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Encouraged by the recent all-natural delivery my friend withstood, I was determined to produce my baby in a similar drug-free fashion.
No epidural. No induction. No IVs. No episiotomy, no forceps, no suction. I would go to the hospital, rosy and resplendent with the effort of strong, productive contractions in my belly, and within hours, I’d push out a squalling and alert small person.
None of this happened.
Ultrasound revealed a Bunyan-esque child, even weeks before the due date. When I watched the due date arrive and then leave with no signs that the baby had any intentions whatsoever of relinquishing her watery home, I began to despair.
An appointment with my doctor three days after the due date confirmed that my body was shut tight and the child floated high under my ribs. He moved to schedule another appointment in a week’s time; I began to cry with frustration and discomfort.
I didn’t need to tell him of my fantasy of a do-it-yourself at-home c-section; he scheduled me for an induction in two days time. Thus began a last-ditch effort to Get-The-Child-Out. I ate spicy food. I walked and walked and walked. I cleaned everything, and then I cleaned more.
None of these things worked, of course, and I ended up in an interminable induction. With my enormous belly cantilevered over the edge of the hospital bed, I gradually lost hope that the child would ever be delivered from me.
Finally even my doctor gave up. Nothing had budged my recalcitrant cervix, not drugs, not membrane stripping, not the rush of my breaking water, not even several hour’s worth of regular, strong contractions. My cervix of steel held fast.
This is not the story of my daughter’s birth or my subsequent reactions. That will wait for another time. It is instead the story of what was left on my body after her birth.
A scar. A beautiful, thin, fiery red line bordered on both sides by small punctures from staples. As c-section scars go, mine is a work of art. Down low, low enough that a full thatch of pubic hair would cover it completely, mine has faded after all these years to a mere thread of pale skin. The pierce marks have vanished.
I adore my scar beyond reason, beyond measure; in the months following the child’s birth, I’d flatten out the remnants of my deflated belly and look at it, amazed that my huge child had fit through that small opening, amazed that in the not-so-distant past, the impossible vaginal delivery of such a large, ill-positioned child would have lasted horrific long days and would have left the child and probably me dead in a sweaty, blood-soaked bed.
I adore my scar because it reminds me that I was blessed enough to carry one child–I grew another human being. The reminder fills me with awe and wonder at what my body did just once.
If I touch the scar now, it responds with a strange mixture of numbness and hypersensitivity, which I hear is not uncommon for surgical scars. I wish it wouldn’t have faded so much. I wish I’d been left with an even more vivid physical reminder of that time and of the pain and joy that have been constant since she arrived.
I consider it one of the most beautiful and sexy places on my body, and when I see a similar scar on someone else, changing in a locker room or caught by a photographer, my heart contracts with sympathy and appreciation. C-section scars are reminders of great blessings; to me they are nothing but gorgeous and sexy.
