one day in a life
Your birth is the most important event in shaping your life as a mother.
Is it? Really?
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Your birth
is the most important event
in shaping your life as a mother.
You call it my birth. But it’s not. It’s my kid’s birth.
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Sometimes, motherhood is destined, and yet the experience of birth is not. Are those women lesser mothers?
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Are women who are indifferent to method lesser mothers? Lesser feminists? Or just unenlightened and pitiable, even if they’re content with their experience?
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There are birth advocates in my life whom I love and adore, even though it took me too long to figure out I wasn’t supposed to say with such coarseness isn’t it more about having a baby than having a birth? Which is pretty much the same thing as walking into a tabernacle wanting to know, genuinely, why any of us should mind if someone else's bum isn’t just an out-door.
These friends and I have pretty much agreed to talk about other things like high heels and muffintops, because for a while there, I was an unintentional cannonball. But today I saw this declaration and it broke my heart.
Then it made me cranky. Which makes me unfashionable. But I have to stand up and raise my hand, even if it means I risk looking like I stand against them, which I don’t. It's the discourse—the language used and what lies implicit in it.
Your birth is the most important event in shaping your life as a mother.
So you’d better make it beautiful and serene and victorious and on your terms. Because if it gets screwed upside-down and sideways, you will be forever marked as having been robbed—and your baby, too, who will never forgive you for not being more like a goddess and less, you know, unconscious.
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Birth is absolutely not the most important event that shapes my life as a mother. It’s just not. Allow me to elaborate.
IMPORTANT EVENTS THAT SHAPED MY LIFE AS A MOTHER
- The day I let down and my toes curled and I went YEEEEEEOWCH and Evan started to drink and his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and I transformed into an eminently useful mutant.
- The day I found those little sneakers with the flames on the sides.
- The day Liam died and I snuck a look behind the curtain of the universe.
- The day Ben realized that cupcakes were actually EDIBLE.
- The day I watched Justin tussle with his sons, and his sons were clearly winning, and I saw him loving that they were winning.
- The day after Evan was born and I had my first shower, and my crotch was ground beef, and all that blood ran down my legs and I felt clean but strange, and I realized I couldn’t go back to bed and sleep, as much as I needed to, because Evan would be hungry soon. That was the first time I couldn’t rest of my own free will. And lo! I couldn’t wait for him to wake up and need me.
I don’t mean to scorn the birthwork-inclined. They want to keep birth as serene and as natural as possible, and they do it passionately, and uphill. This is important. This counters a history of c-sections prompted by imminent tee-offs.
The problem is the flip side.
Birth cannot be controlled. Or promised. Or unfailingly protected, or made reliably miraculous and beautiful. It can be nudged, and sheparded, and prepared-for, and supported, and informed. But sometimes, birth is just a gong show. When that happens, we owe it to ourselves to shrug at the mechanics and hope for better luck next time.
Because I can’t carry any more guilt. I don’t need a rugby team of birth idealists piling themselves upon my buggered psyche, calling me or any other woman a warrior in the spirit of either sorority or consolation prize.
They’ve got the best of intentions, but the wildly overstated significance some people heap onto birth in order to steer more women towards self-actualization is just too heavy a weight. This weight doesn’t make everyone feel empowered and guttural. It makes some people feel anxious and pressured and damaged and unfulfilled.
I was not a warrior in the operating room. I was a warrior in the pumping room.
My motherhood was not written off or lost or compromised by the trauma of one day. My motherhood is defined by love and honour and one-winged butterflies. My motherhood is defined by how I live my life in an effort to balance the woman and the writer and the nurturer I want to be. All that and the quality of my whoopie pies.
My motherhood is no more misshapen than anyone else’s, except for how it’s been touched by death. And so that declaration makes me want to say Come with me, right this way, into the NICU, won’t you?
Then look at my kin and look at how fierce and how brave and how wounded they are. Tell them that the mechanics of birth will be the most important thing that shapes them as mothers. Tell them the catastrophic births of their children—their loss of control—forever marks them and renders their babies (if their babies survive) poorly-bonded basketcases.
Does our experience of birth matter that much? Does it, really, given everything that may or may not follow that makes us into mothers?
Is birth the everything? Or just one thing?
Come with me. Right this way.
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My edits, below.
Birth is one of countless important events and encounters that all mash up together to shape your perception of your life as a mother.
Birth is one day in a life that will give you all kinds of chances to become much more than a birther. It can heal and inspire and give cause for delight and awe. It can be medicalized or marginalized. What determines one or the other is not your skill, nor the divinity of your preparation, your stamina, your faith, but random fortune or misfortune. In the case of the latter you’ll have to let it go and trust that your kid won’t remember it. Because she won’t. Or if she does, she’ll only remember it in an unconscious kind of way such that her innermost self, which is more worldly and less delicate than we all know, shrugs and says Yikes! That was a friggin’ startle.
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A friend has an anonymous confessions board and I read it and swear not to read it and read it and swear not to read it. It’s where people say stuff like this
My husband wants to have kinky sex. I'm not so sure.
and this
I pretend to like dogs but really i can't stand them. Too sloppy and smelly.
and this
I used to know a really spooky girl who had a twin sister who died at birth. The girl said she could communicate with her sisters spirit. All us kids were terrified of her and we wouldn't ever sit with her at lunch.
and so I said this
I used to know a really spooky boy who had a twin brother who died at birth. The boy said he could communicate with his brother's spirit. All us kids thought he was a goddamned superhero. He was swamped with admirers at lunch.
I feel the same way about birth as I do about death.
I need perspective, and adaptability, and beauty in chaos.
So I choose it.
Thursday, October 15, 2009 in birth, brain dumps
Reader Comments (185)
In fact, the moment that I felt defined me as a 'a mom now' was when I reached into a container of boiling water to pluck out the nipple shield because my newborn (oldest) son was incredibly hungry and panicky. I only noticed that I burnt my fingers once he had latched on and calmed down. Not quite a 'lifting a car off your kid' maternal moment, but a defining one nonetheless.
I think of birth vs motherhood much like a wedding vs a marriage. When you have a wedding, you can mark this definite moment when you go from being one thing to something else, and it is the same with birth. But the real work comes after, in the daily routine of marriage or motherhood, when the effort is not a sprint but a marathon.
So, a birth or a wedding is A shaping event but it is not THE shaping event. It's part of a greater experience, and, barring tragedy, a difficult wedding or a difficult birth does not have to forever scar the participants.
*The birth of my first was complicated, premature, by caesarian section and in the middle of utter chaos in my life so it was hard to pin down what feelings belonged to what.
(and Kate, this is beautifully written as always)
My births changed me, but more than anything, raising daughters, getting puked on and not being bothered, seeing my mother and moving past her, loving despite the possible cost-these things define my mothering.
Good birthing is a good start, but life happens. Life is not always pretty and wrapped in a bow, and far too many people know.
The day I realized my heart was full of my daughters-that ultimately was the day that changed me forever.
And damn girl, that little list....
When my daughter was born, I didn't love her. I thought her quite ugly. I wanted them to take her away so I could rest. I wanted someone to bring me my real child, my son. I faked loving her for months, until one morning I had laid her on her back on a blanket near the floor to ceiling windows in our front room. She was kicking at the dust motes that were flying reckless in the light. My heart literally stopped and then flooded. That was the moment I became her mother, and it defines us much more than the stupid birth.
I'm glad you write. I'm glad I know you.
Ha! Hahahahaha!
*wipes tear from eye*
My birthing experiences weren't traumatic but I may or may not have said, after my second child had just vacated my body, "Thank God I never have to do that again." Still. I went on to do it again. And the births are barely on my radar any longer. It's the day-to-day stuff, the on the job training, that has earned me my Mothering Badges. And I'm not done collecting them yet. Not by a long shot.
i respect that the point for birth-advocates is the idea that women should be an equal and powerful voice in their labor/delivery process, but my own reality and yours and the majority of women i know proves that that just isn't always possible.
i remember being naive enough to have a 'birth plan' with my daughter. then preeclampsia and preterm labor stepped in and said "think again, mama" -it taught me *immediately* that it really didn't matter if i was in this room or that tub or with this music or that pain coping method. when birth becomes a life or death matter (and i will allow those of you who have experienced the death side of that equation to speak your own truth) all that other peripheral stuff just becomes bullshit. i think we have convinced ourselves that control=power, when oftentimes it is the exact opposite. i assure you that i have never once regretted one minute of her birth, even if it was 'different' from what i expected.
my "birthplan" for my son was: gestate just long enough to ensure healthy lung/neuro function- and everything from there was a bonus. i couldn't have cared less about any of the rest of it. who fucking cares if i didn't like the nurse in the room during delivery (insert whatever incident blocked you from having a 'good birth')? honestly. when threatened with the loss of my children, that is what defined my motherhood- doing everything in my power (again, not too much i had control over) to ensure their *birth*, period.
and there is a part of me that wonders why we focus so much on the birth-er vs. the birth-ee in this discussion. it seems somewhat selfish to place more weight on the birth-er's experience vs what might be best for *everyone*, and fault them if it doesn't go to original plan. could we just give parents the benefit of the doubt to do what's best for their families, without piling on another load of guilt or label to divide us? please, all of you, know that this is a deep nerve for me, and i only can speak from my own experience, and i certainly don't mean to offend anyone personally- it is more the mentality behind putting parents into a box of what is "good" and limiting who can share what is "important in shaping your life" as a parent.
thank you for your courage, kate. brava.
And then, when I was 8 months pregnant with my second child, my dad died, and I spent the last weeks of my pregnancy conflicted and sad and tired and sad and not feeling very much like a goddess. And then, my willful, playful child decided that 10 days overdue was the perfect time to turn sideways in my uterus, and my perfect expectation of birth turned around and slapped some sense into me via an emergency c-section.
And I'm certainly glad that my own midwives were endlessly more supportive, realistic and practical than the one that wrote that article. She does a disservice to her profession, and to mothers everywhere.
I spent a good deal of my son's first six months deeply depressed about how badly his birth went. I felt alone, sad and somehow robbed from what everyone told me should be this "beautiful experience" (I know, I know). He was born very dramatically in the OR, after a *very* trying 24 hours, and, in the end, someone made a pretty major mistake when it came to my subsequent health care...so I spent the next 2 months...in pain and utterly furious at the whole world. I kept wondering how I could be a good mother when I was so sad (and angry) all the time. I felt like I was cheating him and also myself. It was a pretty bleak period. I've written about it a few times here and there in my own blog.
I had this notion of "birth" being the pre-eminent experience that would define my motherhood. I kept dwelling on this somehow (depression will do that to a person)...partly because I am stubborn and idealist by nature...and also partly because I had been told so many times about the "magical beautiful experience of birth". I wasn't told that it can (and often is) also painful, alienating, scary and (sometimes) kinda bad. I kept focusing on the negative (bad birth) and was somehow incapable of seeing the positive (healthy, incredibly awesome son!)
After a few months...the clouds started to clear and I found my way through these feelings. I spoke to a therapist a few times who helped me see that what I needed to heal...was to acknowledge the trauma of what happened, to grieve it and find ways to move on. It was hard at first...I used to cry every time I spoke about it. Now I can speak about it with only a slight knot in my throat...and I can see that while the experience was negative...the outcome was so incredibly positive...and THIS is what is important. Nothing else.
I found my way to motherhood...not through Felix's birth...but through his care.
I had two relatively uncomplicated vaginal births and honestly, I hardly remember them. They are not my defining moments. They were beyond my control, unlike my marathon or my dissertation defense which I am enormously proud of. My defining moments are much like yours: first words, seeing my daughters face smeared with her father's homemade pasta sauce, clutching my baby after being told she suffered severe brain damage and would likely die.
This is so profoundly beautiful and true Kate. I wish this was required reading for everyone.
Great post. Love that last superhero bit especially.
I hear you. 100%.
One of the most dedicated, most loving mothers I know has one adopted son. She was his foster mother from birth, through supervised visits with his totally unfit biological parents, through health problems and developmental problems and losing an entire income to stay home and care for him because there is no maternity leave or income support for foster parents.
She will never give birth, has never been pregnant, has never breastfed. I am so angered on her behalf by that thoughtless, insensitive and hurtful article that I'm damn glad to know she'll probably never read it.
Thank you for writing this.
That all went to hell in a hand basket the minute my doctor came in and threatened me that the OBGYN that I DESPISED (instead of him) would deliver Eben if I didn't "get this labor started" by augmenting the process with Pitocin.
Because he was going on vacation in 12hrs...He interjected his own wishes on something that my body was handling just-fine-thank-you.
Birth "Control" is a joke.
And yea, our babies may come out with half-beer-can-sized-hematomas sticking out from the side of their heads from the PRESSURE caused by said-Pitocin-induced-contractions (as Eben came to me) but will they remember it.....I think not.
I remember it vividly, but Eben.....I doubt it.
Great essay Kate, I couldn't agree more with your edits. All the minutes following the birth of a baby are what shapes the mother and child.
and your edits are spot on Kate. as well as the post on the message board!
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I know there are good people doing good work to stand against the over-medicalized and dehumanizing birth that still exist in places. But this? This isn't them. This is every bit as patronizing as medicalization of birth is, maybe more. This too tells women how they should feel. And it's worse in that it attempts to claim the power over the rest of a woman's life, her relationship with her child(ren). This is poisonous and so very anti-feminist. This is wrong. And the good people doing the work of midwifery need to stand against purveyors of this attitude. Or I won't be able to stand with them.
P.S. Oh, and I am so glad you outed yourself as the author of that comment. I totally cheered when I read it on the thread. Wished I could applaud whoever said it. So here-- I applaud.
That birth is a means to an end, and just the beginning of motherhood.
Thanks for writing this, it's what a lot of people need to hear I think.
'oh so you did what your body was designed to do? Fabulous! I let them cut me open and remove A LIVE HUMAN BEING!'
Framed in that way, a C- birth is just as much a hero's task as the traditional method.
It throws off the birthier-than-thou people, the c- birth is the easy way people, and men bragging about sports injuries. It's multi-purpose.
Sorry to waylay this thoughtful post and string of comments but I found that reframing useful so I thought other women might too.
I was just thinking about this the other day after I had read of someone's miraculous birth story. I wondered for an instant about my boys. Do I feel any less a mother because of the way they were born? Would I feel closer to them, would our magnetic pull be more magnetic if I had pushed and sweated their way into the world? Am I not a warrior?
Oh, yes I am. I lived through 2 months of hospital bedrest with my good nature intact.
Oh, yes I am. I sat by the bedsides of two tiny infants and begged them to breathe, sang Christmas songs to them because I didn't know any lullabyes, caressed them with my eyes because their skin was too delicate to touch. Skin marred with medical tape and wires and needles. Oh, yes I am. I pumped in the middle of the night, even when my children were sleeping in a bright white room across town. I filled my freezer, the hospital's freezer and the freezer of my friends because it was all I could do, all I could control. Oh, yes I am a warrior.
We are all warriors.
(Kelsi: the contractor who was renovating our house while the boys were in the NICU unplugged our deep freeze without checking first. Had he checked it first, he would have seen it was full of TWO MONTHS' WORTH of painfully, miserably procured breastmilk. All spoiled. Gone. This was shortly after Liam's death, and it's a wonder that contractor is still walking around today, his head intact.)
There's too much here to comment on quickly. Ben is wailing on the floor and I have to go and steamroll him. But I just wanted to say thank you all so much for sharing your thoughts, and for being here, and for being so thoughtful and wonderful.
That said, his birth was nothing like I planned or imagined or wanted. No, I didn't have an elaborate birth plan but neither do I scorn those who do; I am not sure what my focus was other than getting him into the world but my lack of obsessive planning or even thoughtful ruminations doesn't make me a lesser mother anymore than a pages long birth plan makes someone else a necessarily better mother.
Jackson's birth was horrifying, in every way imaginable. There was no calm, no serenity, no softly lit movie remembered moments. There was pain, a lack of drugs, lack of direction, hours of feeling ripped apart and minutes of being literally ripped apart. Hours of pushing, screaming, losing hope and having no faith in myself or the process of birth. And it still angers me three years later both that I didn't plan ''better'' but also knowing plans mean shit in the business of babies being born.
But end of the day, none of that good, bad or indifferent shaped me as a mother. Being told my child was terminally sick shaped me. Deciding to stop treatment shaped me. Making arrangements to have my child cremated and choosing an urn shaped me.
Having it all go well is a luxury and to pretend otherwise is both dishonest and a dis-service.
Thank you.
I had two very different births. The second experience was actually pretty awesome, despite ending up with my clitoris half-hanging-off. Which wasn't awesome at all.
With birth, I feel like all you can do is TRY to be prepared-ish. I suppose. And have supportive people around you and preferably respectful doctors and nurses.
I sure love the way you write.
I did not feel the magic of birth. I didn't feel the magic of breastfeeding. I felt my placenta being ripped out of me, and then I felt the hemorrage of blood that almost killed me. I felt the mastitis that gave me a staph infection in one of my milk ducts that lead to a surgery that left a four centimeter deep hole in my breast.
But I feel the magic of a very busy wonderful little boy who I wouldn't trade the world for. To anyone that thinks that their birth was better then others I say "suck it" Because I'm not elloquent at all.
I'm glad I follow wonderful people on twitter that lead me to your page. Thanks again for writing something so beautiful.
And then he was born, and they laid him on my stomach, and he was crying, and I felt so utterly clueless because I had no idea what to do to make him stop, and didn't really feel that instant bond with him. And even though I'd just had that "wonderful" natural birth experience (which I do not regret, and am glad I had, ultimately), I still felt like a failure as a mother at his birth because of my lack of immediate, undying love (which came later, and is at fierce levels now).
So while I urge mothers-to-be to look at all their choices and consider going a different route than the usual hospital-pitocin-epidural-c-section one, I also fully acknowledge that birth is birth and it goes whichever the hell way it chooses to go, and it says nothing at all about the kind of mother you'll be or the wonder of the moment.
This is an incredible and beautiful post, and I thank you deeply for writing it. I would hate to think that that day of birth, or even those weeks/months after, where I felt so lost and incapable, have that big a lasting impact on my long-term job as a mother. I thrive on knowing that each day is a new beginning, and I just try to do my best as much as I can.
And some well meaning nurse asked me if I was disappointed that I didn't deliver the way that I "should have." I had a new nurse fairly quickly. If I had delivered the way I "should have" neither my daughter nor I would be here right now.
Birth hasn't defined me as a mother. It's all the other things like the hot, buttered toast (my 4 yo son's current obsession) and the ice for bumps and the learning letter sounds that are the profound experiences of being a mom.
I was one of those "birth is so important" evangelists, but friends' experiences had weaned me off it - and then reading your post today has cured me forever.
Bravo!
While I am annoyed by "birth advocates'" presumptions about my worth as a woman, I feel it differently than you do. I had fabulous, uncomplicated births that could have progressed anywhere and without medical intervention, so I feel uniquely shamed. It's not that my "natural" birth was taken from me, I simply chose to throw it away and accept pain relief.
I am well aware that women have been birthing children without epidurals for thousands of years. And people used to have limbs amputated without anesthesia, too. I'm glad I don't have to do that, either.
So when asked recently during a child's birthday party whether I had birthed "naturally," without thinking, I responded, "Is there a way to give birth artificially?"