Close to the stroke of midnight, on April 6, I delivered my second baby, an angelic little girl named Stella. After 40 hours of contractions, a wild car ride over to the hospital with my husband, and an amazing labor, I ended up needing a C-section—my second, and a true heartbreak.
One week after the delivery, I wound up with an acute case of contact dermatitis, in other words, a severe rash, from an allergy to the adhesive tape over the incision, which ended up spreading to other parts of my body and requiring oral steroids for 10 days to get it under control.
To put it mildly, things did not go according to plan.
During my pregnancy, I had become incredibly attached to not having another C-section. I was so fixated on the outcome being different from what I had gone through during the birth of our son Gavin five years ago, that I mistakenly didn’t make room for the possibility of another labor ending in surgery, nor could I come remotely close to accepting the likelihood of this less favorable turn of events. And never in my most well wrought visions of disaster would I have forecasted the allergy to tape that I had developed since my first C-section.
Hence, along with my hormones dropping vociferously, the physical healing from the surgery, the family adjustment, the crazy nursing schedule and lack of sleep, and the unfortunate but necessary treatment of my rash, I have had to face the overwhelming emotional swell that all of these events have created. Suffice it to say, I have not felt so raw in an exceedingly long time.
Because of all of this, for this month’s post, I am simply sharing with you a list of a few very palpable lessons, however familiar, that I have been reminded of through this very intense and personal time:
- Attaching to our expectations and to our glorious scripts of the future is a dangerous proposition, sure to disappoint, and furthermore, a fantasy.
- Thinking we are in control, is just that, thinking.
- When in doubt, be grateful; when all else fails, breathe.
- There is nothing like the physical body, under the most painful and surprising of circumstances, to draw us directly into the present moment and force us to face ourselves.
- There is nothing like getting stripped down and laid bare (and I literally couldn’t wear clothes with my rash) to be reminded of what really matters in this world. Namely, love; the people closest to you; the sweet simple stretch of a day that is made only of quiet company, a big cry, a hot shower, a solid meal, a necessary nap, a little laugh, a sense of awe at this being it, and in the end, a sense of giving it all up.
According to the book The Secret Language of Birthdays, Stella arrived on the Day of the Experimenter, and one on which visionaries are born. Given her head position when she came out, with her face pointing upwards, as if she was already looking expectantly up into her future, I will probably also have to remind her to stay in the moment, to not get too far ahead of herself or too strongly attached to a desired outcome, to be OK with whatever does present, and to find peace even in the middle of major difficulty.
Or maybe, when I really think about it, she is in all her lovely blessedness and calm the one who already lives this stuff. She was probably quite sagely just transmitting it all back to me.
