The Most Important Thing
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 8:45AM
by Courtroom Mama
I generally try not to get all butthurt over trolls, but I couldn’t contain my gasps of impotent horror as the following conversation unfolded in the comments of Emjaybee’s last post.
Screencaps in part:
Jill and Emjaybee were on it with lightning speed, of course, while I was puttering along on my phone totally unable to do anything about it. So, I thought I’d take a short break from “wallow[ing] in [my] unnecesarean grief” and voila, unpublished-reply-turned-post.
First of all, it bears mention that a person exposes him or herself as a troll when they ask the question in the form “So how exactly does a c-section ruin your life?” (Well, for starters, when it kills you, like folks sometimes seem to forget can be the case.) Nevertheless, I think that there is a kernel of truth under there that needs to be addressed. I’m posting this in the hopes that someday someone will google “Why would the method of birth ever overshadow the birth of a healthy baby?” and get my very earnest explanation.
Human emotion is nuanced and complicated. The singular nature of pregnancy and the unique relationship between a woman and her unborn baby seems to play hell on our need to simplify, homogenize, and categorize. Regardless of the headway that we have made in terms of gender equality in civil and political rights, we have a pretty rigid schema for what a normal pregnancy looks like: woman is pregnant, woman delivers baby, woman is happy.
That is not a woman, that is a paper doll.
The truth is that each of those clauses and each of those commas contain nearly infinite possibilities. The experience can be punctuated with an exclamation point, a question mark, or the silence of an ellipsis. We can acknowledge that women may meet their pregnancies with a variety of emotional responses—joy, shock, anger, ambivalence—but the idea that women might meet their babies with the same variety of emotion seems to be beyond the realm of comprehension. Aren’t babies supposed to make women happy?
I know that the question of the method of birth “overshadowing” a healthy baby is not one asked in good faith, but my answer to that sort of question has always been that women with negative feelings about their cesarean sections are, as a preliminary matter, grateful for their healthy babies and are able to experience other feelings in addition to and outside of joy and gratitude. Like when your mom explained to you that when your little sister was born she could love her and still love you just as much as she ever had.
But Dana made me think a little bit: are babies a balm that should heal all wounds? Even if we function under the assumption that a healthy baby is the most important thing in a birth (which, some people may be surprised to hear, is not universally the case across cultures or to individual women), is having even a welcome and wanted baby a substitute for the autonomy lost by a woman who has had the experience of being tied down and operated on, or the horror of seeing herself in a pool of blood in the reflective surfaces in the operating theater?
Is having a baby a substitute for posttraumatic stress? For the flinch and recoil of damaged nerves when a lover brushes her scar? For the knowledge that she may have to fight to even attempt to avoid scheduled surgical delivery even in the face of evidence suggesting that she’d most likely be able to deliver vaginally without any problem?
This is something that may be difficult for a person who had a necessary surgery, or who is okay with having had an unnecessary surgery, to understand. I’ve tried to explain the fact that the outcome doesn’t erase the pain of the journey, but there really is no metaphor. The closest I have come is this:
Imagine you get in a car to drive and see the person you love most in life. You get into a car accident on the way there, are rushed to the hospital, and the doctors save your life. When you open your eyes, your loved one is there to greet you. Now imagine instead that you get into the car, and on your way there, you’re pulled over for driving too slowly, and then taken to the hospital, where your healthy appendix is removed. When you open your eyes, your loved on is there to greet you.*
Notwithstanding your happiness to eventually get to your goal, you might have some questions—or even anger, sadness, or grief—about what happened to you on the way there. Why were you interrupted just for getting where you were going too slowly? How did that justify unnecessary surgery? Even in the first circumstance, might you not still feel trauma from the terror of fear of dying or never seeing your loved one? Getting to see that loved one might be the most important thing, but it doesn’t diminish the importance of your own physical and mental health. This is something that mothers don’t often get to hear: you are important too!
In closing, to those visitors who are not in the “choir”: nowhere on this website, or in ICAN’s materials, or in any of the countless books about healthy birth does it say that women should grieve or feel a sense of loss over cesarean surgery. In fact, my greatest wish: every cesarean a wanted cesarean. I wish that every woman who had surgery could feel at peace with it and supported and cared for by her medical team. To express negative emotion or question the overuse of such a major medical intervention is not to condemn the women who made it through healthy and happy. Please, don’t take it personally; it’s not about you.
*Again, metaphor is imperfect. I’m actually having fun thinking about all the ways to tweak the image: the baby is riding with you and they pull you over for an appendectomy because they think it’s crying? Because your car has had a flat tire in the past? Because the traffic cop wants to fill a quota and go home early?
Reader Comments (81)
Hey Jill, have you seen the comments/mod policy at Shapely Prose? Not only is it hella funny, it's genius too -- proactive, honest, and 100% transparent.
http://kateharding.net/comments-policy/
Excerpt:
"Second rule: Good-natured and delightful people don’t have to ignore the trolls; you’re more than welcome to tell them to get bent, question their logic, trump them with your brilliance, and make fun of their spelling. I will be doing the same when I don’t choose to delete and ban the little f***ers."
I mean, all that to say, this is your house, and if you don't want Dr. Disdain drinking all your beer and pissing on your rugs, ain't no shame in that game. There's nothing but good to be had from a well-applied mod policy. :) *grins and hugs*
I am a black woman, from the ghetto, with only a high school education (at the time of my first birth at the ripe ole age of 21) and while my first birth did not end in a cesarean section, I did suffer what I consider traumatic experiences. I don't fit into Dr. T's "only privileged white women have birth trauma" category at all.
"If a woman who had had a cesarean took the time to be still and open, and to feel into her feelings about the cesarean, how could there NOT be some sadness? After all, her beautiful body has been sliced open, EVEN IF IT WAS NECESSARY."
Does this mean that anyone having surgery should be sad or just those of us who had had surgery associated with childbirth? Childbirth being the thing that is supposed to be the be all/end all of our existence as women.
I don't think I'm sad about my c-section and I don't think it's because I'm not in touch with my feelings about it. I see my c-section as probably unnecessary and a result of a completely out of control system. I don't blame my OB or the hospital or even myself. I'm just a casualty of a deeply flawed system. It's not personal so I'm not angry at them. I honestly don't think they have much control over the system either. It's like we're all on a runaway a train.
I've had people tell me that I feel this way because I'm not yet in touch with my feelings or that I'm in denial or uneducated. I find that to be very condescending because it's premised on the assumption that there must be something wrong with me because I don't think like them.
Let's play a little game called Irony in action:
here is the motto for the town that a certain doctor resides in:
"A nice place to live, because it’s naturally beautiful." (unless it's childbirth.) Parenthetical reference mine.
Trauma is in the heart of the traumatized. We all obviously process things differently. For some it is all harsh and frightening no matter how outwardly beautiful it appeared for others they can process it diefferently- we are all different. My heart is heavy for the women she hurt with her careless words. She is such a turdflinger.
Insert duckling pictures and pictures of candy please.
I feel truly saddened that once again Dr. Tuteur posted something so racially insensitive that anyone would internalize even for a second that they are not entitled to their feelings especially our freinds here. I am almost at a loss for words-a rarity.
Jennifer, I'm trying to think if anyone has ever approached me and told me they pitied me like you described or that I was in denial. Maybe about religion? I had a couple of people give me a hard time about giving birth without an epidural and call me crazy.
I'm remembering a Facebook comment once in which someone wrote something like "Ugh, and of course all that matters is if she's happy. *barf*" I'm paraphrasing but the underlying message was "How can someone be happy if they're doing it all wrong?" It made me extremely uncomfortable.
Also, who are you quoting? I can't find that comment.
SM, no namecalling, por favor.
Sorry me and my potty mouth you can remove it- I was saddened though. I apologize.
I didn't see the post that ignited the bottle rocket- I just can't imagine anyone trying to address the I almost can't even write it that a cultural/racial group would not feel trauma-by a painful birth- and then I saw Patrice's post. I am a rather tough lady but I still feel like I want to cry- how horrible. I'm sorry you know I can be a loose cannon.
It was that only white women experience trauma and disappointment or a feeling of violation related to birth. I guess women of color are just hunky dory about everything that happens to them by that logic.
@ Jill, see my above post!