I’m in a bit of hot water for a comment I made on a NCC blog where the blogger has announced her intentions to never have another baby. Part of the reasoning given was the difficult C-section birth.
The number of relevant factors contributed to making this decision relatively easy. I think the decision would have been harder if we were only faced with one or two of the factors. But the combination of our ages (44 and 41), the gestational diabetes, the inability to deliver, the c-section complications, the toll the pregnancy took (and is still taking) on my body, etc. all made the decision easier to make. If I were 25 or even 30 I think this would have been much harder to accept.
My comments were made to encourage her. After all, I did have my latest baby at 46 and I have also had 3 cesareans and 3 normal deliveries. If I have learned anything it is that not every pregnancy and birth is the same. Just because something happens in one pregnancy or delivery, does not mean that it will happen again. Part of my comment was:
” Based upon everything I read and learned about Cesarean sections over the past 18 years, and from following your pregnancy from the beginning, I do not think it is 100% certain that your cesarean was medically necessary and I still don’t. Anyone who wants to know why can e-mail me. ”
Oh, just for the fun of it, let’s look at the comment in depth.
1. First I qualify it as being based on my own personal experience and education for about the past 18 years (which places the start of education at the time of my own first C-section).
2. I also point out that I had not just jumped into this blogger’s site just to do a drive by, but that I had been following her blog during her pregnancy. In fact as I went through past posts I found some of my original comments including congratulations, bits of pregnancy info, stuff like that.
So I established what I knew and how I knew it.
3. The phrase “I don’t think” signifies that this is my own personal opinion. I’m not stating it as gospel, I’m not admonishing everyone else to think as I think, I am not stating opinion as fact. I am pretty clear that this is simply my opinion.
4. I don’t belabor the point.
5. I said I wasn’t certain it was %100 medically necessary. There are other reasons C-sections are performed other than medical reasons. Having a solid medical reason, like an abrupted placenta or a cord prolapse, is just one of them.
Now, what does that statement NOT say.
1. It doesn’t make any statement about the surgeon involved in any way shape or form. Over 25% of the babies in this country are delivered by Cesarean section. Many are not delivered for medical reasons . Britney Spears had two Cesareans because she feared the pain of labor. My own last birth was a C-section because I simply did not want to go to fight the system while dealing with a birth and my prior stillbirth experience. Had my pregnancy been two years later, with studies showing that women with multiple C-sections are safe to labor, the birthing atmosphere might have been entirely different.
2. I was not making any statement about the delivering mother either. Women in childbirth are vulnerable in a lot of ways. I’ve been there myself. I know that my first C-section was a result of that vulnerability.
I would like to point out that during this blogger’s pregnancy she also wrote this regarding C-sections:
Just because it is faster, easier, cleaner and more attractive doesn’t necessarily mean it’s worse.
An aesthetic preference for having a C-section does not a medical necessity make.
3. I most certainly was not presenting myself as a medical professional, (although I have trained as a doula and have attended a handfullof births). I have seen moms at ICAN meetings and childbirth seminars who were told that they could never have a vaginal birth, go on to delivery vaginally. I was told that my 9 pound 11 ounce baby was too big to be born vaginally, but six years later his 10 pound 12 ounce brother was born that way. So I develop reasonable doubt when any woman is told that she cannot deliver vaginally, particularly at the beginning of her pregnancy.
The rest of my “attack.”
My Aunt Opal only had two children, interestingly for one of the reasons you cited, that the pregnancy and delivery was difficult and my Uncle Paul did not want to see her go through it ever again.
A few years before she died, I was holding my fourth son at the family reunion, and my 80+ something Aunt Opal came over to hold and admire him. Her only son had been killed in a freak truck accident while repairing his rig on the side of the road. She held my baby boy and with tears down her face told me that her biggest regret in life, was that she did not have more children. She was sorry that she let the pain and difficulty of pregnancy and childbirth hold her back from having a bigger family. In hindsight, that time of childbearing is brief, but the soul of another child is infinite.
I held onto those words, even when I had a stillbirth at 44, and then a new baby at 46.
And on a personal note, my mother is 80, she has cancer. I know that she will probably be gone in the next five to ten years. I am so grateful that I will have my only sister to be with me during that time, to laugh at the memories and to cry in grief. She has been my companion since I was a toddler, the only one who truly understands my entire life experience. She is also the reason I wanted siblings for my children.
OK once again, I totally misread this whole Titus 2 thing.
You can read my struggles with that here among other places. So my thought was to share a moment when a Godly woman, my Aunt Opal shared with me. I can truly tell you that as I was sharing that story I remembered the warmth and the love between my aunt and me. I know that the words could not possibly do justice to the bond between us at that moment, but I was trying to convey her love and wisdom in my comment. I was in effect trying to pay it forward.
That was met with:
The stories you shared were not helpful, but are in my opinion some of the most appalling examples of fear mongering I can imagine. Telling women that they should have more babies because their child might die someday is sick.
Apparently my attempt to lovingly pass on the wisdom of my Titus 2 woman, God loving, generous, warm, wise and loving great-aunt turned her into a fear mongering old bitch!
I clearly need to work on my technique.
This blogger also said:
Elena and I have had previous interactions, including during the Blogs of Beauty Awards when she was critical of me on her blog about choices I made regarding who qualified for the awards and who did not. My comments to her today might have seemed harsh, but I (and others) have been subject to her strong and sometime hurtful opinions in the past. Because of these past experiences, I was not willing to let her make those comments here without responding to them. I hope that clarifies why I responded so strongly to what she said here.
This is stretching back about two years or so, but my biggest problems with the BOB Awards were with Marla Swoffer. Since then I have made several supportive comments that apparently were not as memorable because – well this blogger certainly didn’t remember them!
If any more NCCers want to announce their decision not to have any more babies – have at it. I simply don’t care. Cut, snip, sew, ingest, maim, mutilate, do whatever it takes. Yea God can override any decision. He can override your decision to step face first into a busy highway too. But usually God lets us live with the consequences of our decisions. Don’t assume that the efficacy of your contraceptive measures implies a big thumbs up from God.
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