I’m still pregnant. Let’s just get that out of the way to begin with! 
Tomorrow morning I’m going to the hospital to have a c-section. I decided to write about this because of all the mixed feelings I’m having — and because I know that there are probably other women out there who have had similar mixed feelings when faced with similar situations.
We spent most of yesterday afternoon at the hospital filling out paperwork and talking to a bunch of different people — just getting things ready. We had a nice long visit with the OB who will be delivering our daughter — and he seems very competent, patient and kind. I have today to get everything ready and then tomorrow — that’s when it will happen. So weird.
With Sullivan, it was different. I was hellbent on this idea of a “natural birth”. I bought and read every book on the subject I could find. I found a hospital with a natural birth center attached. I found nurse-midwives who could deliver us there. Had a doula even. The whole nine yards — well you can imagine — as big of tree-hugger as I am, I went all out. I was totally 100% determined that Sullivan’s birth was going to be this amazing empowering example of feminine strength and endurance or something. I think I actually believed that his birth was somehow going to prove my womanhood — like this was a test to see if I were fit to be a mother.
So in true Melissa-fashion, everything went horribly wrong. On the morning we showed up at the birth center, I learned that the midwife was only going to be there for a few hours — then it was their partner OB’s turn — a man who I had only met once in their office. I had never even considered that she wouldn’t be on hand when I delivered my baby and immediately felt betrayed. Then, as the morning progressed, the nurses at the birth center became more and more impatient with me, coming in every half hour or so to check on my progress, check my cervix, shake their heads, roll their eyes and threaten to send me to Labor & Delivery.
When the doctor took over, he told me that if I didn’t make progress, the whole thing would eventually end in a c-section. I cried and he convinced me that it would be best if they broke my water. I agreed and my son dropped finally — posterior through. We were eventually transferred to Labor & Delivery ward, where I was given a pitocin drip, an antibiotic IV, an epidural, and internal fetal monitor. My son was born about 14 hours later (after about 50 hours total labor), and after four hours of numb pushing and a nasty episiotomy, via forceps.
The doctor who delivered him was not patient or kind. He made snide remarks that humiliated me. I was completely devastated — both physically and emotionally for weeks. I had nightmares for months afterward and the physical effects lingered on and on (still). It’s hard for me to talk about what happened — and in the last few weeks, I have noticed my fears resurfacing. It’s all going to happen again — especially after my due date passed and I could tell that this baby was going to be as big as Sullivan was.
I changed my mind on a lot of things after Sullivan was born. Well of course, duh, being a parent changes you totally. A lot of things that I felt more absolute on when I was just a carefree rock’n'roller seemed more gray suddenly. And still, in the back of my mind, his birth — this event I think of as some kind of failure — haunted me. It was actually a consideration when Aaron and I talked about about having more children. Would I want to go through this again? Of course, Sullivan is awesome and for him I’d live through a hundred times more pain, but again? For someone new that we hadn’t met?
Then we got pregnant and the question became moot. I was just going to have to suck it up, right?
Throughout this pregnancy, our new midwife and her partner OB has been really great and supportive. She’s been very honest with me about what would happen in labor — no matter what route I chose to go. In the end, we all decided that it was going to have to be an easy natural labor or a c-section. I do not believe it’s worth the trauma of putting my body through another long induction. For whatever reason, I’m one of those women who carry their babies a very very long time — who have ten pound babies — whose hip structure makes them want to lie posterior — etc., etc. The midwife and the doctor have no doubt that if I waited around long enough I would eventually go into labor. They don’t even doubt I could push out another ten pound baby — but is it worth the potential complications and aggravation to my already damaged body? We decided to wait till 41 weeks for something to happen on it’s own. Nothing is happening on it’s own, so we scheduled a c-section.
I feel scared. And relieved. And scared. And excited. And embarrassed even. I even have that little voice in the back of my head still — sneering at me saying, “I told you this would end in a c-section. You just can’t do it.” And I’m trying to counter that by imagining all my fears tethered to balloons that I let go of one by one. But of course, it seems like there’s an unending stream of balloons. I can’t dig down deep enough to root out. That fear is like that viney weed in my garden that keeps trying to strangle my tomatoes and coming back, no matter how often I’m out there pulling it and no matter how strong I pretend to be — it’s there.
After Sullivan was born I suffered a deep depression that I kept entirely to myself. I am like that though — superwoman on the outside, frightened little mouse on the inside. Aaron brought home the book Rebounding from Childbirth by Lynn Madsen and I read it and felt a little better. In the last chapter of the book, she talks about how fear is always there and it’s always a part of you — but you can create edges around it that make it smaller. She writes:
“When edges are put around the fear, a woman knows what sort of demon she is struggling with. She knows how much of the sky is actually filled with fear, how much of the room or the couch, or whatever size and shape the fear takes on… It is not the whole world. Look, the rest of the sky is blue, the rest of the room is safe and warm. The fear is there, safety is here. Edges have been created. When another look is taken at the fear, it becomes smaller, because more safety has been created by talking about it.”
That’s how I feel about the c-section. I’m afraid, but I feel like at last that fear has dimension. I’m terrified actually. But I know that there are parts of my life that aren’t terror-filled and that will not be terror-filled. And I also know that I have to talk about it — because no one talks about fear (who wants to do that?), but seeing it all typed out in front of me also gives it a shape I can see. And maybe someone else has seen the same dark shadows lurking around the edges of their lives too and begin to feel, as I do in my fleeting moments of clarity and strength, that collectively, our joys as mothers and women can and will outnumber our sorrows and regrets.
