overdue: after the birth, or, on labor pains and growing pains

Here's another in a little series of "overdue" posts about my pregnancy and Nell's birth.

Nell's birth didn't exactly go the way we had planned.  If you've read the birth story, you already know that.

In the days, weeks, and even months following her birth, I struggled with that reality: post-partum hormones mingling with weariness and a hundred questions, painfully unanswered and unanswerable.  Even as I gazed at the healthy baby in my arms, knew how lucky we were, knew there was nothing to be sad about, I cried every night for a long time, an inner voice nagging: "You should have planned more.  Prepared better.  Practiced your Bradley techniques more faithfully.  Stayed stronger.  Stuck with it longer.  You failed."

The home birth free of medical interventions didn't happen for us.  Instead I gave birth in a hospital, with an IV of antibiotics and an epidural.  And this was really, really difficult for me to come to terms with.

In those days, every friend who gave birth, and every birth story I read, and every blogger who extolled the virtues of intervention-free birth unintentionally rubbed a little more salt into the wounds of my perceived failure.

Now, ten months later and my hormones a bit more balanced and my mind a bit clearer, those feelings of failure aren't so overwhelming.  Goodness knows that getting an epidural is nowhere close to "failure," and in fact, giving birth - whether with no drugs or with drugs or by c-section - is never "failure."

But in those early days after Nell's birth, I was haunted by questions, by "what-if's," and by self-doubt.  It seems almost silly now, the tears I shed.  I'm sure those few friends I shared my feelings with wondered why I couldn't move past it all.  I'm sure poor Nathan had no idea what to do or say, as night after night we tucked into bed and then the tears began -- again.

I'm thankful for my friend Story, who was with us for Nell's birth, who patiently listened to my questions through my tears, and worked through the whys and hows of it all, even allowing me to process the unanswerable ones.  I'm thankful for my Mom, another good listener who offered encouragement to me during those difficult emotional times.  And I'm thankful for my sister Emily (a doula), whose words on the phone reassured me: "We think of birth being only about the baby, but it's really about the mother, too, and your feelings after an experience like this are real and valid."

Yes, the end result matters.  But what happens to get us there, matters, too, and that's okay.

I wanted to know why the baby was persistent posterior, and what I could have done differently, and why the long hours of walking and hands and knees and more walking and more hands and knees didn't help, and why the midwife we had so carefully interviewed and thought we liked ended up being a person we felt we couldn't trust and who didn't help us feel safe or well cared for.  Why was it that just while sleeping with an epidural we accomplished in a few hours what laboring naturally for days had not been able to - a baby turned properly face down and ready to be born?  Why didn't our midwife explain things to me, talk to me, or seem to do anything more than say bland and generic encouraging things?  Why didn't my labor follow a normal progression?

With time, I was able to let go of these questions, and the feelings of disappointment in myself faded.  These days, I can look at the hospital hat and hospital bracelet in a shadowbox in Nell's room without crying.  I can look at the photo of myself getting that epidural without feeling so badly.

And you know what?

These days, I'm grateful.

I think I can honestly say that I'm grateful for not only the way things turned out (we have a healthy baby, and I am alive and healthy), but also for the way things happened.  I'm grateful for the process.

You see, I think I'm a more empathetic person.

If we had been granted the empowering home birth of our dreams, I think I could have become an overzealous drug-free birth advocate, extolling its virtues without really seeing or understanding the other side of the equation.

When I remember those nearly seventy hours of labor, and especially the last day and night, what felt like one long endless night of darkness and weariness and pain, I know that I have been given a personal understanding of women who choose medical pain relief, because I've been there.

It's not just the birth experience, but the experience of motherhood has also made me a more empathetic person.

When I think about how much I love being a mother, I also think of all the women who long to be mothers and, for one reason or another, don't have babies in their arms.

When I remember how hard that first four weeks of nursing was - oh, the fist-pounding pain! - it reminds me to never, never judge the mother that just found it too difficult and made the decision to use formula.

When I leave my baby in the arms of a babysitter to go to a gig, I know firsthand how agonizing the decisions about work and family can be, and I empathize with other women making those decisions, and find myself less likely to judge those whose decisions might be different from my own.

My baby is growing up awfully fast, but what do you know -- I'm growing, too.

{Tired mama and brand new baby Nell on our way from L&D up to our recovery room on the night she was born.}