Post-op healing journey

I have been mulling over this post since I was in the hospital after Noah's birth. I can't hold it in any longer. I want to write about the pain of having had a cesarean section.

As I prepared for childbirth, I set "avoiding a c-section at all costs" as my primary goal. My dear sister had a difficult recovery after hers, and the pain of it terrified me.

What I didn't think I could have possibly comprehended was the emotional pain I would undergo.

It's strange really, that almost four months later, I still feel grief. I have such a beautiful baby. He is healthy, happy, and so very loved. Why, then, do the circumstances of his birth still sadden me?

Is it because I set my hopes so high, and so in the opposite direction, of a surgical delivery? Really, in an age where women actually opt for a c-section -- as though it would somehow be more accomodating to their lifestyle?! What lifestyle is that, I wonder?! -- hoping for a homebirth is as opposite as you get.

I don't think that's the real reason. In fact, given what I know now, I am actually grateful we never started out labouring at home.

Really, my two main feelings are as irrational as they come: guilt and shame.

The doctors and my team of midwives assure me that nothing could have really prevented my hypertension, and the low levels of platelets were out of my control, too. Furthermore, my medical team tried every possible avenue before opting for a c-section. The continuous decrease in poor Noah's heart rate was just too much to bear. Even I knew it was the best option at the time.

So why feel guilt? The circumstances of his birth were so vastly out of my control.

And yet, I find myself thinking, if only I had exercised more, ate better, even, opted against going to the hospital for that "routine" blood test, I mightn't have had to undergo major abdominal surgery.

These thoughts are all preposterous, I realize.

And why shame? Whenever I am asked by someone, "so how was your labour?" I want to hide. I am embarassed to say what happened, as though it means I am weaker. Part of the problem is I don't think people "get it" -- get just how sensitive a subject this is to me. The constant barrage of "at least the baby's healthy" comments, while well-meaning, and entirely true, make me feel even more guilty, because I'm not grateful enough for what an amazing baby I have (and how relatively smoothly everything DID go).

The reason I have avoided talking about this all on my blog is because of my feelings of selfishness; selfish that I am still holding onto these feelings, sixteen weeks later, selfish that I never gave my sister, or my mother, or my aunts, adequate sympathy for their c-sections, and most significantly, selfish enough that I refused to take these feelings to prayer.

I am happy to say a lot of healing has happened in our household lately, as I "came out" to my husband and said I still was grieving the loss of actually having a normal delivery. In forcing myself to acknowledge any of my weaknesses before my husband, I always end up being able to acknowledge them before God. There must be the something about the intimacy of the spousal relationship which mirrors that of Christ and His Church (Ephesians 5 ring a bell?); hence anything I do, good or ill, to and for Patrick affects how I relate to God.

So holding back my the sadness I felt from Patrick was just preventing him from ministering to my heart. Likewise, I was blocking me from receiving God's healing grace.

Being open finally to him, Him, and now, to you readers, is allowing me to put things into better perspective. (So too has reading over and over "God Gave Us You" and finding healing, warm tears spring to my eyes.)

I am realizing how blessed I am. While I had a few unpleasant hours in my journey into motherhood, everything else since has gone beautifully, and I do mean beautifully! I have the textbook "good baby" that people so nosily inquire about all the time, and it has been a journey of love ever since.

Just this week, I was changing Noah's diaper. This is a favourite time for me, because I will blow raspberries on his belly and he'll coo and get excited by the extra attention of having me so close. This time, when I leaned in to kiss his little tummy, he reached out and touched my face so softly, as if to say, "Thank you, Mommy, for loving me. I love you, too."


That moment, dear friends, superseded the last remnants of pain I was holding onto from his birth. God has shown me once again that His ways are not my own, and they are always better, sweeter and more miraculous than I have ever imagined.