Welcome to the June 2012 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Embracing Your Birth Experience

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have written about at least one part of their birth experience that they can hold up and cherish.

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Don’t get me wrong; the homebirth I had with my second child was by far the birth experience I would want to repeat if given the choice. I would never have signed up for the c-section I had in 2006, when my breech son failed to drop because, we later found out, he had a short cord, only 8 inches long.

But even though it wasn’t what I wanted, I am grateful for several aspects of the experience. Compared to some other moms whose stories I’ve heard at meetings of my local chapter of the International Cesarean Awareness Network, my family was treated with respect, and my birth experience was not as traumatic as it could have been in different hands.

My OB — who always said my “next one would be natural” — allowed my craniosacral therapist into the room to videotape. Although I didn’t watch the actual surgery part until a year later, I was immediately grateful to have footage of our first moments together. When you are so disconnected from what is happening, the physical imprint of memory is not there.

What was there was a big sheet between me and my baby! So having footage of his first moments, blinking directly into the eyes of my doctor. The video allowed me later to see him when he was taken to the side of the room where my eyes could not follow.

One memory I didn’t need captured on tape but I still loved watching later was when my son was first brought over to my face. He wrapped one hand around one of my fingers and the other around my husband’s, and we sang to him, “You Are My Sunshine.” It was so clear that he knew us, knew our voices, knew the song. More joyful tears have never been shed.

When he turned one year old, I watched more of the footage of my husband following him to the nursery. I was so moved to watch my husband standing over him to shield him from lights and talking to him. Those were lost minutes to me, when the doctors stitched me up while talking about March Madness basketball. The apartness of mother and baby in that first hour is one of the most bizarre things about a c-section.

Later that night, the nurses, knowing that the birth was a far cry from the birth center birth we’d wanted, let us warm our son with skin to skin contact, first with me and hours later on my husband’s chest. That was a profound experience for my husband, and one of my favorite memories.

By contrast, my daughter’s unmedicated birth at home was almost too fast — 4.5 hours from start to finish — for me to really inhabit the experience. And when she was born, a cry of “short cord! Don’t pull her all the way out of the water!” created memories of confusion and concern as I tried to maneuver a too-quiet, tired, and funny-looking baby. She was, and is, fine, but compared to the perfect-looking head of a c-section baby and clear-cut (no pun intended) nature of a surgical delivery, I was surprised by the lack of elation and triumph when my daughter was born at home. Couple those first two or three minutes of awkward positioning in the birth tub and giving us both homeopathic pellets with the fact that my placenta took another 4.5 hours to come. It was hard to settle into new (second) motherhood until I knew I wasn’t going to have to go back to the hospital. When my son was born at the hospital, it wasn’t what I wanted, but it was without a wondering and waiting period.

I’m grateful for my first birth for helping me to be more compassionate about the wide range of birth experiences women have (and then, for breastfeeding struggles, which I had none of the second time around). I know it isn’t always easy, and you can’t always get what you want. And even when you get what you want, it still doesn’t look like you expected.

Our experiences lead us on journeys we can’t anticipate and teach us in the ways we somehow needed to grow. My son has six years under his belt and eight teeth out of his mouth already. And he still has that intense gaze he had right out of the belly.

And my daughter, who entered the world tuckered out and too floppy to hold my finger right away. She’s a pistol of a toddler with a whole lot to say and no lack of fire in her belly. You just never know.

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Visit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

(This list will be live and updated by afternoon June 12 with all the carnival links.)

• I Had A C-Section. So What! — Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama rewrites her birth story now that she has worked through the feelings of inadequacy and disappointment of not having the “perfect” birth.
• The Perfect Birth — Kellie at Our Mindful Life reflects on how a birth can be far from what we imagined, but still perfect.
• Own Your Birth: My Hope For All Expectant Moms — Andrea at Tales of Goodness shares how she owned her birth spiritually (while navigating it physically) in order to have a joyous experience.
• Carnival of Natural Parenting: My Birth Experience — It wasn’t what Lily at Witch Mom wanted, but it was everything she needed.
• The Painless Natural Homebirth of BabyE — Shannon at GrowingSlower wants women considering natural birth to know painless births are possible.
• Reflections on Jemma’s Birth … 20 Months Later — It took a second pregnancy for That Mama Gretchen to fully embrace her first birth experience.
• Loving My Unnatural Birth Experience — Erika at Cinco de Mommy cherishes her very first birth experience, in all its unnatural glory!
• Be Careful What you Wish for in Birth — Amber at Strocel.com had two births, and it was the one that went to plan that she struggled with embracing.
• Redeeming an unexpected hospital transfer — Lauren at Hobo Mama looks back at her first, interrupted home-turned-hospital birth, and finds the beauty in what happened.
• All of it — Laura from Pug in the Kitchen had to learn to embrace the whole experience of birth even though it meant being naked . . . with an audience.
• Birthing Dreams & Realities — Momma Jorje never had a “dream birth,” but she wouldn’t change a thing about her births.
• Memories of Birth: Calm Amidst the Storm — While neither of her children’s births had been quite what she expected, Cynthia at The Hippie Housewife cherishes one moment in particular from each of her birth experiences.
• Embracing Our Birth Stories — Luschka from Diary of a First Child shares a sensitive post on her recent birth which both did and didn’t go ‘to plan’, and writes about the journey of coming to terms with the good and the bad.
• Two Beautiful Births — Sheila at A Gift Universe remembers how her mother brought out the beauty in each of her children’s births, and tries to do the same with her sons’ birth stories.
• Embracing My Supernatural ChildBirth Experiences… — Jenny at I’m a full-time mummy shares her fond memories on both her supernatural childbirth experiences
• Embracing the Hospital Birth Experience — Jenn at Monkey Butt Junction believes that sometimes a medicated, induced hospital birth is the right choice for a natural parent.
• Carnival: Embracing Your Birth Experience — Stephanie at The Other Baby Blog embraces the birth experience from a paleobiologist’s point of view and takes a look at how humans defy their anatomy.
• Reflections on My First Birth and Preparing for a Second — Abbie at Farmer’s Daughter shares the strength she didn’t realize she had until she gave birth to her son.
• becoming a mama – embracing my birth experience — Meegs at A New Day remembers the birth of her daughter Gwenivere, and the empowered feeling it left her with.
• What About Us? A Poem About Birth — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment shares a poem she wrote about healing from an unexpected and emotionally painful birth experience.
• Be a Man: One Father’s View of Birth — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children shares her husband’s advice to other fathers and partners.
• A Birth Monologue — Kat at MomeeeZen shares a monologue she wrote during the process of healing from her birth experiences.
• Forgiveness: My Birth Journey — Leah at The Crunchy Farm Baby discusses what happens when her planned homebirth doesn’t end up the way she wanted, and explains her journey of forgiving herself for losing that “perfect” birth.
• Patching together a perfect birth — KrissyFair at Think Mama, Think learned that sometimes a perfect birth happens in pieces.
• Celebrating and Sharing the Possibilities of Perfect Birth — Terri from Child of the Nature Isle joyfully shares details of her perfect births and wishes to inspire a more positive cultural expectation about birth.
• Instinct – Embracing Your Birth Experience — Laura at Laura’s Blog reflects on instinctual moments during and after the births of her two daughters.
• I was Foolish Then — ANonyMous at Radical Ramblings describes how foolish lack of preparation for childbirth led to a feeling of powerlessness and fear, but that in the end she had her baby in her arms, and that’s one thing she can celebrate.
• Sometimes no plan is the best plan — Tat at Mum in search contemplates that maybe she doesn’t need a birth plan for her upcoming birth.
• Disturbing the peace — Kenna at Million Tiny Things thought she would be a calm, quiet baby-haver. Ha!
• Accepting the Unexpected During Birth — Emily at S.A.H.M i AM imagined herself laboring on a birthing ball but she never imagined where she’d really be most comfortable when the time came…
• Sacred This Time, Too — Kimber at The Single Crunch learned enough to know that the way she birthed wasn’t they way she wanted to; but she also knew to enjoy it for what it was.
• The Birth Partner: A Great Natural Labor Companion — Justine at The Lone Home Ranger thinks that the secret to her pleasant natural labors was having a great support system.
• the Best Thing About My Labor Experience — Crunchy Con Mommy realizes that amidst all the things that seemed to go wrong with her labor, the love and support of her husband was the one thing she could always count on!
• Your Birth Was My Favorite — Dulce de leche describes some of the highlights from each of her four births and explains why despite the differences, they are all her favorites.
• Birth Story: Part One – Moon on a Stick! — Gentle Mama Moon tells the first part of her birth story to share some of the delight of labouring at home.
• Embracing My Birth Experience by Sharing My Birth Story — Dionna at Code Name: Mama made peace with her first birth by sharing the story with her son.
• Focusing on the Beauty of Birth — Julia at A Little Bit of All of It shares the beautiful aspects of her birth center water birth.
• A Joyful Induced Delivery — Amy Willa: Me, Mothering, and Making it All Work notes the meditations and perspective that helped her achieve an unmedicated birth despite being induced for medical reasons.
• Finding Joy in an Imperfect Childbirth Experience — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now tells what she learned from her two very different childbirth experiences.
• What’s to like about a c-section? — Jessica at Crunchy-Chewy Mama is glad she her second child at home, but she also cherishes much about the c-section she had four years earlier.
• What Story Will I Tell? — Rachael at The Variegated Life realizes that the way she tells the story of her second child’s birth matters — and could be exhilarating.
• I Quietly Put My Hopes to Rest E — Erica at ChildOrganics shares her emotional ups and downs with the highly intervened birth of her special needs daughter, Bella.
• Tale of Six Births — Jessica at Instead of Institutions appreciates that unique challenges and joys of each of her births.
• Labouring naturally: nature’s gift — Caroline at stoneageparent describes the most beautiful, spiritual aspect of the labour of her son, the first stages along a bumpy road to giving birth.
• All The Woman I Am. — Lindsay at This Woman’s Work shares a poem about letting go and surrendering during the thralls of labor.
• A twin birth story: embracing the unexpected — Megan at The Boho Mama shares her twin birth experience and how she found the silver lining when faced with preterm labor, premature birth, and a two-week NICU stay.
• Giving Birth With Eminem — Kerry at City Kids Homeschooling shares how fiery rap music contributed to an empowered homebirth with her third baby.
• Two Different Births — Cassie at There’s a Pickle in My Life shares how she learned from her first birth experience and how to trust yourself and your body.
• Embracing Our Potential: Birth as a Metaphor — Sheila from A Living Family guest posts at Natural Parents Network and expresses how birth has served as a metaphor to help her through other experiences in life.
• Little Sister’s Birth Story: Our VBAC Adventure — Charise at I Thought I Knew Mama describes the recent birth story of her baby girl, her pride in an epidural-free VBAC, and how her story isn’t exactly the birth experience she had planned for.
• A Journey in Birth Confidence — Shannon at The Artful Mama shares her experiences with labor during both of her sons’ births.

I knew when I went in for my c-section in 2006 that the effects would be lasting, but I only recently realized to what extent. I tend to hold on to emotion through my body, and since the need for a surgical delivery was profoundly disappointing to me, I expected that it would take my body and heart a while to get over the method of my son’s entry into the world.

Last spring, before I conceived, my doctor’s muscle-testing and her colleague’s computer scan of my energy meridians showed my body sort of “divided” at the midline. After that, I began using a laser after acupuncture treatments at their office to help the scar heal. Before bed, I would massage sesame oil into my scar at night to help it loosen. I also felt called to use the essential oil SARA from Young Living Oils, a blend that markets itself as being for sexual trauma.  After I got pregnant on the first try, I essentially gave up thinking about my scar and turned my energy toward worrying about whether or not I could manage to have a successful natural birth.

Now I’m 12 weeks postpartum after a homebirth VBAC, or HBAC. So you’d think I’d have gotten over the c-section, but apparently not! I noticed that my first attempts to jog around eight weeks after my daughter’s birth — just a mile and a half or two! and slowly! — had me later feeling like my pelvis was aching. This was not the case with my son. With him, I didn’t try any exercise — or much of anything else — until ten weeks and then went out for four miles and felt great.

I figured the discomfort was product of the different method of birth and also the fact that, instead of staying home, napping, and healing like I did in 2006, this time I’m running around with a preschooler, volunteering for his school, running a mom’s group, and trying to have something like a freelance writing and editing career. Not much time for rest, and so many things I want to do!

I mentioned all this to Dr. Jennifer Mercier, who was selling her new book Women’s Optimal Pelvic Health with Mercier Therapy just behind our Holistic Moms table at the Freedom for Family Wellness Summit last weekend. She offered to work on me.

Dr. Jennifer Mercier discussing pelvic health

It hadn’t occurred to me that any of my discomfort was related to my c-section scar. I thought it had to do with my pelvis spreading internally. The word that came to mind after I ran or spent a lot of time on my feet was “crushed.” That sounds dramatic, but I felt like my pelvis had been sort of crushed in a car accident years ago and that what I felt was the residual dull ache.

But then she started palpating my scar. It hurt. It was hot, like a muscle with a lot of tension. She noted that my scar was very close to my pubic bone. She worked on it for a few minutes, rubbing it like you would a knot you’re trying to knead out. Then she had me do some resistance exercises. I was on my back with my knees bent, and I tried to pull them together while she tried to push them apart, three times for 10 seconds.

After she was done, she pressed on the scar again and asked how I felt. It didn’t hurt. “If you’re seriously putting the same amount of pressure as you were before, then that is am amazing difference,” I told her. She said she was. And she showed me how to work on my scar myself, by applying pressure and then pulling up and down off the pubic bone.

The next day, we took a long family walk, and I jogged a little bit of it. Zero ache the next day. Seriously. I was pretty impressed.

Dr. Mercier told me she developed her method through the study of osteopathy. I happened to have an appointment a few days later with my osteopath, Dr. D. I told her about my experience a few days earlier. Dr. D. was pulled into my pelvis and told me to put my hands on my scar and imagine pulling up, just energetically, but the same motion Dr. Mercier had recommended.

Through my work with Dr. D, I felt some major releases, and, at one point, like my whole body went light — illuminated — from my scar down and from my scar up — like a bright light moving in both directions from my middle. It was pretty intense, and pretty amazing. I left feeling much less emotional and testy and much more in a place of acceptance than when I walked in (even though I didn’t think any of my crabby mood had anything to do with my surgery four and a half years ago).

I have started reading Dr. Mercier’s book and am going to recommend it to anyone I know who is (or knows someone who is) dealing with infertility or cycle issues.