All That Matters is a Healthy Mother?

We have all heard it time and time again the many versions of:
"all that matters is you have a healthy baby".

Often I found this to be in response to people finding out that my newest son had been born by unplanned cesarean section. But I also found that a version of this phrase was tossed out when I talked to birth professionals about the lack of prenatal information about cesarean avoidance and/or preparation.

I once suggested that women should be given more information about their risk versus the unborn baby's risks of cesareans. The response I got was:
"Most mothers would say to do what ever it takes to get the baby out safely".

I felt like I was being chastised for suggesting that I might choose their safety of myself over the safety of my baby. I quickly dropped the subject. But months later I think.
Am I really the only one who would choose me?

Through out my pregnancy my greatest fear was that I would die in childbirth and leave my older son motherless. I no longer do many of the more risky things my pre-mother self did and I felt that I had taken on a risk in being pregnant and giving birth that was unfairly exposing the mother of my son to potential harm.
Apparently this fear is fairly common in second time mothers.

I would look at my 8 year old and imagine the life he would have without me and how much emotional damage would be done to him if I didn't make it though the pregnancy and birth.
I should also note that this fear was greatly enhanced by contracting H1N1 at about 30 weeks.

If I had been asked who's life should be protected first I would have picked my sweet eight year old's mama (me) over the baby in my belly, who is now my beautiful 2 year old son. Yup it might sound terrible to say but it's true.

And I don't say that lightly-but if it had to be one of us, I would take on the pain of loosing a child to protect my other child from the pain of loosing his mom.
And I know it would be awful.
I was there for one of my best friends when she lost her newborn. I grieved along with her and saw the total and horrible sadness that consumed and transformed her. Her life was never the same. She is a very different woman because of the loss of her new baby.

Maybe I am the only one. Maybe I am driven by a subconscious selfishness that I have justified to myself. But I will stand by my assertion that we should be given a choice in who's health is the most important.

Would I give up my newest son to avoid the P.T.S.D. that I endure because of his birth, no way.
But for example...
Should a women with her heart set on a very large family have the right to decline a cesarean for fetal distress knowing it could put future pregnancies at risk?

There are so many different scenarios. So many different risks and wants and beliefs. Should we be informed and be able to choose for ourselves?

Am I crazy to think that many there should be a box to check that says "Protect me first"?

I'm going to end with a phrase we are starting to hear more...

Mother's Matter Too

WOW

I feel almost out of touch with my blog, like a friend that I haven't had a chance to call.

I am desperate to review Breastfeeding with Comfort and Joy by Laura Keegan.

I'd explain all the things I have going on that are keeping me from writing , but that would only take time away from what I need to say which is that

I AM FEELING SO HOPEFUL!!! Change is a coming I can feel it in the wind.

Last night I was in a room with Suzanne Arms (of Immaculate Deception and so much more)
Gloria Lemay, Jennifer Block (of Pushed), Helene Vadeboncoeur (of Birthing Normally after a caesarean or two), along with other activists, doulas, midwives, lacivists, intactivists, mothers who home birthed, hospital birthed, elective cesarean birthed, and 4 babies.

I could feel the cogs shifting, the universal work being done. Women are so powerful, we just have to take hold of it and NEVER LET GO AGAIN!

I must go, I have a 200+ to do list but I had to stop in and share my joy.

After august I'll fill in all the details.

My Story, blogs and

Finally a moment to myself (hmm and the whole wide world I guess...)

I've been really wanting to write lately and have found that I just haven't been able to fit it in.
The reasons seem to be both physical and mental. My 11 month old slept a whole 17 minutes today- all in the car seat. Can't multi-task much from from there. I'm working on excepting that I'm on the "three year chase" part of having a child, especially a boy!

I surrender to reading the same alphabet book 9 times a day.

It's also spring which for me means garden time. A time when I need to plant and weed and ready the soil. I love growing food in my yard. It makes me feel free and whole to eat things I grow myself. Some day I will start a garden blog as I keep promising all my aspiring gardener friends.

But back to this blog. I feel like I'm turning over a new leaf. I've become more self conscious. When I started posting here I had no idea about the world of blogging. I was frantically researching, trying to get some understanding of this totally surreal thing that had happened to me: the surgical birth of my son.

As I was discovering facts and information I realized I felt a need to make the things I was finding available to others. The idea of blogging came from a woman I went to high school with who has a blog about mothering. She sent me a link to it on facebook. So that's how I got here, my technological foot print.

I thought that I would have to try to get people to read what I wrote, that I would have to send them the link. I'd never heard of"google alerts".

Now I know that there are people out there who are reading what I write and I am humbled.
Thank you for those of you who have stopped by and said hello. You have encouraged me to keep doing and lending my voice to this important issue. I have recently learned that my province has the highest cesarean rate in Canada (30.4% during latest reporting period 2005).
Yikes.

I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem. I've become involved in ICAN by starting a local chapter. Meeting women who have faced these same challenges, who are scarred by their babes' birthing.

Wow(okay that is sarcastic hey it's better then a "bad word"), the more I learn about the state of birthing in the world the more dire the situation appears. Thankfully there are many pushing to keep birth holistic and empowering.

I've been putting a lot of pressure on myself to cause change, to get the info out there and the result is less productivity. It seems if I want to I could see almost everything as an analogy for birth -the more you surrender the to your own flow the better.

So I do have a couple of half finished posts that I will work, but without guilt in the speed of their arrival. I will not be cynical. I will believe in change.

Holding my new nephew a couple of days ago, I ran my hand over his head I felt the complex pattern of texture to his scull.
The story of his path through the birth channel etched on his head.
I miss that in my new son. I was so very bothered by his head when he was new. The geometric roundness of his never "squished" head was unusual to me.
I wonder more about his now. Once babies are born we are very aware that their heads need to be protected. I would be fearful for his life if he was to have something happen to him that changed the shape of his head.
How will he be affected by having a brain that was never crushed through my pelvis? How will the millions of people birthed in this way be affected?
Perhaps there is some reason for these births in the cosmic scheme of things. Maybe these babies who enter our physical world in this way are gifted with a more celestial brain?
There is a theme that runs through out many mythologies that women are destined to feel great pain and sacrifice in order to bring forth life.
Surgical birth felt to me like a greater sacrifice then regular birth, perhaps this extra sacrifice has a purpose. I'll never know, but it makes me feel good to think that besides ensuring a safe delivery for him (in itself a great thing), that his method of arrival may serve a greater good. If I know anything it's that balance finds it's way.