Lucy and I spent the month of November in Texas with my parents to make the final days of Liam’s military deployment go by faster. Family and friends from across Texas traveled to see us and meet Lucy. We were spoiled 100% of the days.
One of those days, my mom asked me, “Where are your bracelets?” I’ve been wearing three gold and silver bracelets since 2009. My mom has matching versions of two of the bracelets. I’d only ever taken them off when absolutely required, and I’d promptly put them back on. I responded to Mom’s question with a quick lie about “taking them off to clean them and forgetting to put them back on before Lucy and I flew to Texas.” Then about an hour later, after processing my lie, I confessed that I hadn’t worn them since June 29th, the day I arrived at the hospital in labor with Lucy.
The truth was, the bracelets were still in the bag I’d taken to the hospital, in the pocket Liam had put them in when the labor and delivery nurse requested I remove them. I’d left the bracelets in that pocket for nearly five months. I knew they were there. Every time my wrist felt naked, I’d think, “I need to get my bracelets and put them back on.” Then I’d think about Lucy’s birth and quickly distract myself with something else. I never made it to the bag to get the bracelets.
What I felt, but hadn’t really processed until my mom asked about the bracelets, was that those three small, precious metal chains reminded me of 42 hours of labor followed by a long, traumatic C section. I didn’t blame the bracelets, I blamed the lack of bracelets. The one time I took the bracelets off for more than a couple of hours led to the two hardest days of my life thus far. It was easier to be mad at a silly hospital “no jewelry” policy than to be mad about all the other parts of Lucy’s birth I didn’t understand.
If you’re giving birth soon, or if you’ve recently given birth, I’m writing to tell you something that took me about five months to figure out. Labor and delivery is NOT motherhood. It’s a stage of motherhood, and you get to decide if it’s a defining one.
You mamas who gave birth at home squatting in an inflatable pool like the absolute Amazons that you are, may consider labor and delivery the most important stage of your motherhood experience. You probably have a very vivid memory of your body’s strength and miraculous endurance. You should be so proud of that and you should write 100 blog posts about it because goddamn. You’re incredible. But those of us who had an experience we’d rather forget, need to know that we’re incredible, too. The end result was the same. We created life.
The best part about women who have had a traumatic birth experience is that they won’t tell you about it because they don’t want to relive it and they don’t want to scare any future parents. EVERY birth story is different. Even parents with multiple kids have wildly different birth experiences per kid. So just because one birth experience is terrible, doesn’t mean yours will be. But the worst part about women who have had traumatic birth experiences is that they won’t tell you about it, so when you go through it yourself, it can feel really really lonely.
But like Brene Brown has told us over and over again, connection starts with vulnerability and as soon as I was brave enough to say, “Lucy’s birth sucked. She came out fine and incredibly healthy, and I’m beyond grateful for that, but I had an awful experience that I’m still working through mentally,” other women started sharing their stories with me. All of a sudden I felt less weak, less angry, and less alone. Most importantly though, I realized that labor and delivery was just one stage of my motherhood experience. It didn’t set the stage. I was still the strong, powerful female figure I wanted to be for Lucy, even if her birth made me feel the opposite.
I’m not going to detail out Lucy’s birth for you here. Partly because I don’t want to scare anyone and partly because I really hate conjuring up the memory. I’m choosing to remember the part where I held her for the first time, and I’m choosing to forget that it was hours after she was born and my arms were numb. I will, however, commiserate with anyone who wants to swap stories one-on-one and I will remind them (because it helps me remind myself) that a birth story is just that — a story. And a story only has the power that the storyteller grants it.
When Liam returned home from his deployment in mid-December, I told him about the bracelet conversation with Mom. The next day while I was feeding Lucy he quietly fetched the bracelets out of the hospital bag and put them on my nightstand. That night I slowly put them back on and noted that they looked the exact same on my wrist as they looked before June 29th.