little miss teethy

Little Miss is no slouch when it comes to teething. She has no fewer than 6 teeth coming in at once! The top center two are almost all the way in now, but she's got 2-4 more coming in around those, with two more coming in on the bottom around her lonely bottom two (which she's had for a few months). After a few crying fits today, she's relaxed and ready to run an errand or two with mom and dad.

For the record, Jason's theory is that Aubrey didn't want to go to bed yet, as her screaming stopped promptly as I carried her out of her bedroom...

c-section emotional distress

I'm usually not one to linger on emotional issues -- I tend to sweep things under the rug or avoid them if they make me sad and upset.  I feel that it's necessary, however, to address a topic that has been causing me some anguish for nearly a year: the fact that I had Aubrey via c-section.

I'm only a little ashamed to admit that Jason and I watch Teen Mom (a show on MTV following girls who get pregnant and have babies at ages 15/16), which is important to admit in this context because I realized that I watch these girls and feel resentment.  I feel jealousy.  I feel annoyed.  I am frustrated that these girls who have all these issues, who don't pay attention to the pregnancy "rules," and who, in my opinion, aren't necessarily the best mothers, "got to" push their babies out.

I'm sure many of you probably think I'm crazy right about now.  You're thinking childbirth isn't all it's cracked up to be; that your woohoo will never be the same; that the pain is agonizing and intense, and the worst pain you'll ever feel, and you're "so lucky" to not go through that pain.  But in my opinion, physical pain is fleeting (and, I will argue that a c-section carries with it plenty of its own pain, which I definitely experienced, thank you very much!), and I imagine that the end result is unbelievably worth it (I got to experience that part, too).  Despite all these things, it was challenging for me to cope with, and continues to be a surprisingly emotional subject for me when I hear others' birth stories or see them on tv.

Out of curiousity, I googled the subject of coping with a c-section, and there were a surprising number of results.  When we brought Aubrey home from the hospital, I figured the lousy mood I was in had to do with the typical baby blues, as well as the challenges I was facing in nursing; however, upon reading several articles and blog posts I believe that what I was feeling actually may have a lot to do with mourning the loss of my "natural" birth of Aubrey.  I just re-read that last sentence, and man do I feel cheesy.  But it's true.  I can't imagine how women feel who are rushed into an unplanned, emergency c-section unexpectedly.  At least for me I knew it might be coming: my mom had a c-section with me and a planned one with my sister; my sister had an emergency c-section after induction and lack of progress; and I even had a c-section planned at one point because Aubrey wasn't head down!  None of that really mattered to me following the delivery, though.  I still had to come to terms with the fact that I had a c-section, and I couldn't go back in time to change that.

Unfortunately for me, I'm a dweller.  And maybe I enjoy a good pity party?  For a long time, all I could focus on was whether I could have prevented it.  What if I hadn't gained so much weight in the second half of my pregnancy?  What if I had waited for another week and had the doctor force me to be induced, rather than going in only a week past my due date?  Would I have started labor naturally and progressed better?  What if I had declined the epidural?  Would my progress have continued better?

I can never answer those questions, and continually posing them is really just torturing myself.  I try to focus on the fact that first and foremost, the doctors helped me deliver a perfectly happy, healthy baby girl who I wouldn't trade for the world.  I also try to tell myself that there's nothing I could have done to change the way she was delivered, and to move on.  Logically I know that they lost the baby's heartbeat many times throughout my 28 hour induced labor.  I also know that shortly before the c-section, I developed a fever that was not going down with tylonel, which could have signaled an infection for me or the baby (thankfully, there was neither).  None of that can change the fact that I still feel like I would have preferred a birth in the room where I labored, where my family got to be there, where I felt an overwhelming sense of accomplishment after pushing a baby out and immediately got to hold her, rather than waiting nearly an hour to be stitched up and wheeled back to where she was.  I am trying my best to push those feelings aside and focus on the logical, as well as the end result, but I still have a hard time with it.

These words in an article I read (article here) rang true and I will try to keep them in mind: 

"If I’ve learned anything in ten years of motherhood, it’s that the way our children are brought into the world means very little for how they live in the world. Nor do the intense hours in which we become mothers shape the months, years and decades of our actually being mothers. And if the experience of childbirth is in fact a crucial process, then let it be the process of teaching us that our children will emerge in ways varied and complicated, not necessarily in times or manners of our choosing, neither made in our image nor as proof of our prowess. Let birth remind us that, with children, so little goes according to even the most well-drawn plan."

Another article that resonated with me is here. I am thankful that I had a healthy baby.  I am thankful that I was awake for her birth, despite the fact that I had a blue sheet practically over my face and saw her in some doctor or nurse's hands from several feet away for two seconds.  I really am thankful for those things.  But that doesn't mean that I continue to have some emotional reactions and feel a little robbed of the ability to recount the story of Aubrey's birth in a way that toutes the pain and me pushing and having an overwhelming flood of emotional joy of accomplishment and love that I imagine I would have had if a c-section weren't required. 

As with most things imagined, however, it's likely better in my imagination that it would have been in reality, anyway.  So I have to instead try my best to remember that the way I became a mother (through surgery) does not shape the mother I am, and all I can do is move forward in ensuring that I am pleased with that aspect of the process, which I can control.

sick and slacking

Poor Aubrey got a bad cold (right while 4 teeth were coming in), and I had barely enough time to feel sorry for her before I got it too. Perfect timing as I'm supposed to be on week one of my half marathon training--not. I've only worked out once or twice in the last week or 10 days: officially the worst track record I've had in two plus months. I've got one of my final training sessions tomorrow, and hope to feel reinvigorated and reenergized. I need it to get serious about this half marathon!