I’m working on writing a book about moving aboard the boat. I’ll write more about that more on my other blog. But I’m doing a lot of cannibalizing of content from this blog and the other one. Most importantly to this post, this morning, I rewrote Rowan’s birth story.
Most of my readers here know that Rowan’s birth was insanely traumatic for me. An unplanned, unwanted cesarean, that birth catapulted me into a year of depression followed by some of the angriest years of my life, and a vocation of activism in the arena of birth. No woman anywhere should have to go through what I did, and yet, the (unnecessary) cesarean rate in this country continues to skyrocket. It’s a crisis, it’s a human rights violation, and it’s a complete international embarassment.
But that’s not what I am writing about this morning.
I wrote the story once, when I was still recovering, and it was the sweetness and light that women usually describe their cesareans as. “Totally necessary” they say. Bullshit, says I. But at the time, I’d have killed you for suggesting mine wasn’t. I wrote it a second time, once I was recovering, in the depths of my depression, in the hopes that women reading it would learn from my journey and not have to take the same one themselves. It was all about figuring out where things had gone wrong, in order to make different, better choices later.
This time, I am rewriting it as what its deepest meaning and highest purpose (for me) might possibly be. Rowan’s birth is what finally, unequivocally taught me that if I wanted it done right, I had to do it myself. That relying on the System for anything at all was a sure path to madness, and that while independence carries its own problems, those problems are at least unilaterally the result of your own choices, and not someone else’s. Someone else who almost certainly has their own paycheck and ass as a higher concern than your well being.
So here’s to Version 3 of Rowan’s birth. It’s taken me seven long, hard, uphill, introspective, kick-in-the-teeth years to get to the place where I am grateful for the lesson, moreso than grieving of the process that got me here.
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So honoured to have been a part of your journey. And a bit afraid that the lessons I learned from my own cesarean will continue to propel me outside the mainstream. Waaaah! I don’t WANNA live off the grid!
Love ya!
Laureen, I’ve never read your stories before. They’re very well written. Do you plan to post #3?
Heh. Post? Dunno. But it’ll be in the book! =)
I’m wondering when I’ll be ready to re-write my daughter’s birth story. It’s still out there and I haven’t read it in years. But I know where I WAS when I wrote it and I’m so on the other side. I can’t wait to read your 3rd story in the book. Can I make a pre-order TODAY!?
Hugs,
2Shaye
You go girl! I’ll buy two copies of course.
re: telling you what a gorgeous baby you had (just read version 2 of Rowan’s birth).
EVERY nurse said the same exact thing. I’ve seen gorgeous babies before. I love my son. The only thing he didn’t have that naturally born kids do is a cone head.
I think the only thing they think is gorgeous about your cesarean is your wallet.
Grrr for my c. Grrr for my son and his health. Grrr for everyone out there who thinks I’m nuts because I don’t trust many in the medical profession anymore
2nd that, hon, you go girl. Go big. Go huge. But don’t go home. So many women need this story and others.