On Becoming a Mother

Today is Mother’s Day- my 11th Mother’s Day, in fact. I can remember with vivid details the day I became a mother for the first time. I remember the struggle of labor, the sacrifices I had to make to my original birth plan to accommodate the safe arrival of my baby girl……

I remember very clearly  being so terrified that I was harming my baby by continuing on with my natural birth plan while I continued to suffer through intense contraction pain and failure to progress. I remember the looks on my husband’s and my own mother’s faces as I pleaded with them to help me stay strong, begging them to persuade me not to abandon my plan- since I had specifically asked them to do just that if it came down to it- and seeing in their faces that they didn’t really have the heart to persuade me. I remember the immense guilt (and shame) I felt after making my decision to abandon my birth plan.

After 30.5 hours of active labor, I decided to let go of my desire for a natural childbirth. I was exhausted. The staff at the hospital had been condescending in the beginning and when I decided to get the epidural, there was an “I told you so” feel; I was embarrassed. I asked for my family to be brought in the room (about a dozen or so family members had been waiting for hours and hours at the hospital), and I couldn’t escape the feeling that I had let them down.

And yet, something about surrounding myself with everyone I loved- who loved me too- and admitting that I needed help, expressing my utter exhaustion at the same time as uttering my sorrow for not following through with my original birth plan….. I think it gave me comfort and peace.

I have never really connected the dots that shortly after gathering my WHOLE family in the room, surrounding myself with their love and essentially admitting, “I can’t do this alone,” then everything else progressed as it should have. I always just attributed the progression of labor after that to be a physical consequence of sequential events following a specific set of actions:

• my body was in a complete exhaustion state after 30 hours of active labor and bordering on 48 hours of zero sleep
• extreme contractions lasting 3-4 minutes each, with barely a minute in between to rest, very unlike the typical pattern we learned about in birthing class
• monitors showing baby’s heart rate dropping and concerns that baby was in distress
• finally so exhausted, I accept recommendation for epidural
• cue the anesthesiologist
• after a long needle and a resentful acceptance of “failure”, I lay down to rest
• then, the nurse “broke my water”
• within an hour of broken water, I progressed from 4-10 centimeters
• “Labor down” sleep for 1 hour, then ready to push
• 5 pushes, “You’re an excellent pusher,” says my doctor, who came in after the 3rd push just in time for baby. 

After 1 particularly long breath and hard push, amid the busyness of nurses moving around and trying to feel what was happening and the chaos in my brain, the doctor looked me straight in the eye and said- very clearly, calm yet firm- “Now, DON’T PUSH.” In a matter of seconds, the doctor unwound the cord that was wrapped multiple times around my first born baby’s little neck (I was not aware of this at the time, but was informed of this much later by my husband and Mom who had witnessed it first hand). And finally, they handed me my beautiful baby. She was purple, and her eyes were wide open, and she cried out loudly, and she stared at me, and I brought her to my body so she could feel me. And we both cried.

This was the moment I became a Mother! It was the most incredible feeling I’ve ever felt. I stared at her in amazement, in gratitude, in absolute love with this being I had the privilege of walking around with for 9 months like a built-in reminder of the intricacy and infinite potential of the human experience.

And her she was, this real life tiny purple human, wailing in my arms as the nurses dealt with all the remaining business of labor and delivery. And then, in what seemed like only  an instant after I was able to calm my baby from the excitement of her entry into the world, they took her from my arms to stick some drops in her eyes and put her on a cold hard scale to measure her weight. She was only about 10 feet away from where I lay in bed, but I could see her face across the room and she was not happy with the interruption to our snuggle time. She cried again. So I sang her a song, out loud, so she could hear my voice and know I was nearby. She quieted. And then, I had her back in my arms. She was happy and so was I; content, peaceful, overwhelmed with emotions.

For a very long time, I believed that the progression of labor- my failure to progress and inability to withstand the pain- was because of some flaw in me. Something must have been wrong with me that caused it to happen this way. It wasn’t fair. I felt terrible that I had “given up” on my original birth plan. I felt guilt at having gotten the epidural.  I felt weak, incompetent, unnatural, less worthy…..

But recently, after a LONG TIME of feeling badly about myself, I’ve been doing so much self care and deep inner work on mindset, positive brain training, meditation, and self compassion I am able to look at things differently. I am able to see that the severe lack of sleep and stress I was holding in my body is likely what contributed to my body’s inability to progress on its own.  These intense stress I was under is likely what caused the “tetanic contractions,” as the nurses told me I was having. I realize now that I was locked in the sympathetic state (not really a surprise, given the circumstances of labor), but I was so entrapped in this fight or flight mode in general that I was unable to tap into the rest mode I needed to allow my brain and body to deal with the pain of contractions.

It wasn’t until AFTER I brought my whole family into the delivery room, shared my struggle, opened up with raw emotion about what I was going through….only after that emotional release did I see progression in my physical labor. This may be one of those cases where there are too many factors to know for sure. But if I’m being honest, I can say that the emotional burden of trying to remain true to not just myself but every one of my family members who came out to support me- the strain of trying to uphold that image of strength and unbreakable spirit, that attachment I had to this vision of a “Primal” labor and delivery, this need to restore the “feminine power” through a natural birth…… all of this was too much pressure for me to bear alone.

By allowing myself to be vulnerable with my family as I admitted that I couldn’t handle it, by accepting their comfort and connection in that moment of humility and courage- I am quite positive that is the moment my whole body released its tight control and allowed my baby to enter the world. That is a day I will never forget, the day I became a Mother.

To be a mother is to  know struggle and strain. To be a mother is to know happiness and wonder. To be a mother is to know courage, connection and love- Indefinite LOVE.