I'm so on the fence about this right now that the best I can do is write it out and then see how I feel after it.
Recently, in order to have my son, I had a C section. The actual procedure went relatively smoothly, but everything around it emotionally has been a total rollercoaster, not least because it happened almost immediately after the announcements of the NHS birthing statistics and the noise around the fact that the number of cesarian births in the UK now outnumbers spontaneous (unassisted) vaginal births. I call it noise because that is how it feels to me. A lot of the voices involved seem to be whipping up a frenzy which is so unnecessary and it seems that there are those endeavouring to cause more tension and division rather than address tensions which already exist, and accept that how a person gives birth shouldn't matter to anyone other than that person, their partner and their close family, unless we're talking about medical coercion in maternity care, where the vulnerability of the patient is exploited in order to make life easier for staff involved.
I've been speaking to my midwives and my partner, my family and a few of my mum friends about the experience of it all and how I've felt about it, and had I already moved to the hospital closest to me I would have an appointment in a specialty clinic where one of the midwives goes through your medical notes with you, discusses the things that happened and helps you to understand what was done and why. As things stand, I don't think the hospital I gave birth at does these type of appointments, or if they do, I've never been told about them.
Whilst my partner and I have discussed that things could have been a significant amount worse for me, for us, for our son, I still struggle to accept what happened and there is a lot where I feel like it was my own fault, for going forward with the induction initially, and then for agreeing to something I knew I absolutely didn't want, but at the time I had to make the decision I was stuck between two really crap options, and even before I decided to go through with the induction I was stuck between a couple of crap options, because I was in a lot of pain and struggling to walk, struggling with sickness and struggling with all of the emotions that came with all of that.
I have been trying to give myself the time to write my way through what happened, partly to process it, partly because there are some parts that I want to remember, like the first time I got to hold my son, but there are a few that I don't really want to remember, and those are the bits that are stuck in my head. Things like the details that the surgeon was discussing with his junior feel like they are imprinted into my memory, and those are not the memories I want from when I was watching my partner holding our boy and going through all of the emotions you go through when you become a new dad. I have struggled a lot to find the time to go through all of this, and also to prioritise it because when I have time I just want to spend it sleeping, because I'm still recovering from the C section and also trying to get through the newborn era and take as much of it in as I can, because I know he won't be this small forever and even if we were to do something crazy like have another one, it's not the same, because at whatever point we have another (if we do, or if we can) they'll have a sibling, and our eldest will still be doing things and hitting milestones and needing attention, so it'll never be just me and a baby this small again. (Obviously I mean my partner, our baby and me!)
So the question I have been considering is whether it's worth me keep trying to go over everything, especially as the further I get from the date that it happened, the hazier it all gets, is it worth trying to go over it all or am I better leaving it alone and accepting the fact that there will always be some difficult moments in the memories of the day my son came into the world, but that probably would have happened even if he had arrived according to the plan that I had been so attached to. I would hope that I can find a way to talk to him about it that our son knows that it's not anything to do with him, but obviously he needs to be a lot older for that, and I would have to find the age appropriate way to discuss it with him, but I'm not sure how I do that without some guidance or some help, and I think that has to mean going over it with a professional when I can. The other important thing is if, and it's a big if these days, we decide to have another child. Prior to having our son we had definitely intended to have at least two, and one of the things I said, though it might have been just from sheer terror, or sadness, or disappointment in the 'experience', was that I didn't think I could do this again. I know it's a bit of a cliche that women say they don't want another child after they've just had one and it's only as they get a bit of distance from it and as their hormones tell them that they want another, they forget how bad it really was.
I guess the important thing to remember though, or one of the very many important things involved in all of this, is that whilst I'm calling myself "well enough" I'm not. I'm still hormonal which is normal, but then I have random crying episodes that are more to do with the details of what happened and whilst they are affected by hormones, they are still a problem in and of themselves and not addressing them means they can affect me, my partner, our relationship, our child and our family in general, so even if it's uncomfortable or inconvenient, even if trying to find the time is difficult and it doesn't happen overly soon, I think it's important that I actually spend the time to get myself right with what happened, how it happened and if there's anything I need to do to address any of it, because if I don't do it now, or when I can, that doesn't mean that it's going to be going away.
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