The emotional aftermath of an emergency c-Section (guest post)
Today’s post is another guest contribution.
Dalia has written a beautiful piece describing her conflicting emotions surrounding how the birth of her son unfolded.
For as long as I knew I wanted to have kids, I knew what I wanted my pregnancy and birth to be like. I knew I wanted everything to be as natural as possible. I wanted to feel calm, stress-free and at one with my body and mind. I wanted the birth to be intuitive and just as nature intended it to be. It seemed to be fate when I found myself pregnant in the Netherlands, the country with the highest percentage of home births in the western world.
My pregnancy was, thankfully, pretty smooth. Sure, I had some discomforts and pains (what pregnant woman doesn’t?), but all of my midwife appointments were normal and everything was going great!
As time went on, I did my homework. I was considered low-risk and therefore a candidate for a home birth. I knew I wanted a water birth and had also registered for a hypnobirthing course. I read the baby books, I did the daily affirmations and breathing exercises (3+ every single day), I posted positive affirmations all over our little home, and I journaled. I was a big bundle of mellow, calm and happy energy.
I made my birth wishes known to my midwives and I thought I had considered every possibility in how things could go. And yet, I still wasn’t prepared for how things actually went.
Before you think I’m going to go into detail about my birth story, let me stop you right here. One of the most important aspects of hypnobirthing is avoiding negative birth stories. When you are pregnant, you are constantly inundated with everyone’s opinions, questions and, worst of all, horrible birth stories. As if seeing birth portrayed on tv screens as some gruesome ordeal isn’t enough, we have to hear it from almost everyone who has had a bad experience. We grow up thinking that this is the norm. Birth is pain and that is that. But let me be clear, I am convinced that this isn’t the norm. I have seen births that are beautiful and inspiring. It is the reason I chose to do a home hypnobirth. And even though in my case, it didn’t work out (this time), that does not mean this is YOUR reality. But I digress.
What actually happened was a birth by emergency c-section at our local hospital. No candles were burned, no lavender oil scents, no soothing music, the birthing pool stayed deflated and unused in the living room. Everything that I had planned was gone in the blink of an eye the minute my water broke and my baby was transverse in my belly.
I am thankful, yes.
I am thankful that my midwife was experienced enough to know that I had to go to the hospital.
I am thankful that my doctors did everything within their power to make it a good experience for me.
I am thankful that the nurses and the midwives at the hospital were kind and patient with me. And I am thankful that my baby boy was born healthy and I got to see him right away and do skin to skin immediately and that he never left my sight.
All of this to say that there is this guilt I feel in mourning the loss of my ideal birth. Because immediately I know that there are moms out there who wouldn’t care how they gave birth as long as they could have their baby in their arms. There are future moms out there who would give anything just to be pregnant or stay pregnant until full term.
There are so many reasons why I feel guilty.
But the reality is that a year on, I still feel like I missed out on something. Like I wasn’t able to give my baby boy the welcome that I felt he deserved. One without blinding lights, strange faces in masks and a cold, sterile hospital. There is a part of me that hasn’t moved on and wishes things had gone differently. Really, I romanticized this idea of a home water birth and when it didn’t happen, I felt like a complete failure. The intricacies of how I ended up with a c-section also add to that feeling of failure for me but honestly, it doesn’t matter.
Every time this wound threatens to burst open again I have to remind myself that I didn’t fail. I have a healthy, beautiful son who is as happy as can be and that is quite possibly the definition of success. But the wound is still there.
I wish I would have known before all of this happened, that there was a chance. A chance that things wouldn’t work out the way I had meticulously planned for them to work out. I wish I would have known that there would be this heavy feeling of failure paired with guilt for having a c-section. I always just assumed that women got c-sections and that was that. There was no aftermath aside from some physical recuperation. I had no idea that I could feel so bitter and so happy at the same time.
Even writing this makes me anxious, hoping that other women won’t think badly of me for feeling this way. But I have to write it and put it out there in case there is another woman out there in the same situation.
Sadness does not exist in a vacuum. You can love your life completely and not want to change a thing about your beautiful baby and how he came to be with you and, at the same time, feel conflicting emotions about what was supposed to be one of the most beautiful moments of your life.
That’s the thing about being human, we are completely capable of feeling so many things at once, and have them exist all at once, without invalidating who we are at our core.
Today’s post was a guest contribution from Dalia Wight.
Dalia is a graphic designer turned stay at home mom to her one year old son. Recently repatriated from the Netherlands with her husband, Dutch souvenir (her little boy) and cat; she now enjoys living on some sunny beach in Southern California.
Visit @wightmodern to see her work and @daliaeren for all things mama, beach and lifestyle related.
Dalia generously shared some of the resources she found helpful:
akriti.nl for hypnobirthing courses in the Netherlands
thepositivebirthcompany.co.uk for other hypnobirthing resources
@labor.nurse.mama (on Instagram) for post c-section help and VBAC information
For those of you have gone through an emergency c-section, what would you like to have known? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
If you enjoyed this story, then be sure to check out Motherhood Together - a special page on Life Inspiration File where we share all pregnancy and early motherhood stories and resources in the one place.
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