The love will come, the pain will fade

As this next baby comes closer to arriving, I've been thinking about Henry's birth and about pregnancy. It's weird, isn't it, how much and also how little about birth is in our control? Today I'm thinking about what happened with Henry and what I wish I'd known. These problems may seem silly to you, but they were very real to me at a very intense and emotional time, and I hope that perhaps someone who has these same emotions may read this one day and realize they're not alone.

Henry was born via an unscheduled c-section. It wasn't technically an emergency, but if we had continued with labor it would have turned into one. It was a necessary thing. We would both be dead without it. Several things about that surgery stand out to me. I had been in labor over 24 hours with zero progress (I hadn't even dilated to a 1). I had always thought hospitals had pain options for labor, but mine apparently had one shot you could use (it worked for 45 minutes) but only worked once...or an epidural. Which they would not give until you were dilated to a 4. No options were available to me that night for pain; none had been available for hours since that shot earlier. I was done. I was drained. So there I was at 10 pm being told that for a number of reasons I almost certainly needed a c-section. What's more, they could do that then (10 pm ish) or re-evaluate in the morning (8 am ish) to see how things had gone. I guess now I realize I could have asked for one at say, 3 am, but it was late and we have a small hospital with staff who wanted to head home for the night. I felt like my options were: have a c-section now OR ELSE have a c-section after 10 more hours of this awful labor with zero pain options. My water had broken, and things needed to happen to protect the baby. I felt like I didn't really have a choice.

They prepped me eerily fast - I wonder if maybe the nurses thought it was an emergency cesarean? I know they were worried about the baby. I gave my consent for the surgery and in less than 5 minutes I had been prepped and was in the OR. It happened so fast, and that speed scared me.

I remember walking into the OR and sitting on the table for my spinal block. I have never been so afraid in my entire life. I did NOT want a c-section; that's why I had avoided being induced for so long! That's why the baby was 9 days late! I did not want one; it wasn't supposed to happen for me. I had never even once considered that it might, and I had done nothing EVER to prepare or learn about it. I sat on the OR bed and knew that I had no choice - I had to have this. This was the only way this baby could come out. It was terrifying to feel completely out of control. During the procedure, they discovered that Henry's head was too big to come out naturally - his head was so big it couldn't even enter the TOP of my pelvis, not to mention exiting through the narrower side! I remember hearing my doctor say as he first removed the baby, "Wow, there was NO way he was ever going to come out on his own." I know that if this had been pre-cesarean days, he wouldn't have come out. He and I would have died. I know this. The surgery saved our lives (which is scary to think about - another year, another country, another place, and we'd be dead). Of course I am thankful for a healthy baby. My grief was unconnected to his health; I was grieving something of my own.

Labor and childbirth were (to me) things I was supposed to participate in. Something I myself did, that I was a part of. Instead, it was a fairly traumatic experience that happened TO me, instead of WITH me. I felt betrayed by my doctors, my body, my baby. Mostly by myself. I had failed at doing the one thing my body was meant to do. I couldn't even give birth. I wasn't a real woman.

And when it took Henry and I a very long time to bond (several weeks, maybe over a month), in my head I connected it to the surgery. It was my fault I couldn't bond with my baby because I couldn't give birth normally. I didn't know that sometimes it takes longer for people and that this is normal. You only hear the stories of instant bonding. They would hand him to me in the hospital and he was just a baby, not MY baby. Just somebody's child. The good-intentioned comments of "Oh don't you just love him so much??" stung. I didn't, not yet, and I was afraid I never would. That seemed like another failure of myself. The guilt slowed things down.

People would say, "He's healthy! Be grateful for that!" And of course I was!! Of course! I was grateful we didn't die, grateful he was here. But that didn't mean I couldn't mourn something I had lost that was so important to me.

It took just over a year for me to no longer be upset when I saw people's birth announcements. "My wife just gave birth at home in our kitchen! She was in labor for 45 minutes and pushed for 3 minutes, no meds needed! What a rockstar!!" As though time in labor, pushing, and pain tolerance were in anybody's control. I wanted to scream at those posts. "I was in labor for 26 hours! I never got to push! Somebody took away my power to use my legs and cut him out of me! I had no control!" The posts hurt and they obviously weren't trying to. You don't hear many "she's a rockstar!" stories about cesarean recoveries, and I am so glad I had so much love and support from James. It took a very long time to not be hurt by my own experience when I saw that of others. And I don't wish that that person's life had had more pain; I just wondered if maybe I had been more like them, mine would have been a different story. But I know it wouldn't. It just took me a while.

And so if you feel like you're alone in mourning this, or if you feel like all mothers must bond immediately, it's okay. You're not alone. It's normal to have these feelings. The love will come, I promise. Just hang on. The pain will fade. Just hang on.