I re-read my previous post yesterday, and realized that it doesn't come remotely close to what I was thinking and feeling, so this is my attempt to continue it and explain my thoughts.
First, I'll just say that, yes, I feel empowered from my birth experience with Abigail. It's hard not to when you plan an unmedicated homebirth and get one, while being surrounded by people who know, love and support you. At the same time, I know that I was simply so greatly blessed to have circumstances work in my favour. If things hadn't gone as flawlessly as they had, I know things would have felt much different, and I would not be sitting here feeling empowered. For instance, I shudder to think what would have happened if Abigail's cord was wrapped around her neck. Matt wouldn't have known to not let me push her body out before he could hook the cord over her head, and she was born before Kr could have done anything.
Mostly I try to not think of these things, because in the end, things happened the way they did for a reason. I am so grateful to Heavenly Father for His protection throughout the experience, and I feel humbled to have had that experience at all. When I was talking about feeling empowered, I in no way wanted to sound like it was all because I was so awesome that we had things go as they did. Quite the contrary, actually!
Yes, I had a 'natural' homebirth, but part of me feels like that had nothing to do with me (especially when it'd have been that way, whether I planned it or not!) I feel great that it happened, but I feel humbled because I see Heavenly Father's hand in my planning of it all, and having midwives in the first place. If I hadn't planned to have midwives, I wouldn't have waited around at home. I might have tried driving to the hospital and had Abigail in the car. I definitely would have had 911 involved, and been rushed via ambulance to the hospital. We wouldn't have had the homebirth supplies already gathered, and we wouldn't have known who to call or what to do when things got scary.
Then with nursing, I know things are going well, but I feel like nursing successfully is so much a matter of chance. My body produces breastmilk, and Abigail latches well, but how much of that do I have control over?
I guess when it comes down to it, I look at my experiences and I recognize enormous blessings from Heavenly Father. I need to give credit where credit is due, and not take it all for myself as if I'M the one responsible for it all. That's why I said that I could feel empowered if I really examined my birth with Elijah and look at it from a different perspective. His wasn't a natural homebirth like I'd planned, but I experienced the miracle of adding a child to my family. That is a miracle no matter how it happens, and an enormous blessing. Who am I to dictate the manner in which it happens, as if one way is superior, or as if it's best if things go as I plan them?
So yes, I feel empowered, and it's easy to because things DID go (roughly, minus The 15 Minutes of Chaos) as I planned, but what I realized was that I could feel empowered if I allowed myself to and if I recognized and appreciated the blessings Heavenly Father had given me, instead of focusing on what I didn't have.
And then I started thinking about infertility, because that's just where my mind goes when I think about having children and being blessed by Heavenly Father. I started thinking about the many ways that infertility removes those feelings of empowerment, and makes you feel defected, like there's something "wrong" with you. I mean, is that feeling really any different from my MW making me feel like I was labouring "wrong" with Elijah, and that I would have a better outcome if I could just do things "right?"
While going through fertility testing I would often wonder if there was something we had done or failed to do that made our bodies such that we couldn't conceive on our own. I picked apart my childhood and Matt's, analyzing where we lived, what water we drank, etc. I looked at every little wrong I had done, and tried to figure out if we were being punished by Heavenly Father for some misdeed in the past. I tortured myself with these thoughts, and felt so abandoned and powerless to do anything about our situation.
It took a lot of time for me to come to terms with our trial and to see it as something we had been called upon to experience, and to see that there were things to be learned throughout it, but as I realized this, a feeling of empowerment started to grow within me. I stopped seeing our trial as something wrong, and began seeing it as something right and good in our lives. Of course it was still hard to let go of the idea of conceiving a biological child, but I began looking at adoption as a beautiful method of building our family, of providing one of Heavenly Father's children with a good, loving home with the Gospel and parents who loved each other and honoured the covenants they had made. I was so excited to adopt! I then found out I was pregnant with Elijah, and that became the new normal, the new, so-this-is-what-Heavenly-Father-wants-for-us plan. I feel like I have been blessed with feeling empowered just as I had been blessed with going through the process of adoption, pregnancy, being a mother to Elijah, and now Abigail. Everything I have has been given me by Heavenly Father, and that makes me feel so humbled.
So, going back to my comparison of the two birth experiences. They were SO different, and one left me feeling crummy and dissatisfied while the other left me feeling amazing and good about myself. What I've been realizing lately is that, after having Elijah I was focusing so much on my disappointments and unrealized hopes for the birth of my son, and not enough on the miracle we had been given. It makes me feel a bit like an ingrate to realize that, and brings me back to the early days of infertility when I had a hard time reconciling my hopes, dreams and expectations with reality. This time, I feel like I have been handed this experience, and I feel rather unworthy of it. How have I blessed to have things go so well, when I don't feel too fundamentally different? I wanted the same thing, I even felt like a failure at the end (in transition) when it seemed that I couldn't do it anymore and was going to give in and have an epidural like with Elijah.
I don't understand why Heavenly Father blesses us with the experiences that we have, especially when we are so often unworthy of them, but I can feel that I'm a different person than before Abigail came along. I know that I have learned, that I have grown, and maybe that's the point of it all.
Anyway, I'm starting to get tired again, and I have 2 sleeping babies for the moment, so I'm going to make use of this time and sleep too. I hope this has been coherent enough to convey how I'm really feeling, and that it hasn't come across as bald as I feel it has! It's an improvement, at least, from my previous post, which did so little to express what I was feeling during that contemplative drive home on Sunday.
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