Writing of obstetrics as understood in Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy includes this remarkable comment: "The new idea, conceived and born of Truth and Love, is clad in white garments. Its beginning will be meek, its growth sturdy, and its maturity undecaying."Science and Health, p. 463. What a lovely blessing, really! What a promise! It is a hope any mother would have for her new baby. And any father would be glad to know his little one is so secure. How do we realize this blessing—what is demanded? It's essential to gain and maintain a spiritual concept of birth.
We need to see birth as spiritual unfoldment and growth in the understanding of man as the perfect idea of God, divine Love. The paragraph in the Christian Science textbook with the marginal heading "Scientific obstetrics" is a perfect guide for this adventure of gaining a true understanding of birth. In it Mrs. Eddy states: "To attend properly the birth of the new child, or divine idea, you should so detach mortal thought from its material conceptions, that the birth will be natural and safe." Ibid. This change of thought from material conceptions to spiritual ideas is important for harmonious delivery, because it frees us to experience the unfolding of a new spiritual idea in consciousness, the awakening to a higher concept of man as purely spiritual, not limited and physical.
This awakening involves our regeneration—turning from a mortal, self-centered approach to express more unselfed love. Regeneration not only puts the birth on a safe basis; it helps us be better individuals, better husbands and wives, and better parents. In a world of widespread materialism, this spiritual perception of being may not be easy to achieve. It does mean firmly rejecting the general belief in matter as cause and effect and uplifting consciousness to discern the Christ-idea, born of Truth and Love. And this realization brings the new birth to us. To the degree that one glimpses this spiritual sense of birth, the human experience of birth will be safer and more natural.
