If something goes wrong, it is all your fault.
If something goes right, you got lucky.
This is the repeat mantra and theme of motherhood. You can apply it from pre-conception to pregnancy to birth, post partum, breastfeeding, teething, sleeping, crying, crawling, walking, talking, toddling, lving, learning, homeschool/choice of schools.....
There will ALWAYS be someone clucking their toungue at you, wagging their finger at you, knowing what is "best" for you. Screw all of that. Smash it and stomp it and smear it into the cracks in the concrete.
These *people*, who we worry so so much about impressing, pleasing, convincing, converting haven't walked one second in your shoes, and they never will. Nobody can. Not your lover, not your child, nobody can walk in your actual shoes. This can be terrifying, liberating, helpful, grounding, scary, empowering, awesome, sucky, but nothing changes the fact that it is true.
So, Mamas, keep that little path that goes from your brain to your heart nice and clean. Sweep that path and keep it swept. Only you walk that path, and you have a choice who to let clutter it up or not.
You ARE a good mother and no, it ain't just LUCK. You know that, sometimes boldly and sometimes very very faintly. But MamaJoy is giving you permission right now to be as proud and as righteous as you oughta be, everyday. Show it to the world, show it to your babies.
6 comments:
I just found your blog from another link. My second child was a failed UC. There was no short supply of people telling me that I ended up at the hospital because UC is unsafe. Thank you for this post. :)
Damn straight! Tell it like it is, mama! I'm so sick of people blaming US for when things go wrong...yet when mishaps arise at the hands of doctors, they are always PRAISED for "saving us." What a crock!
It's fear and guilt, plain and simple. They are ashamed they can't trust their bodies the way we can. They may not realize it, but it comes out when they say such things. To hell with them!
Since I am on a quote kick, let me add another one from Sarah Buckley:
"Anything that disturbs a labouring woman’s sense of safety and privacy will disrupt the birthing process. This definition covers most of modern obstetrics, which has created an entire industry around the observation and monitoring of pregnant and birthing women...On top of this is another obstetric layer devoted to correcting the 'dysfunctional labour' that such disruption is likely to produce. The resulting distortion of the process of birth—what we might call 'disturbed birth'—has come to be what women expect when they have a baby and perhaps, in a strange circularity, it works."
It's not surprising so many women need to be saved given the conditions in which they must birth. I'd say a woman who comes out of a hospital birth without major trauma or a multitude of medical interventions is lucky.
I found your blog and I just LOVE it. You are so refreshingly honest and a pure joy to read.
"So, Mamas, keep that little path that goes from your brain to your heart nice and clean. Sweep that path and keep it swept. Only you walk that path, and you have a choice who to let clutter it up or not."
I LOVE this.
It applies all the way through our lives.
The L&D nurse aunt who couldn't believe that I'd have my baby at a birthing center instead of at the hospital where she works. The mother-in-law that was panicked because she couldn't measure how much the baby was drinking (breastfeeding)-- surely she'd starve. The sister-in-law who was horrified that I was neglecting my 5 year old by not forcing reading lessons on him -- waiting until he was ready to begin. The neighbor who still clucks her tongue at me when she sees us all out on a school day. The aunt who was disgusted that I'd comfort my crying infant -- I'd certainly spoil that child by loving her too much!
Screw them.
Thank you! :-)
I've been feeling this way tonight Joy. I have a new blog about it. Only this is a UC death that got blamed on the "attending" DOULA. As if.
Ugh.
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