I haven’t written for the Carnival of Natural Parenting (hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama) for some time, but when I saw that this month’s topic was Embracing Your Birth Experience I knew that I had to weigh in. I have two children, and their births were very different. While both were midwife-attended hospital births, and both of my labours were relatively short, that’s pretty much where the similarities end.

My firstborn, Hannah, arrived unexpectedly at 34 weeks. I was thrust into a high risk birth, complete with monitors and obstetricians and pediatricians and a whole team from the NICU. She was whisked away within minutes of her arrival. My placenta didn’t deliver smoothly. I hemorrhaged severely, and even more people showed up in my hospital room. When the bleeding didn’t stop I was sent to the operating room for a D&C and I received a blood transfusion. I spent four days in the hospital recovering, and I had to go home without my baby, who was still in the NICU. We struggled with breastfeeding due to the separation and her small size.

Visiting Hannah in the NICU the day after she was born

My second child, Jacob, arrived a few days before his due date. I spent the morning of his birth making pickles with my friend. By noon I could no longer ignore the signs, so I called my husband. The midwife stopped by to check on me, and told me I should head to the hospital. I endured some uncomfortable contractions during the drive to the hospital, but I made it in one piece, and gradually made my way up to my room. They checked my vitals and ran a bath, and as soon as I got in the water my body started pushing. I got out of the bath, and my son arrived 20 minutes later. He breastfed well right off the bat, and we went home about five hours after his birth, stopping at Burger King for my husband on the way because he’d missed his dinner.

If you were to hazard a guess as to which of my two births was harder to embrace, the most obvious answer would be my first one. It didn’t go to plan at all. Both myself and my daughter required extensive medical care afterward. I sobbed on her first four birthdays, remembering the difficulties surrounding her arrival. It took me years to make my peace. And yet, as I reflect on my births themselves, hers was the one I found easier to accept for what it was.

Resting with Jacob after his birth

What I am about to share next may sound whiny, given that many people would view my son’s birth as ideal. In fact, my birth attendants themselves described it in glowing terms. And yet, I found myself feeling overwhelmed and confused and the opposite of empowered in its aftermath. This, in spite of the fact that I got pretty much everything I asked for. I went into labour after I dropped my daughter off at daycare in the morning, and my son was born while she was still there, which simplified things considerably. I even said that I’d like to have the baby about 45 minutes after I got to the hospital, and I did. But in birth, as in every other aspect of life, sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.

Some mothers describe natural childbirth as a beautiful and empowering experience. It’s meant to make you feel as if you could do anything. I didn’t feel that way. I found it messy and uncomfortable and overwhelming. Yes, it was fast, but it was also a lot to take in a relatively short time. I pushed my son out on my hands a knees, a position I found uncomfortable. At the time, though, I just couldn’t move as my body worked on its own to expel my baby. I spent most of my time pushing saying to my midwife, “I know there’s nothing you can do now, but I don’t want to do this.”

The pickles I made while I was in labour with Jacob

With my daughter, I found myself with a birth I hadn’t bargained for, and I just rolled with it because I had no other choice. I held on to what went well, and shrugged off the parts that I had no control over. It was what it was, and I recognized that I had done the best I could. But with my son’s birth, I felt that I should be feeling like a birth goddess, when I really just felt as if I’d been hit by a truck. A beautiful, perfect, seven-pound-ten-ounce truck, who was everything I wanted. And yet, I felt weak and overwhelmed and confused. I couldn’t wrap my head around the rapid-fire events of his birth.

Some months after Jacob’s arrival I watched The Business of Being Born on DVD. It contained a scene in which a homebirth midwife discussed her own birth. She talked about finding herself between a rock and a hard place, feeling afraid to push but also afraid of the pain she was already experiencing. I could really relate to her words, and I found them liberating. Here was someone who helped other women have natural childbirths, and she herself was describing birth in less-than-glowing terms. She was acknowledging the hard-ness, and the discomfort, and the mess. Because birth is all of those things. Some people may find it transcendent and spiritual, but I did not. And as I watched the DVD, I realized that was okay.

My babies

What I’ve discovered is that birth, in all its forms, challenges us. It challenges our preconceptions, our ideals, and our bodies. It rarely goes to plan – and even when it does go to plan, we may find that our feelings don’t. You know what? That’s probably to be expected, given the extreme nature of the experience. You don’t have to enjoy birth to be glad that you’ve had a baby, and to love that baby. By allowing myself the space to feel confused and overwhelmed, I embraced my birth for what it was, rather than what I thought it should be. In the process, I made my peace with it. Paradoxically, by giving myself permission to not feel empowered, I found empowerment.

For me birth was a brief, intense, hard, transformational experience, which I endured so that I could have these two children I’m head over heels for. The way that they arrived is an important part of their story – but it’s just one part. The events of those days may have changed me, but they don’t have to define me. I’m the one in charge of writing my own story, and I choose what to take with me and what to leave behind. That knowledge, ultimately, is what has helped me to embrace both of my birth experiences, just as they were.

Visit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

• I Had A C-Section. So What! — Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama rewrites her birth story now that she has worked through the feelings of inadequacy and disappointment of not having the “perfect” birth.
• The Perfect Birth — Kellie at Our Mindful Life reflects on how a birth can be far from what we imagined, but still perfect.
• Own Your Birth: My Hope For All Expectant Moms — Andrea at Tales of Goodness shares how she owned her birth spiritually (while navigating it physically) in order to have a joyous experience.
• Carnival of Natural Parenting: My Birth Experience — It wasn’t what Lily at Witch Mom wanted, but it was everything she needed.
• The Painless Natural Homebirth of BabyE — Shannon at GrowingSlower wants women considering natural birth to know painless births are possible.
• Reflections on Jemma’s Birth … 20 Months Later — It took a second pregnancy for That Mama Gretchen to fully embrace her first birth experience.
• Loving My Unnatural Birth Experience — Erika at Cinco de Mommy cherishes her very first birth experience, in all its unnatural glory!
• Be Careful What you Wish for in Birth — Amber at Strocel.com had two births, and it was the one that went to plan that she struggled with embracing.
• Redeeming an unexpected hospital transfer — Lauren at Hobo Mama looks back at her first, interrupted home-turned-hospital birth, and finds the beauty in what happened.
• All of it — Laura from Pug in the Kitchen had to learn to embrace the whole experience of birth even though it meant being naked . . . with an audience.
• Birthing Dreams & Realities — Momma Jorje never had a “dream birth,” but she wouldn’t change a thing about her births.
• Memories of Birth: Calm Amidst the Storm — While neither of her children’s births had been quite what she expected, Cynthia at The Hippie Housewife cherishes one moment in particular from each of her birth experiences.
• Embracing Our Birth Stories — Luschka from Diary of a First Child shares a sensitive post on her recent birth which both did and didn’t go ‘to plan’, and writes about the journey of coming to terms with the good and the bad.
• Two Beautiful Births — Sheila at A Gift Universe remembers how her mother brought out the beauty in each of her children’s births, and tries to do the same with her sons’ birth stories.
• Embracing My Supernatural ChildBirth Experiences… — Jenny at I’m a full-time mummy shares her fond memories on both her supernatural childbirth experiences
• Embracing the Hospital Birth Experience — Jenn at Monkey Butt Junction believes that sometimes a medicated, induced hospital birth is the right choice for a natural parent.
• Carnival: Embracing Your Birth Experience — Stephanie at The Other Baby Blog embraces the birth experience from a paleobiologist’s point of view and takes a look at how humans defy their anatomy.
• Reflections on My First Birth and Preparing for a Second — Abbie at Farmer’s Daughter shares the strength she didn’t realize she had until she gave birth to her son.
• becoming a mama – embracing my birth experience — Meegs at A New Day remembers the birth of her daughter Gwenivere, and the empowered feeling it left her with.
• What About Us? A Poem About Birth — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment shares a poem she wrote about healing from an unexpected and emotionally painful birth experience.
• Be a Man: One Father’s View of Birth — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children shares her husband’s advice to other fathers and partners.
• A Birth Monologue — Kat at MomeeeZen shares a monologue she wrote during the process of healing from her birth experiences.
• Forgiveness: My Birth Journey — Leah at The Crunchy Farm Baby discusses what happens when her planned homebirth doesn’t end up the way she wanted, and explains her journey of forgiving herself for losing that “perfect” birth.
• Patching together a perfect birth — KrissyFair at Think Mama, Think learned that sometimes a perfect birth happens in pieces.
• Celebrating and Sharing the Possibilities of Perfect Birth — Terri from Child of the Nature Isle joyfully shares details of her perfect births and wishes to inspire a more positive cultural expectation about birth.
• Instinct – Embracing Your Birth Experience — Laura at Laura’s Blog reflects on instinctual moments during and after the births of her two daughters.
• I was Foolish Then — ANonyMous at Radical Ramblings describes how foolish lack of preparation for childbirth led to a feeling of powerlessness and fear, but that in the end she had her baby in her arms, and that’s one thing she can celebrate.
• Sometimes no plan is the best plan — Tat at Mum in search contemplates that maybe she doesn’t need a birth plan for her upcoming birth.
• Disturbing the peace — Kenna at Million Tiny Things thought she would be a calm, quiet baby-haver. Ha!
• Accepting the Unexpected During Birth — Emily at S.A.H.M i AM imagined herself laboring on a birthing ball but she never imagined where she’d really be most comfortable when the time came…
• Sacred This Time, Too — Kimber at The Single Crunch learned enough to know that the way she birthed wasn’t they way she wanted to; but she also knew to enjoy it for what it was.
• The Birth Partner: A Great Natural Labor Companion — Justine at The Lone Home Ranger thinks that the secret to her pleasant natural labors was having a great support system.
• the Best Thing About My Labor Experience — Crunchy Con Mommy realizes that amidst all the things that seemed to go wrong with her labor, the love and support of her husband was the one thing she could always count on!
• Your Birth Was My Favorite — Dulce de leche describes some of the highlights from each of her four births and explains why despite the differences, they are all her favorites.
• Birth Story: Part One – Moon on a Stick! — Gentle Mama Moon tells the first part of her birth story to share some of the delight of labouring at home.
• Embracing My Birth Experience by Sharing My Birth Story — Dionna at Code Name: Mama made peace with her first birth by sharing the story with her son.
• Focusing on the Beauty of Birth — Julia at A Little Bit of All of It shares the beautiful aspects of her birth center water birth.
• A Joyful Induced Delivery — Amy Willa: Me, Mothering, and Making it All Work notes the meditations and perspective that helped her achieve an unmedicated birth despite being induced for medical reasons.
• Finding Joy in an Imperfect Childbirth Experience — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now tells what she learned from her two very different childbirth experiences.
• What’s to like about a c-section? — Jessica at Crunchy-Chewy Mama is glad she her second child at home, but she also cherishes much about the c-section she had four years earlier.
• What Story Will I Tell? — Rachael at The Variegated Life realizes that the way she tells the story of her second child’s birth matters — and could be exhilarating.
• I Quietly Put My Hopes to Rest E — Erica at ChildOrganics shares her emotional ups and downs with the highly intervened birth of her special needs daughter, Bella.
• Tale of Six Births — Jessica at Instead of Institutions appreciates that unique challenges and joys of each of her births.
• Labouring naturally: nature’s gift — Caroline at stoneageparent describes the most beautiful, spiritual aspect of the labour of her son, the first stages along a bumpy road to giving birth.
• All The Woman I Am. — Lindsay at This Woman’s Work shares a poem about letting go and surrendering during the thralls of labor.
• A twin birth story: embracing the unexpected — Megan at The Boho Mama shares her twin birth experience and how she found the silver lining when faced with preterm labor, premature birth, and a two-week NICU stay.
• Giving Birth With Eminem — Kerry at City Kids Homeschooling shares how fiery rap music contributed to an empowered homebirth with her third baby.
• Two Different Births — Cassie at There’s a Pickle in My Life shares how she learned from her first birth experience and how to trust yourself and your body.
• Embracing Our Potential: Birth as a Metaphor — Sheila from A Living Family guest posts at Natural Parents Network and expresses how birth has served as a metaphor to help her through other experiences in life.
• Little Sister’s Birth Story: Our VBAC Adventure — Charise at I Thought I Knew Mama describes the recent birth story of her baby girl, her pride in an epidural-free VBAC, and how her story isn’t exactly the birth experience she had planned for.
• A Journey in Birth Confidence — Shannon at The Artful Mama shares her experiences with labor during both of her sons’ births.