I hate C-sections

Thank you, Doctor Morgan for cutting me open two weeks ago after telling me my labor wasn't progressing on schedule.  I suppose some C-sections are actually necessary and life-saving but many of them aren't.  I'm not sure, Dr. Morgan, which category I fall into but I hate walking around feeling like my guts are about to spill out.

Thank you for making me thoroughly afraid of my wonderful but scarily energetic three-year-old.  Whenever she runs towards me I suck in my breath in terror.  She understands that Mama has a big boo boo where they had to cut into her tummy to take out baby sister.  Often she asks me if she's going to put me back in the hospital.  This morning when I was throwing a bit of a tantrum because I was experiencing new abdominal pain, Eliza curled up on the floor crying "Mama's never going to get better."

Thank you Drs, for encouraging C-sections so you can adhere to some kind of schedule.  I feel like less of a mother because I can't have my Eliza sit on my lap or help her get into the bathtub.  I am in a bit of an extreme situation here, having just left C and being holed up with a mother who is also recovering from surgery.  But with this new pain, I'm so terrified I will be unable to take care of my girls.  It's been less than two weeks and I know it takes time but the pain and my fear of becoming more incapacitated are starting to take over.  With every new ache, I wonder "Am I going to heal?"

My friend had a home birth for her second child.  I'm just too afraid of medical problems to go that route but she had the vaginal birth that she wanted.  The pain during labor was horrific she said, but her recovery was over within 24 hours.  As I toiled in labor that night alone in the hospital while C slept on the fold-out beside me, I was screaming for a C-section so in the end I suppose I got what I asked for.  But if my water hadn't broken, settling me into the hospital before the contractions started, maybe my labor would have progressed normally.  Once you go to the hospital, you're in a bed hooked up to monitors and IVs.  When the back labor really hit, I know I would have been able to endure the pain better if I could have gotten down on all fours but I was strapped to machinery, lying on my side, feeling Elena's head pound against my tailbone.

So thanks those of you in the medical community who've turned child birth into something that must be monitored, carried through in a scheduled fashion (you must dilate one centimeter per hour, at least), and controlled by the evil that is pitocin.  Thank you for scaring me to death as I wait for my body to heal and the day when I can allow my lovely little Eliza to jump into my arms.

I only hope she hasn't outgrown me by then.