Healing from Birth

I've spent just 4 days shy of a year contemplating the concept of "healing from birth". My first daughter was born via c-section. At the time I fully trusted my midwife when she said I needed a c-section. It took the duration of my second pregnancy to understand how wrong she was and how wrong I was for not educating myself more. Directly after my cesarean I was miserable from the physical pain of the surgery. A year later I was over the physical pain but struggling with the emotional agony of wanting more children but wanting to avoid another cesarean. I am stubborn and argumentative and these two traits helped me tremendously in researching, preparing and successfully having a vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) with my second daughter.

I truly thought that succeeding in having the birth that I wanted would help me heal from the emotional pain of my first birth. Sadly, I still have regret, anger, grief and flat out disgust hanging on about my surgical birth. I am disgusted by medical professionals who treat birth as an illness. I'm disappointed in myself for "studying" all the wrong things during my pregnancy. I skipped over sections in books on c-sections because I just *knew* that would never happen to me. Ugh! How could I have been so ignorant!?!!?

Even more tragic, I am not the only intelligent mother to approach pregnancy and birth with blinders on! We assume the medical professionals who care for us during our pregnancy want what is best for us. We can just show up and they will tell us what to do, right? So wrong. They aren't caring for us...they are treating us.

While I have no regrets about my VBAC with my second child, I still want a "do over". I want the birth that heals me from my previous births. Does that really exist? I read 2-3 birth stories each week. I can feel the bliss and joy in so many birth stories...usually homebirths. I want that for myself. Yes, I want one more child too, but I do want to experience birth that is...happy? Is that the word? Neither of my births were terrible, like life-threatening terrible. But they were very emotional and traumatic in their own way.