Crafting

Every fourth Wednesday we mothers get together above the library for "craft night" In this small rural Northern town lapped by the shores of Lake Superior, where the locals hunker down to the icey cold of winter for many months, we have to create community to keep us warm and spirited through the long dark season. It's one way of balancing our lives, as on the second Wednesdays we get together with all of our children and try to eke out conversations and knitting patterns in the midst of our various aged children runnning, screaming, nursing, laughing, and crying. These are usually joyous and exhausting times, my toddler is just about 2 and very active, and though we both crave the social activity, it is also tiring and I would still call it work at his age.
So on the fourth Wednesdays we leave all but the littlest nursing babes at home with their fathers or their babysitters and take some much needed time to ourselves. IN the second floor room of the library we have a world all to ourselves around huge tables where we spread our crafting projects out far and silence never enters the room. This is when we can breathe into those tiny places of ourselves we often feel is lost when tending to the needs of our demanding children and filling the everchanging role of Mother that we have become. I know for myself these times without my child are necessary and vital to my health, but often I find a stream of emotion well up when I am in the company of other women now, alone, for all the experiences that we share in solitude and simply cannot find the words for, nor enough time to share them.
Hence the conversation at these gatherings never stops, and I even leave feeling overwhelmed by all the different topics we bounce to, never quite finishing the one we were just on. It's as if we cannot waste one second of our precious time, and we have adopted the survival mechanisms of conversationalists whose conversations may be cut short at any given moment by any interruption. So these talks become chaotic and scattered, but we love them nonetheless. However, if one of us should be in serious need, the room becomes completely still and all the attentiveness of our mothering comes in to rally and support the mother in need.
On the last craft night I was still fresh with the news of my new pregnancy, and all the emotions this entails for me at this time. I am excited for this new opportunity to give birth, as my last birth was anything but what I had planned, and ended after many long hours in a very necessary cesarean after I had planned for a home, natural birth. As I feel my uterus slowly expanding and this new life growing within me, I can also feel the trauma and grief of that unexpected surgery resurfacing again. I tell myself I accepted it as it happened, and on the operating table I honestly felt at one with God, it was an amazingly peaceful comfort that helped me to be present for the birth of my son in the midst of great fear and disappointment. Despite all of these reassurances I give myself internally, the grief still lives with me, and lately has been coming up again and again to be dealt with and released.
I remember planning the birth, and never once thinking I would have a cesarean. My mother had had all four of her children naturally and three of them at home, so I planned to do the same with no complications. Unfortunately, my husband was very ill for much of my pregnancy and we were in a great state of upheaval, so much of the stress from that complicated my emotional state and it was hard to focus on the new baby. Nonetheless, I took birthing classes, and hypnobirthing classes, and read every book I could find, and got together with the midwives where I was living and planned a homebirth. I of course arrogantly assumed that nothing would happen to me, and that cesarean births only happen to ill-prepared or overly frightened women whose doctors mislead them (though I never would've said that out loud) and who are too weak to stand up for themselves. Sounds ignorant and cruel, I know, and I certainly learned that one the hard way.
So while sitting and knitting at craft night, after a long and tiring day with my toddler, over a bowl of brownies the subject turned to birthing. There were only four of us there that night, but all three of the other women had had multiple natural, vaginal births, and one had her third child at home alone with her husband and friend and didn't even bother hiring a midwife, she was so confident things would go fast and well. Which they did, and within an hour their baby was born and voila! easy as one two three! The other two women talked about how the second time around it was so much easier because they knew what to expect and they weren't so afraid and it must be the fear that trips women up and how if they could only let go of that fear there would be no complications and women would have easy births. Hah!!! At this point in the conversation I started thinking I might bawl hysterically, and the room started to spin just a little as I tried to tell myself I was just emotional because I was pregnant, and all I needed to do was jet to the bathroom and let it out but I could breathe deeply and let it pass and noone would have to hear my cesarean birth story which I stongly felt they would not understand anyway or their pity would be so evident and their ignorant so great that I would not be able to bear any of the possibly unknowingly hurtful things they would say.
I just sat there listening and knitting, and using every ounce of strength I had not to cry. I could've just let it all out and let them feel the enormity of pain that accompanies a traumatic birth, but I just didn't feel that they would understand. Maybe they would've, but the risk of exposing such great disappointment seemed at that moment much too great, and what it comes down to ultimately is that birth is still and always will be a life-threatening situation for some women and babies, no matter what miracles medicine and God can create. In fact, 2 women very close to me had lost babies in the year of my pregnancy, making it very obvious to me just how transient life is.
the thing that gets me still about the natural birthing movement, is the reactionary ignorance perpetuated by anti-cesarean philosophy. Why not tell women they will be so lucky to have a natural birth and to hope for that, but it may not be the case, and prepare yourself just in case. This was the information we recieved in our childbirth education class, very objective and real, but I was reading Ina May Gaskin and what I wanted to hear was what I heard, that only women who do something terribly wrong "they " have cesareans.
Underlying the conversations of my loving and caring friends was this very thinking, and I think that was why I wanted to cry hysterically that day. Also because for me, choosing to VBAC this time around is still the brave and scary choice. I don't know what it will be like, I don't have less fear because I never made it to transition or to pushing, after 40 hours of labor, I never dialated past 4 centimeters. All of this willa gain be like the first time, and though I wish for it very much, I doubt I will be attempting a homebirth again because it will never be so simply easy as my friend's thrid child. And this time I realize I face the very real possibility of another surgery.
A friend of mine recently told me her birthing story, and it was very similar to mine. she had wanted a natural vaginal birth, she subscribed to Mothering magazine, the whole shebang. After a long and grueling labor her first child's birth ended in cesarean as well. When she got pregnant with her second child she considered VBAC but after discussing certain factors with her husband and doctor, they agreed that a scheduled cesarean would be best, and that because of the circumstances of her first labor chances were things would not be too different and she would have the same outcome.
I have to admit, at first i was confused by her decision, but then I realized my old mechanisms were popping up again and then I decided to respect her decision with fervor and compassion. She was making the best decision she could make, and no doubt it was a tough one, becasue I know how strong my de3sire is to see my body do the "right thing" and birth my baby "normally" and naturally". Is it perhaps some deep down fear that I am not good enough as a woman that drives this? That I need to prove I can birth my baby naturally?