When it doesn't go to plan...
what a missed marathon reminded me about birth
When I was pregnant with my first baby, someone told me that labour is like running a marathon.
I loved that. I’d run marathons. I knew about training, about the quiet bargaining with yourself somewhere around the 30 kilometre mark, and about the feeling of crossing the line.
I remember thinking: I know how to do hard things. I’ve got this.
Then labour happened.
Thirty hours of it.
Here’s what nobody told me: the comparison falls apart in the place that matters most.
In a marathon, you know the distance. It’s 42.2 kilometres. Every marker is a small promise. You can break it into pieces, tick them off and tell yourself only ten to go.
In labour, there are no markers. Nobody can tell you whether you’re at 20 kilometres or 40. Nobody can say whether the end is an hour away or another day. For most of my first labour, I had no idea where the finish line was. And that is its own kind of hard.
Still, the comparison isn’t useless.
There are things the two really do share. It’s worth preparing: for the strength of your body, but just as much for the strength of your mind. The people around you matter enormously. And when you reach the end, there’s a reward. In a marathon it’s a medal. In birth, it’s a baby, which is the better prize by a very long way.
But there’s another way they’re alike. One I only truly understood this week.
The marathon I didn't run...
This past weekend, I was supposed to run a marathon.
I trained for it. I gave it months. And then, a month before the race, I had an operation, then two weeks before it, I was hit with tonsillitis so fierce it knocked me flat.
On the day, I simply wasn’t well enough to run.
It wasn’t my fault. I know that. I could say it a hundred times, and some part of me would still ask:
what if I’d done something differently? Did I fail?
The disappointment surprised me with how heavy it was.
It wasn’t only about the race.
It was the sense of having worked so hard towards something that then didn’t arrive.
Of having done everything “right” and still not getting the ending I’d pictured.
And that was when it hit me.
That is exactly what I hear from so many mums after a birth that didn’t go the way they hoped. How I felt after my first birth...
You read the books. You took the classes. You practised the breathing. You wrote the birth plan. You prepared your mind and your body for a natural birth, and then something changed. Perhaps it was a caesarean. Perhaps it was an induction, an epidural, or a very different kind of day to the one you’d imagined. Afterwards you’re left wondering:
Did I fail?
Was it something I did?
Was I not strong enough?
I want to say, as clearly as I can: no.
if that's you...
You didn’t fail.
Your body didn’t fail.
Birth isn’t a test you pass or fail, and it isn’t a performance with a score at the end.
You can feel two things at the same time.
You can be endlessly grateful for your baby, and you can also feel sad, angry or let down by the way your birth went.
Both are true.
One doesn’t cancel the other. You don’t have to be “just grateful”, and you’re not being ungrateful when you grieve what you hoped for.
This week, I’ve been giving myself the same grace. I’ve been letting myself be disappointed. I’ve stopped asking what I did wrong. And I’ve been reminding myself that all the preparation I did wasn’t wasted. It made me stronger, even though the race didn’t happen.
The same is true of you. The preparation you did for your birth, the courage it took, the way you showed up, none of that went to waste either. You gave birth. You brought a person into the world. The way it happened doesn’t make you less strong, less capable or less of a mum.
If you’re carrying this around, I’d love you to know you’re in very good company. And if you’d like to tell me your story, my inbox is always open.
I won’t judge, and I won’t try to fix it. I’ll just listen.
As for the marathon? I’ll find another one. And I’ll cross that line again, eventually.
As a birth photographer, I also want you to know this: every birth is worth remembering, however it unfolds.
Caesareans, inductions, long labours, short ones.
Each is a story, and each deserves to be told beautifully.
If these feelings feel heavy or don’t ease with time, please speak to your midwife, doctor or a perinatal mental health professional. You deserve support too.
