I’m afraid I won’t have one. Is that the problem? I’ve heard so many beautiful and intense birth stories; births that were difficult and didn’t go as planned, perhaps, but births that started with a deep call from the body asking to bring out life. Births that took someone further inside themselves than they had ever gone. Labor as a connection between the birthing person and their partner, or with the alien inside. A drug trip (that was my theory), a place of no-time and only waves. Stories of labor and birth always sounded mythical to me, and now I guess they’ll remain as myths.
Mine will be nothing like those stories. I will feel no calls from my body, which by design will not be ready to transition into a mother by the time of the procedure. We will arrive at the hospital half an hour before our scheduled appointment. I’ll be wired up with an IV, blood pressure monitor, oximeter, electrodes, leg compression sleeves, a catheter, and an epidural, and in a room so bright there are no shadows, a large team of people will go to work cutting through my skin, tissue and uterus to remove the shocked, blinking person inside. They will show me what they’re doing, or what they’ve done, but I won’t be doing any of it.
Birth is still birth, as countless people have reminded me, but this image feels like the opposite of what I believed birth to be. I’d thought I was open-minded about the whole thing, but all this time I guess I was constructing a story about what it would be like. The words I use to imagine a C-section are cold and antiseptic (“schedule,” “incision,” “remove”) in contrast to the words I associate with labor and vaginal delivery (“deep,” “intense”, “waves,” “push”). When people try to reason about the benefits of the planned C-section — no pain, predictability, you can go grocery shopping and do laundry the day before — every pragmatic point feels like a tiny stab. I nod and smile as I try to hold back the rising howl But I didn’t want that that dissolves me to an embarrassing mess when I’m alone.
Some aspect of loss, I suppose, is always the loss of a story. A breakup that shatters an imagined future or a trauma that makes you look at yourself differently. The more you’ve woven the story into who you are, the harder it is to let go of. I’ve found meaning in a deep connection to my body for many years and I suppose I saw childbirth as an evolution of that relationship: the most epic body-mind confluence out there. I’ve spent more time preparing my mind for labor than I have preparing the baby’s room. Wrenching my mind from that story feels as violent as wrenching this baby from my body.
I know that not everybody feels the same way about C-sections. The people I’ve spoken to seemed to feel relief or a sense of peace when they knew what was going to happen. I don’t. My resistance and clinginess to vaginal delivery is yet another affront to who I thought I was. I know that I can’t reach anything like acceptance without investigating and incorporating this resistance as well. I also know that it can’t be fully investigated. Who knows why it felt so important to me? My reasons may be as murky and primal as my desire for a child itself. Acceptance is a function of time more than it is of logic and at least I have a little bit of it to process.
The loss of a story doesn’t leave you without stories. That’s what it means to go on living; a never-ending accumulation of stories. I can prepare, I can attempt to recontextualize, but I can’t tell my birth story yet because it hasn’t happened. It will come out through me in its own way. And then the next story will.
What I’m cooking
Sesame Oat Date Bars (v, gf)
Rich and chewy, not quite a granola bar but not so sweet like a blondie, full of tahini, seeds, and oats. You could eat these bars for breakfast or a snack and feel great. This is the kind of treat I’m going to prepare for myself for the Great Hunger that people have warned me comes with breastfeeding.
Become a paid subscriber to get the recipe, new recipes every Friday:
As I guy, just can't relate. As a reader, what lovely prose . . . .
I felt the same when this happened to me. My first-born was breach, so he was C-section and then so was my daughter. I still had a story that I wanted to share about the amazing experience of bringing them into the world! Occasionally I still regret that I missed what it feels like to “give birth.” But life became so full with them, I focus on all the other experiences. I hope the best for you when it happens!