As I've mentioned before, my husband is Active Duty United States Air Force. While we don't move nearly as often as people think military families do, we do move more often than your average family. We've lived in Alabama for a little over three and a half years, and while we have no idea when or where we do know that we're almost definitely moving somewhere within the next year. While I (still) haven't finished my degree in large part do to getting married, moving cross-country, and becoming a parent; I majored in elementary education. Since I've been to schools in three different states, as part of my course work I have to deal with the state standards from three different states. Generally speaking, the standards for any particular grade are the same across state lines. There are differences. For example, most states have students study state history in fourth grade. Which is wonderful unless you move your child cross-country midway through fourth grade. In Alabama, students study United States history in both fifth and sixth grade. In North Carolina, they study American history in fifth grade only so that they can have another year of state history in eighth grade. Even within states there can be continuity issues. My parents divorced when I was in the seventh grade, and we moved back to my parents hometown. The school I had been attending had an eight period day with all academic classes lasting one period for a full year. The school I transferred to within the same state also had an eight period day, but academic classes lasted for two periods and electives lasted for one. Math and Language Arts were taught the entire year, but Science and Social Studies were only taught for a semester. I was able to pick whether I wanted to take Science or Social Studies, but it meant that I never finished seventh grade science. And despite using the exact same textbooks for Social Studies, my old class had been further along in the book so I spent a couple of week repeating old material.
I share all of that because I have a lot of worries about educational continuity for our daughter knowing that before my husband retires, we will probably move at least 3 more times. I also know that we aren't guaranteed to have a place to live immediately upon arriving at a new duty station. When we moved from Arizona, pre-baby, to our current duty station, we broke the lease on our apartment and headed east with no new address. We were authorized to stay in the Base Temporary Lodging Facility (TLF) for a month, so we knew we wouldn't be homeless until we were able to find a place to live. We got lucky and arrived on a Saturday, looked at apartments on Monday, signed a lease on Tuesday, and got the keys on Wednesday. If we had had school age children at the time, we probably could have gotten them enrolled on Tuesday amid setting up electricity and cable. Between driving cross-country and finding a new home, they probably would have only missed a week of school. But not everyone is that lucky. Good friends of ours PCS'ed (moved in military speak) to Hawaii under similar circumstances. They had planned to live on the economy, but were unable to find a place that met their standards in their budget. They ended up applying to live in Base Housing, and they ended up staying in the TLF for about two months. They don't have children yet, but two months without a definite address could mean two months without a school. If you knew you were going to be living on Base for sure, the school assigned to the Base might be able to work with you, but not necessarily. I don't want our daughter, or any theoretical future children, to be in that position.
As of right now, my husband is not pro-homeschooling. He and I both attended public schools K-12, and he worries about our daughter ending up as weird and unsocialized. While one of my aunts homeschooled her two children who have grown up into generally normal well-rounded adults. Both of her kids are married, and her daughter has two children that she's planning to homeschool as well. They live in Pennsylvania, so my husband doesn't really know them at all, and the only homeschoolers he knows are a family at the church he attended as a teenager whose parents apparently locked them in the house except for church. Not knowing the family in question I can't speak as to how accurate his description of them is, but I know that even if it was true I wouldn't let that happen to our children. He has also said that he pays taxes for the public schools and he doesn't want his money to go to waste, and that public school was good enough for us. He has however agreed to homeschooling for two situations. One, he's willing to support it if he gets orders to Alaska because of their public school programs that provide money to homeschooling families. (I'm not trying to start a debate about whether students participating in programs like the ones in Alaska are real homeschoolers.) And two, after learning about how much preschools can cost he's open to me homeschooling for preschool. He agrees that I'm capable of doing the same types of things academically at home that our daughter would get at a formal school, and save our money for things like dance lessons that we think she would really enjoy that we both agree that with my two left feet just isn't something I'm capable of. (I did make an A in Modern Dance 1 which I took for my PE credit in college, but it was graded mostly on effort and participation. I'd of probably failed if it had been graded on actual skill. I have also tried Zumba at home with a DVD since I've heard several people say it's a lot of fun. After tripping and falling over three times, I finally just gave up.) Since he's open to preschool at home, I'm running with it. I've been praying for God to soften his heart on the issue, and I'm hoping that if things go well he'll be open to us continuing once our daughter is school aged.
Right now, our daughter is nineteen months old, so we have a little ways to go before she's ready for kindergarten. But I also think that she's getting to a point where she's ready to add in a little more structured learning to her day. While I've looked at quite a lot of curriculum from the just let them play until age five to the very structured and expensive programs, I haven't really started before now to actually put anything into practice. Until now that is. To start with, I'm going to be using the Letter of the Week Preparatory Curriculum. The curriculum is available online for free, and it's rounded out with some art supplies and library books. I wouldn't mind if the preparatory curriculum included Bible lessons, but since we read a story from her Bible as part of her bedtime routine, for now I don't think it's a huge drawback that it's not included. I probably won't use Letter of the Week all the way through, but for now I think it's a good start. I'm thinking that fifteen to thirty minutes a day should be enough to get started with, and because of her age I'll probably go through the Preparatory Curriculum twice before moving on. I want to work on getting stuff together for the learning poster and getting the first few weeks of materials together before we jump in, so since I'm heading to North Carolina the first week of November for a baby shower and to see family, we'll probably start around the middle of next month. And since socialization is supposedly homeschool kryptonite, we'll be continuing with our once a week playgroup through our church that meets at parks, homes, local museums, and the zoo.
I have some work to do to get ready, but to be honest I'm very excited. In a month or so even if it is only preschool, I'll be able to say that I'm officially (if not legally) say I'm a homeschool mom. And who knows, maybe for the '18/'19 school year I'll be able to tell people, "no, she's not at Whoville Elementary, we're homeschooling."
Monday, October 8, 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
On Having More Children
Our daughter, as of last week, is nineteen months old. Apparently that's the age when people start to really question when we're going to have the next one and how many children we want. I don't really know the answer or even how to answer those questions. I've had issues with progestin only birth control, and while I used the regular pill when we first got married, once I finish nursing I'm not sure I want to ever go back on hormonal birth control. We've tried barrier methods with far less than perfect use, but as far as family planning goes I'm think I'm being led to use either natural family planning or nothing at all. And yet both of those ideas have major flaws. I'm really unsure about the idea of natural family planning since I worry about how accurate charts would be if I don't consistently get a full nights sleep. Our daughter has gotten to the point where she sleeps all night about half the time, but up at 3 am isn't unusual at our house. I charted while we were trying to get pregnant after just stopping the pill didn't result in a baby, but I had issues with charting if my routine got messed up. In other words, I used the fertility friend website to create my charts. The cycle I got pregnant, my husband and I were at Disney World around the time I should have been ovulating. Fertility Friend told me it didn't have enough data to pin point ovulation until after I put into the program when I got a positive test since obviously a positive pregnancy test meant I had indeed ovulated. For conception purposes that level of uncertainty is fine. For contraceptive purposes I don't trust it. I probably need to re-read Taking Charge of Your Fertility. Adopting a "quiverfull" mindset of whatever happens happens would relieve some of the pressure from charting, but it doesn't change one thing. I'm not sure if I want more children.
That's not entirely true. I've always said that I wanted two or three children. I grew up in a family where I was the oldest of three, and a family of five always felt like a big family to me in a world where four was standard. While I have my days where I'm under a lot of stress, need a break or at least a nap, and I wistfully look back on my pre-parenthood life. I think about how easy it was to get out the door, with no one unloading the dishwasher and licking dirty spoons while I'm trying to load it, and no one was yelling at me to get out of bed at 3 am almost every night. When I'm stressed out and frustrated I'm all for saying we're done since I can't imagine how I'd manage with another child if I can't handle one, but I imagine most people have days when they look back wistfully on their former lives. In all honesty, ninety-nine percent of the time I want more children. I want our daughter to have siblings, and I want them to be close enough in age that they actually know each other. My husband and his brother are just over five years apart, and they barely know each other. While the age difference isn't the only issue in their relationship, it didn't help the situation either. Until the end when everything seemed to go off in a hand basket between the threat of a deployment less than two (which mercifully was able to be pushed back until our daughter was a month old) weeks after our daughter was born, the induction, and the c-section, I loved being pregnant. If it wasn't for the c-section, I could see signing up to be pregnant every few years until menopause. But there's the rub. The specter of the c-section hangs over every thought of having more children.
I wasn't scared of childbirth before my daughter was born. I knew that it could be painful, and that they call it labor because you have to actually labor. That's the curse of the fall. Men must labor in the fields, and us women must labor in childbirth. I also knew that God designed a woman's body to give birth, and I grew up with the knowledge that my mother had birthed both me and my oldest brother with no drugs. She had issues with my youngest brother who managed to get his foot wedged between her rib cage, and she had a much needed c-section in which they ended up having to break her rib to get him out. However, I knew that was a freak situation that was unlikely to happen. While pregnant I was a little nervous about labor since it wasn't something I'd ever experienced, but I was never scared of it. And then I ended up with a c-section that I'm not 100% sure was necessary, and simultaneously created both the best and (one of) the worst moments in my entire life. I'm not scared of being pregnant again, but I'm terrified between being cut open again. Of not seeing my child until she'd been cleaned up and wrapped in a blanket, not hearing her cry until hours later, only being allowed to touch her out of the kindness of my obstetrician before she was removed to another floor, not holding her for hours. I'm scared of the recurrence of the physical pain that my newborn caused me when she innocently brushed her foot across my abdomen. I'm scared of how I could possibly care for my daughter as well as a newborn while trying to recover from major surgery. I'm terrified that I'd yet again feel like a complete failure as a woman because I was unable to give birth to my child. I'm still working my way through those feelings nineteen months later, I don't know if even with God's help I could handle failing again. I'm petrified by the idea of having to have regional anesthesia again after the nerve pain associated with the insertion of the spinal before the "babyectomy." Knowing I had a panic attack watching someone receive a spinal on television before a c-section, I'm not sure I'd be capable of letting someone insert a spinal ever again. And that scares me even more because the options are either general anesthesia and completely (instead of mostly) missing my child's birth or no anesthesia and feeling every slice. Neither is a good option.
Obviously if we are blessed with more children, I want to have a VBAC. And even though my husband has said he would call 911 if I were to attempt it, I'd rather have an unassisted homebirth than another c-section. Hospitals all over the country have instigated bans on women with a previous c-section giving birth. These bans aren't legal since you can't be forced to consent to surgery you don't want, but these can be hard to fight. My husband is active duty Air Force, and since he's eligible to receive orders there's a very good chance we could be living somewhere else by the time we were to have a second child. I've read that domestic military hospitals are one of the best places to VBAC since they don't have the monetary incentive to do more c-sections, but not all bases (including my husband's current duty station) have hospitals and instead rely on civilian hospitals. I've also read that most overseas military hospitals do have VBAC bans. While I can't be ordered to do anything as a civilian and it would be an unethical order for my husband to be told to make me sign consent forms for a non-medically indicated repeat c-section, it's also not an issue that I want to have in the middle of my marriage. And ethical or not, my making a scene in a military hospital because I wanted to give birth could cause problems for my husband career wise. If my husband gets orders for an accompanied overseas assignment and we get pregnant, I will probably have to choose between a unwanted repeat section, paying out of pocket for a home birth (that my husband would not be comfortable with) with a midwife who quite possibly does not speak the same language I do natively or at all, or going home and forcing my husband to miss our child's birth. If he gets orders overseas I'll probably end up going back on the pill, and we probably won't have any more children.
I want another baby. If our daughter had been born normally, I'd probably be more than ready to start actively trying. But as things are, I don't know. Before we got pregnant, my husband always said one, maybe two. He likes the idea of having only one. He jokes now about us being one and done. He's also said that he wouldn't mind having a son as well, that he'd like five children, and that the options are either five or one. Nothing in between. I think he wants more children, but I think the idea of parenting more than one child overwhelms him. We babysat a friends children who are a couple of months younger than our daughter and five years old. Her husband had just deployed so the little boy was a little out of sorts, as well as being the type of person who has to test people's authority. His parents are firmer with him, so he doesn't act up nearly as much for them as he did for us who are more used to dealing with a toddler. My husband I think was completely underwhelmed even though we wouldn't (unless we were to adopt) all of a sudden add a preschooler and a second baby at one time. Personally I vacillate between not wanting to have any more children, and announcing that we are quiverfull and having children until I either figure out how to give birth or I've destroyed my uterus to the point that it has to be removed. Neither is really a healthy option.
I think a successful VBAC would be quite healing for me. It would give me my confidence back in my body. But a failed VBAC or an issue that came up pre-birth that were to require a repeat c-section isn't something I'm sure I could handle since I imagine that it would cement the idea that I was a failure in my mind. I don't know.
I guess the real answer is that I don't know. Sunday night we got together at the church that we're in the process of joining for a covered dish dinner. Our pastor was sitting at our table, and since he and his wife are currently expecting their sixth (and first girl!) child the topic of children naturally came up. We kind of joked it off, and we mentioned my husband's claim that we're going to have either just one or five, no more no less. It felt kind of wrong to lie, but I also didn't think a church dinner was the right place to burst out with all of my issues. I'm not sure if I'll ever be ready to truly try for another child since it there's such a huge risk of an unknown outcome. God knows how many children we are supposed to have, and He'll bless us when the time come.
That's not entirely true. I've always said that I wanted two or three children. I grew up in a family where I was the oldest of three, and a family of five always felt like a big family to me in a world where four was standard. While I have my days where I'm under a lot of stress, need a break or at least a nap, and I wistfully look back on my pre-parenthood life. I think about how easy it was to get out the door, with no one unloading the dishwasher and licking dirty spoons while I'm trying to load it, and no one was yelling at me to get out of bed at 3 am almost every night. When I'm stressed out and frustrated I'm all for saying we're done since I can't imagine how I'd manage with another child if I can't handle one, but I imagine most people have days when they look back wistfully on their former lives. In all honesty, ninety-nine percent of the time I want more children. I want our daughter to have siblings, and I want them to be close enough in age that they actually know each other. My husband and his brother are just over five years apart, and they barely know each other. While the age difference isn't the only issue in their relationship, it didn't help the situation either. Until the end when everything seemed to go off in a hand basket between the threat of a deployment less than two (which mercifully was able to be pushed back until our daughter was a month old) weeks after our daughter was born, the induction, and the c-section, I loved being pregnant. If it wasn't for the c-section, I could see signing up to be pregnant every few years until menopause. But there's the rub. The specter of the c-section hangs over every thought of having more children.
I wasn't scared of childbirth before my daughter was born. I knew that it could be painful, and that they call it labor because you have to actually labor. That's the curse of the fall. Men must labor in the fields, and us women must labor in childbirth. I also knew that God designed a woman's body to give birth, and I grew up with the knowledge that my mother had birthed both me and my oldest brother with no drugs. She had issues with my youngest brother who managed to get his foot wedged between her rib cage, and she had a much needed c-section in which they ended up having to break her rib to get him out. However, I knew that was a freak situation that was unlikely to happen. While pregnant I was a little nervous about labor since it wasn't something I'd ever experienced, but I was never scared of it. And then I ended up with a c-section that I'm not 100% sure was necessary, and simultaneously created both the best and (one of) the worst moments in my entire life. I'm not scared of being pregnant again, but I'm terrified between being cut open again. Of not seeing my child until she'd been cleaned up and wrapped in a blanket, not hearing her cry until hours later, only being allowed to touch her out of the kindness of my obstetrician before she was removed to another floor, not holding her for hours. I'm scared of the recurrence of the physical pain that my newborn caused me when she innocently brushed her foot across my abdomen. I'm scared of how I could possibly care for my daughter as well as a newborn while trying to recover from major surgery. I'm terrified that I'd yet again feel like a complete failure as a woman because I was unable to give birth to my child. I'm still working my way through those feelings nineteen months later, I don't know if even with God's help I could handle failing again. I'm petrified by the idea of having to have regional anesthesia again after the nerve pain associated with the insertion of the spinal before the "babyectomy." Knowing I had a panic attack watching someone receive a spinal on television before a c-section, I'm not sure I'd be capable of letting someone insert a spinal ever again. And that scares me even more because the options are either general anesthesia and completely (instead of mostly) missing my child's birth or no anesthesia and feeling every slice. Neither is a good option.
Obviously if we are blessed with more children, I want to have a VBAC. And even though my husband has said he would call 911 if I were to attempt it, I'd rather have an unassisted homebirth than another c-section. Hospitals all over the country have instigated bans on women with a previous c-section giving birth. These bans aren't legal since you can't be forced to consent to surgery you don't want, but these can be hard to fight. My husband is active duty Air Force, and since he's eligible to receive orders there's a very good chance we could be living somewhere else by the time we were to have a second child. I've read that domestic military hospitals are one of the best places to VBAC since they don't have the monetary incentive to do more c-sections, but not all bases (including my husband's current duty station) have hospitals and instead rely on civilian hospitals. I've also read that most overseas military hospitals do have VBAC bans. While I can't be ordered to do anything as a civilian and it would be an unethical order for my husband to be told to make me sign consent forms for a non-medically indicated repeat c-section, it's also not an issue that I want to have in the middle of my marriage. And ethical or not, my making a scene in a military hospital because I wanted to give birth could cause problems for my husband career wise. If my husband gets orders for an accompanied overseas assignment and we get pregnant, I will probably have to choose between a unwanted repeat section, paying out of pocket for a home birth (that my husband would not be comfortable with) with a midwife who quite possibly does not speak the same language I do natively or at all, or going home and forcing my husband to miss our child's birth. If he gets orders overseas I'll probably end up going back on the pill, and we probably won't have any more children.
I want another baby. If our daughter had been born normally, I'd probably be more than ready to start actively trying. But as things are, I don't know. Before we got pregnant, my husband always said one, maybe two. He likes the idea of having only one. He jokes now about us being one and done. He's also said that he wouldn't mind having a son as well, that he'd like five children, and that the options are either five or one. Nothing in between. I think he wants more children, but I think the idea of parenting more than one child overwhelms him. We babysat a friends children who are a couple of months younger than our daughter and five years old. Her husband had just deployed so the little boy was a little out of sorts, as well as being the type of person who has to test people's authority. His parents are firmer with him, so he doesn't act up nearly as much for them as he did for us who are more used to dealing with a toddler. My husband I think was completely underwhelmed even though we wouldn't (unless we were to adopt) all of a sudden add a preschooler and a second baby at one time. Personally I vacillate between not wanting to have any more children, and announcing that we are quiverfull and having children until I either figure out how to give birth or I've destroyed my uterus to the point that it has to be removed. Neither is really a healthy option.
I think a successful VBAC would be quite healing for me. It would give me my confidence back in my body. But a failed VBAC or an issue that came up pre-birth that were to require a repeat c-section isn't something I'm sure I could handle since I imagine that it would cement the idea that I was a failure in my mind. I don't know.
I guess the real answer is that I don't know. Sunday night we got together at the church that we're in the process of joining for a covered dish dinner. Our pastor was sitting at our table, and since he and his wife are currently expecting their sixth (and first girl!) child the topic of children naturally came up. We kind of joked it off, and we mentioned my husband's claim that we're going to have either just one or five, no more no less. It felt kind of wrong to lie, but I also didn't think a church dinner was the right place to burst out with all of my issues. I'm not sure if I'll ever be ready to truly try for another child since it there's such a huge risk of an unknown outcome. God knows how many children we are supposed to have, and He'll bless us when the time come.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Sermon on the Mount Month
Friday, September 21, 2012
Thoughts That Just Won't Go Away
A week shy of nineteen months ago, I didn't give birth to our daughter. I know that statement offends people, but deep down in my heart I have never believed that I gave birth to her. I was strapped down, sliced open, and she was removed all eight pounds and one poop covered ounce of her. I have no real connection with her birth. I was pregnant, I agreed to be induced, my water broke and things hit the fan, I was scared into staying in bed while hooked up to ever increasing amounts of Pitocin, and I agreed to a c-section after not moving past three centimeters. I was shaved, told by the nurse that I'd never been in labor since my contractions had never regulated and that "all the birth plan mommies end up with c-sections," and put on a stretcher and taken downstairs. Where I was separated from my husband and left with people I'd never seen before,and told to lean forward so that they could stick me repeatedly with needles that caused me to feel like I was on fire. After what seemed like forever while thoughts of being knocked out or never walking again they got the spinal started. I was laid down, my arms stretched out beside me like a crucifix, they put up a drape up so all I could see was blue, and touched with an alcohol wipe to see what I could feel. They brought my husband in, and I was sliced open. I didn't even realize that the "birth" had started. I knew it had begun when my husband was told he could stand up if he wanted since they were getting ready to pull our daughter into the world. He declined because he's not good with blood and guts. No one offered to let me see her be born, and I didn't ask because I didn't know how I could see without my husband seeing. I heard my doctor say time of birth 15:05, and I heard a different voice say to not let her cry. They took her to the side, out of my sight, and cleaned her up and wrapped her with a blanket. I first saw the child that I had carried for nine months, wrapped in a striped hospital receiving blanket with a hat on several minutes after she was born. The only sign that she was mine was the little bit of meconium still on her ear that they'd missed. For the first time in my life I had joyful tears running down my face because she was the most beautiful thing that I'd ever seen, while I stretched with all of my might to just touch her since they were holding her an inch or so further than I could reach with my strapped down hands. I don't know if my doctor noticed my struggling or if I was managing to move my numb body and thus disturbing the surgical field, but he told the nurse that my hand could be unstrapped and I was able to brush her cheek with my hand. The nurse snapped a picture of our new family, and then my husband carrying our daughter was whisked out of the operating room upstairs to the nursery while my empty broken body was put back together. I didn't see them, let alone get to hold her, again for several hours. I was completely alone. The end of the surgery is mostly a blur. I was brought up to my postpartum room to find all my stuff from the labor and delivery room had been moved and that my dad and step-mom were waiting for me. My husband was still in the nursery with my daughter, though he started sending me texts updating me. When they finally released her from the nursery, my husband handed her to me, and I just stared at her finally counting her fingers and toes, while the paparazzi circled around invading what should have been a private moment taking pictures. That's the one thing I really remember is snapping at my dad when he wanted me to turn my head so my face would be in the picture, that if he wanted my face in the picture he should move. According to my husband, she was very alert and just looking around at everything for the first hour. I wouldn't know since by the time I was allowed to hold her, she was asleep. I'll never get those first hours back.
I spent months berating myself for failing her, begging her through my tears for forgiveness that she couldn't give. In my mind, my scar is a giant scarlet c marking me for the whole world to see as a failure, a statistic. It took me months to recognize myself in the mirror when I'd walk by and there wouldn't be a giant pregnant belly. There was a part of me that wondered if she was actually our daughter. Luckily she looks just like my husband with my eyes, or I'd probably still be wondering if she was really mine. She had very severe reflux that we finally got under control with a combination of a dairy, soy, and gluten free diet plus Zantac and later Prilosec. I can't count the number of people who suggested I switch her to some form of hypoallergenic formula, in large part because my limited diet was annoying to others. When I eliminated gluten, I had actually decided that if that didn't help I'd switch her to formula since I wasn't sure what else I could eliminate and still eat enough to actually make milk. But wanting what was best for my daughter wasn't my biggest goal in not weaning her to control the reflux. My motivation was that I wasn't sure I could mentally handle failing at feeding her too. It was a triumph of sorts for me to be able to say that I might not be capable of giving birth, but at least I can feed her the way God intended.
I spent several month in counseling working through my issues. I've gotten to a point where I don't have to get up every morning and remind myself that I am not failure. I got off the birth control pills that were making the depression worse. For the most part my life is back to normal, and I don't think about the fact that she was removed much like my tonsils. I try to avoid the articles that pop up on my Facebook news feed that remind me. I don't pregnancy related shows on television any more, and I quit testing myself with them after I had a panic attack watching a woman get a spinal before a c-section that caused quite a bit of nerve pain. Mostly I do my best to avoid the pink elephant in the room.
And yet every now and then it pops up and slaps me across the face with its trunk. I'm right back sitting on the bathroom floor with the shower running clutching the baby monitor while I cried. It happens when I end up biting my tongue while a friend talks about her worries she wouldn't make it to the hospital because her labor went so fast she didn't even have enough time to get an epidural. Or when I see a friend who had the natural birth that I had wanted being congratulated on that birth, and being told she's their hero. That voice in the back of my head says she did it, why couldn't you? She's a hero, you had the exact opposite of a natural birth, you're nothing but a stupid coward. And just the other day, I shared a photo from cesareanrates.com showing a Mississippi hospital with an almost eighty-five percent c-section rate. Seeing as how the World Health Organization advocates a maximum rate of fifteen percent, and the US rate is just over thirty percent, that's excessive no matter how you look at it. My brother enjoys playing the troll when I post anything he thinks is kind of dumb, and everything came back up.
A week or so ago while trying to show my daughter some pictures my mom took via Skype of her "knitting" on my iPad, my daughter managed to open up a chat window that brought up a conversation I had with my aunt the day before my daughter was born. I had sounded so optimistic that labor was getting ready to start, and that everything was going to work out. Re-reading it started to chip away at the thick walls I try to keep around my feelings around her birth. My brother's comment that maybe the high c-section rate at that hospital was just because there are more fat people in Mississippi took those little cracks and tore the walls down. The anger and the pain and the fear and the regret came tumbling out. I was trying to explain why low c-section rates and VBACs are good things. The reasons why I would rather not have any more children than go into a pregnancy knowing I had not option other than another c-section flew out of my mouth. And then something that both shocked and scared me came out. I said that I would have rather of died but actually have given birth to my daughter, than to have been cut open. I'm not sure if that makes me suicidal, or just still going through the various stages of grief. Regardless I'm happy that I'm not dead. I don't what my husband would do with the baby if I'd of died giving birth. And if for the safety of my child, if we're blessed with more children, I'd have another c-section.
It took me several days to write this out, and I was crying through the first part. Maybe I need to see about getting another counselor. The fact that I was able to finish writing without the tears means I just need to work on getting my feelings out and dealing with them in healthy ways instead of ignoring things to the point that I'm trying not to shake listening to others talk about childbirth and how they went c-section all the way like it's a good thing. I dunno. I need help, but with Christ's help I can get through anything.
I spent months berating myself for failing her, begging her through my tears for forgiveness that she couldn't give. In my mind, my scar is a giant scarlet c marking me for the whole world to see as a failure, a statistic. It took me months to recognize myself in the mirror when I'd walk by and there wouldn't be a giant pregnant belly. There was a part of me that wondered if she was actually our daughter. Luckily she looks just like my husband with my eyes, or I'd probably still be wondering if she was really mine. She had very severe reflux that we finally got under control with a combination of a dairy, soy, and gluten free diet plus Zantac and later Prilosec. I can't count the number of people who suggested I switch her to some form of hypoallergenic formula, in large part because my limited diet was annoying to others. When I eliminated gluten, I had actually decided that if that didn't help I'd switch her to formula since I wasn't sure what else I could eliminate and still eat enough to actually make milk. But wanting what was best for my daughter wasn't my biggest goal in not weaning her to control the reflux. My motivation was that I wasn't sure I could mentally handle failing at feeding her too. It was a triumph of sorts for me to be able to say that I might not be capable of giving birth, but at least I can feed her the way God intended.
I spent several month in counseling working through my issues. I've gotten to a point where I don't have to get up every morning and remind myself that I am not failure. I got off the birth control pills that were making the depression worse. For the most part my life is back to normal, and I don't think about the fact that she was removed much like my tonsils. I try to avoid the articles that pop up on my Facebook news feed that remind me. I don't pregnancy related shows on television any more, and I quit testing myself with them after I had a panic attack watching a woman get a spinal before a c-section that caused quite a bit of nerve pain. Mostly I do my best to avoid the pink elephant in the room.
And yet every now and then it pops up and slaps me across the face with its trunk. I'm right back sitting on the bathroom floor with the shower running clutching the baby monitor while I cried. It happens when I end up biting my tongue while a friend talks about her worries she wouldn't make it to the hospital because her labor went so fast she didn't even have enough time to get an epidural. Or when I see a friend who had the natural birth that I had wanted being congratulated on that birth, and being told she's their hero. That voice in the back of my head says she did it, why couldn't you? She's a hero, you had the exact opposite of a natural birth, you're nothing but a stupid coward. And just the other day, I shared a photo from cesareanrates.com showing a Mississippi hospital with an almost eighty-five percent c-section rate. Seeing as how the World Health Organization advocates a maximum rate of fifteen percent, and the US rate is just over thirty percent, that's excessive no matter how you look at it. My brother enjoys playing the troll when I post anything he thinks is kind of dumb, and everything came back up.
A week or so ago while trying to show my daughter some pictures my mom took via Skype of her "knitting" on my iPad, my daughter managed to open up a chat window that brought up a conversation I had with my aunt the day before my daughter was born. I had sounded so optimistic that labor was getting ready to start, and that everything was going to work out. Re-reading it started to chip away at the thick walls I try to keep around my feelings around her birth. My brother's comment that maybe the high c-section rate at that hospital was just because there are more fat people in Mississippi took those little cracks and tore the walls down. The anger and the pain and the fear and the regret came tumbling out. I was trying to explain why low c-section rates and VBACs are good things. The reasons why I would rather not have any more children than go into a pregnancy knowing I had not option other than another c-section flew out of my mouth. And then something that both shocked and scared me came out. I said that I would have rather of died but actually have given birth to my daughter, than to have been cut open. I'm not sure if that makes me suicidal, or just still going through the various stages of grief. Regardless I'm happy that I'm not dead. I don't what my husband would do with the baby if I'd of died giving birth. And if for the safety of my child, if we're blessed with more children, I'd have another c-section.
It took me several days to write this out, and I was crying through the first part. Maybe I need to see about getting another counselor. The fact that I was able to finish writing without the tears means I just need to work on getting my feelings out and dealing with them in healthy ways instead of ignoring things to the point that I'm trying not to shake listening to others talk about childbirth and how they went c-section all the way like it's a good thing. I dunno. I need help, but with Christ's help I can get through anything.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Beginnings and Introductions
I'm going to attempt to start up another blog. No holds barred, just me, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I'm Bazile. I'm twenty-seven, I've been married to my airman husband for five and a half years, and we have one daughter who is one and a half. We're originally from Southeastern North Carolina, but we currently live in the Montgomery, Alabama area at least until Uncle Sam decides that we should live somewhere else. We're a Christian family, and I'm a stay-at-home mom. I'm a knitter, and I play the flute. Though the latter is not something I have the opportunity to do as often as I would like. I prefer skirts to pants because they're girly, but I do wear pants. My husband says I'm a hippie do to my love of tye-dye, vegetables, cloth diapers, and peasant skirts, but personally I think I'm too conservative to actually be counted as a hippie. I've never smoked tobacco let alone marijuana. I'm short and fat, though I still hope that one day I'll wake up and be tall and thin. I'm still nursing my daughter, and while I don't plan to nurse until she self-weans, I do realize that at eighteen months I'm well outside the mainstream in that regards. My daughter was born by c-section, and my unhappiness with her birth colors a lot of my perception of childbirth. I still have issues with not giving birth (vaginally) that while better still need a lot of work. Feel free to ask questions about anything you want to know about me. I'll do my best to answer as honestly as possible.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)