If you’re about to have a c section and want to hear happy, positive birth stories, skip this one.
I had a really tough pregnancy. Hyperemisis gravidarum (threw up every day, couldn’t keep food down), then gestational diabetes (I know, it makes absolutely no sense how you can become diabetic during pregnancy when you cannot even EAT), then gestational hypertension that came on very randomly very late in pregnancy, and finally, pre eclampsia. I’m someone who knows my body, and I had all the symptoms of pre e. My OB’s office kept telling me to go to labor and delivery when I’d have a high blood pressure reading, L&D would do bloodwork, and then they’d send me home. Finally, after a week and a half of literally going in daily, at the insistence of my OB, my bloodwork was bad enough that they decided to induce me.
I tried everything. Foley bulb, pitocin, anything else you can think of, but after 3 days in labor and 24 hour after my water had broken, the doctors told me I needed a c section. The one thing I was absolutely terrified of.
They took me into the OR, and I was panicking so badly that I had one nurse holding each hand, trying to calm me down. The doctor said I couldn’t get anxiety meds because it could make the baby sleepy. I begged them over and over again to put me under general, because I can handle a lot, but being awake during surgery is NOT something I will ever be even slightly okay with. They wouldn’t put me under general, which logically I understand, but I was so not okay. Then I got this wave of what felt like a sedative or something, still unclear what it was, and I was fighting to keep my eyes open. My baby was born, and she was silent. I kept asking “is she breathing?” Over and over and over again. Apparently my boyfriend told me again and again that she was breathing, but I have no memory of that, and no memory of hearing her cry. She was perfectly fine, just stunned, which makes sense because she did everything she could to stay inside my body lmao!
I had always dreamed of that moment after I had pushed my child out of my body where the doctor would place her on my chest, and I’d just know that this was the little being who had been growing inside me for 9 months. Instead, I was fighting for consciousness (I absolutely hate feeling like I’m not in control, so I’d rather be fully awake, awake but with anxiety meds that I’ve had before (I have had multiple of them before and know how they affect me, but this was NOT that), or fully unconscious. The in-between half conscious state I was in was absolutely terrifying. I remember how scared I was trying so hard to stay awake to meet my baby while also panicking so much that I had to be cut open while I was awake. I have very little memory of actually meeting my baby, but I have very vivid memories of the way I felt during all of this.
After she was born, I was not able to even start bonding properly with her because of how much pain I was in. I couldn’t walk for 2 weeks. I was in bed the entire time, aside from trying to hobble to the bathroom and her nursery, and I wasn’t able to take care of her at all. I genuinely wanted to unalive myself for the first week and a half, but I thankfully have the best therapist in the world, who helped me rationalize with my postpartum brain, and by the end of the first 2 weeks, I was doing a LOT better.
My daughter is my entire world. She is everything I have ever wanted and more. The way I feel when she looks at me and smiles is indescribable. She is worth all of the pain, the two years of infertility, all of it. But the memory of her birth is something that even after 2 years of finally being a mom, I’m still unable to think about without panicking. I feel like the pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experience was taken from me. Nothing about being a mom is disappointing to me, but EVERYTHING about my pregnancy, birth, and postpartum recover was and still is so incredibly upsetting and disappointing. I know that all that “should” matter to me is that I have a healthy incredible baby, and I feel selfish for sitting here crying thinking about what was supposed to be the best day of my life, but I can’t help it.
I’ve tried so hard to heal from this. I’m in therapy twice a week (I’ve been in therapy for over a decade now), and I’m trying a new medication, but I am still so traumatized and sad about the way everything happened. I’m sad that other moms can remember meeting their baby. I’m sad that other moms felt joy when they first met their child. I’m sad that I didn’t really even get to “be” a mom until 2 weeks after my baby was born. And I’m really really really sad that I’m so incredibly terrified to ever have another child. Originally, I wanted 4 kids. Now, I don’t know if I can handle having a second.
It probably doesn’t help that most of the moms in my daughter’s daycare class are pregnant. Or that all of them look so happy and functional, whereas I was puking my guts up and miserable and basically bed-bound my whole pregnancy, only to be bed-bound for another 2 weeks and in searing pain when I was supposed to be bonding with my child.
I know how I “should” feel, but I just don’t feel that way. I look at my daughter and think “I’d do this all over again a million times for YOU, but I don’t know if I could do this all over again for any other baby,” and that makes me sad.
