I looked at the sad faced icon after the words I have to have a C-section and I wondered.
I stood there reading it again remembering the guilt I felt when people asked about when we were due which generally led to yes I am having a scheduled C-section; yes it was my own choice. I remember how the staff of my small town hospital treated me after I chose to have a C-section’s after my first child’s labour was horrifying and more importantly unnecessary.
Whilst I understand now I had empowered those people, doctors and professionals to make me feel that way- guilty. They had no right. It was simply none of their business but age teaches you things. Yes I chose to have a c-section but it was my choice. It didn’t make me less of a parent, less of a mother, less of a person and I wasn’t too posh to push but it is how we are I guess. I remember Kate Winslet lying to the public on how one of her children was birthed because she felt guilt that she had whether by choice or not a C-section. She lied and kept it like a dirty secret instead of rejoicing in the fact she had a beautiful healthy baby I felt sad for her but understood completly.
How we birth our children how we come to have them in the first place makes us no lesser parents. No better or no less.
Sometimes things go to plan other times they don’t. Some times its guilt from others sometimes we are our own worst enemy.
For my first birth I had planned to birth ‘naturally’ and that was where my planning stopped. I didn’t want to be disappointed. I had no expectations of the birth I didn’t want to. I did however do all the exercises to help me get through the birth. I spent hours on my knees rocking back and forth in the shower in preparation to open my hips; so I guess I planned sort of.
What I did plan for was rarely anything goes to plan and so I planned that it was going to hurt and I would get a baby at the end. I was asked do you plan on drugs, have music, gas? At the time I said I would avoid that epidural like the plague but inducement as B1 would have it means being strapped to a bed. If I had a planned on squatting rolling and mediating through whilst my husband held my hand it wasn’t going to plan. With B1 being 11 days late, me strapped to a bed, the taste of the gas making me vomit and not wanting anyone touching me and my low blood pressure which was due to unidentified heart murmur and we will make you labour for ten hours at least nothing would’ve have gone to plan anyway.
The emergency c-section after all that non planning? Was as scary and as empowering as the ‘natural birth’ may have been.
So
My choice of a sub sequential c-section’s was based on several determining factors. It wasn’t something I woke up and said yes I think I may drain the public health system despite having made contributions all my working life, have several weeks of pain, guilt and feeling of isolation with those who chose to compare our ‘labours and sub sequential births’ and deem me less of a mother. It instead was considered and informed as everything medical should be natural or otherwise. Sometimes people would ask after asking about the C-section but what about the labour? Didn’t you miss that? No I laboured for 38 weeks. I was sick. I was uncomfortable. I was tired. I was in pain. Why people are so complacent about pregnancy I don’t know. It’s nothing to blasé about.
And whilst the birth and that’s what every C-section is; is to an extent clinical it was also very empowering to me and no less special. I was scared crapless and I made it through just as I would have been with a ‘natural’ birth. It brought me and my husband together. He cared for me loved me like I have never known him to. And the bond with my babies? Unsurmountable despite not seeing my first baby for several hours due to my body failing me after a that forced 10 hour labour and my second baby sent to an incubator because the liquid wasn’t expelled from his lungs quick enough. My third it was a dream run and yet I love my babies equally and just as much as any mother. But the after pain? It was there I wont deny that but I was up after 12 hours of my C-section walking nursing by babies yet the girl who delivered naturally next to me lay in bed for days because her stitching was equally as bad.
We all have our horror stories.
But how you deliver your baby ‘naturally’ or via ‘C-section’ it doesn’t matter in the end the health of you and your baby is what matters. That’s the important thing and it’s the only thing any parent should focus on; birthing your baby in the safest possible fashion.
But because I will get someone who will email me with statistics or a horror story I don’t care…I’m not endorsing or promoting C-sections any more than the use of mediation or epidurals. There are great stories, horrible stories deaths and injuries in both styles of births and each carry their own risks. Child birth is risky business.
What I am doing is telling you; that how you birth whether it’s to have a C-section either by necessity or by choice is nobody’s business. As it is to birth with or without drugs, with or without music and with or without anyone being by your side. It. Is. No. Ones. Business. No ones. Don’t allow someone else opinion or sometimes your own expectation of what a birth should be take away from the end result- an incredible beautiful marvellous baby. Your baby.
And so wondered was it disappointment or guilt that that icon was there? I do hope neither.
Xx D
