17. Can Pregnant Christian Moms Manifest a Positive Birth Experience?

Can Christian moms “manifest” a positive birth experience… or is that idea at odds with biblical truth?

In this episode, we’re unpacking a topic that’s becoming more common in pregnancy and birth spaces, even among Christians: manifestation.

You’ve maybe heard phrases like:

•  “Speak your birth into existence” 
•  “Visualize your dream birth” 
•  “Your thoughts create your reality” 

But how should we think about these ideas as Christian women?

In this episode, we thoughtfully break down:

•  What manifestation actually means (and where it comes from) 
•  How it subtly shows up in Christian birth spaces 
•  Why “name it and claim it” theology can be harmful (especially in pregnancy)
•  What the Bible really says about control, faith, and outcomes 
•  The important role mindset plays in labor (without crossing into manifestation) 
•  How to use affirmations, visualization, and preparation in a way that honors God 

If you’ve ever felt tension between wanting a peaceful, positive birth and trusting God with the unknowns, this episode will help you find a grounded, faith-filled perspective.

Because the goal isn’t controlling your birth outcome...it’s preparing wisely, trusting deeply, and walking into birth with peace.

Scripture referenced in this episode:

Psalm 115:3 "Our God is in the heavens. He does all that he pleases."

Proverbs 16:9 "The heart of plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.

James 4:13-15 "Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”"

Psalm 42:11 "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God."

 Hebrews 11 

 Matthew 26:39  "And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.""

 Colossians 1:17 "And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together."

 Psalm 31:15a "My times are in your hand."

Other resources mentioned:

Allie Stuckey's episode about pain-free birth / word of faith theology: https://podcasts.apple.com/zm/podcast/ep-1047-pain-free-birth-false-promises-bad-theology/id1359249098?i=1000664629123

Just getting started?
Use my free pregnancy and birth research checklist to jumpstart your learning.

Free roadmap to planning a natural birth:
10 Steps to Natural Birth 

Want to feel more confident making decisions in labor?
Join the Autonomous Birth Workshop to learn how to advocate for yourself and navigate birth with clarity.

Free Scripture-Based Affirmation Cards
For encouragement and truth as you prepare for birth, download my Free Scripture-Based Affirmation Cards

Connect with me on Instagram:
@rise.birth 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

You're listening to Rise, a Christian birth podcast for encouragement, education, and biblical truth for birth without fear. I'm your host, Manna, childbirth educator, Cola and Mama Three, here to help you rise above fear and prepare for a fate-filled birth. Today we are diving into a question that might feel a little bit uncomfortable at first. Can a pregnant Christian moms manifest a positive birth experience? So you might have heard language at times like you need to call in the birth that you want, you need to speak it into existence. Um, your thoughts create your reality, visualize your dream birth, and it will happen. And some of that language has kind of trickled into Christian birth spaces, sometimes subtly, sometimes more directly. And I would love to carefully unpack what manifestation actually is, why it's appealing, where it kind of conflicts with biblical theology, and how Christian women might want to think about preparation, mindset, and positive expectation. Because mindset does matter a lot. Preparation matters a lot. Your thoughts do affect your nervous system, and that's part of God's design. But God is sovereign over everything, and those two realities must sit together properly. So, what does manifesting actually mean? In popular culture, manifestation is built on this idea that your thoughts, your words, and your energy create your outcomes. It assumes that the universe responds to your declarations. So, kind of this idea that like speaking something positively attracts it, or that fear attracts negative outcomes. Certainty attracts desired outcomes. If you've ever heard somebody kind of say something negative and then someone responds, like, oh, don't speak that over me, it's that idea that like saying something negative is going to somehow attract it to your life and and make it happen. Um, this comes from a new thought philosophy called the law of attraction, which basically just suggests that positive or negative thoughts bring corresponding experiences into a person's life based on the belief that like attracts like. So the idea with that is that because we are energetic beings focusing on desired outcomes combined with visualization and gratitude, that we can manifest goals in health, wealth, relationships. But this has come into the birth space, and now it's you can manifest a positive birth experience. So, in other words, you become the determining force behind your reality. Now, in Christian spaces, it's not usually phrased quite that way. It's a little bit more subtle, a little bit more nuanced, but it sometimes sounds like you know, if I just have enough faith, I can have a pain-free birth. And there are popular quote unquote Christian books and resources that would affirm that. Like if you just have enough faith, you won't feel pain in your labor. If I don't speak about complications, they won't happen. If I visualize the perfect birth, God will give it to me, or if I pray hard enough or whatever. Or like sometimes I've heard people say, like, oh, I don't want to talk about the possibility of a C-section or in a planned home birth. I don't even want to think about preparing for the possibility of transferring to the hospital because I just don't want to speak that into existence. I don't want that to happen, so I'm not gonna talk about it because I don't want to jinx myself somehow. A lot of Christian mamas and even Christian birth workers in the birth space have come across this book called Supernatural Childbirth by Jackie Mice. It's been around since the 1990s, but it was republished in 2018, and it has a significant following in Christian pregnancy and birth circles. It's marketed as a faith-based resource, and I understand the appeal. We all want to approach birth with faith and not fear. That's like part of my whole thing. But the issue is that the premise of the book is that with enough faith, you can command your body to obey your faith declarations and experience a pregnancy and birth completely free from nausea, pain, complications, all of it. My's writes that she's talking about going through labor without pain and delivery, without stitches or anesthetic through faith declarations. And that's not a biblical promise. That is what's sometimes called word of faith theology. It's like this name it and claim it framework. Ali Bastucki actually did a really thorough breakdown of this book on her podcast. I'll make sure and put a link to that episode in the show notes. I would encourage you to listen to that if you want a deeper theological dive into that book in particular, but she connects the pain-free birth movement directly to word of faith theology. And she makes the point that this framework actually burdens women by implying that if your birth was hard or painful or didn't go the way that you had hoped, it was because your faith wasn't strong enough. That is not the gospel. That's not what God promises. This isn't very far off from the book The Secret 2, that massive bestseller that became a cultural phenomenon in the mid-2000s. The entire premise of the secret is that your thoughts and declarations attract corresponding outcomes from the universe. The language is different, but the theology or whack thereof is very similar. You are the one calling reality into being. And when that idea gets baptized in Christian-sounding language and applied to something as vulnerable and emotionally touched as birth, it can do real damage. Scripture is very crystal clear about who holds outcomes. Psalm 115 3, our God is in the heavens, he does all that he pleases. Proverbs 16, 9, the heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. James 4, verses 13 through 15 talks about boasting about tomorrow, and it says, Come now, you who say, Today or tomorrow, we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit, yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. The consistent biblical pattern is we plan, we prepare, we act wisely, but God determines the outcome. Manifestation theology says, my certainty produces the result. Biblical theology says, God's will produces the result. That's a huge distinction. So does mindset matter though? Yes. And here's where it's really important because just because manifestation theology is unbiblical doesn't mean that your mindset is irrelevant. Your thoughts absolutely affect your body, and that is part of God's design. Proverbs 17, 22 says, a joyful heart is good medicine. Romans 12.2 tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Philippians 4.8 instructs us to dwell on what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable. So scripture does affirm that your inner thoughts do matter. And in labor specifically, we know that fear increases adrenaline. Adrenaline can inhibit oxytocin. Oxytocin is the hormone that drives your labor and helps you to cope with pain. Tension increases pain perception. So if you're feeling a lot of fear, you're probably going to hold more tension and that's going to make your contractions feel more painful. Feeling safe and confident, which would be something happening in your brain, can actually promote progress in your labor. So cultivating peace and truth and courage is important, but it's not manifesting. It's wisdom. And the difference is that we renew our minds in submission to God, not to control him, not to control outcomes, not to control providers and staff, and not to control everything that's happening in your body, but to submit to God who is in control. And everything that we're doing to prepare is an offering to him. So what about affirmations? Because affirmations can kind of go hand in hand with that manifestation idea. Birth affirmations are really common. Things like my body was made for this. Each contraction brings me closer to my baby. I can do hard things. Are those wrong? I I think it just depends on the foundation. You know, if affirmations are attempts to override fear by sheer self-belief, they I think they can subtly center yourself as kind of the ultimate controller and maker of your labor and how things go. Like if it becomes all I need to do to prepare for birth is to just say my affirmations every day, and if I just believe them hard enough, then everything will work out. But if affirmations are rooted in biblical truth, they become kind of declarations of just what is true under God. So for example, instead of there's a popular affirmation that's like, I'm powerful, I have everything that I need. Instead of that, it can become God designed my body wisely. The Lord is with me in this, I'm not alone. Even David in the Psalms speaks to himself. That's um Psalm 42. He's actively redirecting his own thoughts. So it's not manifestation, that's preaching truth to your own heart. Visualization is another really common preparation tool. Athletes use it, performers use it, mothers preparing for birth use it. So a few years ago, I ran a half marathon. I had given birth to my son in February, and then we signed up for this half marathon in November. So nine months postpartum. I am not a runner. I guess I kind of am now, but I have never been a runner. Um, I did cross country in high school and I was terrible. I literally came in last every single race. I that's not an exaggeration. Literally last place every single race. So I don't have a running background, but I just decided that I was gonna make this happen. I was just gonna do whatever it took. I I really believe that if I just worked really hard at it, that I could eventually do it. And so we picked a November race so that I would have a hard deadline, so I would be forced to train. I was following this training guideline. The race time limits I thought were accessible for somebody who's not a runner. So I think it was like you had to average like a 16-minute mile over the whole course. And I felt like, okay, I I can surely get to that point and do that. And during training, and really actually during the race itself, when I was feeling really tired and starting to really doubt myself if I was actually gonna be able to get to the finish line, I think the most miles I had done in one go before the actual race was like eight. So I was still several miles short of ever having actually gone the full half marathon distance at one time. And whenever I would start to really just doubt if I was actually gonna be able to do it and wondering why I had signed up for this, I would find myself imagining what that would feel like to cross that finish line. Like I would just picture it in my mind what that would feel like, how accomplished I would feel, how rewarding it would be, and just having that sense of like, wow, I did something that felt so impossible and so unattainable for most of my life. After all of that, I actually did it. And I would just imagine what that would feel like. Now I want you to understand, imagining crossing that finish line did not cause me to cross the finish line. Like visualizing it isn't what made it happen. Like I didn't visualize it into reality. I still had to run every single training mile. I still had to show up on race day. I still had to actually run every mile of that race. There was no shortcut. The visualization didn't produce the outcome. But imagining it was a very powerful motivator for me. So it gave me something to move toward. It gave me something in my head that I was like, I really, really want that, and I'm gonna work really, really hard so that I can have that feeling. And it made the hard work feel purposeful and worth it. And that's a very different thing from believing that if I just pictured it clearly enough and with enough certainty that the universe would make it happen. That's the distinction with birth visualization, too. There's nothing wrong with imagining yourself calm and focused in labor and breathing through contractions and moving well and feeling supported by your team. Mentally rehearsing those things is actually really useful. I a lot of my educational materials and even some of my online courses actually include practice scenarios and practice dialogues that you can act out and literally try to imagine, like, okay, you're in labor, this thing happens, you got this suggestion, how are you gonna talk it out and what are you gonna do? I think that's very helpful and it actually helps your nervous system to practice calm responses before you need them. Athletes call this mental rehearsal. It's a it's a legitimate preparation tool. But the concern arises when visualization becomes like picturing it is going to make it happen. That crosses into presumption. Hebrews 11 is a really cool chapter that kind of goes through a few big names in the Bible and the ways that they stepped out in faithful obedience to God, not having certainty and outcomes, and definitely not always seeing how things were gonna work out, but having confidence in God. Faith says, Lord, I trust you whether this birth unfolds exactly as I hope, or not. Jesus himself models this in Gethsemane. If it be possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. So he expresses the desire. Um, that was Matthew 26, 39. He expresses that desire, he expresses his preference, but he also submits his will to God's will. And that is the posture that he's modeling for us to take into birth. I think these ideas and manifestation are so appealing in pregnancy because it feels so vulnerable and so unpredictable. Manifestation offers something really tempting, which is control. If I can think the right thoughts, say the right words, avoid the wrong fears, then maybe I can guarantee safety. But the gospel frees us from that burden. Colossians 1.17 says, In Him all things hold together, not in our mindset, not in our declarations, not in our visualizations or affirmations, not in our emotional discipline, but in him. And that is deeply comforting. I had a mentor in college who always used to say, Don't seek comfort, seek the comforter. And that's a mic drop right there. So, how should Christian women prepare for labor and birth? Prepare your body, learn coping skills, practice breathing, cultivate courage, replace lies in your life with truth. So when you feel fears come up, don't just push them down, don't just say, I'm not thinking that because I don't want to make it happen by attracting it to myself. But identify that fear and then replace it with truth. Surround yourself with scripture. Pray boldly for a peaceful birth and also that God will strengthen you and give you faith if what you're hoping is not what comes to pass. And release the illusion that your preparation actually controls the outcome. You are responsible for obedience, you are responsible for stewardship, but God is responsible for outcomes. That distinction protects your heart from pride if things go smoothly, and it protects your heart from shame if they don't. So, no, if you ask me, Christians cannot manifest a positive birth experience, not in the way that culture defines manifestation. We don't speak outcomes into existence, we don't control reality with our thoughts, we don't bend God's will with declarations, but we can prepare faithfully, renew our minds biblically, pray expectantly, and trust completely because ultimately every birth outcome rests in the hands of a sovereign, wise, and loving God. Psalm 3115 says, My times are in your hands. That includes Labor Day, and that truth brings far more peace than manifestation ever could. I would love to give you my free scripture based affirmation cards to help you ground yourself in the truth of God's word. So look for that in the show notes. You'll just have to put your email address in and then it will immediately send you the PDF. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next time.