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VBAC
Relating to past generations - birth disappointment
Fairly random, but I was musing the other day about a conversation I had with my Grandma from my dad's side. I don't remember exactly when it came up, but she was telling me about my father's birth. It was in 1950, when they were doing the knock 'em out, deliver 'em, wake 'em up thing.
Anyhow - my Grannie had told me that she was disappointed in the experience, that she'd practiced certain things to help deal with labor and that it kind of all flew out the window. Fairly similar to my experience with my c/s (I didn't labor at all so had the entire I wasted hours of my life researching and practicing for nothing thing). It was interesting to have that connection with her, and sad at the same time that she had that experience.
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Re: Relating to past generations - birth disappointment
I think we have more in common with previous generations than we realize. No matter how far medicine has come when you get to the root of it, nothing quells the sting of a disappointing labor and delivery. As girls we spend years dreaming of the day we will have our babies. We get pregnant and still dream of what it will be like. We get to delivery and some jerk that was never present in your dreams up till that moment shatters any hope you had of that serene, profound moment by knocking you out during those precious first few moments that you'll never get back.
I have spent years beating myself up over the fact that I am less like my mother than I thought. I have heard stories over and over about how long she labored with each of us and as crazy as it sounded I couldn't wait for that to be me. I couldn't wait to endure that strong emotional bond with my baby, that I would go through anything for my child. It's even worse when your mom tells you after your traumatic first c-section that you just didn't try hard enough and you took the easy way out. I wanted to hide somewhere.
Now that I've been doing my research, asking questions, not taking no for an answer and preparing my body for this marathon, I have to find a way to make peace with the fact that this might not work. I still might not be able to VBAC this baby. Would I be ok with that? I'm not sure how long it would take to accept it. Now I'm told I'm selfish for attempting it.
With my Grandmom, I'm thankful she doesn't tell me things like that. It's so neat to hear her stories of when she gave birth, how primitive things seemed then compared to now and how doctors were still jerks then too. Other than her praying for the safe delivery of her newest great grandbaby she's been nudging me on finding out the gender before everyone else. She's so cute.
It's funny, I never dreamed of when I would birth my kids. In fact, I wanted to adopt. DH didn't, so?.
When I was pregnant with Bean, and after the delivery, I learned a lot about my mom I never knew. She, like me, never put that much into the experience until she actually had a bad one, and then she worked hard to change in the future. The details couldn't be more different, but a lot of emotions were the same. In her case, she had my oldest brother through twilight sleep (aforementioned "knock 'em out" method) and when she woke up, there was no baby. He had been stillborn. After that, she fought against having ANY pain relief of any kind for future deliveries. My mother is the furthest thing from your stereotypical NCB advocate, believe me, but she HAD to fully "be there" for the births. I completely understand that, after what she went through. There was nothing during the birth that could have changed the fact he was a stillborn, but her experience of it didn't have to be what it was.
I'm not going to try to draw too much comparison between the tragedy of a stillborn and my c/s, but just that it took both of us experiencing something first hand to realize that there are things about the experience that are important.