Every few months, I will come upon another article online talking about the merits of having your child vaginally and naturally versus having a c-section.
For some reason I cannot fully comprehend, many women consider c-sections to be either a) the easy way out or, b) not truly giving birth at all. It's frustrating and hurtful and can do serious damage to women who are already in a vulnerable place because of the circumstances surrounding the birth of their child(ren).
For some reason I cannot fully comprehend, many women consider c-sections to be either a) the easy way out or, b) not truly giving birth at all. It's frustrating and hurtful and can do serious damage to women who are already in a vulnerable place because of the circumstances surrounding the birth of their child(ren).
***
Why are women so quick to judge and decide what is right and wrong? Why is something so incredibly personal as the birth of a child open to so much discussion with people who are not even involved? Why can we not, as women, be sympathetic and understanding and SUPPORTIVE?
Why is birth (and, truly, ALL things mothering) even up for debate?
Why are women so quick to judge and decide what is right and wrong? Why is something so incredibly personal as the birth of a child open to so much discussion with people who are not even involved? Why can we not, as women, be sympathetic and understanding and SUPPORTIVE?
Why is birth (and, truly, ALL things mothering) even up for debate?
It's something I think about often. I always come up empty. Most often, I come up struck silent. I do not understand.
***
Let's tackle the first part: C-sections are the easy way out. I am so beyond angry and beyond words for that one.
If having your entire abdomen sliced open (while you lie paralyzed from then neck down), your inner organs removed from your body and pushed aside, your baby practically tugged and pulled and ripped from your body, only to have your organs put back inside your body, your inner bits sutured, and then our outer bits (most often) stapled back together is "easy," I am not sure the definition of easy is completely understood.
Walking is horrific afterward. You are often gotten up off your few a few hours after MAJOR abdominal surgery to get yourself walking around. Your insides feel like they are falling out. You cannot stand upright. You cannot cough or laugh. You cannot sit or stand without help. You can not use the toilet without holding on to people or bars perched around the toilet. You piss through a catheter and make do with liquids at first.
They listen to your stomach periodically to make sure your intestines are working correctly and that food and drink are traveling where they need to. You see, your intestines are not in the same place they once were. Your inside-y bits are flipped and twisted and flipped again. Like spaghetti, they are now somewhere else. Your legs are checked regularly for blood clots and are massaged and moved and made to carry your morphine riddled body to the bathroom or down the hall or just past the pull out couch in your room on which your husband is sleeping peacefully and SNORING four hours after you have a baby cut out of you, while you are now being forced to jump out of bed and make your rounds, right after screaming out OH FUCK and then promptly vomiting on the floor in pain.
Then picking yourself up again and walking your ass to the bathroom to be hosed down by the most amazing and gentle nurses who have ever lived.
You cannot hold your baby in your arms, but must hold her off to the side, so that she doesn't press down on your incision. The football hold becomes your new best friend for breastfeeding, which, I am not going to lie, did not help with my fantasy images of breastfeeding my newborn baby.
***
***
Let's tackle the first part: C-sections are the easy way out. I am so beyond angry and beyond words for that one.
If having your entire abdomen sliced open (while you lie paralyzed from then neck down), your inner organs removed from your body and pushed aside, your baby practically tugged and pulled and ripped from your body, only to have your organs put back inside your body, your inner bits sutured, and then our outer bits (most often) stapled back together is "easy," I am not sure the definition of easy is completely understood.
Walking is horrific afterward. You are often gotten up off your few a few hours after MAJOR abdominal surgery to get yourself walking around. Your insides feel like they are falling out. You cannot stand upright. You cannot cough or laugh. You cannot sit or stand without help. You can not use the toilet without holding on to people or bars perched around the toilet. You piss through a catheter and make do with liquids at first.
They listen to your stomach periodically to make sure your intestines are working correctly and that food and drink are traveling where they need to. You see, your intestines are not in the same place they once were. Your inside-y bits are flipped and twisted and flipped again. Like spaghetti, they are now somewhere else. Your legs are checked regularly for blood clots and are massaged and moved and made to carry your morphine riddled body to the bathroom or down the hall or just past the pull out couch in your room on which your husband is sleeping peacefully and SNORING four hours after you have a baby cut out of you, while you are now being forced to jump out of bed and make your rounds, right after screaming out OH FUCK and then promptly vomiting on the floor in pain.
Then picking yourself up again and walking your ass to the bathroom to be hosed down by the most amazing and gentle nurses who have ever lived.
You cannot hold your baby in your arms, but must hold her off to the side, so that she doesn't press down on your incision. The football hold becomes your new best friend for breastfeeding, which, I am not going to lie, did not help with my fantasy images of breastfeeding my newborn baby.
***
I had to wait for people to hand my baby to me, as getting out of bed and then back into it was a herculean effort at best. "Pull with your arms and not your stomach!" "Sit down and then slide up slowly!" "Try to lift the back of the bed and slip yourself sideways in the bed and flip your hips up!"
Oh! And don't laugh. Or cough. Or, for the love that is holy, DO NOT SNEEZE. Do not. Do not. Do not.
***
And all the while, think about everything that went wrong according to your birth plan. There went the warm baths I had planned. Bouncing on a birthing ball. Walking around the ward, laughing and contracting with my mom beside me all the way. Being on all fours to hopefully let gravity do it's work to help my baby out.
***
All gone. Expectations and plans out the window.
***
Enter the midwife entering you room, introducing herself and letting you know your baby (your FIRST baby, the baby for whom you moved heaven and earth to conceive), wasn't doing well. Heart beat dropping. Unable to find it at all. HURRY HURRY HURRY. No time to call my mom. NO time to prepare.
Only time for me to cry and ask what I had done wrong. Was I too fat? Was I too old? Did we wait too long to induce? She is almost two weeks late. Should I have pushed for an earlier induction?
WHY WHY WHY.
***
And all the while, think about everything that went wrong according to your birth plan. There went the warm baths I had planned. Bouncing on a birthing ball. Walking around the ward, laughing and contracting with my mom beside me all the way. Being on all fours to hopefully let gravity do it's work to help my baby out.
***
All gone. Expectations and plans out the window.
***
Enter the midwife entering you room, introducing herself and letting you know your baby (your FIRST baby, the baby for whom you moved heaven and earth to conceive), wasn't doing well. Heart beat dropping. Unable to find it at all. HURRY HURRY HURRY. No time to call my mom. NO time to prepare.
Only time for me to cry and ask what I had done wrong. Was I too fat? Was I too old? Did we wait too long to induce? She is almost two weeks late. Should I have pushed for an earlier induction?
WHY WHY WHY.
***
I had never researched c-sections. It wasn't something that ever occurred to me. I had my birth plan and was ready to go.
But nothing goes along with plans. And I was rushed into a cold and clinical room. Alone. With no one I knew and no one I loved. Scared and crying, an epidermal inserted, pillow propped, sheet pulled up to block my view. Too much in shock to fully cry and too scared to even ask questions.
Mike finally allowed in. Me throwing up. Panicking from fear of suffocating. When you can't feel your lungs move, you do not know they are working. Begging for help. Screaming that I could not breath. "If you can talk, you can breathe, Adrienne. Just remain calm."
My first baby. I tried for ten years. I left my husband to have a baby. I met someone else, moved to another state WITHOUT question when I became pregnant. Left my family and friends and NYC. Oh, NY, I left you and left so many pieces of my life behind.
For THIS. This moment. This vision. This LIFE. Planned and made out of love, and not in danger.
Unfathomable.
***
Cutting and talking and tugging and lots of crying on my end. Trying not listen. Trying not to THINK. Trying to mentally prepare myself.
Finally feeling the pressure let up and my baby was pulled roughly from a small incision. Free of my body. We were no longer one, and the lump in my throat grew at the fact that the safety of my womb was no more.
Trying to see over as my limp, blue baby was rushed over to warm lights and machinery and tons of nurses. Quiet, other than the surgical team counting tools as they closed me up to ensure no tools were left inside.
And still nothing. Still the sound of silence and held breaths and palpable fear.
And then, after what must have been days and years and months, a small mew. A tiny squeak. A little peep. And it all came out. And I sobbed. And I prayed and thanked the lord. And made promises and deals and told myself it would be all vegetable and rice and water for all meals.
A quick glimpse of my sweet girl as she was whisked out of the room. I whispered messages of, "Mommy loves you, sweet girl. For always," and she was gone. Her father looking back and forth between us until I yelled at him to get the fuck out of here and run to out daughter.
***
Hours and hours and hours later. Waiting in my room. Everyone having seen my doll baby but me. "Go to sleep," they said. "Get some rest."
But, no. Rest was not possible until that girl was returned to her rightful place in the world. In my arms, against my heart, next to my breast. Our return to each other.
Forced to walk around the room. Vomiting, screaming profanities because of the pain, blood everywhere, weakness and worry and FEAR.
WHERE IS MY BABY??
I had never researched c-sections. It wasn't something that ever occurred to me. I had my birth plan and was ready to go.
But nothing goes along with plans. And I was rushed into a cold and clinical room. Alone. With no one I knew and no one I loved. Scared and crying, an epidermal inserted, pillow propped, sheet pulled up to block my view. Too much in shock to fully cry and too scared to even ask questions.
Mike finally allowed in. Me throwing up. Panicking from fear of suffocating. When you can't feel your lungs move, you do not know they are working. Begging for help. Screaming that I could not breath. "If you can talk, you can breathe, Adrienne. Just remain calm."
My first baby. I tried for ten years. I left my husband to have a baby. I met someone else, moved to another state WITHOUT question when I became pregnant. Left my family and friends and NYC. Oh, NY, I left you and left so many pieces of my life behind.
For THIS. This moment. This vision. This LIFE. Planned and made out of love, and not in danger.
Unfathomable.
***
Cutting and talking and tugging and lots of crying on my end. Trying not listen. Trying not to THINK. Trying to mentally prepare myself.
Finally feeling the pressure let up and my baby was pulled roughly from a small incision. Free of my body. We were no longer one, and the lump in my throat grew at the fact that the safety of my womb was no more.
Trying to see over as my limp, blue baby was rushed over to warm lights and machinery and tons of nurses. Quiet, other than the surgical team counting tools as they closed me up to ensure no tools were left inside.
And still nothing. Still the sound of silence and held breaths and palpable fear.
And then, after what must have been days and years and months, a small mew. A tiny squeak. A little peep. And it all came out. And I sobbed. And I prayed and thanked the lord. And made promises and deals and told myself it would be all vegetable and rice and water for all meals.
A quick glimpse of my sweet girl as she was whisked out of the room. I whispered messages of, "Mommy loves you, sweet girl. For always," and she was gone. Her father looking back and forth between us until I yelled at him to get the fuck out of here and run to out daughter.
***
Hours and hours and hours later. Waiting in my room. Everyone having seen my doll baby but me. "Go to sleep," they said. "Get some rest."
But, no. Rest was not possible until that girl was returned to her rightful place in the world. In my arms, against my heart, next to my breast. Our return to each other.
Forced to walk around the room. Vomiting, screaming profanities because of the pain, blood everywhere, weakness and worry and FEAR.
WHERE IS MY BABY??
***
A few hours, and she is here. She is being brought to me. Crying and whimpering. Uncomfortably moving and twitching. Her, too.
Handed to me, so gently. So carefully. Giving me advice. Telling me what to do.
My body knew it, though. Had always known.
I gathered her in my arms, under my shirt, into my arms. Smelling her and touching her smooth skin, whispering my love for her, praying to God for allowing the doctors and nurses to know what to do for her. Thanking the lord that we live in a time in which this is all possible.
We both lived. We both loved. We both smiled.
We both fell asleep. Entwined together.
One again.
At least for a little while.
She is mine and I am hers.
I am not a MOTHER. I am HER mother. The dream fulfilled and so much better than I ever imagined.
***
Underlining it, is the second part of it all. A little shame, a little guilt, a lot of sadness.
I missed it all, you see. I missed the pushing and the sweating and the panting and the people around cheering me on until that amazing moment when baby is born and the whole room looks on in wonder and mother gets to hold her baby right away. Mother and child beginning the bonding immediately.
Mother and child one again. Right away! No wait. Family around. Celebrations. Cheers and photos and happiness.
***
A few hours, and she is here. She is being brought to me. Crying and whimpering. Uncomfortably moving and twitching. Her, too.
Handed to me, so gently. So carefully. Giving me advice. Telling me what to do.
My body knew it, though. Had always known.
I gathered her in my arms, under my shirt, into my arms. Smelling her and touching her smooth skin, whispering my love for her, praying to God for allowing the doctors and nurses to know what to do for her. Thanking the lord that we live in a time in which this is all possible.
We both lived. We both loved. We both smiled.
We both fell asleep. Entwined together.
One again.
At least for a little while.
She is mine and I am hers.
I am not a MOTHER. I am HER mother. The dream fulfilled and so much better than I ever imagined.
***
Underlining it, is the second part of it all. A little shame, a little guilt, a lot of sadness.
I missed it all, you see. I missed the pushing and the sweating and the panting and the people around cheering me on until that amazing moment when baby is born and the whole room looks on in wonder and mother gets to hold her baby right away. Mother and child beginning the bonding immediately.
Mother and child one again. Right away! No wait. Family around. Celebrations. Cheers and photos and happiness.
***
The operating room isn't like that. We DID have an amazing anesthesiologist who took photos for us. He was gentle and kind and understanding. He took a photo of my girl first reaching the outside world. I will post it below, but it's not for the faint of heart.
***
So. Easy? Never. Brutal and heartbreaking, lonely and scary, guilt-ridden and unknown, and alone. So very, very alone.
***
And for those who say it's not really giving birth. I gave everything I had to bring that child into this world. Having my body cut open. Being morbidly obese, knowing that anesthesiology and a major operation themselves are dangerous to my life. Not knowing if either one of us would survive.
***
There is nothing easy about it. There is nothing BUT giving birth. There is nothing LESS THAN a mother meeting her child for the very first time.
No matter how they get here. No matter how we meet. No matter how other people feel.
My life was now in my arms.
The fear and the pain and the worry and the guilt. The lifeless body. The tense moments waiting for a tiny noise. The rush of the nurses. The separation of mother and baby and father.
So hard. The hardest thing I've ever had to do.
And? So worth it. So, so worth it.
But easy? No fucking way.
So, yes. There are different ways to bring them here. And none are easy, but they are all beautiful and they are ALL ours.
***
Kudos to all the women who do it every day. And do it more than once. And do it through the pain and through the fear and through the guilt.
You are my tribe.
You are mothers.
***
So. Easy? Never. Brutal and heartbreaking, lonely and scary, guilt-ridden and unknown, and alone. So very, very alone.
***
And for those who say it's not really giving birth. I gave everything I had to bring that child into this world. Having my body cut open. Being morbidly obese, knowing that anesthesiology and a major operation themselves are dangerous to my life. Not knowing if either one of us would survive.
***
There is nothing easy about it. There is nothing BUT giving birth. There is nothing LESS THAN a mother meeting her child for the very first time.
No matter how they get here. No matter how we meet. No matter how other people feel.
My life was now in my arms.
The fear and the pain and the worry and the guilt. The lifeless body. The tense moments waiting for a tiny noise. The rush of the nurses. The separation of mother and baby and father.
So hard. The hardest thing I've ever had to do.
And? So worth it. So, so worth it.
But easy? No fucking way.
So, yes. There are different ways to bring them here. And none are easy, but they are all beautiful and they are ALL ours.
***
Kudos to all the women who do it every day. And do it more than once. And do it through the pain and through the fear and through the guilt.
You are my tribe.
You are mothers.
***
The most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
