The Anxiety Is Setting In

With over a week of sporadic labor, dropping baby, and the super hero cleaning power kicking in, it is safe to say the end is certainly coming quickly and we will be meeting our long awaited miracle.  While I am so very excited, I cannot help but to start having flash backs of my pregnancy, labor and birth with Aiden.  I typically recall his birth as follows:

Water broke at 7 am.  I called my friend to tell her my bladder quit working. Went to the hospital, was treated less than human, felt forced into unwanted interventions, I had bad back labor, a stupid nurse, family that was making me crazy.  Aiden was born at 3:34pm.  My doctor cut me for a baby that weighed less than 6lbs. I spent 3 hours alone after having him when they took him to the nursery.  Had a nurse grab me and shove my son's face into my breast when I asked for help feeding him.  Then had a hysterical drive home with an asswipe ex-husband who thought it was funny to scare me 3 days postpartum.

End story.  The only thing I got from my birth that I planned was a vaginal delivery.  There are a lot of other sad details that play over in my head about that experience that I typically try to push away, I don't share.  But I shared the saddest with my husband the other nite.

I can remember being in transition with the worst back labor.  Stuck because I opted for an epidural due to the pitocin and no actual support from my family.  I had a husband that didn't care, a mother that was running in and out of my room in a panic and a mother-in-law that just sat in a rocking chair knitting a stupid hat. I had a nurse who kept telling me to be quiet.  I was nearly hysterical with emotional grief and pain and all I wanted was for everyone to leave. I didn't feel safe having my son with all these people who clearly didn't care about me.  During a time that I should have felt safe enough to check out of reality and check into the deepest part of me to get the job done, I was forced to remain present and tell myself that I could NOT ask these people to leave.  I had to remember to set up protection for myself AFTER the birth.  I did not want to, nor could I have dealt with the emotional wrath I would have endured from those people if I had just done what I felt.  I was so vulnerable and no one protected me. I was forced into protecting myself from the aftermath that would have come otherwise.  I want to cry just remembering that.  Just knowing that I was truly forced into submission by mental games.

I have felt robbed of being the mother I wanted to be.  My integrity, my ethics, my skills were questioned nearly everyday after Aiden's birth.  My mental ability was questioned.  I was cowed into letting everyone else do what was "best" for my son.  I feel like I lost so much of him for the first 3 years because I didn't step up and take what was mine out of fear of all the retaliation that I felt I would have endured. I cried so many nites in my apartment alone when I didn't have Aiden.  No one would meet me half way.  Help me be a better mother. It still hurts.

Now here I am, ready to have a baby with a man who allows no harm to come to me.  He has taken the time to come to class with me every week to get education on what's going to happen.  To learn how to support me so I can give our child the best start in life.  So I can bond and not feel helpless. Not feel like its a better choice to make everyone else happy above my own needs.

Skip has told me countless times that everything that has happened was never my fault.  That I did the best I could with what I had at the time.  Most the time I believe that, but parts of me still doubt that I did do my best.  I still wonder if I could have done better for myself and for Aiden. I know that things are amazingly different now and that I really have no need to worry about anything.  I am fully protected and fully in control of my parenting.

But looking back makes me feel like I am giving birth for the first time. I really don't know what to expect of myself.  What I am going to feel and how much different this process is going to be as compared to what I dealt with last time.  It scares me to a point.  All I want is peace from this birth.  I want to know I am capable, I am not broken, and that I can be a parent to a helpless infant without people judging and telling me I am doing it all wrong.  I want to be respected as a full grown woman and mother this time around.

Most of all, I want to know that I am strong enough to tell people NO without fearing their hurt feelings and retaliation for not putting them above myself and my family.