In the moment

Some mornings I drive to work listening to the regional radio station, East Coast Radio. I’d be smiling at their jokes and singing along to a song when….

BAM.

Sadness hits me like a brick. And suddenly my ears become too sensitive, the sunlight too bright and the day ahead impossible. Usually the mood doesn’t last long. At work there are things to see to and Marco and Magnus keeps me busy at home. But I get reminded in that moment how much we have lost.

When I wake up with this heavy feeling I know to choose a CD that holds no memories, that requires no emotional input from me. I drive to work allowing myself the luxury of tears – never mind the glances in my direction. I get to work and I go through the day with a heaviness that threatens to engulf me. I feel like life has no meaning. That there’s nothing to look forward to. I’m tired and sad. Sad and tired.

But most days I spend knowing very well how lucky I am. I never have to go to bed hungry. I have a wonderful marriage, beautiful children and family and friends that I love. I live in a lovely place, have a home that I enjoy, have a good job and despite South Africa seemingly going to pieces around us, we still have a bright future that I feel very optimistic about. I had a little boy who changed my life and for whose life I’ll always be grateful.

Surviving loss makes you strong, but the problem is that you lose your sense of invincibility.

One of the medical team at Magnus’ c-section was an older woman who’d lost four children. Four. She shared with us that she had twins – one of which died shortly after birth. Another child was still-born. Two of her sons died days apart after a motor vehicle accident in which they were both involved. She still has two children. While she recounted the losses her voice became emotionless. It was very hard, she said, in a cold cold voice.

At some point, I suppose, you cut away all emotion.

Last night I sat reading a magazine. I came across an article about a woman who dropped her perfectly healthy child off at daycare only to be phoned a few hours later by a doctor saying that her child was dead. He was only three months old. A virus that rapidly attacks the lungs, was the cause of his death. She described her feeling at finding him at the doctor’s office – still warm – and her resistance at having him taken away to a mortuary. I felt her pain echoing mine. My own heart started beating heavily and I ran to the bedroom where Magnus was sleeping. In the dark I held my breath and felt relief surge through me as I saw his little hand fluttering while he dreamed. Marco was laying spread eagled across the bed, his breathing steady and soundless.

Yes, I know how much I stand to lose. But grace was given to me in that I know now to live in the moment, to treasure what I have. To live fearless.

And I’m reminded of the verse I read the night Loren died:

“Death where is thy sting? Death where is thy victory?”

Setting the record straight

A whole lot of referrals to this site came from Babyzone yesterday. Ever curious, I went to check and found this site mentioned as a warning to a mother not to have a homebirth after c-section.

I guess opening our story to the Internet does draw visitors who do not know us and who may be quick to make assumptions. I have been judged by almost everybody I know. I’m used to it by now. Even worse, there is nothing anyone can think of me or say to me that I have not thought of myself and said to myself. But fortunately, with time comes a degree of sanity and logic.

After Loren’s birth I have spent hours dissecting what happened, getting input from all over and doing research on every possibility. I have reached some conclusions and I have reached a great deal of peace. The one thing I cannot do is change my decisions. I cannot undo Loren’s brain damage or reverse his death. But I can go forward – step by step. And I have come out of this stronger and more determined to do what is right. Not what is convenient for others, not what is generally expected, but that which I know in my heart to be the right choice for my children and myself.

Researching all of this and slowly getting to know other mothers with brain-damaged children, I’ve realized that babies get hurt or die and mothers get hurt or die no matter what the setting. To say a homebirth is unsafe is to imply that hospital birth is. And that is not true. Babies get hurt and mothers die in hospitals every day. Birth is as safe as life. (And no-one gets out of here alive.) But given a choice between the safety of letting my body do as it has been made to do and trusting everything I have into the care of fallible people with their own agendas….?

The one thing I do not want to do is contribute to an even worse birth culture than there currently is. And believe me, the birth culture all over the world is shocking. There is no trust in the process left. Women trust their doctors implicitly (and often foolishly). Women are being delivered of their babies rather than delivering them. Babies are forced to be born when they are not ready. Some pay the price in terms of health issues. Some women and some babies pay psychological dues for the rest of their lives. And women are told that everything is okay as long as the baby is healthy.

It is not true.

There are thousands of women out there who suffer from birth trauma, post traumatic stress syndrome and post partum depression due to the raw deals they had with their children’s births. Loving a child and welcoming it into the world is a completely different experience to processing its birth and satisfaction with the process. Women are made to feel guilty about not being satisfied with their experience of birth. Sure, there are some women who love their c-sections or their epidurals. And if they do, they are most welcome. But for every woman out there who loves her c-section there is a desperately unhappy woman who hated her child’s birth. And she has as much right to her emotion as anyone else.

I would go as far as saying that there’s an unrecognized epidemic of birth trauma out there.

I didn’t like my c-sections. I still don’t. What happened in Loren’s birth does not negate my unhappiness with Marco’s birth or Magnus’ birth. I’m not sorry that any of my children were born. I love them. But Loren’s birth was wonderful purely as a birth compared to Marco and Magnus’ births. I’m not sorry that Loren’s birth brought me Loren. Was he “worth it”? Every single bit! Were Marco and Magnus “worth” the feeling of being subjected to slaughtering. Ditto. But I would have preferred, of course, to have had peaceful loving births for all three of them. To have had all three of them healthy – both physically and emotionally.

My babies were so intertwined with me that all three of them could sense emotional turmoil in me even if I was at work and they were at home…The two that are left still do. To hurt me, in any way, is to hurt them too.

Let’s talk about stats. Go to ICAN’s website and look at the stats. Join ICAN and read the “real stories” behind medicated, interventionist hospital births and the scare tactics doctors use to suit their malpractice insurance. I’ve experienced them firsthand. I was told by a doctor that he was more worried about his insurance than my baby. Sure, there may be some hospital births or doctors that are not like that, but believe me, they are such a minority that they are not worth mentioning. I am very sorry that I even went to see a doctor with Magnus’ birth. I’m sorry that I was bullied into another so-called emergency c-section. The doctor admitted that she had me in hospital and that she was not going to let me leave. I should have walked out. I should have.

Homebirths are safe. Stats prove it. They are at least as safe as hospital births and in some respects they are safer.

I had an unassisted homebirth – which is completely different to a homebirth with a midwife. But in South Africa you have to have the backup of an OB-GYN for a midwife to even be allowed to take you on.

Uterine rupture happens. It can happen in a person who has never had a c-section. But even in people with multiple prior c-sections the rupture rate on a tranverse cut is negligible. Often rupture happens because of interventions such as induction or administering of Pitocin. And these things happen because in a hospital birth the staff put women on a tight time schedule – which is not how the human body works. In a homebirth you are not going to get the interventions you are going to get in a hospital. And that makes homebirth safer in terms of the danger of uterine rupture.

Uterine rupture is not what caused Loren’s problems. He inhaled amniotic fluid which is actually a complication more prevalent during c-sections. Amniotic fluid inhalation can be disasterous even in a hospital setting.

C-sections carry more risks for both mother and baby compared to vaginal births whether the vaginal birth in question is a VBAC or not. Simply because it is surgery. Major surgery.

Let us go back to square one. Would I have chosen the same birth for Loren again?

Yes.

But. I would first have tried harder to get a midwife on board. Failing that (and yes, I strongly suspect that I would have failed, because I would not have found an OB-GYN prepared to support it)I still would have had the unassisted birth but I would have taken an infant CPR course. I would have birthed without assistants and I would have had a better Plan B than “let’s go to the hospital.”

My advice to the woman who asked the question on Babyzone?

Birth is a strongly emotive thing, precisely because it is tied up with our feelings about our own births, our sexuality and our children’s births. If you truly want a VBAC, go to people who’ve done VBACs and especially HBACs (home birth after c-section)before. Join ICAN. Don’t ask for advice or justification of your decision on a public website. You’ll just end up in more turmoil. You’re getting people shooting their mouths off on their personal beliefs rather than basing anything they say on facts. This is not the way you are going to get a birth that you’re satisfied with, but most importantly, it is not the way you are going to get a safe birth either.

I do not judge people who have elective c-sections because of convenience or because they truly feel they need them. But I don’t want another one. Ever. And don’t you dare judge me or question me.

As much as I’m not able to (or don’t want to) reverse my choice of an unassisted homebirth or as much as I’m not able to reverse Loren’s brain damage and early death, just as much a mother who chooses a hospital birth or an elective c-section cannot reverse her decision should she or her child get damaged in the process. The only difference is that in the hospital setting there’s somebody else to blame. In my case, the buck stops here. And I am truly unable to know whether I would have felt any better if a doctor’s decision damaged my child. In the end it would still be my signature on that hospital form condoning whatever was done.

The ax forgets, the tree remembers. African Proverb

Strange weapon

While we were students, one of our friend’s friends, Tanya, went shopping for a pair of high-heeled shoes for a dinner-dance.

She located a shoe on one of the shelves in the clothing shop that she rather liked, but couldn’t find it in her size. So, finding nobody nearby who could help, Tanya walked over to a salesperson standing behind a counter. Upon her request for help the lady asked where she found the shoes.

Without bothering to look behind her, Tanya took the shoe by its toe and used it to point; “over there”, not noticing that an elderly lady had walked up to the counter and was standing right behind her. She hit the poor woman with the sharp heel of the shoe right between her eyes. Shocked she saw how the lady turned blood red in anger and how the point where the heel hit her stayed white so that she resembled a red parakeet with a white dot on its forehead. This looked so funny, that Tanya dived into the closest rack of clothing, pulled the clothes over her head and started laughing hysterically.

Knowing Tanya, she would have emerged at some point to apologize profusely, but it is probably better that we don’t know how the rest of the encounter went.