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Back In Time
He wished I could have seen how quickly the uterus shrinks down to its normal size, “It really is amazing” he said.
Date: 9/3/2005 2:27:30 PM ( 19 y ) ... viewed 1637 times September 3, 2005 @ 11:46 AM
As I sat facing the doctor who had “delivered” my baby, I felt small, lifeless, altered. He stood across from me with his student to his left, telling me how he wished I could have seen how quickly the uterus shrinks down to its normal size, “It really is amazing” he said. I managed a smile. The student MD was a woman she met my gaze as he talked of shrinking uterus’s, I hope she understood how horrific the conversation was.
This doctor had sliced me open. Through skin, through fat, through muscle, through womb. He had reached into my body and pulled my uterus out and onto my belly, then sliced it open and pulled my offspring out into the bright lights--but when I came back for my second check up I heard the muffled sound of voices in the hallway, “Do you want to take this one?,” he said to his student.
“Sure.” she replied.
“Great.”
She walked in with a little book. She was actually asking me questions from her little book of what to say. I had dressed my baby in her, “I was delivered by... T-shirt” that he had given me the week before. I had brought my camera to take a picture of the two of them for her memory book. To me he was not just a doctor, he had been in my body in a way no one was ever supposed to, in a way I had never imagined, he had theoretically saved my child's life and mine--but to him I was just a nameless woman that he had the pleasure of doing surgery on. Still when the student saw that I had brought the camera, she went and got him. He came in and smiled for the picture.
So at the end of my 51 hour labor. At the end of my 45 hour non-medicated labor. At the end of my 29 hour attempt at home birth--what I have is a picture of this doctor and a scar that makes my skin fold over and pooch out in a very unattractive way.
It has been traumatic--and I am using that word purposely, for me to see my body this way. To know that it has been opened. That the muscles that were my strength, my center, my core, have been severed--never to be as strong again. To know that the next time I labor there is a 1 in 4 chance that my uterus will tear and if I am not in a hospital (which I will be) I would bleed to death in under two minutes. During my last pregnancy I was unafraid. I was peaceful, calm, filled with only faith and love. Next time will not be the same.
For a long time I did not recognize this body as my own. When I looked in the mirror I would actually say out loud, “This is not my body. It isn’t whole anymore. It isn’t sacred.” Then I would cry and sob and cry. Perhaps this is one reason I didn’t mind destroying it with food.
Am I grateful that this didn’t happen prior to the 1700’s? Am I happy that my daughter was born healthy and safe? Of course I am. I am just so sorry that my nurse-midwife had been on vacation, that I didn’t trust my instincts on a few key decisions, that I probably didn’t need a c-section and that I will never actually know for sure. But considering that my sister-in-law, stepsister, and I all had major abdominal surgery to deliver our babies...somehow I don’t think nature intended all three of us and our babies to die.
So now as I see my body getting smaller, when I look in the mirror I feel excited at first and then apprehensive...will this pooch flap remain no matter how in shape I become?
Yuck. I hope not.
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