You Should Be Grateful
-by Gretchen
Humphries
"You should be grateful, after all, you’ve
got a healthy baby". How many times have
we heard those words? How many times have we said
them? It seems so obvious, you wanted a child
and now you have a healthy child. You are alive
to enjoy that child. You should be grateful. Right?
That phrase (or the similar "all that matters
is a healthy baby") did more damage to me
than anything else said to me after my cesarean
section. Because on the face of it, it seems so
true. My husband and I had struggled with infertility
for several years. My pregnancy came after at
least 2 miscarriages and drugs to make me ovulate
and then to maintain the pregnancy. I had beautiful
twin boys. Why was I so upset? Wasn’t I grateful?
They were apparently healthy and so was I, if
you discount the physical devastation of major
abdomenal surgery on top of the exhaustion taking
care of newborn twins brings with it. My recovery
was, after all, uncomplicated by medical standards.
Physically, I was healing well. Wasn’t I
grateful?
So many people said it to me, I started to wonder.
People I trusted, people I respected, people I
loved. Women that had cesarean sections for their
children and trumpeted the advantages of it. Maybe
I wasn’t grateful for my babies? Maybe I
didn’t love my babies as much as I should
or as much as other mothers did? Maybe I was being
selfish and petty to be so upset about the birth
and not blissfully happy with my babies- after
all, other women seemed to "get over it"
so quickly, so quickly in fact that I had to wonder
if I was really crazy to think there was anything
to "get over". What was the big deal?
Part of the problem was that I actually didn’t
feel overwhelmingly grateful, nor did I feel overwhelmed
with love for my boys. I knew that if anyone threatened
them in any way that I’d do anything to protect
them, I’d already proven that in negotiating
a less traumatic cesarean than they would have
normally experienced. I could protect my children
but I didn’t feel a lot about them.
I was depressed. So for several months I wasn’t
feeling much of anything. It wasn’t hard
to believe that I wasn’t grateful enough,
that I didn’t love them like I should. But
I still had to wonder, even as the depression
lifted, why hadn’t I "gotten over it"?
What was wrong with me?
Then I began to realize how evil it is to tell
a woman who’s experienced a physically or
emotionally traumatic birth that she should be
grateful because when you say that, she hears
that she isn’t grateful enough for the precious
baby she’s been given. And that cuts to the
quick. She may already be wondering what was wrong
with her that she couldn’t have a normal
birth and now you’ve told her that she doesn’t
love her child enough. It is evil to say "all
that matters is a healthy baby" because you
are saying that her pain, her damage doesn’t
matter. You are telling her that not only is her
body broken, but so is her mind. That if she is
physically healthy, that’s all that matters,
and to be concerned with anything else is somehow
wrong. That the means to the end doesn’t
matter, she is expendable.
The truth is, a woman can be absolutely grateful
and full of passionate mother love for her child
and be enraged by how that child came into the
world. Hating the birth, hating what happened
in that cold, impersonal operating room or delivery
room has nothing to do with the child. It is possible
to be both full of rage and full of love. When
that rage is turned inward, a woman is depressed,
and likely to believe you when she hears you tell
her she’s ungrateful and unloving toward
her child. And if that rage turns back outward,
it will spill over to you, because you told her
a lie and she believed it because she trusted
you. If that rage stays hidden, it will fester,
and eventually there will be a place in that woman’s
heart where she no longer goes, because it just
hurts too much and makes no sense. Good mothers
just don’t have those feelings, and she’s
already afraid she isn’t a good enough mother.
And so she loses something precious, and so do
we all.
I discovered that there are a lot of women out
there who hated the births of their children;
women who had bad surgeries, women who had good
surgeries, rarely women who had necessary surgeries,
women who didn’t have surgery at all, but
did have horrible things done to them in the name
of birth. I’m not the only one. There is
a vast hidden ocean of pain in women who’ve
had horrible births but do love their babies and
continue to wonder, what is wrong with me? If
I just loved my baby enough, I wouldn’t feel
this way.
I was freed by the knowledge that there is nothing
wrong with me! I underwent the surgical removal
of my children from my body- a procedure that
has nothing to do with birth, that completely
circumvents what my woman’s body is made
to do. If it felt like an assault, then it was
an assault, a very sexual assault. And if I’m
not upset about being assaulted, then there really
is something wrong with me. And that nothing that
was done to me has the power to keep me from loving
my children with passionate mother love.
I am grateful, grateful beyond words for the
blessing of my children. They are miracles. The
day they were taken out of me was one of the worst
days of my life. Yet I am grateful for them, though
not for what was done to me. My physical body
might have recovered well enough to be called
"healthy" but my spirit was deeply wounded
and then neglected. I was not healthy. I know
my children suffered because of that. I have a
lot to be grateful for but not for their birth,
never for their birth. Understanding and accepting
that makes me truly healthy. Admitting the horror
of their birth frames the love I have for them
in a way that astonishes me- amazed at what I
went through because of my love for them, I now
know I really would die for them if needed.
Now, when you tell me that I should be grateful,
I realize that you are showing me how frightened
you are. That you are afraid to look at my pain.
That you are afraid to admit that maybe I have
good reason to be angry, that maybe woman are
truly assaulted in the name of birth. You are
telling me that it's ok for women to have birth
ripped from them, that it isn’t acceptable
to look for a better way or to mourn what was
lost. I know you now. You may not know yourself,
but I do. And I pity you.
Also read Gretchen Humphries' home VBAC waterbirth
story.
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