This One's a Doozy

In case you haven't noticed, I am completely in love with my son. Head over heels in love with him. I love to cuddle and rock him, kiss his neck to make him laugh, receive sloppy kisses from him, I love it all.

I'll tell you a secret, though. For the first six weeks of his life, I was not in love. To be fair, my body was fighting a host of issues that made it hard to focus on loving my son, but that's another story.

When he first came out, I thought he looked weird. Again, to be fair, I was shaking uncontrollably from the anesthesia, my body was still open, and starting to create a post-surgical uterine infection, but still. I thought he looked slightly Asian, like he was from Mongolia, which I found confusing, since neither I nor Josh have any Asian blood that we know of. Emotionally, I felt nothing. I felt no rush of love that is shown in movies, or that I'm sure many new moms have. I felt numb, and kept feeling like I should be excited or something. I felt defective, like I missed out on the whole unconditional love thing.

I didn't fall in love with Jacob until he was about six weeks. After the uterine infection that gave me a fever so high that the on-duty nurse said it was the highest reading she'd had in 32 years of being a nurse. After the pulled groin, the bulging disc, the hemorraghing that resulted in a D&C and removal of retained placenta from my uterus. After my body started to heal and I was pretty certain that I wasn't going to die any time soon, my heart opened wide open and let Jacob in.

This is one of the things that THEY don't talk about, and I really wish that THEY would. THEY say things like, "you better get that baby on your chest as soon as it's born so you have that 1 hour of bonding," without stating that you can bond with your child in many ways, and if you are shaking and lying cut open on a table, you may not be able to put your child on your chest, and THAT IS OKAY.

Other things that I wish THEY would talk about:
1. When you get pregnant, it is more than likely that your first ultrasound will be through a vaginal probe (please see Knocked Up! STAT if this is a shock), which looks like a large, plastic penis (complete with a condom!) that may seem scary when you are expecting the cute little belly wand that they show on TV.
2. Yes, breast milk is best, but that doesn't mean that formula is harmful to your baby
3. If at first you do not bond, there are many ways to do so with your child. Jacob and I got a lot of "skin-to-skin" that first year by bathing together.
4. You will probably poop yourself when you give birth. This one is actually from my sister, who gave me a lot of enlightening information when my neice was born. Since I was 20 at the time, I pretty much blocked out all the information except for the poop.
5. Sometimes, inductions don't work.

I believe that all the advice that we received came from a place of love and wanting to help, but sometimes it feels like parenting advice (especially surrounding labor, delivery and the first year of care) is so concrete, so passionately given, that there is not much room for the other side of things. What if you want to breastfeed, but your body suppresses the hormone to create it, or you are in so much pain that you can barely hold your child on your chest? Why do I trip over the term "C-section," debating over whether or not I add a qualifier. Emergency? Unplanned? As if it's only okay to have a C-Section if you almost die?

These are some of the questions with which I still struggle. Anticipation of this next birth reminds me of the last one, and I'm realizing that I'm not over the last one yet. I know that there are plenty of women out there who don't struggle over their birth stories and I hope to join their ranks. Still, I don't think I'm alone out here. And so I'm going to share my stories and hope that my voice can be part of the THEY.