The lovely truths about birth...Warning: Not so lovely!

So, lately I have been thinking a lot about birth...my last birth experience to be exact. Probably because I am expecting again. So far I have given birth to two rambuctious boys. The first via Cesarian Section and the second via....well, ya know, the good old fashioned way;-) It's the second birth, the "natural" birth, that has me worried. Can you even classify that as natural?! I don't think so, but here I am again. I tell myself that I just get pregnant for the great parking spots, but it's gotta be something more than that to make me put my once very nice body through all of this for a third time.
My mind keeps going back to the hospital room on the day of November 17, 2009. Six days before my due date. It's been twelve hours, two and a half of that has been pure pushing...and screaming. The doctors actually shut the door, so I wouldn't scare the other mommy's to be. I am at my breaking point...literally. I am imagining a rubber band stretched to it's limit and getting the little tears in it before it finally snaps. All at once everyone starts yelling. The baby is coming. They can see his head pushing through. Everything happens in a matter of minutes, though it seems as if time has slowed waaaay down. I can feel each beat of my heart, hear everyone, including my normally calm and in control mother, screaming that I'm almost there. I feel the nurse grab my hand and try to yank it in-between my legs, so I can "feel" the baby being born. I grab my hand back completely horrified of what I'll feel. No thank you, grabbing my own baby out is not for me. If it was I'd be at home in my bath tub. I chose the hospital for a reason.
That's when the burning sensation stops for a moment and I feel that first pop. The head is out. My husband, not the brightest crayon in the box, leans down and whispers lovingly in my ear "You're almost done. Now you just gotta get the shoulders out." At this point I literally start weeping. I can't explain to you the intense fear and anxiety that took over me in that moment. All of that work just for the head and I still have to get the shoulders out. With those two sentences my husband had taken my feelings of triumph and victory and had replaced them with extreme fear and doubt. I took a deep breath, prayed that our baby would not be a line backer and pushed with everything I had left. Surprisingly the rest of him popped right out. All the fear, doubt and exhaustion melted away. Sure, I was still tired and the work was not quite finished yet. I knew that my placenta still needed to be pushed out, but that was nothing and soon I was holding Mason Xander Wolff for the first time in my arms.
I'm not gonna tell you that I found the birthing process to be easy or even natural. To me pushing a watermelon through the eye of a needle will never be natural. But, I will tell you this...it was worth it.
I now know that my body is capable of giving birth without splitting into two and that my heart is capable of an intense love, that I can't quite describe, without exploding. That right there is why I am doing this again and why I probably won't stop here.

Ryan Charles
January 9, 2008

Mason Xander
November 17, 2009