Inside the OR: The Other Side to Cesareans.. part 1 of 2

You all know how hard I fought with Asya for a VBAC. How devastated I was to have a c section for Aleks. How I just accepted the inevitable with River. You all know how many articles I have posted coming out against the practice of Routine C Sections. How many life long complications arose from my having multiple c sections. So this article may surprise some of you. I am here to celebrate Cesarean Births.
Both of my children who walk this earth were born via cesarean section. That is a fact. Many if not pretty much all my friends' children were also born this way. All my sisters' children were, as were my first cousin's children. So why is it that we hang our heads in shame? Feeling as though we failed our children, that our bodies failed us.
I spent about an hour searching online for something that would celebrate cesarean births. A doll, a card, a necklace, even an article... and found nothing. I only found article after article about terrifying hospital statistics, court cases fighting for the right to VBAC and instructions on how to recover if you are subjected to one of these "horrible soul crushing" procedures.
Ok here is the thing. Is a c section ideal? No! You are in the OR, you may or may not be allowed to take pictures. You usually may not hold your newborn until you are back in your room. You can not nurse during the procedure. It's cold, you are numb, you are in so much pain afterwards. It is far from ideal. But it is still a birth. This tiny person (or not so tiny in Bug's case) start their days outside your body beginning this day, in this way. They take their first breath. The parents still wait with bated breath to hear that first cry. Tears still stream down their cheeks.
So why do we have this culture in our country that instead of helping to celebrate these births, we vilify them? If anything having a cesarean takes great courage. The courage to undergo serious surgery, to give up your wants, needs and safety to provide the safest birth (meaning something has gone wrong or in cases of a repeat section to prevent a ruptured uterus, not saying that under normal circumstances a c section would be safer) for your baby. It takes great courage to have your child pulled from you, weep over the perfect tiny face and perfect tiny hands and then watch your husband and a nurse walk the baby away from you and out of the OR, knowing it could be hours before you finally hold her or him. It takes great courage to lay there alone while doctors stitch your abdomen back up, knowing that your baby is far away from you right now.
There are also so many beautiful moments to be shared from the OR. Instead of bemoaning how our children come into the world, we should be celebrating it. We should be snapping pictures as they come out, catching every moment of the beauty that it their birth. Showing our children just how beautiful their births were too. So in honor of that I have asked some of my friends to share their OR pics, showing the beauty of birth even inside an OR. I will be sharing those in part two of this post. I will however leave you with a couple that were taken from inside our OR during Aleks' birth. I sadly don't have any of River, as her birth was a bit more rushed and less personal than his was. I do not have any of Aleks coming out because Hubby was too nervous to look but I do have a few of us as a family in the OR, that I would like to share.