Open Hands, Open Heart: The Power of Surrender in Pregnancy and Birth

There’s a deep kind of strength that comes not from control, but from surrender.

As a midwife, I find myself talking about surrender with nearly every expecting mother who walks through our doors.

Learning to surrender during pregnancy and birth doesn’t mean giving up. It means releasing what you can’t control in order to be fully present, open, and ready to receive your birth as it unfolds.

Let’s talk about what this kind of surrender really means, what we can influence along the way, and how to begin practicing the art of letting go.

What Does Surrender in Pregnancy and Birth Mean?

When I talk about surrender, I’m not talking about being passive. Surrender is active. It’s choosing to accept a beautiful truth: Your baby is going to come, and the more you relax and release into that reality, the better you’ll be able to receive how your birth unfolds.

Despite the responsibility we feel as mamas, so much of labor is out of our hands. We can’t control when it will start, how long it will last, what it will sound like, or how it will feel. We don’t know in advance whether we’ll be loud or quiet, whether our labor will be quick or slow, or — despite our care and planning — whether we’ll push in the tub or on a hospital bed.

Often, our reality is that the more we try to exert control, the harder everything becomes. We can actually miss the story unfolding in front of us when we try to force a script we wrote ahead of time.

I often encourage moms to relax their hands, turning their palms upward. When we open our hands like this, it’s much harder to tense our bodies than when we’re making tight fists. This simple act alone can help us open up physically and emotionally.

The Four Pillars: What You Can Influence

Again, surrender doesn’t mean doing nothing. We still take measures to care well for ourselves and our babies during pregnancy. I suggest focusing on four key areas, like the four legs of a sturdy stool: sleep, movement, food, and stress.

These are factors mamas can influence, and tending to them helps lay a steady foundation for labor and birth. Of course, external factors still impact what you’re able to accomplish even in these areas, but it’s not about being perfect. It’s simply about supporting your body however you’re able in your specific circumstances.

First, sleep matters, as much as you can get it. If you’re struggling with insomnia or restless legs or you just can’t seem to stay asleep, that’s worth bringing up with your midwife. We can talk through strategies to help!

Movement is key too. Aim for about 30 minutes of intentional movement 4–5 days a week. That could be walking, stretching, dancing, prenatal yoga, whatever type of movement you love! The goal is simply to move your body, not push it beyond what feels right.

Then there’s food. I always recommend eating nourishing, real foods that fuel your body well. Think protein, healthy fats, veggies, citrus fruits, and berries. This may prove challenging when cravings appear, but again, it’s not about perfection. It’s about making intentional choices where you can to support your health and your baby’s development.

And finally, stress. You don’t have to get rid of stress entirely, which is good, since many stressors aren’t within our control. Instead, I suggest looking for healthy ways of managing stress. This might look like counseling, journaling, prayer, warm baths before bed, breath work, or winding down each night with a cup of tea and magnesium.

Caring for the four pillars helps to reduce risks, support a healthy pregnancy, and prepare you for labor. But even if you do everything “right,” some things still fall outside your control.

The Nature of Surrender: Embracing the Uncontrollable

Sometimes just making it to 37 weeks feels like the goal, and then you’re ready to be done. But baby might not be ready to come yet. Trusting that labor will unfold at the right time for you and your baby tends to lead to a better experience overall.

In fact, I consistently notice that moms who accept that they may be pregnant until 41+ weeks often have their babies a little earlier. Meanwhile, moms who insist they won’t go past their due dates seem to end up going to 41 or 42 weeks. This isn’t every case, of course, but the point here is that so much of this process is about mindset.

There are no “shoulds” in labor and birth. You might have a beautiful vision of where and how you’ll birth, but labor could unfold differently than you imagined. Surrender means accepting that possibility — even if it isn’t the ideal — and recognizing that it isn’t your fault.

Even when you do everything “right,” complications can arise that are completely beyond your control. If your placenta is covering your cervix, for example, it’s not because you did anything wrong. It just means your beautiful baby may need to arrive a different way than you planned.

How to Surrender

The truth is, there’s no “right” way to birth. But without surrender, you can end up disappointed when reality doesn’t measure up to an ideal.

Surrender looks like letting go of your tight grip on how you hoped it would be, and making space to receive what is. It looks like turning your palms up — literally and metaphorically — and opening to the experience that’s here, while simultaneously releasing what you planned.

Sometimes surrender is physical. Why do so many mamas go into labor in the middle of the night? Something about that quiet, that stillness and softening, not to mention some hormonal influences, seems to invite labor to begin. Instead of walking, doing Spinning Babies exercises, eating dates, or drinking raspberry leaf tea — as much as I support all those things — mom is sleeping. She’s resting. Her palms are open.

Sometimes surrender is emotional. So many times, I’ll have a mom come in at the end of her pregnancy, and she’s hit a wall. She’s just done, and she feels she’s reached the end of herself. And then — often, but not always — she’ll call me that very night in labor because her body and heart have finally released.

Birth isn’t something you make happen. It’s something that comes in its own time.

Birth is received, not forced.

Trusting Your Body, Trusting the Process

Surrender doesn’t mean not caring. It means shifting your focus from controlling the outcome to trusting the process. You’ve done your part. Now it’s time to trust your body, trust your care team — and trust God.

With birth stories becoming popular on social media, moms sometimes inadvertently cling to idealistic expectations of how birth “should” look. When their experience doesn’t match the highlight reels, it creates feelings of failure or disappointment.

If your story doesn’t go the way you imagine, it’s okay to grieve that. You can let yourself feel the disappointment without getting stuck there. Finding a safe place to process and working toward acceptance may be helpful. Surrender is as much about allowing yourself the space to feel and process waves of emotions as it is about letting go.

However your birth unfolds, that story is yours alone. No one else birthed your baby. That’s your unique journey, and nothing can change it once your baby is in your arms.

Surrender in Pregnancy and Birth: Final Thoughts

Pregnancy and birth ask so much of you — not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually too. You can prepare and plan and support your body well, and still be asked to release and surrender in ways that feel deep and vulnerable.

That’s not failure. That’s birth.

Let yourself receive it with open hands.