Opening my heart

When Maddie was about two, we decided to go ahead and try to have another baby. Looking back, neither of us really believed it would happen, because I was not going to go through the mess of fertility treatments again. Mostly we had come to terms with only having one child. But I started charting again, and while we didn't force ourselves to have sex during my fertile times, we weren't opposed to it. We were ready to open ourselves to another baby if and when one decided to come into our lives.

I had wanted to be prepared for the possibility of another baby, so I had continued to read about good births and ways to avoid the pitfalls of last time.

But when my charts made it clear that we were pregnant on my third cycle, we really were in shock. We were not expecting it to happen so fast! It hit me particularly hard. Suddenly I was in a position where I was going to have this baby, one way or another. At first it was the idea of the birth that got me. I spent about a week thinking that maybe just having a repeat cesarean was a good idea. I could schedule, I wouldn't have to labor. And most of all, I wouldn't have to fight. A VBAC these days is a fight. You have to fight to find a care provider, you have to fight hospital policies and time frames. I could have a home birth with a midwife, but even that carried some degree of fight.

I couldn't just resign myself to another surgery without a good reason, though. While my heart was still with unassisted birth, I started searching for a midwife. A new law legalizing midwifery in Wisconsin had just been passed, but the details of who a midwife could and could not care for at home was still being hammered out. No one was willing to risk even the slightest possibility that something might go wrong during my birth and prevent midwives all over from taking on VBAC clients. So midwives were out. My insurance assigned me an obstetrician, but I could not willingly go back to a surgeon to have a normal birth.

That left us with an unassisted birth as really my only option. It was one I felt very comfortable with, though. I loved being my own caregiver. I was sick, and for some reason very uncomfortable throughout my pregnancy despite chiropractic care and regular massages from Chris. I also often felt like this baby was an interloper in our family. We had a happy family. We all seemed to fit together nicely. Who was this baby to inject itself here and possibly mess that up for us. I know these thoughts weren't very nice, and the guilt I carried about having them mad it even worse.

Around 15 weeks, I was measuring very large and decided it would be prudent to get an ultrasound. i went to the one and only prenatal appointment I had throughout the whole pregnancy to get it ordered. We went for the ultrasound and I cried the whole way through. I couldn't believe how much it hurt my scar to have the ultrasound waves going through it. I also felt terribly guilty for exposing my baby to the waves as it was clearly not a good experience. But I also really didn't want to see the baby. I made Chris put the pictures away so I didn't have to look at them. I wasn't sure yet that I even wanted this baby, I definitely didn't want to see its picture. It made everything way too real.

Of course, I did eventually get to the point where I put those pictures up on the fridge, where I was somewhat excited to meet this new baby growing inside me. It just took me a very long time to get there.

I wrote this post to my myspace blog when I was in my late second trimester. It shows a good deal about my mental state regarding the upcoming birth:

Hmmm... my very first ever blog. I'm a tad late jumping on the bandwagon here. I'm terrible at journaling, so I don't expect this will get updated very often. And many apologies to my guy friends. This blog will probably be pretty graphic and personal. I'm gearing up to give birth, about the most intimate and feminine act there is, and my blogs will probably reflect this for awhile. So there it is, my disclaimer. As I mentioned, I am gearing up to give birth. As I write this I am 27 weeks and 3 days along. 3 days from entering my third trimester. This is both an exciting and petrifying time for me. (For the few people who know the whole ugly story of Madelynn's "birth," you understand my fear. For those who don't, it is time for me to get my story out there, look for an upcoming blog with it. I just didn't have it in me to type it all up today. ) So I am preparing for this birth already. Well, in truth, I have been preparing for it since before we even conceived. We always wanted more than one child, but getting Madelynn was an amazing struggle. I have a condition known as polycystic ovarian syndrome, or PCOS, which can make getting pregnant very difficult. For us, it took 2.5 years of medications and procedures. Some of the medications were so potent, it made me suicidal. Combine that with Chris being deployed and me being alone, well, not good. I had the presence of mind, at least, to know that I couldn't do it anymore and decided to finish the cycle I was on and then no more. We could adopt eventually, when I was finished grieving for the child I would never have. But that was the cycle it worked for us. I bleed for pretty much the whole first trimester. It turned out I had conceived with two eggs and one didn't develop properly. I was miscarrying that one, but it was a very frightening thing, wondering if the baby we had waited so long for would be lost so soon. It was made even harder by Chris' deployment. We each had to deal with all of this completely alone. (For those of you curious about these things, we had frozen some of Chris' "swimmers" before he left and had it transferred at the right times.) I never thought I would be so happy to have morning sickness, but it meant my baby was staying put! I'll go more into my pregnancy with Maddie when I tell her story, because it is all interconnected and really hard to figure out where one part ends and the rest begins. So, we had pretty much given up on the idea of having another baby. After what the drugs did to me the first time, I knew there was no way I could do that again. So to have another, we would have to conceive on our own. It was theoretically possible, since I do ovulate on my own occasionally. I chart my cycles, more so I know what's going on than for either "trying" or "avoiding." But it meant that when we did conceive, I knew within 10 or so days. We couldn't believe it! Then the morning sickness set in again and we could easily believe it. Maddie came via cesarean section, so this pregnancy, while otherwise an amazing blessing, held a lot of potential trouble for me. I'm very involved with a group designed to prevent unnecessary cesareans, but I must admit, at the very beginning of this pregnancy just signing up for a repeat c/s was very appealing. I snapped out of it pretty quickly, but for awhile that seemed way preferable to the fighting and work and effort I would have to put into a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean). But the plain and simple truth is that I didn't want another surgical delivery. I want to give birth. I want to be the first person to touch my baby. I want to catch him or her as s/he emerges into my hands. I WANT to feel the contractions and sweat while I push out my baby. I want to breathe through the pain and curse and cry. Women who have had a c-section know what an unbelievable blessing it is to do that. I want it. What I don't want is to be in an operating room, numbed from the armpits down, a passive vessel for bringing my child into the world. I want to be an active participant. I want to nurse and cuddle my baby moments after it is born, still covered in birth fluids. So this time, we chose home birth.
This is what we had wanted for Maddie too, but just couldn't make it happen. We didn't know enough, didn't want it enough. We didn't even know what we didn't know. I wasn't going to make that mistake again, so even though we didn't know if it would ever happen, I set about learning everything I could. Some of it I couldn't help, being involved with ICAN (http://www.ican-online.org/ if you want to know more) gets you educated in birth even if you don't want it. A few months there and I learned more about birth and the politics behind it than I would have ever thought possible. But even the most knowledgeable women can't teach you everything. You have to learn about yourself by yourself. Self discovery and healing can not be given to you. And it is not an easy path to take. Some days, I look back down that path and can't believe how far I've come. Other days, I can still see my starting point and I don't know that I've actually done anything. Who ever said healing is a spiral was so right. Some days it seems like you are right back where you started, but eventually you find you are on the same place but another level of that spiral. This probably doesn't make any sense, but anyone who has ever grieved over anything will understand. Its universal.
Besides a LOT of soul-searching, what I did was toss the wrong pregnancy books (namely, What to Expect) and picked up the right ones. There are a lot of good ones out there, but for me, Birthing From Within is one of the best. It helped me to both heal from my first pregnancy and prepare for this one. Sit Up and Take Notice (along with http://www.spinningbabies.com/) helped me learn about the positioning issues to avoid to have a better birth. Turns out there is a lot more to good birth positioning than just being head down. I'm also really enjoying Hypnobabies. There are classes, but we are using just the book, and it is going very well. I finally know what it means to relax on cue, a huge step for me. The Pink Kit is great for learning my particular pelvis and the best birthing positions for me. I'm seeing a chiropractor regularly to keep all my bones in line. When I get a little further along, I'll be practicing Optimal Fetal Positioning to try to avoid the posterior position that caused so many problems last time. I'm drinking Red Raspberry Leaf Tea every day.
The most important thing though, is being careful what I let into my head right now. I will not watch shows like "Birthday" and "a baby story" that so often show terrible births. I won't listen to bad birth stories. I go out of my way to hear good ones. Wonderful stories, some with "complications" but where no one freaks out and calls it an emergency. Birth is as safe as life gets. Sometimes that isn't safe at all, but the vast majority of time, it is. Birth works, when left alone. My favorite movie right now is "A Clear Road To Birth." It has videos of lots of unassisted births. No doctor or midwife to interfere and the births are so calm and wonderful. There are older children coming in and out at will, no bright lights or suctioning, no episiotomies or "we have to weigh the baby now, dear." None of it. Just pure, raw birth. As it should be. I call it my brainwashing tape. I need to brainwash out the cultural messages that birth is scary and dangerous and brainwash in that it can be lovely and calm and peaceful. To me, this is the single most important thing I've done to prepare for this birth. I have surrounded myself with people who believe in me and my ability to birth my baby. People who can remember I am strong, even when I forget. People who will have sympathy for my pain, but cheer me on anyway. Reminding me that I can do this. People who listen to my fears and help me work through them so they won't all come up while I'm laboring and vulnerable. People who aren't afraid to look at the raw emotion and deal with it. People who have walked this road before me and some who are wanting me to light the way for them. The decision to VBAC can be very hard, there are so many obstacles, but with the support and love of my supporters, I know I can do it.