So, birth plans...ha! I laugh in the face of birth plans - or at least my children laugh in my face for thinking I could plan their births.
I'm having a really hard time letting go of the idea of birth that I have in my head and how things are supposed to go and how smooth and gentle and natural. How calm - breathing through contractions - pushing and working hard, of course, but still beautiful - and I'm sure highly "hollywoodized." Except, it isn't just Hollywood promoting this beautiful birth picture in my head, that might actually be easier to press aside, it's my dad telling me all these Christian things about how I don't have to feel any pain and how I'm delivered from that and I need to have faith in God and so on and so forth - on one hand I want to say "dude, you are a dude - you aren't allowed to have an opinion here" and on the other it's really hard not to feel like I'm letting him down, like I'm not strong enough or I don't have enough faith to believe for the healing that he so believes for - and there really are women who say that it was all smooth and easy, etc. Then on top of that, you have the idea and fact that my mom had very healthy pregnancies and had both my brother and sister at home with a midwife - so that was my plan and ideal growing up - I was born in the hospital, but that was "due to the midwife rupturing membranes too soon and my parents not listening to the prompting of the Spirit to wait" - I was good with that idea - I was good with childbirth being hard but natural and beautiful and almost spiritual. This is the same ideal promoted by midwives and the "crunchy" and the naturally minded - "women have been doing this on their own in fields for thousands of years and getting up and getting to work...." And so on and so forth.
Yet, things haven't worked out for me that way in the birthing and pregnancy department - you can read/reread Owen's birth story here - things just don't always look the way you see them in your head - and I'm trying to cope with that and my vastly different reality without embracing/claiming it as MY fault or feeling badly about how I'm not strong enough or healthy enough or how I don't have enough faith. I'm really, really struggling with that and how to think about it and what the right perspective should be (although I do think it is a sign of a healthy grip on postpartum emotions that I am able to articulate this struggle). It's just hard when things don't go the way we hope they will - although I need to say that I know how completely and entirely blessed we are that things worked out as well as they did and that we all came out of the experience healthy and strong with no serious problems or issues! I'm working on writing up Noah's birth story and will post part one tomorrow. Sorry I've been so neglectful of this space for the last month - but I've been focusing on my little family and enjoying J's time off (we saved his vacation so he could have 2 weeks off after Noah arrived and it was amazing having him home and then my parents were here for two weeks after that), but now we are starting to get into more of a routine and get the little issues we've head under control, so I should be back here more regularly from now on! Thanks for your congratulations and support and for sticking around while I disappeared for a while!
