Gratitude & Grief

For years I imagined the image, sensation, euphoria of my baby leaving my body, pushed out by the strength I knew I had. Forty-one weeks came and went, and I longed to go into labor naturally; for my body to be the animal I knew it was. Nipple stimulation, sex, stairs, hills, bouncing, balls, bouncing on balls. I took the classes with my husband; he knew where to massage. I was going to be home at first, bathing in my own tub, eating my own food (food at all). Forty-one + one and the induction started. Balloon stretching me to my brink, pitocin, cords, tethered to a pole with needs because I was positive for Strep B (I didn't know that was a thing!).

Still, I thought, “it's okay, it's all going to be okay.” I'll get my moment: the pushing and the emergence of the life I created. “Your baby's not dropping,” they told me. +2, still too high. Still, I waited. I wanted her to come caked in my blood, my fluid, my body. Eventually, I had waited as long as I could for myself, my vision, and the c-section was scheduled for the next hour. My partner called my mom as I couldn't say the words of what wasn't going to happen and what was. My daughter was pulled out of me behind a white curtain, healthy and perfect. I sobbed with relief, exhaustion, the fear of what had just happened and gratitude for the warmest smallest body tucked on my chest as my body was sewn back together.

Three years later, i tried again. After pushing for four hours, delirious with medicine and exhaustion; again, I found myself in the cold, white operating room. How could my body not have been able to do it? I'm just as strong, right? Were my pushes wrong? Again, a perfect being arrived earthside and breastside. My discharge papers reading: no future labor. I'll never know the feeling of a vaginal birth. Grief (guilt for the grief) and gratitude.

—By Hanna G.