How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love C-Sections
One part of motherhood that I love the least are all the “Mommy Wars” about what kind of birth is “best.”1 As soon as you see those pink or blue lines and you foolishly google about pregnancy, you will find heated debates about natural birth versus a medicalized birth and a lot in between. You’ll also encounter terrifying stories of miscarriages and births gone wrong and admonitions about deli meat. It’s such a fun experience, this mom life.
Lots of women have lots of opinions about how to deliver babies. You should do what makes you feel empowered and confident. For some, that may include a midwife at home or a birthing center. For some, that may include a doula. For others, maybe that means a more medicalized experience. For all of us, motherhood is life-changing and wonderful and crazy-making. Let’s not make it more complicated than it already is.
This is not a piece about trying to convince earth mamas to get an epidural or to celebrate the medical-industrial complex. It’s a piece for the women who feel somehow lesser or as though they missed out because they had C-sections (or had epidurals).
So here a few reasons why/how I learned to stop worrying and love C-sections:
It’s the Principle of the Thing
Pregnancy and parenthood force you to learn a lot about yourself—not what you think you know about yourself, but your real, actual weirdo self. I read through parts of What to Expect When You’re Expecting and then threw it in the trash when it advised me to talk to my OBGYN before using dandruff shampoo. I’m not a medical professional, but it did feel like a stretch to imagine that a topical shampoo that wasn’t entering my bloodstream would somehow hurt my child. By that, I mean I did imagine it, had a panic attack at one o’clock in the morning when I realized I had been using dandruff shampoo, this whole time and my sensible (and irritated) husband helped bring me back to reality.
I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t want to spend the next eight months reading up on pregnancy and generally making birth-preparation my hobby. I also realized that beyond just not being interested, it was the principle of the thing. I didn’t go to medical school or train in any way to be a midwife ON PURPOSE. Why? Because I didn’t care enough to devote my life and profession to delivering babies. Now all of a sudden I had to become an expert on interventions and different ways of delivering? Because if I didn’t, I’d have a terrible birth and gasp, potentially a C-section and then my life would be ruined! No thanks.
I don’t like doing things I don’t have to do, if someone else can just do it or tell me exactly what to do. I accept that about myself. Maybe you do too. In that case, maybe a C-section isn’t the worst outcome?
Was My Body Really Made for This?
One of the things you hear a lot when you’re pregnant for the first time is that “your body was made for this.” The first time someone said that to me, I thought of all the women who died in childbirth. And then all the women who have multiple miscarriages. And then the women I knew who had stillbirths. And finally the women I knew who just couldn’t get pregnant.
I discovered, during the induction process with my first son, that I am one of those women. One doctor, after observing no change in my cervix after really pumping me full of pitocin, shrugged and said “you might have been one of those women who 100 years ago would have gone to 44 weeks.” Well, I was nearly 37 and had been told that going past 40 weeks at that age could lead to a stillbirth. I was discharged and told to return a few days later. That induction also failed. Maybe my body *wasn’t* made for this. I *guess* I could have insisted on waiting for labor to kick in, but having that C-section allowed me to have a healthy baby.
I’m writing this as a freshly-minted 40 year-old at 39 weeks and after two cervical checks that show I’m nowhere near dilated, I’m definitely relieved to be having another C-section.
It Wasn’t Really That Bad
One caveat to this—I never really went into labor with my first son. I had one major contraction just a minute or two before I was wheeled into the operating room and felt like Indiana Jones in the underground chamber with the creepy Knight in The Last Crusade.
There are lots of women who labor for hours and get so close to delivering only to have to have a C-section. That is disappointing and traumatic and, if that’s you, I’m truly sorry that you had a birth you didn’t expect or want. There are women who feel pushed into choosing interventions that then lead to C-sections. That is horrible. Every woman deserves to be heard and to have agency during labor and delivery.
My recovery from the C-section was not that bad. Maybe because I wasn’t exhausted from laboring and my C-section was fairly “gentle,” I recovered within a few weeks. I'm sure it was helped by my husband's generous parental leave. I get that a lot of women don't have great leave or have partners with great leave. That's something that needs to change.
Of course, you aren’t really “recovered” until you see the doctor at six weeks and are given the go-ahead to work out and do other things. And you’d better believe, I stuck to that schedule!
Did I mind being told that the only thing I could lift was my kid and that chores were off-limits? Nope. Did I mind having my husband wait on me hand and foot? Absolutely not. And now, after fifteen months of living in a pandemic with a toddler while working part-time, am I looking forward to resting in my bed and watching TV while snuggling with a newborn? Yes, please! If this was the only way I could get a break after this past year, it’s completely worth the abdominal surgery.
The Second Time Around Is Easier
The beauty and wonder of second-born children is that you expended all your crazy mom energy freaking out about the first. You also still *have* the firstborn kid and therefore, you just don’t have a lot of bandwidth to go full-on nuts. That also presents a challenge: what to do with your firstborn when you go to have your second?
Here’s where C-sections really get good. Once you have one, you can just schedule another the next time you need to deliver. No worrying about when your water might break and calling someone up in the middle of the night to watch your firstborn. You just find a time that is right for you and, bam, you’re done. You can arrange a whole “vacation” for your kid with family members or caretakers of your choice in advance. You can schedule a mani-pedi or a haircut right before. You can take a shower (because who knows when you’ll be able to take another one).
For neurotics like me, this certainty is a gift. It is one less thing to worry about when you have no idea what your new kid will be like, how your firstborn will react, or whether you will ever sleep again (you will). C-sections aren’t for everyone. And that’s ok. But if you’re newly pregnant, or are told that you’ll need a C-section and furiously googling about what’s about to happen to you,I hope you take some comfort from this. Parenthood is hard. I guarantee you, a C-section is not the worst of it.
This is not a mom-blog but several of us here at The Wheelhouse Review are parents. So you try spending time with children and “writing what you know” without parenthood seeping through.