So I did it, she's here ! And its wonderful and exciting and overwhelming and scary and depressing. And its all my fault. Theses blogs aren't just how lovely and serene motherhood can be but how we can experience it in many different ways.
So there I was all ready to go off to the hospital armed with my carefully packed bag , my birthing choices so that I could have a semblance of choice in what was going on. And feeling of knowing after what to do , and how it was going to go, you know nappy changing and feeding sleeping. But everything went out the window, firstly , induced (didn't want to be so bit resentful) then I got into complications, then she got in to complications ending in a bloody c section, so my dream of natural water birth gone, feck natural birth gone, there I was numb on a table from the shoulders down, throwing up due to the drugs they were giving me. Wearing fetching compression socks and silver thigh high boots ( don't ask I don't know why) having many people buzzing around me, pulling and pushing. I felt like I could have sold tickets in the peanut gallery. Then she was pulled out, shown to me and I didn't get to see her properly for another 30 minutes.
Not only was I trying not throw up on my new born baby , I didn't get skin on skin till I couldn't feel my arms again to hold her. Everyone says yes but she happy and healthy but it was still hard, I felt robbed . Then due to the hour other half was kicked out of ward and I was left bleeding, shaken and unable to move due to the wound, bandages and catheter.
Then due to the rush and the date of her arrival my milk didn't come in , so faced with another hurdle, do I bottle feed, maybe loosing the window to breast feed? With wee one losing weight I had to feed her begrudgingly with a bottle. Expressing what I could , then desperately trying to get her to latch I campaigned to have her tongue checked. It was tied ! It seemed constant, the problems, expectations , realities. The light at the end of the tunnel is that she got snipped , another fraught moment for a new mum, you know it needs to be done, but cutting your baby's under tongue on purpose feels wrong and right at the same time.
So here I am 5 weeks in, and this post has taken me that long to write. I have been coming back to it, swinging between writing it at all or just leave it in the past. Because it was personal , yes all the post are personal , but this one was a journey , mentally , emotionally and physically. It was and wasn't , a learning experience in a positive way of Mummy and me but a battle of emotions and notions of motherhood and expectations raised and lost. I had to let all of the above flow through me, I did learn I cant hold on to them. Just as they say the memory of the birth good or bad will fade , hence us going on to having more than one child sometimes. The sting of it all if it doesn't 'go to plan' needs to fade too. But It can and I have found does raise its head. Reading , talking and hearing of others birth- days reopens the debate in me. I read about another woman who had the same experiences as me and felt angry about it. I felt justified to feel the way I felt and sad that I will never get that day back and it will never be as it should or could have been. To hear of others who had a fantasy day , to see photos of women having c sections and being handed their baby. I was not , even though I asked repeatedly to be before and after the operation.
I guess I am writing this for others to justify and work through either smugly ( I do not hold that against you ) or resigned to what we did have on the day . To say it's ok that it was not ok. It's ok if it was ok, it's ok what ever. So feel free as I did to 'Bang Head Here' till you can get out of your head and move on to being the best mother you can be. Because you are ! xx