Joining the ranks

I was very bummed out, concerned, but mostly, validated when I came across this thing today. I had typed cesarean scar massage into google and found this Q+A type of message board. I do not vouch for anything else on the site but the voices of the post-op women was something I had not had much access to.

when I had my first section in 2000, I was somewhat new to the internet, as far as searching, and I wanted to really deny that this was me. I didnt want to bond or cry I wanted to move on and get pregnant right away again. This is common with a "bad" outcome regarding pregnancy and birth. Anyhow, it took 20 months after my first period to conceive and in retrospect I am glad.

when I had my 2nd section in 2005 I knew too much and was extraordinarily saddened by the whole thing. Extremely devastated. Extremely silenced. Extremely shunned and muted and my pain and my situation was totally and utterly and even resentfully "blown off" by almost everyone I knew, family, friends, strangers, noone wanted to deal with me or it or anything. It was made clear that the entire subject matter was just unacceptable, and the pressure building inside of me literally and figuratively started me blogging. First the guise was that I was blogging about "our days" but from the get-go I had anger and snide little slip-ins about how difficult it was with this pain, my little "profile" said some thing about how "New Mamas shouldnt be abandoned" etc. I was hurting, baaaaaaaaad. Heartbroken 24/7 was how I would describe my first year(ish?) with Charlie and the kids.

One entry I did on the "homeschooling fun times" blog was about birth and I got a lame comment from a guy friend of ours and it was that that let me know I HAD to have a whole seperate entity to write about birth and stuff and thus Breast and Belly was born, along with the other blogs that were just NOT about homeschool!

Ok what am I talking about?
Oh yeah....well anyways being self-identified as a homebirther and a homebirth advocate and not wanting to get on any kind of lists with any c section moms WHATSOEVER, I actually know remarkably little about healing and what is common and what is normal, etc. My anger and pain was too big for me to "go there" and so I just put energies all into other things birthy.

So.
I am in pain, but without the bitterness of the surprise cesarean, but the new newness of the planned cesarean, and it is very different. It is "better" and it is not convoluted by the extraordinary weight of "WHYWHYWHYOHGODHOW COULD I HAVE AVOIDED THIS OH WHYWHY WHY DID THEY BUTCHER ME?"
Now it is like, ok, we did this, we felt it was going to happen anyhow, lets get better! All these cool and wonderful Mamas online are telling me about massages and vitamins and lets check it all out!
So I do not know if I want to be on some commiseration-ring with anyone just yet. There is so much potentially "there" with cesareans, and my story is mine, and it takes enough energy to share it with my blog and you al, I dont know if I can start up with strangers who might be coming from so many different angles and beliefs-- just give me the damn instructions, eh? Thats probably too simplistic. I have alot of unhealed stuff from my old births, too. Alot.

I am really freaking out about this family event, 2 of them actually, and I know the belief of the people on Daddy's side of the family: We dont talk about Birth and C Sections are easy-peasy even though none of us had one. ACK!

I was also TOLD, point blank, in my face, (well, not really, on my bed-phone because they didnt come to see me or the baby or the kids until the baby was almost 2 weeks old, didnt babysit didnt do anything they promised) on day THREE by my mother in law that "I am probably mostly better by now if not tomorrow for sure" (This was when 2 nurses had to help me to turn in bed to start the 10 miute process of sitting up to begin the long long walk to the bathroom bent completely over, weeping--no--SOBBING with each impossible step)

I was also told, TOLD when the baby was about 12 days old that "Well, youre all better now!" and when I looked at her, incredulously, tears pouring down my face "No, I am not, not by a long shot, " she told me that I needed to "quit takin them pills". I rolled over in bed as best as I could (that is still hard to do) and nursed until she left my bedside.

sigh
its so easy to tell people to not worry about what others think, but it still sucks to enter into a group situation where every person there has such an agenda, for lack of a better word.

I want to get better. It is scary to read about all the women who have pain years later and the ones who wrote about limited leg motion really made me think WOW, I have had hobbling right leg since 11-05, but can fake a normal gait. I just want to get better!

I feel really good today--yesterday was SO BAD I felt like I had lost 3 weeks off of my recovery, couldnt even carry Eska and walk! But today I feel good so I am NOT going to clean I am going to rest!
Charlie and Casey are squirting good, new baby wash all over their own heads out on the sidewalk, it is 8:30 am, and instead of screaming at them, OR putting in the good hour it will take to give them baths, new outfits.....im just gonna take a picture and let them crust over : )

Of course I am among the ranks of moms who have had cesareans. Whether I want to be or not, it is true and real. I do not want to get sucked under and start drowning in abunch of MDC crying and bashing fests, but it is no longer (too) scary to search some stuff on google here and there. It no longer makes me turn purple and cry and write big thingies about how hospitals are evil and stuff. I hope that this fact hasnt made my blog boring, I know it sure isnt what it used to be, a nice fist-pumping F-the-Hospital kind of an affair--but hopefully the true story of me is still interesting enough.

PS my own family and my own friends this time have really really been wonderful. I wanted that to be very clear. this is a daddys side o the tree deal right now, the parties and the attitudes.