I don’t regret my c-section. I regret my expectations.

I am 39 weeks pregnant today, so you’ll have to excuse me if I get a little passionate about this topic. I am hoping for a successful VBAC this time around, but I’m also reliving the traumatic birth of my son as we get closer each day to labor and delivery. It’s made me think about the factors that led to not just the c-section itself, but my struggle to come to terms with it. I read an article about VBAC recently that started with some quote about how the most important factor in having a successful VBAC is believing you will have a successful VBAC. If that’s true, then my chances at success are pretty slim.

Photo by Rebecca Tredway Photography

I’ve spent way too many hours going over and over the difficult birth I went through and trying to analyze where we went wrong. I feel like I’m watching a movie I’ve seen before where you keep wanting to yell at the screen, “No! Don’t go alone with that guy into the abandoned building!” but you already know how the ending happens. I can’t change history and the more I think through how things happened, the more I can see how hard everyone in that room worked to avoid the c-section outcome. Frankly, they may have worked too hard since I ended up with a difficult physical recovery because of what my body went through during labor on top of recovering from surgery. In retrospect, I truly don’t believe the c-section was avoidable.

But I think the difficult emotional aspect of my recovery might have been.

I drank the natural childbirth Kool-aid. And I loved it. I read an insane amount of books on pregnancy and childbirth. I watched “The Business of Being Born”. I wasn’t going to let anyone push me into any unnecessary interventions and I certainly wasn’t going to be one of those wimps who had to have a c-section when clearly my body was capable of doing what it needed to do if I just believed in it enough and knew all the right techniques. I was judgey about anyone who opted for an epidural, allowed the use of forceps during delivery (good gravy, I don’t think I even KNEW a vacuum was a possible tool doctors used but I was going to become all too familiar with it soon), and especially those women who just didn’t try hard enough and ended up with c-sections— things I would eventually come to experience in my own labor. In short, I was a naive jerk. The worst kind of jerk there is because they have no clue the extent of their jerkiness.

Two years after it all went wrong I have learned to thank God for the humbling I received. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it has significantly changed my perspective. There have been much needed moments of clarity during this lengthy emotional recovery process. Like when I watched a documentary about a man who had a brother with severe brain damage. He was explaining how his brother had become brain damaged and basically described my exact labor scenario except the child was eventually delivered vaginally. I sat there and wept. Was that what I was wiling to risk to get the birth I wanted? Was that how focused I was on doing things “naturally” that I would have put my child at risk so I felt successful? I remember weeping again reading about African women who labor for days and then give birth to babies who died during the long labor and in the process the mothers would lose the ability to control their urination or bowel movements for life. And all for want of a surgery that I was so angry about and shamed by.

It is really easy to judge the births other women have experienced. It’s easy to see where they went wrong and imagine how you would have fixed it. It’s easy to think if they read the right books or hired the right midwife and doula or went to the right birth center they could have gotten the birth they wanted, or at least the birth you think they should have had.

It’s also really easy to think those things about your own birth experience. Those feelings of judgement about other women become feelings of shame about yourself. You feel like you must be physically weak, easily manipulated by a slice and dice medical community you should have fought harder. You feel like a quitter. You may also have negative feelings about your child— this baby that ruined your plans for a beautiful birth by being so big or so stuck or so stubborn or not progressing through the stages of labor like he was supposed to. Obviously those feelings are not an ideal way to begin motherhood or a parenting relationship with your new baby.

If my son’s birth taught me anything, it is that it is foolish to think we can control birth. We can be educated and work with professionals we trust, but that is not the same thing as “control”. I think control is a privileged belief for those who have seen things go the way they planned. Those of us who did it all “right” and still ended up with the “wrong” outcome know better.  Now I understand that my son’s actual birth wasn’t what was so traumatic, it was my wrong expectations of control. I refuse to walk myself into that emotional storm again.

I’m sure there are women in my shoes who would respond by reading a million more books, this time focused on VBACs and how to make them successful. Maybe I should have gone to a new birth class, watched more movies, interviewed women who have successfully gone through the VBAC process. I fully support women who go that route. But I know my own heart and I know that’s not going to be healthy for me. For this birth, I am letting go of trying to control the outcome. I am holding my hands open and praying for a healthy baby and the strength to endure what’s before me. I want to give it my best shot, but if a c-section becomes necessary I want to see it as the helpful tool it is and not as some kind of enemy or failed test of my womanhood. While the physical recovery will still be hard, I think my heart will be in a much better place to start the bonding journey with my baby.