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My Mother's Cesareans
The
following is the story of a woman preparing for the birth
of her first child, and discovering that her mother's past
births, all by cesarean after long labours, were making
her fearful of her own ability to give birth. This is how
she worked through the fears, and how she feels now after
the birth. The intergenerational effects of births by cesareans
are real, and becoming aware of them can help us heal.
***************
Hi Claudia, Thanks for the good vibes, I enjoyed talking
to you. I would be happy for you to post our email discussion
anonymously, but please wait until after I give birth. I
have many misgivings about the Internet, but I have to admit
it has been great while pregnant, because whenever I have
an unexpected concern or complaint, I can always find ten
women who have posted the same feelings online. I would be
happy to contribute to another woman feeling less alone in
her concerns about this issue, but again, it just feels better
to wait until after the birth to post it. Thanks.
**********************
Hello Claudia, It
has taken me a while to respond to your email because it
was quite a watershed for me and I wanted to take some time
to sort out my new feelings.
Although your response was probably
pretty standard, your comment that a natural birth might
be healing for my mother brought me to tears because I realized
it was not true. Instead, I think it would crack my mother's
rationalizations for her cesareans, which leave no
room for mourning something lost or being angry about something
taken. I think it would make her more upset if I had
a vaginal birth than if we could bond over some sort
of similarity between us which led us both to cesarean
birth. I realized my attempts to prepare myself for
this birth by focusing on differences between myself and
my mother, which always felt false, would never work as
well as challenging her rationalizations and instead
believing in her birthing abilities and therefore my
own, which also means grieving for what was taken from
us and struggling to reclaim our ability to birth.
I had a long talk about this with one of my midwives and
my partner yesterday which has given me further insights
and reassurance that they will be there to support
me emotionally, physically and spiritually as I go through
what I assume will be a journey that I and my little
one must ultimately take on our own and find our own
way through.
My midwife also suggested that rather
than focusing only on my mother's births, I should draw spiritually
on all of the other women and women ancestors in my
family who have given birth, the majority at home with a
midwife. I realized that although I have never called on
her before, this is probably the right time to draw on my
namesake, my Great-grandmother, who gave birth to eight children
at home.
On a less personal note, I'm reading Dr. Odent's
book, "The Cesarean".
Thank you for your support.
**************
Hi Claudia,
I've been thinking a lot about how my birth changed
my feelings about my mother's births and my own birthing
abilities and the answer has surprised me. Surprisingly,
during my labour, I didn't really have any fears that I would
need a cesarean, I knew things were going slowly and painfully,
and I was having trouble relaxing because the pain was never-ending,
but I was confident that I would birth my baby. Even
when I got stuck at 8 with all the nausea, double peaked
pain of transition, and tried yelling out all my fears to
let them go, I still didn't take seriously the possibility
of a cesarean. And then when I decided to go to the hospital,
I remained sure that I could go in and get what I needed
without a cesarean happening (I think I had this confidence
from attending births in hospital as a labour assistant).
My partner on the other hand, did not have this confidence
and was really scared that going into the hospital
would lead to a cascade of interventions. I didn't know that
was why he was so upset at the time (I thought he just really
wanted a home birth) but his strong support at that
time kept me home a little longer as the midwives tried their
last attempts to turn the baby, relieve some of my
pain and/or make some progress. When none of these worked,
I felt even more comfortable going into the hospital knowing
we had tried everything we could. Once at the hospital, even
when the OB started talking about a cesarean if I didn't
finish dilating or forceps if he stayed OT (he didn't actually
turn OP until right at the end, and then while I was pushing
he turned lateral and emerged that way), I remember being
completely confident that he would turn and I would finish
dilating (luckily my partner was in the washroom for that
conversation because he would have freaked out - and I didn't
tell him what the OB said - he was totally panicked at this
point I later found out and that conversation would have
put him over the edge). Again, I have no idea where this
confidence came from but I was SURE, absolutely confident,
that I could do it. And after I birthed my baby I felt on
top of the world for pushing him out despite the psychological,
physical and then medical barriers to a vaginal birth that
were in my way.
I do think though, that my fears from my
mother's birth initiated a fear-tension-pain cycle that affected
my labour. I think partly my fear about cesareans and my
ability and my mother's ability to birth made me more tense,
which made it harder for him to turn, which increased the
pain and slowed the labour, making me more fearful since
labour was not progressing well and on and on. While it would
have been nice to break this cycle at the fear point, by
breaking it at the pain point with an epidural, I was finally
able to relax enough for him to turn, and drift into 'labourland'
myself during the second stage, focusing only on pushing
when I felt the urge and drifting off in between. Since I
had been given the message that I might be too 'cerebral'
to relax with birth, it was very powerful for me to enter
that place where time and everything else but the birth disappears,
since the pain had stopped me from doing that before. I now
knew I could tap into that inner place of focus and strength
to birth like any other woman.
When my parents came to visit,
unsurprisingly my baby's birth brought up their memories
of my birth and my brother's. Mostly, my parents seemed
to think the labours were similar and that my brother and
I were in difficult positions, but as my parents put it;
I 'stuck it out' where they did not (as if having a cesarean
is somehow giving up and taking the easier path – I
don't think so!). When I got stuck at 8 I was pretty
confident that I must have been past where my mother
got to and therefore felt sure I would reach the end.
Luckily I didn't know then that she had her cesarean
with only a swollen anterior lip left or it would have
been much harder for me, I think. But my own birth
has led me to find peace with my mother's cesareans.
I came to realize how important it is to feel that
interventions have only taken place after everything
else has been tried first, and for them to be your
own informed decision, as they were in my mother's
case. I also know now how powerful she must have felt
after her birth because she had created a new life
even if she had not pushed the baby out herself. I
can now accept that because she had these things she
truly is at peace with her cesareans, and thus I can
be at peace with them. I do mourn that she missed that
triumphant moment of birthing, but accept that for
her this loss is not monumental. My birth has also
further strengthened my belief in my mother's own ability
to birth. My birth as led me to understand that each
of a woman's birthings follow their own trajectory,
and that while the two she had may have ended in cesareans
for whatever reason, this does not mean that she could
not have had five other vaginal births.
I don't think
my mother's feelings about her births really changed
with my birth, but for myself, I feel that I was able
to reclaim the birth power of my family through my
birth: not only my own, but also that of my mother's,
and now my own children as they can go on to have their
own children with the confidence that our family CAN
birth.
Please feel free to make a posting out of this
so that other people can understand and respect the
intergenerational effects of cesareans. Thanks for
all your help through this incredible process. Take
care.
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