Hindsight and Healing.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing. It's also a difficult thing. There are many things I would change about my life, including my decisions surrounding birth and parenting.

But in the last 8 months, I've realised that you just can't allow yourself to get caught up in the 'I wish's', the 'What ifs', the 'If onlys'. But you can't ignore them either, or they just fester.

I still think 'What if I'd not asked for a stretch and sweep?', 'What if we'd not been in Mackay that day?', 'Why didn't I just demand for them to give M oxygen while he was having skin to skin instead of taking him away?' and ... 'Why didn't I just hire a midwife and stay home?' 'Why didn't I trust my body? Why didn't I trust birth?' And they are important questions. They are valid questions. Instead of just having the what ifs go through my head over and over and over though, I answered them. It was a bit confronting and painful, but I feel that I had to explore the questions and the answers if I was going to get past it, and if I was going to change it for the future. I learnt. I learnt the hard way, but I still learnt. And it has turned my world upside down.

Today, I feel SO much different than I did in the weeks and months immediately following M's birth. I was SO consumed by regret and sadness. Now I feel empowered. Of course I still wish it had been different, I always will. But that's ok. It doesn't mean I love him any less. It doesn't make me a bad mother just because I made the choices I did.

I even feel proud. Twice I birthed in hospital. Twice the births were relatively straightforward and both times the baby exited the way nature intended. Few drugs were used (only gas with H and about 4 sucks of gas with M + the synto both times, but with M only after the placenta was delivered and I had a PPH). If I feel proud now, imagine how proud I will be when I give birth at home :)

I also feel lucky. I went in fairly blind both times, though the second time I was a little more informed (though I've since realised how much more there is to know!), and I came out the other side. Both times there were reasons I could have been forced into surgery. I didn't know in 2008 that many hospitals have a '1 hour pushing' rule, and if you didn't comply, the baby was forced out by way of forceps/vacuum/cesarean. Somehow I managed to push for almost 3, and no talk of any such interventions. Phew, I now consider that, knowing what I do, a 'lucky escape'! I also know that many times when APH (antepartum haemorrhage, which I experienced with M's birth) is diagnosed, it is immediate cesarean - luckily for me the only intervention was ARM (artificial rupture of membranes), though other interventions were threatened.

I really feel like I am at peace with his birth now. Sometimes things trigger me, and I feel sad/angry/regretful/etc, but it is much more fleeting now. And I don't hide those feelings, I address them, I embrace them, then I move on and accept them as part of my journey.

I am so passionate about birth and all things related. I am excited about the information I now have that I can share with other women. I am looking forward to supporting other women during such an amazing and lifechanging time of their lives, and encouraging them to make informed decisions and be in control of their own births, however they want them to be. Yes, I freely admit it will be difficult to watch women make decisions that would be different to my own, or that don't align with what their wishes are, but I respect that it is their birth and their journey - it is not my own. All I can do is provide the information, encouragement and support for them to become empowered and make informed choices.

I have gone on my own journey, and while it's not the journey I imagined or wanted, it's mine. Every woman's journey is her own and noone else's. That is what gives women power. We are allowed to be angry and upset at the role/s other people played in our birth experiences if they were less than ideal - whether that be scare tactics employed by obstetricians or midwives that have chosen 'policy' over being 'with woman', but we also need to take responsibility for our own choices - whether that be the choice of care provider, consenting to unwanted or unneccesary interventions or whatever else. There is ALWAYS choice. I don't feel I had power at the time of M's birth, but by going through this journey I have FOUND my power. My role is not to take that journey and that power away from other women, but to encourage them to find their own power.

Birth is not an emergency. It is simply an emergence. (Jeannine Parvati Baker.)