Healing

For my first real post, I'd like to take a few minutes to discuss one of my scars.

I have several scars of varying sizes; some are self-inflicted (but that's a topic for another post), one is from a foot surgery, two from infections, some are from my childhood, and a good number are a result of me just being clumsy. The scar I want to talk about, however, is the scar I received at my son's birth.

For a little over two-and-a-half  years I've mourned because of that scar; I've mourned the loss of a moment I can never get back. I've mourned lost bonding time, and the loss of time I feel we needed to get nursing right.

My son was not sick, he was not premature, he was not underweight, he had no abnormalities. He weighed just over eight pounds. He should have had the chance to latch right away, but he didn't, and as a result he never did get the hang of breastfeeding. My baby was absolutely fine aside from one thing; he was hurt. He spent time in the NICU. A healthy, full-term, developmentally "normal" little boy was taken from his mother and hooked up to monitors and IVs for no good reason. He was put in a little plastic box in the NICU because of a birth injury; a drop in his left lung, to be precise. His injury was a result of the "necessary" c-section that was used to deliver him. He was put on IV antibiotics "just in case" of infection. He did not have an infection, yet they pumped him full of antibiotics for a week.

I did not birth my son, he was taken from me by an impatient doctor. I was cut open, and he was pulled away from me. He was hurt, and then he was taken from me again as the whisked him away to "monitor" him. I was lied to. I was told he'd be waiting for me, but he was not in my room when they brought me there.

I've mourned the loss of the hours directly after his birth that he should have spent cuddled with me and learning to nurse. I've mourned the days between the first time I held him and the next time I held him. I've mourned the loss of the birth experience we didn't get to have together.

I spent around two years feeling like a failure. I thought something was wrong with me. I was devastated and terrified at the thought of potentially never having the birth experience I wanted. The phrase "once a c-section, always a c-section" kept running through my head. I cried, a lot. I lost a lot of sleep. I had to work to bond with my son. I had to work to get that attachment to him. I had to struggle to find that deep, intense love for my child that I expected to have immediately after his birth. It took months for it to seem real. I never admitted that before now.

I felt ashamed that I couldn't birth him naturally. I should have been able to. I felt broken. I went over every single "what if" I could think of. Then I saw a film titled "The Business of Being Born," and something changed in me. I started reading. I started researching. Then I realized something. I realized that it wasn't my body that failed, it was the doctor. He failed to trust me. He failed to listen. Hospital protocol made him fail me, and it made him fail my son. An inability to trust and be patient, coupled with the convenience of intervention, caused my c-section, not any physical shortcoming on my part.

I'm not blaming the doctor exclusively, mind you, I do take some responsibility for everything. I should have researched, I should have been more vocal in my wishes for an intervention-free labor, but I was young (I still am) and had been taught to trust the doctors. I had been conditioned to believe that pregnancy and birth were disasters waiting to happen. I'd been made to believe I could die if I didn't do as I was told, and I deeply regret not questioning that.

I still mourn for that lost experience, I probably always will. I'll definitely always have that scar. The difference now, however, is how I look at it. I've decided to stop looking at my scar as a reminder of a loss, and start looking at it as a symbol of my newfound voice. It's a symbol, not of unnecessary pain, but of an obstacle I've faced and overcome and my resolve to fight harder for the birth I feel I have the right to try for next time. It's a symbol of healing.

Intro

I've tried blogging in the past, and I almost always end up abandoning my blog after just a few posts. I'm hoping this one will be different.

I need a place to get some things out in the open. Journals are great and all, but I don't feel like I need to keep everything so private all the time. I also don't think everyone wants to hear about my problems or every little thing that goes on with me, which is where this thing comes in. I figure, with a blog, if someone doesn't want to hear or read about something, they don't have to. I'm also not limited in what I can post on here like I feel I am on facebook.

I'm going to try and post at least once a day on here, let's see if I can.