I had a plan. A birth plan. All natural, drug-free, uncomplicated birth. I had taken the classes, did my homework, had my birth doula’s number in my favorites, and I was ready. Little did I know that the first lesson in parenthood would come BEFORE I gave birth to my baby. As parents we try to plan, protect, anticipate. And life just doesn’t work like that. Neither does birth. I had a plan. But life had a different one.
I am a planner by nature so going into birth I had it all written out. I had my heart set on natural childbirth. We all birth the way we feel makes sense for us and our bodies. For me, being an actor for many years of my life, I crave experiences. I wanted to feel it to its fullest. Without anything disrupting or altering the crazy experience of giving birth. And I thought - “Hey, I’m a woman. I get to do this if I want to. My husband will never get this chance. But I do.” Many of my coworkers and friends and family all said to me. “Yeah right. You’re crazy!” or “Okay, good luck!” which just gave me more motivation to prove them wrong, and prove to myself that I could do it.
Labor started around lunch time one afternoon at work, I left about an hour later, came home, ate some pasta, called my husband to come home a few hours after that, went for a walk around the block, and labored at home till about midnight. When I got to the hospital around midnight that evening I was already 7CM dilated. They got me upstairs in the tub where I was able to beautifully get through transition. I labored for 20 hrs like a warrior. I mean, not to toot my own horn, but I rocked at labor! Really. Then it was time to push. So I pushed. And pushed. And pushed. I tried every position, every angle, every trick in the book for 6 WHOLE HOURS. His head was right there, they could see it, but it just wouldn’t come out. So, after 6 hours of pushing my midwife told me we needed to explore other options. We tried Pitocin first, which was awful, and hard. That didn’t work. Then they said, we could try a vacuum extraction since his head was right there. So, we tried that. Twice. And then they said the words. The words that were not in my plan. Ever. I never even let my mind think of it. “You have to have a c-section.” It was if someone had literally just taken every part of me and smashed it into tiny pieces. I had literally done things with my body I had not thought possible and this is how it ends. The one thing I didn’t want. The one thing that terrified me. A c-section. I failed. My plan didn’t work. My body couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it.
And that feeling, that emotional pain, that trauma of my son’s birth has stayed with me. For a long time I felt like it stole something from me. It stole who I thought I was. What I thought my body could do. It stole my power. My identity.
But, over time, and with a lot of space to process my c-section (and a lot of therapy), I see it differently now. It actually didn’t steal my identity at all. It shaped who I am now. At this moment. Today. Four years later.
After reflecting on my son’s birth three significant times in my life. The first being right after he was born, the second before I started trying to conceive my second child, and most recently as I had to reflect on it during my doula training I have seen my c-section three very different ways. At first I felt lost, and sad, and utterly disappointed. That this experience I so desperately had wanted and planned for was ripped out from under me. The second time I reflected I thought, okay, well that happened to me. But it’s okay because I have my son, and I know for the next baby I will try a VBAC and hopefully I can find some peace and healing through that. (And I did by the way!) And this most recent time was filled with perspective and love and compassion for myself. I realize that I didn’t fail. My body didn’t fail. My body was amazing and a warrior and I did things I never thought I could do. I felt empowered and whole.
My c-section didn’t steal my identity. I became a mother. My world shifted. And that was just the way my baby entered the world. His journey to get here, earth-side, was not any less amazing or bad ass or powerful. We did it. He and I. Together. And that was the plan all along.
