Two days ago, Lawyer Girl emailed me a copy of the monologue she is doing in her school’s production of The Vagina Monologues. The monologue is entitled “I Was There in the Room” and is a grandmother’s account of witnessing the birth of her granddaughter. It’s a beautiful poem, and I couldn’t find it online, so I can’t link to it, but you can always rent the movie.
Anyway, I read the monologue, and it immediately brought back to me a number of feelings I had when I had my son. Not because I had experienced the birthing process exactly as Eve Ensler depicted it, but because I didn’t experience it at all. I had a planned C-section. There were no contractions, no labor pains, no screams or slurring of rude phrases that could make a sailor blush. Just me. Me and Husband. Me and Husband and a world of trepidation.
I had a planned C-section because I almost two weeks past my due date. I wasn’t effaced. I barely felt contractions. By this time, The Boy was huge. My pelvis was not. Unlike the rest of me, my pelvis is narrow. My doctor gave me the option of inducing and trying to deliver naturally, or scheduling a C-section. He gave me the pros and cons of each and strongly urged me to choose the C-section, though said it was up to me. I also found out at that particular appointment that they were incorrect in telling me I was pregnant with a girl, and was in fact, bearing a son. I had a name for Her. I had clothes for Her. I had a bond with a Her. I was in no emotional position to make a decision on whether or not I should schedule the surgery. Many tears and the folding and putting away of skirts and dresses and ballet shoes later, I had calmed down enough to discuss the options and Husband and I decided to go with the C-section.
I can’t compare it to labor, but I assure you, C-sections are no walk in the park. The largish needle in my back, and subsequent numbness. Laying on the operating room table with my arms outstretched. A shivering cold taking over my upper body. And a single haunting thought — “how can I be a mother when I’m not even going through the passage of motherhood?”
See, I spent most of my pregnancy both fearing and looking forward to labor. I had heard story after story of women in the labor room and seen it in movies with the tears and yells, and then in the end, there’s a tiny little baby to hold and love. And yes, I realize that the movies aren’t to be trusted for accuracy, but I’d heard labor stories from the mouths of so many mothers. The attitude of “I earned the right to be a mother because I went through labor.” And here I was, cheating myself of it. By my own signature, no less.
After the doctors pulled The Boy out, Husband left with him to see him get weighed (9 1/2 pounds. The 2 doctors and 2 nurses in the OR all told me I would never have delivered him naturally, even with the inducing), and when I was finally rolled into the recovery room to see The Boy, I held him and smiled for pictures but I didn’t really know him. I’m sure most mothers can recall those moments of fret when they didn’t feel that immediate bond to their child after giving birth. They warn us of it in all the books, yet it comes as such a shock anyways that we don’t instantaneously bond with and gush over the little being we just brought forth into the world. And I blamed this lack of a bond on the fact that I had a C-section. I lamented this as possibly the biggest mistake of my life, that I didn’t go through labor. And a few days later when we got home, I turned on the TV in the middle of the night and cried my eyes out because the stupid ending to that stupid movie, Nine Months, was on TV, and stupid Julianne Moore was all crying and gushy and in labor. I hated her that night. I switched over to AMC and found a delightful movie, The Shop Around the Corner, which I cried through too. Ah, hormones.
Of course, I developed a bond with The Boy and when I became pregnant with Little No Limit, I was determined to have a natural delivery, although my OB/GYN told me he didn’t think it was a good idea. Then Husband got a job transfer, and I moved to Bakersfield in my second trimester (FYI: Bakersfield is THE CALIFORNIA DESERT and I spent my third trimester in the summer there. I went to the hospital in the middle of the night because I thought my water broke, and it turned out, I was just sweating). Anyway, I told my new doctor of the whole delivery dilemma and after examining me, he too suggested I would be better off with a C-section. So I did it. And I admit, it made it a lot easier to coordinate care for The Boy who was only 20 months old. Little No Limit was 7 pounds on the dot. My doctors had both told me that anything over 6 would be problematic, so I guess it was the right thing to do. But again, all those same feelings of sadness overwhelmed me that I didn’t get the Badge of Motherhood. And this time, I had really done myself in, because once you have 2 C-sections, you can only have C-sections. Enter a major case of post-partum.
It’s been over 2 years since all of that went down, and I am now a happy mom with happy kids and we have bonds and everything is great. I am over the whole ‘didn’t go through labor’ thing, yet when my friend emailed me her monologue, I found myself suddenly crying again. I suppose you could attribute some of those tears to that feeling of old, that I didn’t get hazed properly by the sorority of motherhood. But I also attribute some of those tears to the realization I have earned motherhood. Towards the end of the poem, there is the line, “It can change its shape to let us in.” And I did. And I do. And when my kids says to me, “I love you!” with all the capriciousness that their age guarantees, I think to myself, I love being a mother.
(This post is a response to Scribbit’s Write Away Contest. The topic was Love. Anything about love.)
