Another late post. Bri is traveling for work again this week after just getting back Friday night. I had a tough time remembering what my mantra was this past week. I know it was really long. I'll have to work on another one that's easier to think of. {Oh, and please skip the last part of this post if you're easily grossed out. Sorry.}
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I often think about the "lessons" I've learned from having the birth experience that I did, be it the life-threatening part of the ordeal or the things-sooo-didn't-go-as-hoped-for portion. I feel a strong pressure to recognize deep changes in myself, a newly acquired wisdom or something. I often come up disappointed from the search. But there is always one issue that comes up....
Tonight I was reading "Mothering Magazine," a publication that leans heavily to the breastfeeding, homebirthing side of the mothering spectrum. It has taken two years for me to open that publication again, and I was thinking about how I've very recently made peace with the whole thing, finding an emotional place where I can appreciate the articles that are meaningful in my life (like about 2 year olds refusing to take baths), and letting go of those that are no longer relevant, and that I have allowed myself to feel anger about. I've been able to laugh at some of the more self-righteous parts of the magazine, acknowledging my own immaturity at having been so self-righteous in my pursuit of the homebirth I'd always imagined and hoped for.
I had subscribed to Mothering before I even got pregnant, always excited to devour every last article on my right to nurse in public, "wearing" my baby 24-7 and the horrors of drug-assisted birth. But after my own birth dreams periled with the onset of HELLP Syndrome, my attitude toward Mothering totally changed and I found myself resenting the women who wrote articles like "Ring of Fire - Labor's Power Transforms Self-Restraint into Uncensored Creative Expression." I mean... "F you!!" my newly traumatized and angry self would say. I stopped reading the magazine and felt somewhat perturbed when I saw a copy of it at Whole Foods or on a friend's bedside table.
As I noticed that resentment coming up so strongly in me, I finally connected that with the fact that it's my own shadow trying to reveal itself to me. I was angry at these women for speaking out passionately, and sometimes even aggressively, about issues that they cared deeply about. Admittedly, I have lived a great deal of my life standing really high up on a very large soap box. And there are a great many issues that I care quite deeply about. (I can just hear those of you who know me well laughing out loud right now.) While I have taken pride in trying to be as nonjudgmental as possible, I've still felt entitled to tell the world what I think and feel about something, whether they've asked or not. I have felt "like myself" when expressing my passionate views about humanitarian concerns, politics, breastfeeding, dark, hoppy ales, whatever... like it's something I have to do in order to exist.
So maybe one of the great lessons of my experience 2 years ago is that I think I have finally learned to let things be. To let people have their opinions and passions and experiences and to just let things be. With the emotionally-charged healthcare debates taking over media attention lately, I guess this issue has been on my mind a little more. And then I was reading Mothering tonight, specifically an article about letting your newborn baby do the "breast crawl" and find its way to your nipple on its own. It's really hard for me to read about newborn stuff like that without getting carried away imagining what it must have been like for Gavin to come into this world after 30 hours of trauma and magnesium sulfate and pitocin... with an unconscious mother lying on an operating table, belly sliced open and dumping blood onto the floor, my insides splayed on a table nearby, arms outstretched, a ventilator pump pressuring my chest up and down, eyes taped shut.... Then to be whisked hurriedly away, not even able to feel his mother's touch, let alone be able to nurse, for 4 hours. It's just awful and it makes me cry still if I let my mind go there. I guess I'm still processing that because I'm not sure why I did have to let my mind and my blog go there just now.
Anyway. I'm going to focus this week on my newly acquired and developing ability to let things be.
Week 12
Mantra | Let it Be
Action | Just be an observer
3 comments:
Thanks for sharing these feelings Amy. You put words to some of the feelings I had during my several year struggle with fertility. It is only after about 5 years (and the birth of my daughter) that I can look back and accept the journey for what it was. You are a healer and a survivor!
wow! just when i thought you were amazing, you become super-amazing! for someone who worked under your tutelage a year ago, i can attest to some "soap-boxing" (btw...don't ever stop)and i can also attest to experiencing, in your presence, such a deep and peaceful spirit and, joy for life that resonated from within you. i guess i now know it is because you are a survivor and a true healer. post-survival is nasty work to say the least, but you my friend are doing it so well, filled with so much compassion for yourself and for your child and husband. you go on girl...speak your truth, your trauma...on the path to lettin' it be! thank you for your words of wisdom. much peace to you amy, always, kd
I am HELLP survivor and also hoped to go the natural route...my baby couldn't nurse for 4 months and by then my milk supply was VERY low...it is still heart wrenching and I am still very much dealing with how my dear son was brought into this world two years later. Thank you for this blog, it is comforting to know there is someone else out there going through a similar thing.
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