As I’ve been approaching my due date, all that has been weighing on my mind is delivery and whether or not I should attempt vaginal birth or schedule a C-section. Getting the nursery ready, buying diapers, and making sure I have “all the things,” have been the last things on my mind.
My first son, Greyson, was born 2 1/2 years ago via C-section and honestly, it was pretty awful. I cringed anytime someone asked me about his birth story. I’m an open book so of course I don’t mind sharing it all, but when I said it out loud I just kinda felt like I gave up too easily. Maybe I should have waited a little longer or pushed a little harder and just maybe he would have come the “right” way.
With Greyson I went into labor at 1:00 pm on a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon in September. It was the perfect fall day. We were out enjoying the sunshine and watching daddy ride dirt bikes and I think Greyson was like, “I’m coming to play daddy!”
After I waved him down to say, we gotta go, we scooted our way to the hospital, and after 15 hours of labor, my blood pressure kept rising and Greyson’s heartbeat kept dramatically dropping. Several times the nurses would run into the room, get me on all fours and rock me until his heart rate got back up there again. It was scary as heck. I’ve never sniffed a lavender stick so hard (which does wonders in labor). I was shaking and Jamie was about to pass out. I’ll never forget the looks on Jamie’s face. Staying so calm yet looking so freaked out. Afterwards he admitted he has never been so scared in his entire life and never wants to go through something like that again. Greyson was also sunny-side up so that didn’t help matters. The doctors and nurses were so incredible and they kept walking me through my options never pushing me to quit. They just kept telling me that we’ll keep trying but the option for a C-section was there, but never pushing me to go that route.
I HATE needles, I hate blood, I hate it all. Having a C-section almost made me pass out at the thought of it. So I held in longer and longer and longer. But in the end, after too many scares of Greyson’s heart rate dropping, I ended up having an emergency C-section at 5:00 am.
All I remember after the surgery was shaking, crying and throwing up. I couldn’t even hold my baby. It was awful. I just laid there watching Jamie hold Greyson. They kept asking me if I wanted to hold him but I literally couldn’t. I was so weak and I was shaking so bad I thought I might drop him. And then the guilt and judgment quickly sank in. I felt like everyone was judging me because I kept saying no to holding my baby.
All I could think about was that I felt like I should have tried harder. I remember sitting there and thinking…there it all went. You will never experience the feelings of what it feels like to birth a child. You just got your first motherly duty torn away from you. Day one of being a mother and you’re already failing.
It never occurred to me that this might have actually saved my son’s life as well as mine. Instead guilt, failure, and judgment were the only things that entered my mind. I felt like I was cheated. I felt like a weak person.
But who cares how your baby comes into this world? You have a baby. You carried and created this child and they are already so loved. Within these last couple years, I have had more than a handful of friends lose their babies, some at eight weeks and some at eight months. I can’t even imagine that pain. And it’s made me quickly realize the importance of a lot of small things.
So, after countless blog posts and leaning on a number of friends, all I know now is who gives a crap how my baby comes into this world. Yes, I may not know the feeling of birthing a child vaginally, but I created and have a child. Babies who arrive naturally with music, in a bath and lavender pedals still cry loud as hell and crap their pants just like Greyson. At the end of the day, how our babies got here is not going to shape them into the strong, loving and smart kids they’re going to be.
Gearing up for baby number two I get asked weekly if I’m going to attempt a VBAC or schedule a C-section. And my answer is…I scheduled a C-section. If the baby comes before the scheduled date, I’m going to give it a whirl and pray to God that the same experience doesn’t occur again! But if not, a C-section is the way God intended for this baby to join us in this crazy world.
So, if the day comes for my scheduled C-section and our little dude hasn’t come out, I’m going to laugh and sing myself onto the laboratory table and tell them to get on with it because I want to meet my son.
