The birth of my daughter
My daughter is 18 years old now. This is a picture of her and me taken about five minutes after she was born.
Finding out I was pregnant was a shock to me. Remember, I had been told for years that I shouldn’t have kids, because it would “ruin my life.” I was in church for a long time, and this church was extremely heavy on the will of God *not* being “your will”. So anything that you wanted was basically not God’s will. In the early phases of my pregnancy, I assumed I would miscarry. Every time I went to the bathroom, I was expecting it to happen. Nonetheless, my doctor would tell me everything looked great whenever I went for a check up. I believed her when she told me that, but I expected it to change at any moment. If it wasn’t the will of God to be a mom, then there was no way I was having a baby.
When I got to the phase where she would have been considered a “micro-preemie”, I was scared to death and had panic attacks often. My ex husband didn’t understand. He often lectured me that my anxiety “wasn’t good for the baby.” I was so detached from the baby, though.
Then I got to 32 weeks, which would have been premature still, but no longer a micro preemie. At this point, I believed I was going to have a stillborn. Even though the doctor played the heartbeat for me at every visit, all the warnings from other people constantly played in my mind. Things can happen at any moment. I expected at “any moment” for her to stop moving.
There was one point in my pregnancy that I was having very mild cramps. I got in the car and drove to the beach. I worked at the children’s museum at the time, and was still in my work uniform. I walked up and down the beach expecting to have a premature baby in the ocean. If that happened, I thought, I would put a scarf over my face and take advantage of the baby Moses laws and drop her off at a University hospital nearby that was known to have the best NICU in the state. Then I would just disappear. No one would see me again. Finally, I came to my senses. I got back in the car, went home, and called my doctor to tell her I was having cramps. She returned my call and told me to drink a lot of water. So I did, and the cramps stopped. A couple weeks later, I was in the exam room waiting for her, and I could hear her on the phone with another pregnant woman telling her the same exact lines- to drink a lot of water. It must have been common.
My due date of June 10, 2007 finally arrived, and I went to the hospital at 8pm to be induced. I was still in complete denial about the fact that I was having a baby. Now that I know more about psychology, I look back on that day and I now realize that what I was experiencing was complete dissociation. I had completely removed myself from the situation because I was expecting so much to go wrong. When I had contractions, I didn’t feel them. That was one positive about being dissociated during labor- there is no pain. Some nurses told me my contractions were very strong and they couldn’t believe I didn’t feel them. I thought the nurses were nuts. What contractions? Then my doctor arrived and they put my legs in stirrups and told me to push. I actually argued. I said there’s no reason for that, why are you having me do that? They all told me the baby was coming now, and I needed to bear down and push. I remember feeling like they were absolutely insane. That wasn’t happening. I do remember screaming as I pushed her out, but in my mind, it was screaming out of frustration, not pushing out a baby.
Then all of a sudden, there she was. They put her on my chest and she cried immediately. She just had this look on her face like “Hi I finally made it! I’m here!”
I was in shock again, but this time it was a good shock. The next day I held her as I looked out the window of my hospital window at cars going by on the freeway. That was the day that I lost my faith. When people say they “lost their faith”, it has a negative connotation. But I saw it as gaining a higher perspective. The church I went to was absolutely wrong about the will of God. I realized that they were saying it to control people. Ever since then, when I hear a pastor or any other Christian talking about the will of God as if it’s not “your will”, I know that they have a dark agenda of manipulation and control, possibly even corruption.
As I continued to raise my daughter over the years, I started realizing that the feminists and the moms in my family who were bitter about it were also wrong about my life. They said having a child would ruin my life and I would regret it. In fact the opposite was true. She made my life better. She’s an amazing person. She’s empathetic, loves animals, caring, friendly, loving, and has always defended other kids if they were bullied.
Disclaimer: I’m aware that some people’s experiences in the church were different than mine. I realize that some people grew up in churches that forced unwanted marriages and unwanted motherhood. This was not the experience of me in my church. The Bible talks about singleness as a gift, and most churches believe that to an extent. Also, when the will of God is presented as “not your will”, then it can mean literally anything.
Another disclaimer: I also realize that liberal feminism or choice feminism exists. The people in my family that I’m referencing here were actually radical feminists that strongly dislike choice feminism. And these women obviously didn’t attend my church. The pressure to not have a family came from, like I said, two wings of the same bird.
#traumaticbirth #birth #childbirth #godswill #losingfaith #laboranddelivery
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