This one really hit home. I tried to write about women changing their stories as time passed a few months back, but this really was well-said. Oftentimes, in those desperate survival times of 24-hour caring for a newborn, we are simply not in ANY position to process, think, mourn, ponder, get angry, question stuff--especially if we have had a hospital birth that we did not want, and especially if our butchered bodies and aching bones and ringing ears are being bombarded with GOOD THING YA WENT TO THE HOSPITAL bullshit, it is very easy to just say yeah yeah uh huh uh huh and go back to our nursing and diapering and scraping out tiny snippets of sleep.
But it don't mean its truth. Our truth. It just means noone knows how to treat a postpartum woman anymore, and noone really gets the power that shutting up and bring hot meals really holds. Anyhow, Pamela nailed it as always :)
3 comments:
It has taken me years to process the birth of my oldest, and may take many more to process it completely. I certainly believe that the best thing we can do for new moms is just love them and help them as much as we can, but also to be willing to not judge anything she says, and certainly not say, "But at least you have a healthy baby..." That can shut down the healing process, rather than facilitating it.
Great post.
It took me a long time to get properly angry about how my birth happened. The medwife asked me after the birth how I felt, and I just kinda shrugged and mumbled something neutral. I was still reeling from major surgery, I was wondering where my baby was, I wanted to take a shower to get the ook off me but couldn't get out of bed because I had a catheter...did she really expect a thorough, thoughtful response?
It wasn't till my son was almost 2 years old did it really hit home how wrong it all was, and what should have happened, and what DID happen instead. But of course, no one's going to ask a patient 2 years later how they feel. They'll have already been forgotten by then. :(
I've thought a lot about this post, and I have to say that you are right on here. It's too bad we couldn't sit our "care" providers down and give them a real talking-to a couple years later after we've had time to think, saying "Listen! You did this to me. What do you have to say for yourself?"
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