Member-only story
I DON’T EVEN FEEL THAT IT MATTERS HOW I GAVE BIRTH
I know that women put on the robe of guilt as soon as they become mothers and find it very difficult to get rid of it. And it’s a shame, because some things don’t really matter that much. For example, birth. It is important to have a healthy mother and a healthy baby at the end. That’s about it in the long run, in the great equation of life. And I’m writing this to you ten years after an emergency caesarean section that I DIDN’T want and for which I felt very guilty for a long time. Yes, it is ideal for most people to give birth naturally, but look, I couldn’t. Hasty medical decisions, too little power to insist on sticking to the original plan, fear of something terrible and irreversible. I chose how best I could then. I chose out of love. Could’ve been better? May be. Does it matter? Now I’m pretty sure not and that all the time I spent crying about it would have been so much better used in love with my little girl instead of guilt. Ten years have passed and I can honestly say that the place where my little girl was born is absolutely irrelevant compared to all the other things we have lived together. It seems to me the exact moment when I weaned her and the food with which I began to diversify. And how much I was stressed then with all this, with every step, decision, how much stress and how much guilt… I no longer have any emotions related to the birth, other than the joy that I…
