27/03/2022
https://www.facebook.com/167486533292365/posts/7555127301194881/?d=n
Dear C-Section Scar,
I didn’t want you. I didn’t plan for you. In fact, I did everything I could to avoid you. But today I touch you with compassion. I smile at you. I send love, grace, and tenderness to you.
You are not weakness. You are not failure. You are not a mistake. You are part of me.
You are not a dead end, the place where my birth journey halted and could travel no further. You are a passage I am still discovering. You are the door that opened to my baby. You are the door that opened into who I am as a mother and as a woman.
Riding over bumps in the car. Laughing and coughing. Bending at my waist. The day I stopped taking narcotics to soften your pain was a milestone. The day I could get out of bed without holding my husband’s arms and without searing pain was a milestone. The day I could stand up from the rocking chair while holding my baby was a milestone. The day I could sit on the floor to play with my son and make my own way back up to my feet was a milestone. The day I could bend over to pull my underwear up by myself was a milestone. These were milestones I resented. I didn’t want to have to be passing through these milestones.
I wasn’t prepared for the numbness. I couldn’t feel anything when my fingertips touched my own skin in the inches between my belly button and p***c bone. My fingers felt like they were touching someone else’s body; there was no feedback from my nerves that had been cut. It felt like I was touching something in me that had died.
The doctor cut through six layers of muscle, tissue, and organ to get to my baby. She separated my abs in the middle and pulled my baby through. I have met at least seven new layers within myself because of you.
You are not my whole story of becoming a mother. But I will never know how my birth as a mother would have been different had I pushed my baby out of my va**na.
C-section scar, You are the dark place cut into me that opened into light. You will never be one simple story, but you will always be mine.
Posted in dedication to all the C-section mamas✨
By: Catherine Gray - https://www.instagram.com/unsilencedwoman
Incredible Image - https://www.instagram.com/melissajeanbabies
Gem
The Motherhood Project
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