Birthrites: Healing After Caesarean.

A Picture of Faith, Love, Trust, Blood, and VICTORY

-by Katie Scribner

(*Picture not available... But it was truly an inspiring image!!!)

When I look at this picture, I see faith, love, trust, my blood, my husband's fingers, and VICTORY. This is the picture of the moment that I met my precious Chaya Namaste Blue, my protection and my healer.

Up until that moment my body was responsible for so many statistics: failure to progress, CPD [cephalopelvic disproportion], narrow symphysis, post dates. Everything that made me who I had become banked on that very moment that my girl would leave my body through my vagina, not the hole that they carved into my body to remove my boy.

My little girl was swept into my arms, as blue as Krishna and gasping for her life airs. All I heard was the sound of my best friend sobbing by the bathroom door and my husband sobbing behind me. I only had a moment with her, and in that slip of time, I scrubbed her chest, minding not to bang the scissors that severed her from her placenta, before she was taken from my arms. She had meconium and they did not want her to aspirate, so she was suctioned. I was then raised from my squatting position and encouraged over to the bed to deliver her placenta. "Don't worry, Katie, there are no bones". It slipped out with a plop! I looked over at the Paediatrician and remember thinking, "They're smiling. Look at them smiling, everything is o.k."

When I look at this picture, I see the birth I COULD have had with my boy. My boy's birth left a scar on my body and a scar in my heart.

When I look at this picture, I see the necessity of healing and I see the love that went into bringing her here. As is taught in my faith, I chanted for HOURS the day that I conceived. We believe; so is the consciousness of the parents, so attracts the like spirited soul. I knew that we were making my little girl, who was to be a great devotee of God.

When I look at this picture, I see the love and the support that brought me to that point. Oh, the support that I had! During her pregnancy, my friends rallied around me with love, food, herbs, time, humour and encouragement. Especially when I lost the care of my midwife and when I would succumb to the doubt that had been planted, which was often. The bigger my belly got, the bigger my doubt, and paradoxically, the bigger my resolve and faith in God and my body.

When I look at this picture, I see the primitive bonding of a she-being meeting her heartlove for the first time. No fear, no anger, no doubt and no memory of my c-section. This was Chaya's birth and it was MY birth. The birth of a woman that can do ANYTHING! This was my moment to heal 3 years of pain and self-doubt; but it was not there. This picture is NOT the picture of a VBAC, of anger or resentment. It is simply the picture of a woman being held by her Love, and cradling her Love in her arms for the very first time. This was not the mending of Sterling's birth, this was the sweet, blissful birth of Chaya. I thought that I had so much to prove, but all that existed in that moment were the people encircling me and my girl. My precious Chaya Namaste Sarasvati Devi, my protection and healer.

When I look at this picture, I see faith, love, trust, my blood, my husband's fingers and VICTORY!