seven of pentacles: tarot card meaning
Do you trust the timing of things? The Seven of Pentacles wants you to have faith that it’s all working out perfectly.
So much of my job as a birth doula is helping the birthing couple let go of control regarding the big question of when baby will show up. Although we’re obsessed with “due dates” anywhere between 37 and 42 weeks is fair game. There’s no “early” or “late”. Baby doesn’t have a calendar in the womb, I like to tell my worried clients.
Despite telling others to chillax, I haven’t always been that easygoing about the timing of things myself. As a new doula I made myself sick over it, panicking every time my cell phone momentarily lost signal, losing sleep over when I’d get the call and having my bags packed by the front door for days on end. My nervous system paid the price; after two years I burned out and put myself on sabbatical.
When I returned to the work I made a decision that this time I would trust the Universe to handle the timing of my births. If a couple interviewed but didn’t hire me, I assumed that they would be birthing on the same day as another of my clients. When a woman began to have signs while I was with someone else, I would trust that her pre-labor would be long enough to give me time to finish the current birth. When I was scared that I wouldn’t have enough energy to get through one, two, or three possible births on the horizon, I trusted that somehow it would all work out.
This seems naïve but actually, if you ask most doulas how often they have to use their backup (another doula we have on call for us, just in case we are unavailable), they will tell you that it’s almost never. In my entire career I’ve used my backup precisely once. Of course, that doesn’t stop us from fretting; you try staying calm when three women are all texting you that they just lost their mucus plug.
But back to the decision I made to do it differently. Before every birth I started to write down my fears, the most common of which were as follows:
I’M SCARED THAT THE TIMING OF THIS BIRTH WILL CONFLICT WITH ANOTHER BIRTH.
I’M SCARED THAT I WON’T HAVE ENOUGH ENERGY FOR THIS BIRTH/THE NEXT BIRTH/MY LIFE.
I’M SCARED THAT BECAUSE I’M SO TIRED MY CLIENT WILL THINK I’M SHIT AND THEN HATE ME.
Once I had written them down I would offer my fears to the Universe, promising to act as if it was all going to work out. Then I would get the fuck on with my day. Afterwards I would review said fears to see which ones had come true. The results were astonishing: it worked out. Every. Single. Time.
Some examples:
I had three clients - all with wildly different “due dates” - having birthing signs on the same day. One of them went that night, another drank some water and the labor went away for a few days (if you start to feel contractions, drink something, you might just be dehydrated) and the third one ultimately waited another month.
I got home from a very long birth and was just taking off my shoes when another woman texted to say she was feeling something. I made myself a strong black tea, told the Universe I trusted that I would have enough energy and was miraculously fine for her relatively short birth (that still lasted all night). I even got to sleep an hour in the middle.
I was waiting on one client who had been having on/off contractions for a week, when a second one went into labor and I had to go to her birth instead. After I texted the first, joking that she needed to cross her legs, her labor backed off and - at the end of twenty four hours at birth number one - I went home, slept two hours and was able to function remarkably well during the second birth, offering amazing support right to the end.
At 1am on Christmas day I got a call from a woman to say she was going into labor. The average first timer will take about 24 hours, so I kissed my partner goodbye, wished him Merry Christmas and asked him to save me some turkey. She birthed twenty minutes after I arrived and I was home in time to help cook dinner.
I could go on and on but you get the point.
You’d think that after all this evidence, my left brain would stop worrying. But the amazing thing about brains is their capacity for pessimism in the face of all evidence to the contrary. “Yes, it’s worked out every time so far”, my mind would concede. “But THIS time it’s going to be a gong show.”
And then, perhaps after a little weeping and a couple of cookies, I would pull the Seven of Pentacles and be reminded that the timing is not in my hands and is therefore in very good hands. Honestly it’s probably why the Universe decided to put babies inside our bellies. If humans laid eggs we wouldn’t be able to stop ourselves from “just checking” and would open them up to make sure that our little ones were growing okay in there. Sigh.
Trust the timing of all things, says Seven of Pentacles. Your brain says you can’t but the Universe says you can.