I Wake up Terrified.

I have a quiz due tomorrow and I need to be working on it. Oh well. I just read this article because it was posted on ImprovingBirth.org's Facebook page. I then posted this comment on the thread:

It's true. The article talks about a home birth that went devastatingly wrong. It was scary and traumatic. The same birth may or may not have happened in a hospital. I can't say. I don't know everything about birth just because I've had one kid. I'm not the end-all be-all of mothers. I barely consider myself a good one.

But I can say that I had a traumatic birth. I can say that it has stayed with me for almost two years. I can say that while Bryan and I have started talking about trying for another, I am terrified. I woke up in a cold sweat a few weeks ago and what was going through my mind was that I couldn't do it. Here are my options:

1. Do what I did last time. Hire a midwife to give me prenatal care. Hope she'll take me... Try for a home birth (and a smooth one at that!). Face the possibility of something going wrong.  If I were to have pre-eclampsia again, go straight to the hospital and deal with doctors I don't know.

Or

2. Find an OB, be a high risk pregnancy, fight for my right to start laboring on my own. Face the possibility of being dropped as a client. Face the possibility of being pressured to schedule a c-section. Pray that I don't swell/don't have protein in my urine/go into labor on my own. Hope that I get a "good" nurse that is nice and lets me eat a little. Pray that the doctors I encounter won't forcefully shove their fingers in my vagina and painfully check me without caring about how it makes me feel when they do it. Fight for a surgery that doesn't end in staples (cause hell no.) Face the possibility of something going wrong.

The problem is all my options scare me.

And this is what makes me so pissed.

I shouldn't have to choose between one horrifying experience or another. It's like in politics when you pick a candidate you don't agree with at all but do because they are less crazy than the other.

Birthing is as natural to our bodies as breathing. Our bodies morph to what our babies need and more often that not, we legitimately don't have a reason to cut open our bodies and take them out. And it's not just the Doctors fault. A lot of doctors are sued or punished because they make the wrong call and it ends badly. Which is heartbreaking and infuriating. We are all only people, at the end of it all. We can only do so much. When someone loses their baby, sometimes it's the only thing that makes sense. Honestly, I can't imagine. I do know that many doctors just try to do what they believe in that moment is right. It's not an easy job. That is shitty for them as doctors.

But there are also many doctors out there want to be home by dinner or don't want you ruining their Disneyland plans. They have a life to live too so they push the surgery. That is shitty for their patients. Taking their own schedule out of it though, a cesarean is less work, less grief. When they do surgery they are in control of our birth. When we labor and we birth, our bodies are in control. There is some degree of the unknown to both, but for the most part, there is less guessing when it's a cesarean.

And that is shitty for us as patients.

Because our bodies are generally made to have baby after baby. Our bodies are not meant to have surgery after surgery. Our bodies don't recover the same way because our bodies our fighting something unnatural when healing from a cesarean. When we have a natural birth, our bodies are more likely to repair the damage as easily as a paper cut. I like to think of it like this: When you lose weight, slowly and methodically, you're body goes back to normal. It heals itself. Your skin tighten. Your muscles will become strong. Your bones will breathe a sigh of relief. When you lose weight by say, a gastric bypass, your body freaks the fudge out and you look like a zombie for like six months and you have the possibility of bursting your stomach open if you eat too much.

One way is better than the other. One way is less damaging. One way is safer. But sometimes, people do the other way because it is medically necessary. All too often, people do the other way because the results are much faster, even if the recovery is slower.

Recovering from the cesarean was not fun. My nerves were so shot in that area that I could barely stand for anyone to touch it - even me - until recently. Having gallons and gallons of stored up water pouring out of you and trying to get to the bathroom on time while in the hospital recovering was horrifying. Getting into bed was...awful. Going number 2 was EXCRUCIATING. The scar is lopsided and while it is fading, it is ugly. I look at it and hate what I went through. I hate that I didn't get the birth I hoped for. I hate that I remember the way the doctor touched me. I hate that my brain can recall the burning sensation from the Cervidil and how I was treated in the hospital.

When I let the strong, resilient Megan fall away the truth comes out. I don't think emotionally I can handle it... if I had to be touched like that again. If I had to be poked and prodded and left with a dirty feeling and bruised arms.

How will I be able to enjoy pregnancy when I know what could be waiting for me at the end? And what will that do for my stress levels?

One of the huge reasons why I had pre-eclampsia at all was because of the stress I was under that year. There was a lot going on. But pregnancy-wise, life was beautiful. Everything looked great. I was blissfully unaware of what lay ahead.

Now I know. Now I know what I could be up against. I'll be fretting and worrying the whole dang time if I'm going to start to swell. And if I do, sure it could be nothing. But I won't be so quick to dismiss it like I was last time. I figured, pregnant women swell. Duh.

Uhh. No.

I just know, I'll be stressing about trying not to stress. I'll try to keep myself calm but I'll be on the very edge. For a moment in December, I said we could start trying in February.

What the hell was I thinking?

February is just moments away and I can't be working full time and schooling and moming and wifing and having a dirty house and being so fat and trying to build a career and NOT STRESS OUT.

So I feel doomed before I even begin. And that's just labor. When I think about failing at breastfeeding again, pumping for another 10+ months, the struggle in bonding... I can barely breathe.

It breaks my heart. I feel my heart ripping because what is something so beautiful was so hard for me and has left me so broken in so many ways.

But then I see my boy.

He's pure joy. He's incredible. Would I wish him away to have a better labor? Not in a million years. I would endure the greatest suffering if it meant seeing him smile, or laugh, or cry, or yell BONK and then hit his head on purpose.

I would do anything for him.

And in a moment of righteous stubbornness I think, I would do anything for my next one too.

But that doesn't mean I should have to.

There are situations I faced in my pregnancy that I could not control.

There were situations in my labor that I could not control.

But the care I receive IS and SHOULD BE in my control.