Article February 9, 1974 Issue

Spiritual Preparation for the New Child

AUDREY B. WILCK

Through the study and practice of Christian Science my thought was lifted out of a material view of pregnancy, birth, and infancy. I began to gain a spiritual view of man as the eternal expression of God, infinite Life, never born, never proceeding through stages of material growth. What freedom these thoughts can bring to an expectant mother!

I started my preparation for the expected birth by studying a paragraph with the marginal heading "Scientific obstetrics" in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. One sentence reads, "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."^{Science and Health, p. 463;}

I was learning in Christian Science that the "new child" is really a divine idea—God's child. Right away I began to welcome this new idea in my thought. To make room for it humanly, I first had to make room for it in my thinking. Further study of the Bible and the writings of Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, helped me understand that birth is the appearance to human comprehension of an idea that God has always known. Since God is eternal, all His ideas exist forever and are forever unfolding in Him. God, as Mind, is eternally conscious of His own creation, which is, always has been, and ever will be, complete. To our consciousness, new ideas unfold and develop, but they have preexisted in Mind before our awaking to them. Christ Jesus referred to his preexistence when he said, "Before Abraham was, I am."^{John 8:58;} He knew his life was not confined within the limits of his earth experience.