september mama

there is no way for me to describe how it felt to hear him say that. when i recovered my powers of speech, i told him how much it hurt and how that IS THE PROBLEM and how i let everyone else make the decisions and push me into things i should have refused, and he said a few key things (after explaining he did not mean that i was defective or incapable, but that the cord issues made it impossible for me to birth her. irrelevant as far as i am concerned--which is another problem for me.):
- he said that i was "blaming everybody else" for the interventions (meaning they were necessary and i shouldn't be regretting them)
- and then he said that it "wasn't my fault" (i hear: my body just couldn't do it)
- and something about how if we had been at home we might not have known about cord issues, etc, and it might have been worse.

my emotional response to all this misunderstanding on his part is that i failed to educate him properly on what really happened, what should have happened, and what could have happened. i realized later that the only time he has heard me talk about rowan's birth (and its effect on me) was 48hrs post-hospital, when we "debriefed" with our midwife. i was distraught then, understandably, but he has never known that i continued to be distraught ever since. i feel... sad... that i never talked to him about it, that he didn't know, and now cannot understand why i feel the way i do about homebirth and the rest of it. i think he thinks i'm just being stubborn. he has no idea how much of 'me' is spent thinking about birth. he has told me that he doesn't think i'm passionate about anything--when i argued that birth is my passion, he had no idea what i was talking about. i guess in the process of having a baby and having the economic responsibilities fall solely on him (read: he's always working, like it or not), i stopped sharing his really important part of myself with him. or maybe i just didn't want to say it out loud, and now it's too late to try to help him understand. tomorrow night, when we talk to debbie, will be enlightening for him. if it doesn't just make him think i'm more of an emotional nutcase than he already knows i am.

in labor with rowan i was surrounded by people who have seen the good and the bad of birth, but people whose strongest emotion, for the most part, was worry. my parents were a mess. matt was in pain himself and worried about me. the midwife is a generally sort of worried person. karen and the birth assistant were the only calm, confident ones there--both of whom have given birth several times. (my mom is the queen of worries, birth-experienced* or not.) i don't blame any of them for anything, but the atmosphere does reflect who is in it.**

control was an issue. i think i have addressed this before. i wanted, dreamed, imagined, etc that my birth would be totally without control--that it would happen, and i would ride the wave and become birth without steering or being guided by anything but my instincts. oh, how wrong i was. i didn't know just how restrictive the "minor" rules would be; take this castor oil now, doppler every few minutes, BP/heart rate check every few minutes, time to get out of the tub, time to eat something, PUSH, time's up we're going to the hospital... then control really got involved. i had none. i wanted none, but i most definitely didn't want them to have it, either. i wanted to be at nature's mercy, and i experienced the absolute polar opposite.

i have always been good at surrender. i am by no means a submissive person, but i am more than capable of "letting go" in terms of allowing for gray-areas, releasing tensions, living in limbos of various kinds, with questions unanswered or unasked... which i think helped me manage contractions, and that's it. i was totally relaxed and letting the pain wash over me without holding on to it, but it was that same willingness to NOT FIGHT IT that allowed so many things to go askew with my experience. how was i supposed to give in to the pain and yet argue with my midwife in between contractions? i am not afraid of vulnerability--in fact i value it greatly, at times--but i have learned that it is a slippery slope in labor, with attendants you don't know well enough. my willingness to trust others to be around me at birth is greatly lessened, because i realized that some people, wonderful as they may be, will tend to take advantage whether they mean to or not. i speak of family as well as professionals, here.

i have learned something else as well; what i think is the most important answer to "why did this happen to me?" (other than the zen-master truth 'because it did' which is perfectly valid)... i've learned, very recently, that the most important third of my being, in terms of birthing a child, was absent for rowan's labor. i have never been a very physical person--i lack the strong "embodiment" of most other people, in my own opinion. call it a libra thing (which it is, often), i just don't have a solid grounding anchor to my corporeal self. i'm all emotions and mind, thinking and feeling, and not a whole lot of doing or being. i never have been. the very physical, "real," knitty-gritty bits of existence just don't hold my interest or preference very much. i don't really like my body--it does embarrassing things (just like everyone else's)--and i'm typically more than happy to forget i have to maintain it and deal with it. during rowan's labor, i was out of my body. not literally--it wasn't an OOBE--but i had definitely 'checked out' in my management of contractions, and i never checked back in, even when i needed to most. i had a single urge to push, at a moment when i was totally relaxed in the tub with only karen and/or matt (i can't remember which). that was the moment my body said "oh hey, we're in labor, let me help" before it was promptly ignored again by the other two parts of me that were preoccupied with their own shit. my brain had spent 10 months analyzing and planning and choosing what/where/who/how and my heart had invented a fantasy birth chock-full of spiritual musings, candles, and wonderment, and in the midst of all that, my body--specifically my uterus and vagina--were left out in the cold. yes i did kegels, but come on. i did NO work towards integrating my body or even really focusing on the fact that its role was worth my time. my dreams of having babies i couldn't recall birthing speak to the effect this metaphysical separation had. as does the actual event of her birth, with me numb(ish) and someone else doing it for me. i went into her birth with too many ideas and hopes and not nearly enough CAN DO and physical, visceral knowing. and i had far, far too much anxiety about ending up at the hospital.

if you had asked me, as a midwife once did, what my biggest fear of birth was, i would have said ending up at the hospital. maybe i'd have said a c-sect, but i don't think so. i was so unspeakably horrified at the thought of the hospital that i could not allow myself to consider that it might happen. i was in total denial because the possibility was crushing. i see now what a weakness that was, and though i knew it to be so then also, it paralyzed me at the time. i think a little bit of connecting with my body might have changed that a lot. it sounds strange, but i've always been squeamish about watching births on film--i could never handle crowning or what follows--and even through my pregnancy with rowan it was too much for me to see. i get grossed out by bodily things (castor oil was a terrible way for me, especially, to begin labor)... they make me uncomfortable. but i feel "in" my body this time. i feel like a woman, like a mammal designed for vaginal expulsion of offspring, and i'm not disgusted by that. i'm empowered by it, in fact. unashamed. my hips will open, my vagina 'will get huge'**, and i will produce a baby from between my thighs, covered in blood, vernix, and whatever else needs to accompany him. i don't say this to fool myself into feeling ok with it--like i did last time--i say it with conviction and even, shockingly, pride.

i will end with this quote, which is so profoundly related to birth i don't really know what else to say about it, except perhaps that i was very nearly destroyed by what i did not bring forth...

"if you bring forth that which is within you,
what you bring forth will save you.
if you do not bring forth that which is within you,
what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
- gospel of st. thomas

i hate to say that i am looking for salvation in this birth, but i would be lying if i didn't say it. my only fear now is what will happen to me as a human, as a mother, and as a wife, if i don't do it right this time.


*my own birth, according to my mother, was a scary labor because she was young and inexperienced, but it was short (~8h) and uncomplicated except that the doc used his hands as forceps to deliver just my face so that i could breathe, since the placenta was separating early. i doubt that i carry any birth trauma of my own that i need/ed to relive, but who knows. i was not separated from her, she breastfed me, and she labored without any drugs.

**despite the above, i believe that matt will be a good partner in labor, present and supportive, barring any sudden toothaches. he has seen the worst of me already and that makes him safe. karen too, has seen it all for me and for other laboring women, and i trust her on every level. anyone else in my space will be heavily scrutinized before the moment arrives.

**thanks, ina may.