My Son's Birth Story And How I Got Over It

This past weekend I went to one of my best friend’s baby showers, and without revealing anything about a situation that is not mine, she expressed some nerves about the birth not going the way she wants. She has a plan, and has been actively working towards the plan, but as most birthing people know, your plans don’t always go to…plan.

In the moment, talking to her about it, I started kind of nervously giggling, remembering how sideways things went with my son’s birth. Kind of like, oHWeLLBucKLeUpLAdY! And afterwards I felt like such a shit. SUCH a shit.

I had my son, my first kid, about six and a half years ago, and it feels so distant - like just a blink of a moment on our whole path, he and I. But I clearly remember what it was like in the weeks and days leading up to his birth. I felt like whether or not I’d be a good mom hung in the balance of how well my labor and delivery went. How long I could hold out without an epidural, how naturally I was able to breastfeed. I had planned on doing hypnobirthing, I wanted an unmedicated birth. I was a biology and science freak in school, and I was honestly excited to see what my body would do, and to witness this THING happen to my body. I was fascinated by birth, and thrilled to get to experience it myself.

At about 30 weeks, I found out my son was breech. Fine, I thought, there’s time for him to flip. I started going to see a chiropractor, getting physical therapy, doing Spinning Babies with increasing desperation. We had an external cephalic version (ECV) planned (the thing where they try and manually flip the baby) for the earliest possible date (37 weeks), and at my last appointment before that, my OB told me I was already pretty dilated and that I should try and stay in bed all weekend until the ECV on Monday.

I think I might have told this story before, but I really, really, really did not want to have a c-section. I really did not. I felt like I’d be a failure as a mother and as a woman if I did. I was dealing with a fair amount of undiagnosed prenatal anxiety and depression, and it manifested in this warped perspective and intense pressure I put on myself to control every outcome. It was the universe’s first lesson in parenting for me: you can’t control a fucking thing.