You may or may not know that April has been dubbed Cesarean Awareness Month. The purpose of this month is to educate people about cesarean section births. There are quite a few misconceptions and stigmas surrounding the procedure.
Since it’s the last day of April, I thought this would be a perfect time to share some information on cesareans and tell my story!
The Stigma
For whatever reason, there’s some huge stigma surrounding moms who deliver their baby via cesarean. People will say that it’s not “real birth.” What? Yes, I know, that’s crazy.
There’s even a term in defense where people say “birth is birth.” Uh, Hell yes it is! It shouldn’t matter how a baby was delivered. The choice and decision is up to the mom and the doctor.
Maybe the reason for the stigma is because people don’t fully understand cesareans. Maybe they don’t realize that it’s not a decision to be taken lightly. Maybe they don’t realize that the mom has a longer recovery period.
Thank goodness months like this exists! Education.
This Is Science
Many people argue that a natural birth is just that: natural. It’s the way our bodies were designed, but, that’s not true for everyone. Sure, our bodies were designed to birth that way. But for some, it puts us at major risk.
In my case, my pelvis is narrow. Also, my baby was guesstimated to be quite large. If I lived back before the time of cesareans, my baby and I would have died in childbirth.
Cesareans save lives. That’s the fact of it. Scientists have created this life-saving surgery to help women that have had difficulty laboring naturally. Who are we to question that? Those women all those years ago that lost their lives would have given anything for this surgery.
Major Surgery
A cesarean operation is considered major surgery. A woman is cut open and her insides are taken out of her. Seriously, my fiancé saw the doctor pull organs out of my body and place them in, what he describes as, a series of bags on the other side of my partition. (This makes me think of those shoe racks you hang on the back of a closet door. I have no idea if that’s an accurate depiction).
Recovery is different for every mom, but it certainly isn’t an easy one. It’s difficult to walk. You have to be careful with how much weight you carry. You need to be sure to clean the incision area. (Which, I might add, isn’t too easy considering how numb you are down there after).
The scar that a cesarean leaves behind is nothing to sneeze at. It’s a big scar! For many women, it can still feel a bit numb for months, even years, after birth. But I guarantee you, if you ask any woman about her scar, she’s not ashamed of it. That’s where her precious bundle(s) of joy came from. She wears it proudly.
My Story
When I was one day shy of 40 weeks pregnant, I had my weekly doctor’s appointment. My doctor felt my cervix and she said it wasn’t even close to be dilated. In fact, she said that normally at this time, it would feel a little spongy. Mine was not. I was showing zero signs of going into labor and my due date was the following day.
She also mentioned that my pelvis is very narrow, which can make laboring and pushing out the baby difficult, as there’s less room. In feeling my stomach, my doctor also suspected that my baby was quite large.
Narrow pelvis and large baby don’t mix well.
She performed an ultrasound to check the size of the baby. Now, the measurements are not precise, but there is a margin of error, so the baby could have been 7 ounces over or under the estimation.
I can’t remember the exact number, but I’m pretty sure they guessed my baby was about 9 pounds. That’s a pretty big baby!
My doctor gave me a choice. They could wait a week and see if I labored or end up inducing me and I could try to labor normally. Or, I could schedule a cesarean.
After talking more with the doctor and my fiancé, I decided to go with the cesarean. It was the safest option for me. If I had elected to labor normally, I might have ended up needing an emergency cesarean anyway. That could put me at even greater risk.
This wasn’t my plan, I had a birth plan. I was going to labor naturally. What I was most looking forward to, was having that immediate moment with my baby. During my labor classes, they showed us videos of babies being placed on their mother’s belly the second they were out. I wanted that.
I didn’t get that. But what I did get, I wouldn’t trade for the world.
I laid on my back while the doctors did their work. My fiancé sat next to my head. When they pulled our son out, we heard his beautiful cry. The nurse took him to clean him up and minutes later, he was placed in my fiancé’s arms.
He laid our son next to my head. That little boy silently looked between the two of us. It was as though he couldn’t decide who to look at first.
Those moments mean the world to me. It didn’t matter how he got there. What mattered was that he was there. My handsome baby boy, the life I created inside of me, made his debut into the world.
