I've Had an Epiphany

I'm not going to give my whole, emotional, drawn-out "birth story" on here, but let's sum it up in the fact that my body refused to co-operate with the plan I set out for myself. I wanted to have a natural and med-free birth, but at 41 weeks and 2 days I was induced, labored for 9 hours, and ended up having the dreaded c-section.

At the time, I was pretty torn up about this. I felt like I had failed, and at the same time as though mother nature had cheated me out of the experience of bringing a child into the world the way she intended. Over time I have learned that what matters is that my son is healthy, and my healing process went as smoothly as I could have ever expected no matter what way the kid was delivered.

And then yesterday, the chilling strike of realization that if I was going through this experience 100, 50, or even 30 years ago things would have been so different. I would have never known that my amniotic fluids were low and that my baby had stopped growing. I may have gone on carrying this child for two more weeks while he was getting no nutrients. He likely would have been stillborn, or killed both of us in the birthing process. The thought of that just scares me. How did women deal with that? How do women in other parts of the world deal with the fact that just because they carry a baby for ten months doesn't mean they will be a mother in the end?

I never thought I would think of "medical intervention" as such a good thing, but in my time of deepest need, it was there for me. And it's the reason I am here, typing this blog one-handed as my perfect 6 week old baby boy lies sleeping in my lap. I would not trade that for a natural birth story any day.