like just another wonderful way of welcoming a baby into the world.

The details mattered so much to me then. They don’t matter nearly as much to me now.

the night before

The night before my induction, I was in a positively foul mood.

Looking back, I think there was one major issue hanging over my head:

I believed I had failed.

I had failed to deliver my baby on time.

I had failed to work hard enough to follow the plan I had so clearly laid out.

I know now that this is absolute crap, but that was my headspace at the time.

I packed my hospital bag and went to the grocery store for snacks, an angry, emotional mess.

To make matters worse, I felt like shit from about 5 p.m. onwards. I was having weird cramps and symptoms that were really irritating me.

Can you see where I’m going with this?

I was in early labour.

I just hadn’t figured that out yet.

apparently, this was labour

I went to bed trying to get a good sleep, even though I knew that was unlikely.

I can’t sleep the night before I board an airplane, let alone the night before I bring my first child into the world and experience labour and delivery for the first time.

But I couldn’t sleep.

I was feeling more and more uncomfortable. Finally, around 11 p.m., I realized the cramps were becoming rhythmic and more intense.

But as you learn in prenatal class, it’s not real labour and real contractions unless they start to settle into a bit of a rhythm.

Looking back, this is also when I learned that not everything you learn in prenatal class will be true for you.

My contractions never settled into a regular pattern. In fact, they never did for either of my labours.

So I spent the hours between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. thinking I was just having weird indigestion cramps that were preventing me from sleeping.

When really, I was in labour.

At 5 a.m., we called the midwife to tell her what was going on because it had finally occurred to me:

Wait. Maybe this is labour.

She thought it was unlikely based on what I described and said that if I was okay and could keep going, we should just meet at the hospital at 8 a.m. as planned.

When she checked me, she was shocked and delighted to tell me I was already 6 cm dilated.

“This is amazing. You’ll be out of here by noon!” 

Guess what?

I wasn’t.

My son arrived about eleven and a half hours later. 

Let’s save part two of that story for another day, but needless to say, things went positively off the rails and nothing went as it was supposed to.

what I didn't know yet

I’ve talked before about my experience with postpartum anxiety, and it’s a topic that I strongly feel we should talk about more.

Another time, I’ll delve into how I believe this birthing experience — and my first real experience of things not being within my control — contributed to a lot of my postpartum experience.

Some birth trauma. Wildly high expectations for what things were going to be like. Extreme hormonal fluctuations.

It all sent me down a path that took me years to recover from.

At the time, I didn’t know any of that was coming.

I just knew that my baby was late and that was not the plan I signed off on.

nine years later

That same little boy who wouldn’t arrive on time is about to turn nine years old, and my brain is struggling to fathom this.

I told someone earlier today that he’s turning nine soon and then immediately thought to myself, "Wait. No. That can’t be right."

But indeed, he will be nine.

And guess what?

That guy still isn’t the best at arriving on time for things.

He got it from his mama.

So, I wish you a happy Labour Day, whatever life phase you’re in, and send along a gentle reminder that the best-laid plans are only that:

Plans.

One of the greatest challenges in my life — and I’m sure some of you can relate — is learning that, at the end of the day, our job is to roll with the punches.

Because as much as we like to try to predict the future and control our destinies, a lot of things are going to go how they’re going to go.

And the more you can relax and trust the process, the easier those things will be.

Sometimes the baby comes ten days late.

Sometimes the birth plan goes completely out the window.

Sometimes the thing you were so afraid of turns out to be completely fine.

And sometimes, nine years later, the little boy who taught you all of this is still making you wait for him.

Happy Labour Day. 🤍