My C-Section Was Transformative and Empowering

May you live in interesting times. That Chinese blessing/curse has come to my mind many times during this past year since my son was born. With just weeks to go before his first birthday, and with another son on the way soon, I find myself reflecting on the experiences of labor, birth, postpartum, and my first year as a mother.
As I prepare for this second experience, I realize that I still have many fears associated with the actual, physical process of giving birth. Some of that goes back to childhood. Some of it is rooted in my homebirth that became a cesarian section.
I have never felt like I made a mistake in choosing cesarian. Nor did I ever feel like I was forced or bullied into the decision. I know that a lot of women have those feelings but that was not my experience. When we arrived at the hospital, I finally felt safe. I felt truly cared for; I felt like the caregivers around us were paying attention. My homebirth experience, unfortunately, mostly just triggered old feelings of being neglected, abandoned, invisible, misunderstood. The exception to that was our wonderful doula, who never left my side until the next day when my son was finally placed into my arms. So, my experience was unlike many I have read about, and I was so very grateful to be in loving, competent hands.
Nonetheless, I have still struggled with feelings of disappointment, failure, and heartbreak. And there were many other perceived disappointments, failures and heartbreaks that characterized this past year. I discovered that my incredible, loving husband is a wonderful, natural, hands-on dad, but that he really isn't cut out to be a therapist or a girlfriend to a woman mired in postpartum depression and anxiety. In other words, I discovered some of the limitations of my marriage, at a rather tough time to be discovering them.
My depression and anxiety also delayed bonding with my son, which only drove me deeper into said depression and anxiety, and pushed me towards serious considerations of suicide. "They would be so much better off without me" was a refrain that echoed through my mind daily for a while.
In addition to that, breastfeeding was a struggle, and I found myself attached to a breast pump night and day for four months, until the sleep deprivation threatened to take away the last little bits of my sanity, and we transitioned our son to formula.
My son hated, but hated, to be worn in a sling. In my mind, I really started to panic. I really worried that without breastfeeding or babywearing, our struggles to bond would become a permanent feature of our relationship. Now, I can see that it was my depression and anxiety that got in the way more than anything else.
And so went many of the hopes and expectations I had had as a new parent. As each decision was made, I did my best to accept it, to make peace with it, and to move forward. But it was hard.
Just as we were all starting to get some decent sleep on a regular basis, I found out I was pregnant again. I was shocked. I spent many weeks alternately feeling numb and crying, hard. My husband was excited from the start, but I just couldn't get past the thought that I would have to survive another armageddon. All that sleep deprivation, and the way it obliterates my perspective, not to mention my filters. The struggles, the disappointments, the breast pump.
But I couldn't give this baby up. I am and always will be firmly, wholeheartedly pro-choice and in favor of legal, safe abortion, but I knew in my heart that I could not end this pregnancy. It slowly began to dawn on me: I wanted this baby.
And so I set about the work of filling in the gaps that were missing for me in this past year. I hated where we were living. I was isolated and incredibly lonely. I didn't know how I would find caregivers for my pregnancy and delivery, as the midwives I know of cannot work with VBAC patients. Nor did I really want another homebirth.
Other than one generous, compassionate local friend and her family, I really didn't have any connections to other OC moms. Nor did I feel comfortable at either the Attachment Parenting groups, or the Gymboree groups. I don't fit in to either paradigm. (A RIE group would be absolutely perfect, but the closest ones are in LA County).
As always, my husband was totally supportive of any changes I proposed making in order to be happier. We moved from our cramped apartment under power lines and next to the freeway to a very charming little house in a very friendly little neighborhood. We did some marriage counseling to help us to move forward and heal the hurts and resentments of the past year, and the early years of our marriage. I started working individually with a therapist who specializes in postpartum depression and new mommmyhood. I joined a wonderful mothering group that meets monthly. I have found tremendous support and connection in these new bonds.
Through all of this, I felt an intense need to withdraw from many of the other "connections" I had been looking to in vain for support. I deleted my Facebook account. I went into a cocoon. I knew that I was undergoing some kind of tremendous change, but I didn't really understand from what, into what. All I knew was that it was new, and fragile. I felt sadness and self-pity, too, but I couldn't help but pull back into myself-- whoever that was.
I've come to realize that what I've been feeling is shame and disappointment. Shame at my perceived failures and limitations, and disappointment that I didn't get my "I just climbed Mount Everest!" moment of exhilaration, joy and triumph at pushing out my son. That, I thought, was what it meant to have a transformative and empowering birth experience. The other kind, I believed, simply can't be those things. It just can't, it isn't. It's done for you. You're rescued. You don't get to triumph. You just have to learn to live without that accomplishment. The shame didn't come from the women I knew who had successful homebirths, or anyone else around me. It's all coming from within, and it's all predicated on these beliefs.
So then, how to go forward into another birth? Another baby? Another postpartum experience? I realized that I need to confront these fears and insecurities, and I started to look around for resources specific to that goal. And just as I was beginning my search, I received an e-mail from a pregnancy and mothering coach that I had spoken with when my son was about four months old. That was three days ago. She is starting up new class, and invited me to join. I read the description on her website, and it sounded like a possible fit. There was even a session targeted specifically at confronting fears. But the group setting and the idea of being "coached" gave me a lot of pause for concern. I don't want to set myself up for failure, or to feel judged or defensive around other moms who are excited about natural/home/water/unassisted birth. With my OB, I do have the option of VBAC, but that will require spontaneous labor, as induction isn't an option. Otherwise, a surgery will be scheduled at 41 weeks. And I have already decided that I want a hospital birth, and probably an epidural as well. How would I fit in to such a group, if at all? I talked it over in therapy, and with my sister, and more or less made up my mind to pass, and try to do the work of confronting my fears on my own.
And then yesterday happened. I decided to phone the pregnancy coach, get some more information about the class, and talk to her directly about my concerns. She was, as in the past, accessible, warm, and genuinely listening. And as she listened, she picked up on not only my fears about childbirth, but my lingering sense of having failed at my first birth. She asked me if I felt that I had made a mistake, and I said no. I told her that, in fact, I felt that I had made the right call, and that my hospital experience had been wonderful and nurturing. I went on to tell her that over the past year, I had been undergoing a process of major change. My tendency to see everything in black-and-white, good-and-bad, correct-and-incorrect, had been (is being) seriously challenged by my experiences. That I felt-- as I have often said to my husband-- that I had been given a real gift, a "secret" insight that I never would have received if all of my granola mama goals and aspirations had been easily granted to me. If it had all fallen into place easily, in fact, I probably would have become insufferably self-righteous. I would have been Maggie Gyllenhaal in Away We Go.
Instead, I have been given the gift of moderation. I used to believe that the middle was where people lived when they just didn't know or didn't care enough to find out. That it was the breeding ground of the uninformed and lazy. Now I realize that moderation and compromise and flexibility can actually be an informed and intelligent, compassionate and loving way to live. I am being transformed. Into what, I still don't yet know, exactly.
As I talked, Justine listened intently. Then she pointed out something that completely rocked me to my core. She said, "You just described your experience as transformative and empowering. And that's exactly how I feel about mine. It doesn't matter that yours was a c-section and mine was a natural birth. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. You have within you all the answers you need."
I choked back tears. She was right. I had just never put it all together before. My cesarian section was transformative and empowering. It wasn't the Mount-Everest-summiting kind of transformation and empowerment I had envisioned, so I never realized it until that moment. No, it was a slow, painful, enlightening, informative, excruciating process. Justine went on to say, "From the greatest pain comes the greatest wisdom." And she was right. My pain was not the pain of natural childbirth, as I had expected. It was an entirely different kind of anguish.
When I think about it, most of my changes have taken me down such a road. And that probably has something to do with my disposition. I tend to be extremely stubborn. I don't like change. And I have a huge ego. I tend to go kicking and screaming. I don't like the loss of control that change entails. I don't like the not-knowing. And so, any change I do undergo tends to be a burn-it-down, rise-from-the-ashes kind of experience. And that is what this year has been.
Never again can I tell myself that my cesarian section was a disappointment, a failure, a heartbreak.

My cesarian section was transformative and empowering.

My son was born the way he needed to be born. For his own sake, and for mine. I can go forward from here.