The C-Ecret Section

Sometimes I can still feel it. That heaviness, lightening my entire life and being. My body, my mind stretching to accommodate the fullness of my belly matching the fullness of my heart. At times the bubbles of a continuously absent period feel like phantoms of the kicks I delighted in so much, even when a lack of space was making them increasingly uncomfortable. My hand will subconsciously reach down and rest on that sweet spot just below my navel, cherishing the visceral, spiritual memory of pregnancy. My belly may be empty now but my heart, my body, my soul – they are overflowing with indescribable love, strength, and a profound sense of satisfaction. I feel it every day and acknowledge it with gratitude. And yet, on some raw mornings and broken nights, after yet another insensitive comment or painful reminder, when my fingertips gently trace the line of my most significant scar, one that brought me the greatest love I have ever known, I get hung up on those precious moments, those two hours, I – we – were heedlessly robbed of.

*

My transition from formerly reigning Majesty of Panic and Anxiety Disorders to Zen Queen was nothing short of incredible if I do say so myself. After years of self-loathing and negative internal dialogues, that little person growing inside me helped me flip the script – I finally started treating myself with the kindness I deserved. The harsh voice inside my head adopted a gentle tone and spoke only soothing words; I kicked semi-lifelong addictions with relative ease, all in favour of feeding my baby and myself only with goodness. They say having a baby is a life-changing experience, and it is. But for me, that incomparable shift started the minute I found out I was pregnant. I never felt so at peace with myself and the world (that was slowly falling to shit around us). For me – for us – everything was as it should be. I celebrated every nauseous second of the first trimester, adored my blossoming belly in the second and third trimester, worked through the aches, the huffing and puffing through that final stretch with pride, breath and excitement. I was ready to birth my little girl with the same mindfulness that had birthed an entirely new version of me.

Nature has always been my religion, but for those 41 weeks that I was a home to her, it was a temple to me. Unsure of how to navigate the pandemic and even my closest relationships safely during this time, I took to the fields and to the beach, saluted the sun and the moon, celebrated the equinox with my brother-from-another-mother with a shared ritual from different parts of the world, honoured the rauhnächte and stopped to smell every damn rose that crossed my path. I only allowed the purest concoctions of herbs, flowers and oils to touch my skin and gently rubbed them into my belly every night. My bump was like Aladdin’s magic lamp – all I had ever wished for cosied up inside there, moving beneath my palms as I whispered sweet words to her, telling her how much I loved her already. While I never said no to a bocadillo de carne mechada con manteca colorada, I tried to keep my diet clean and my appetite for rest dirty. I did regular yoga every day and, once a week, my friend and yogic guide, Kirsty, Zoomed into my living room for lush, hip-opening and pelvic-strengthening prenatal sessions and sound bowl meditations my daughter mistook as an invite to rave in utero. I’d never felt so in-tune with myself and with nature, which made it that much harder to succumb to chemically induced labour.

*

To this day, I can’t help but to question whether I made the right decision in agreeing to set a date for induction one week after my due date. In my heart of hearts, I believe that the sequence of events that led to my girl being belly-birthed were at fault – my body and baby simply weren’t ready yet; she wasn’t given the chance to enter this world on her own terms, my body wasn’t given the time to open and warmly receive her. Instead, she was pressured to make her exit coldly, and I can assure you I am not using the term loosely. I know her journey to meet us earthside was anything but calm or easy, because within about three and a half hours after having been administered the Pitocin, the contractions started to liken small convulsions in my belly. At this stage, yes, they may have been “my own” as the midwife informed me in her congratulatory, saccharine tone, but their pacing was far from natural. In other words, my contractions – at less than one minute apart – were telling my body it was getting closer to birthing when, in reality, at 1cm, it was nowhere near.

For the first two hours, I felt peaceful and in control. I was using all the breath and body work I had practised daily, focused on my carefully curated playlist, and the hot cascade of water my husband held against the small of my back at regular intervals. The contractions intensified so quickly I barely had time to breathe and rest between them, let alone communicate with my husband. I was determined not to agree to any further interventions unless absolutely necessary. I had already been pressured into kickstarting a show that had not been given its dress-rehearsal before screening the main event, I didn’t want to bring all that I had worked towards in the previous hours to a screeching halt again and risk further complications for my baby. But I was exhausted, and things were progressing at an unbearable speed without actually progressing in the slightest. Through snotty tears and inexhaustible surges, I agreed to an epidural. And this was the only birth preference I had insisted on that was indeed respected: the midwives went through my husband to urge me to get the epidural, instead of getting me out of my zone of sheer and utter discomfort. Well played.

I tried to hum away the agony as two male nurses wheeled me into an elevator talking about their weekend and other banalities, as though they couldn’t hear me, as though the bed between them were empty. No comforting words, no promises of reuniting me with my husband promptly, no reassuring hand on my shoulder. They dropped me off in the room I had been so adamant to avoid – a windowless chamber in green and grey tones, beeping machines and wires everywhere, uninviting and alarming. The only thing friendly to use as a focal point in there was the midwife-in-training’s surgical cap, a colourful number with a cartoon cat print. I turned it into my visual mantra until I was forced to sit and stay rigidly seated for the epidural and some time after. I may have squeezed my eyes shut to get through this seemingly endless moment, but I can assure you, the pain was blinding. The tears I cried in that moment were no longer down to just the physical strife and exhaustion. They were salted with sadness; the realization that I was now at the mercy of others and that, for the first time since my daughter was conceived, I was going to momentarily lose that visceral connection to her.

By the time my husband was finally allowed to join me fully kitted in his surgically blue garb, I was back on the cat print and trying to connect the physical relief to my mental state. As soon as he was back at my side, I did my best to block out our surroundings and retreat into us. And it was good for the short time it lasted, but soon the monitors started beeping, the midwives started getting nervous, my water was broken, and my baby’s heartbeat was dropping. I can’t really put into words what I was thinking; I was fully prepared to die just as long as my girl came out healthy. A new gynaecologist came in, all business and no niceties, and told us that the last option was to inject me with oxytocin but that, in all likelihood, I was going to end up with a cesarean either way. There was no way in hell I was going to risk further distressing my baby and, honestly, it is beyond my reasoning why they would even have offered to try something else at this stage. It all happened quick, quick, quick – they snapped into action and wheeled me into the adjacent delivery room; I told my husband I loved him as I was already disappearing through the door, and never got to hear him answer.

The contrast between the grey darkness of the purgatory room and the brightly lit delivery room was another shock to the system. Though I had been made well aware that birth and everything about it was nothing like what we see in shows and movies, I was still surprised by the spaciousness and the sheer amount of people present – which made me feel all the more lonely once my hospital gurney came to a halt, my arms were spread into a T away from my body and a curtain drawn up dividing my chest from the lower half of my body. Everyone gathered around my belly, no one stayed on my side of the curtain – part of which kept falling into my face – to hold my hand and talk me through what was happening, as I had specifically requested for this scenario. I repeatedly asked for my midwife and was either ignored or waved off. They just began to tug and pull at my body. I turned my head to face the wall and stare at the clock – like the cats in purgatory, it was the only thing remotely friendly in that room.

I heard one of the doctors say she had big eyes. A track from the Petshop Boys came on and I lamented my playlist. A few minutes later I heard a cry. By this time, I had been made to feel so separated from the whole procedure – both physically and emotionally – that, when I finally heard my daughter cry for the first time, I was so removed from the situation, I didn’t really make the connection that that was, indeed, my baby crying. It felt awful then, and it still does now. Finally, my midwife’s head popped up next to mine; her teary eyes smiled at me as she told me that my girl was here now, that she was healthy, that they were cleaning her now, and that all was good. And then she disappeared again.

Some minutes later, a fully kitted nurse came up behind me holding my crying daughter away from his body, and up against my face. As soon as I kissed her cheek and greeted her she stopped crying, as though she was listening intently for what I was about to say next. But before I could even ask the nurse to, at the very least, lay her on my chest for a couple of minutes, they took her away, and I was alone again. No one listened from behind the green curtain. I started crying. Eventually the nurse who had presented me my daughter came to my side of the room for long enough to tell me, deja de llorar, te están cosiendo. So, I stopped, and stared back at the clock.

Next thing I know, I am being wheeled into a recovery room, and there’s at least five other people laying in there. I felt as though I should hold my breath – wasn’t this exactly the kind of thing that shouldn’t be happening during times of COVID? Sure, we’d all been tested upon being admitted into hospital; but we all know by now that that doesn’t mean shit. The nurse running the show in this limbo was just as tactless and lacking in compassion as the mechanics in the delivery room. But I didn’t care about anything anymore; not even the violent shivers that held my body hostage no matter how hard my mind tried to negotiate with it. All I cared about was getting back to my room and reuniting with my baby. Holding her for the first time, studying her face, breathing her in, loving her. The midwife came in to tell me that our daughter was with her dad, that she was beautiful. She was going to take pictures of them and bring them to me. I waited but she never returned. Nurse Limbo kept checking my vitals and my bleeding, then finally told me I was going to be taken back to my room.  

There were two other people in the room with my husband, plus the two male nurses wheeling me in. I remember them all congratulating me as they left the room, but the sounds were muffled. And then the most beautiful silence when the husband finally put our little baby girl on my chest. Nothing else in this world existed. Only us. Her. And the space she was taking up in our hearts.

*

For the first few months I was consumed by the joy of finally holding her in my arms, kissing those little fingertips and inhaling her intoxicating scent. The hilarity of our daily newborn-parent conundrums had me in tears of laughter that conveniently curtained the darker feelings hiding behind my heart-shaped eyes. The ones I hadn’t allowed myself to actually feel just yet. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as much as I did in those first three months – I was so completely high on her. And then, around the third month, those curtains lifted and out poured a guttural ache, an inexplicable feeling of grief I couldn’t shake for a long time.

What followed was a period of constant questioning and nocturnal sobs only few could hear. Not to mention guilt – for allowing myself these moments, even under the cover of night, when I had the sun rise right beside me every day, painting my days all the colours of the rainbow with her boding, incomparable personality and those, big, beautiful eyes, deep like two ponds inviting me to get to know a whole new reflection of myself. And I soaked up – and continue to – every minute of it, of her, of us, of our life. But I couldn’t – and sometimes still can’t – let go of our first, fleeting moment. I will treasure those thirty seconds, that first kiss forever and ever, though I’m not sure it will ever become a memory entirely absent of pain – the pain of a separation that simply was too abrupt, too cold, one that, after nine months of keeping her safe in my belly, felt like an eternity.

I felt as though I had no right to cry when so many women out there and around me have experienced so much worse. This also happens to be one of the main counter arguments I received upon sharing what I was going through, further contributing to the guilt and shame I was already feeling. I chose the people I confided in carefully, and held on to the words of wisdom, understanding and encouragement that got me through the harder days. One of them was, “with a vaginal birth, you let your baby go with each push. You never got to let go,” – and that stuck with me. It’s not the fact that I had a C-section I struggle with; it’s how we were treated during the procedure. They should have given me the opportunity to belly-birth her – to let go – gently. They should have involved and talked me through the process, make me aware of the exact moment she was born, given us a real moment together. Lay her on my chest, let me cry, give me just a fucking second to collect myself with some warm words.

It's taken me a long time to accept that it is perfectly OK to feel this way. That I don’t owe it to anyone to justify these feelings. I am still healing – physically and emotionally – and I know there are so many incredible, wonderful women out there who are struggling with similar feelings and the shame that comes with them. And I am writing this for them, as much as I am writing this for my own therapeutic catharsis. Allowing ourselves to feel the lows of the post-partum period, of motherhood, as much as the indescribable joys, doesn’t make us weak. It doesn’t make us ungrateful. It makes us stronger than we already are. There is no need to suffer in silence, suffocate in unnecessary secrecy. We all have our stories and there is absolutely no reason why we should apologize for the way they affect us. The only way we can change the dialogue around these experiences, elicit change in delivery rooms, on the maternity ward and among fellow mothers, is by opening up about them. We should never be made to feel that our feelings or circumstances aren’t worthy of tears. On the contrary; we should be encouraged to cry it out and to let it go.