When Shit Goes Sideways

“That was fast! Came out in one push. Now, let’s look at that leg”

Being just 5 days postpartum from an emergency c-section, the dr.’s super offhand comment smacked me in the face like a wet fish. Being utterly unprepared for, and having no idea how to deal with, the aftermath of said c-section, I had returned to the labor and delivery floor to have the on-call doctor take a look at my Jubilee James, born 12:35am 10/19/2022

very slightly swollen right leg just to be sure it didn’t have a blood clot (it didn’t). She had begun the exam only to be whisked away suddenly to assist another patient on the floor who was ready to push, but here she was, back in less than 20 minutes. That was two days ago and it’s taken me this long to process the intense wave of guilt and shame produced by this really small and seemingly insignificant statement about another person's birth story.

If I have one really, really good tool in my emotional repair kit, it’s recognizing when a weird thought or feeling needs to be sat with and examined. What I mean by that is I don’t let the thought simmer and blossom like leaven, growing and compounding until it’s swallowing the whole of my brain and not letting me think about anything else. I call my therapist or some other loved ones and talk the thought or feeling out. The thought attached to the guilt and shame in this instance was that my body had failed. And more specifically, that I had failed.

I failed. I failed at giving birth like a woman is was supposed to. I had one job to do, push out this human being that I had just spent 39 weeks incubating, and at the finish line had shat the bed. I got that baby all the way to the front door just to have her get stuck in the doorway and need the damn jaws of life to yank her out. Maybe it’s because I’d gotten the epidural, something I didn’t do with my first child who had popped out like a greased watermelon in three pushes.

Maybe it’s because due to my first child’s premature birth (34 weeks) and my own “advanced maternal age” (thanks for that label western medicine, that sure feels good) all my doctors had been treating me like a volcano about to blow my entire pregnancy, but once I hit 36 weeks, became obsessed with getting her out before, or directly on, her due date.

I, therefore, had also become obsessed with getting her out. With drinking red raspberry leaf tea and taking long walks and eating evening primrose oil like it was water from the fountain of youth. I’d had my membranes swept twice (google it, I don’t have time to explain). I’d had labor start up, then stall out, 3 times. I had, under-fucking-standably, become frustrated and anxious. I had gotten caught in the crossfire between western medicine, who wanted to schedule an induction and use all the drugs, and the wise woman traditions that say just let it come and trust that it will be fine.

When push came to shove (pun absolutely intended) I erred on the side of western medicine. My water broke at 3am and I went in and allowed all the drugs. The epidural, the Pitocin, all of it. My thought was that I had failed to trust my body, failed to trust God, failed to let my daughter come on her own and that somehow, all of those decisions had culminated in the c-section that went awry and required 4 hours of exploratory measures to make sure I was ok before they stitched me back up. My thought was that the c-section was punishment for my lack of faith. My thought was that I had been so intent on getting her out for my own comfort and for my own sake, that I had forgotten how serious an endeavor birth can be. My thought was childbirth is a very literally walk through the valley of the shadow of death that has claimed the lives of countless women and that I was not, in fact, special or exempt. I had forgotten, and God had chosen to remind me.

Visual representation of the thought in my head shown to scale.

Even in describing all of this, my throat gets tight and the tears well up. Because, as my therapist gently reminded me when I called her and said all of this, the feelings behind the thought are more important than the thought itself. The thought wants to keep me trapped in my brain, intellectualizing a traumatic experience and rolling it around like the proverbial grain of sand, as if my oyster of a brain can somehow turn it into a pearl. But it can’t, that’s not how trauma works. When I drop down into my body and feel it, when the thoughts stop, it changes.

What I feel is grief. Grief that I never got to have that cinematic moment where my baby is placed on my chest and the bond that’s been growing for so long in utero is finally sealed earthside. Grief that my daughter never got the “golden hour” that all the fucking research repeats over and over is so crucial. Grief that I can’t pick up my 2-year-old for 6 weeks. That she can’t run to me for affection and cuddles without being instructed to remember that mommy has a boo boo and to be careful. Grief that my husband’s paternity leave will be spent doing all the things I can’t do while I heal, instead of just bonding with his new daughter.

Grief. It’s a mother fucker.

But sitting in my body and feeling the grief is the antidote for the poison of self-blame. It connects me, once again, to a psalm 34:18 God who is close to the broken hearted and who saves those who are crushed in spirit. A God who fortified me with strength in the operating room while doctors worked to save my life, not one that was punishing me with grueling 4-hour surgery that I was AWAKE for. A God that sees my grief and is desperate to console. The god in my head? The one that blames and punishes? That’s just patriarchy, masquerading around in Christian clothing. I’ve met him before, he’s an asshole. And, he’s not real. He’s a lower-case god, made by man and full of shit. One of these days I’ll worm him out of my brain for good and he won’t have the power to sucker punch me when gender politics make me wanna blame myself for no good reason, which, btw, is what all this really is. All this self-blame that’s wrapped in and around what a “good” woman’s body is “supposed” to do. How I’m “supposed” to serve mankind by perpetuating my husband’s seed. That shit is patriarchy 101, and it does not come from an uppercase God.

So today, I’m going to order burgers from grubhub again and lay in bed and nurse my baby and watch tv. I may get out of my pajamas, I may not. I’m going to allow the God of love, the God of comfort, the God of peace to beat the shit out of the lower-case god of blame, self-doubt and punishment. I made a human being ya’ll. A beautiful creature that gets to be here with us because of the miracle of western medicine. I get to be here because of the miracle of western medicine. It’s a good day to be alive people, and I’m glad I get to share it with you.

Love ya’ll.