I hear the little bundle of blankets stirring gently to my left. I hear my husband snoring softly to my right.
I try to get up to quiet the baby but I can’t.
There is pain–blinding, searing pain like lightning behind my eyes–when I try to move, and I am reminded, quite quickly, that I am still catheterized.
I look down and there is blood on my gown and sheets, bright and fresh.
Hot tears catch in my throat and burn there. They tingle my nose.
I am vaguely aware that it is morning.
The sun has risen with its vibrant, cheerful colors and new beginnings.
In this room, there is a new beginning. Pale morning light streams promises through the windows.
The nurse comes in to remove the catheter and help me to the shower. She sees the blood and quickly, ashamedly, changes the stained gown from the night before.
I have to get up, she says. Walking will help, she says. Moving will make things easier, she says.
I say to myself that I want to cry.
The idea of scalding water which she says I must not use because of my blood pressure sounds glorious. I want to wash the memories of the previous night from my brain. Scald the words from my ears and the fluorescent lights from my eyes. Rinse the anguish and failure from the previous night down to some dull gutter somewhere beneath the hospital. Beneath the world.
All of my dignity is gone, has been gone, so I strip down and she steadies me by holding my arm while I gingerly lift my legs over the side of the tub.
I’ll be just outside the door if you need my help, she says as she closes the door.
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And that is when I see it.
That is when I see where they removed my son.
I examine it carefully, closely. The line they left behind looks angry. Furious. It mimics what my heart feels. And then I start to cry. Slowly, quietly, softly, the tears burning my throat.
I turn on the water and as it warms my skin, I feel nothing. I am empty. It is as if my feelings, my heart, my identity, were removed from that slice across my belly.
It is ugly. Crooked. Broken.
It makes me feel as though I am broken. Incomplete. And standing slightly off-kilter.
In this room, so close to the room with the new beginning, there is the death of a dream. The death of my dream.
There is a darkness creeping into my soul.
I bathe and vow not to look at it. Not to see it. To pretend that its rage and darkness do not exist.
But this pretending is futile. Every move reminds me that it is there, this thin wound that is not yet a scar. This wound that, in my mind, will never be a scar.
When I return to my room the sheets are fresh and crisp. They are almost cheery. There is a sleeping bundle waiting to be nursed and I realize it is my husband’s birthday.
This was written for The Red Dress Club’s RemembeRED memoir post.
This week’s prompt was to give a memory of the color red without using the word red in the post.
The redness of my c-section scar is a redness, an anger, I will never forget, even if the scar has now turned white. Talking about this is always difficult for me, so please, be gentle.
so beautifully written, i could feel your pain, it took me back to that post birth time that i hated. but your writing was beautiful. thankyou so much for stopping by and saying hi, its lovely to find beautifully written blogs, am now a follower so hopefully can say hi again soon. janex
Thank YOU for stopping by. And thank you for your kind words.
I was devastated when my doctor told me that I would have to have a c-section. “The baby is just too big,” he said. “Your blood pressure is too high. We can’t wait.” I hated him for that. A part of me still mourns for the act of actually giving birth and it has been six years. I totally get where you are coming from, and it is definitely a red feeling.
So was I. Absolutely devastated. I still mourn and that mourning makes me almost afraid to try again some times.
SO beautiful, so intense. I am mother of five, 3 birthed, 2 adopted, each of my stories is different, even with adoption there is this type of pain that you describe, one of my children was birthed at home because I couldn’t stand feeling this above feeling, but my last daughter I was forced back into the hospital and there is this sense of loss for sure. There have been whole studies done on it, quite amazing. Your writing is very beautiful.
I think intense is definitely the right word for all of my emotions surrounding my c-section.
And thank you for your kind words about my words.
Wow, so descriptive, so intense, and so genuine. This was emotional to read.
I always worry when I put the really emotional things out there. I don’t want to make others feel bad, but sometimes I need to purge myself of the emotions.
The entire time I picture my hospital bed, my hospital room, my hospital bathroom. I know that line. I have that line.
I couldn’t look at it. I didn’t look at it for 12 days after the fact.
I am so, so sorry that this was so emotionally awful for you. Even though I know every single thing you are talking about, I didn’t have the same response you did, and I can’t imagine.
But you made me feel. For the first time, I felt WHY this could be awful for some. Why…if you had your heart set on NOT having this happen…that this squashes a dream and makes you feel empty and is hard to recover from…not just physically.
Thank you for sharing.
Your story is so important.
That’s the thing I want people to feel, Katie. There’ve been WAY too many people to dismiss what I, and others I know, feel regarding the way our labors ended. I want people to know that this is ridiculously painful for some people, especially when you never see it coming.
I can’t imagine both the physical and emotional pain that is attached to a c-section scar but I could feel only a slight smidge of it through your words (I say smidge because there will never be any way that I could actually feel the complete impact it had on you. Never.) My heart breaks that you went through this but I hope that now, when you look at that scar, you see a beautiful strong woman who kicked some serious ass.
I hope you see you like I do.
Inspiring.
I’m glad you see me that way, Kim. That’s how I see you.
I felt like you were describing my EXACT post C-section experience!!
Love this line: “In this room, there is a new beginning. Pale morning light streams promises through the windows.”
Visiting from TRDC 🙂
I hate that there are so many of us who feel this way.
and I love that line, too.
As women we have a plan, a dream for the births of our babies. When things go differently we can’t always just “accept it” like many ppl tell us to or “go with the flow.”
My PPD started in the hospital but I didn’t realize it till months later.
I hope writing this was healing. At least a little.
Any time someone tells me to “accept it” I want to punch him/her in the face.
Writing about this is so hard because it dredges up so many emotions. I wish I could just forget, but I can’t you know?
Oh I know exactly what you felt. Not only did I have a c-section, I failed at that. I couldn’t take it and they had to put me under entirely, against my wishes. I woke up hours later to a freshly cleaned baby. My in-laws had already seen him… before me.
It haunts me to this day.
That’s one of the things about C-sections that just infuriates me. There’s nothing personal about them. The mother, the person who has given LIFE to this new human, is just…nothing. Not important. Her feelings aren’t considered.
GAH. I’m getting all fired up for the two of us right now.
that’s what worries me the most. i do not want to miss the weighing/first bath. i do not want photos taken of moments i havent gotten to witness as firsts. and if some god damn member of either of our famlies holds my child before me, i will probably not be able to forgive them.
That was a hard part. Really. Knowing that they were all staring through the nursery window ooohing and aaaahing over him before I’d even gotten to really hold him.
I am NOT discounting Miranda’s experience one bit, but I had a c-section too. I got to see every important moment – first bath, weighing, we nursed within the first 10 minutes. They even let me hold him while they stitched me back up {well, Nathan was allowed to lay him on my chest…my arms were strapped down}. We were separated less than 5 minutes during the first 24 hours of his life.
Like Miranda said, every c-section experience is 100% different. My doctor was really good about making sure that I got to experience all of those first moments. I never once felt like I was missing anything.
Miranda, your story is so touching. You know I love you, and I really want you to have the birth you want the next time around.
I love you too, Stephanie, and yours is proof that there are times when these surgeries are more mother-centered. I’m happy you had that.
I wish I even had the opportunity to be angry over a c-section. But I never will, because my body is broken and I can’t have kids. I have had 6 humans live and die inside me. If it took a scar to get them here alive and healthy, I would take that 10 times over. Hug your baby and embrace the body that brought him into the world!
I’m truly sorry for your losses. Truly.
((((((()))))))
Thanks for the hugs.
This is so well written, with such strong emotion. This is the first time I have visited your site, but it won’t be the last.
Thank you for stopping by and deciding to stick around 🙂
I’m so sorry for your experience Miranda. I can’t fathom what a c-section would do to me.
I can’t feel your pain for you, but my heart goes out to you and wishes it could feel it so you wouldn’t have to.
Aww, thanks. It hurts, but it’s also empowering, you know? And I think talking about it and letting people know that this sucks for some women is important.
Ugh, I remember that feeling. They had also given my staples instead of stitches so it was ultra horrifying. I had a franken-belly. My baby was breach, so I was just happy to have her out alive, but man, I can still feel it sometimes.
They glued me back together. I had steri-strips over my incision for weeks.
I remember that feeling too… and the indignity of it all. And the daily question about whether I’d poo-ed yet. And sliding out of bed sideways. DD was taken out of me prematurely, but she was alive and healthy and that was worth it all.
I first read this last week but was unable to comment. Wanted to make sure I did. I delivered via c-section, and I will never forget first seeing that scar. I was horrified. I had never had staples before. It was the ugliest thing I have ever seen. To this day I hate to look at it.
I do not have the intensely negative feelings about the procedure that you do, but I certainly understand them. And you are far from alone. I know you hope for a VBAC when you have another child, and I hope you get the birth experience you deeply desire. We all deserve that.
For me, it was the only way. My daughter could have died without it. And so all I ever feel when I think about her birth is grateful that she was OK. As far as the thin red line is concerned, I wrote a post recently about my scar I thought you might find interesting. It was for TRDC:
http://www.thewriterrevived.com/2011/03/scar.html