| Thursday, March 22, 2007 |
| Healing |
I saw my midwife yesterday to be fit for a diaphragm. Never done this before. Not. Fun. Anyway, she's a perfectly lovely woman. She asked how I was doing (hidden implication: have you gotten over having your homebirth dreams shattered yet?). My son squirmed on my lap and I muttered, "Fine" into his silky hair and tried not to tear up.
You see, I'm a crier. Always have been a probably always will be though in recent years I've gotten assertive enough that I'm no longer easily angered or intimidated.
The midwife started talking to me about VBAC and how stats show we should have at least 18 months between births. I countered that the research I had done via Pubmed turned up only a handful of studies involving VBAC before 18 months and wasn't it a bit premature to base provincial policy on a study which included 300 women? The conversation went on until she said, "Well, you can't turn back the clock and do things differently." No shit, Sherlock. She's a nice woman, but this struck me as a) insensitive and b) unsupportive.
Why did this piss me off so much? I think, in my heart-of-hearts, that I blame the midwives for my c-section. I honestly feel that if they had informed me that being induced (I was induced for Pregnancy-Induced Hypertension) would likely lead to c-section in a first-time mom, I would've told the OBs to shove their induction...somewhere. They totally hung me out to dry and passed me off to a group of GPs quicker than I could process.
After the appointment, I made a few decisions:
1) I won't use those midwives next time around
2) I'm ready to give up being angry. I'm angry at them (the midwives) and they don't give a shit. I wrote them a letter that I'm not even going to bother sending. That's how much I'm sure they don't give a shit.
3) I need to symbolically throw away my anger and need to come up with some type of healing ceremony. I know. It sounds all new-agey and west-coasty, but it's what my intuition is telling me will resolve the anger and close the door on this chapter in my life.
What will my healing ritual be? I'm going to collect small pieces of driftwood over the next week or so. On each piece, I will write in charcoal one statement of my anger. Example: "The midwives abandoned me." or "I didn't do my research." One night, I'll go down to the ocean with my husband and my son and chuck those pieces of driftwood as far into the ocean as I can. When I'm really raging mad, I fantasize about throwing things. I figure this exercise will be cathartic, at the very least. |
posted by Mama K @ 4:24 PM  |
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