Baby's Birth and Why I Chose Cesarean

This may be my last pregnancy photo. I'm due by cesarean this Friday- an elective procedure I've wanted since I found out I was pregnant over nine months ago.

I've been reluctant to share my decision to have my baby this way because the opinions of those opposed to this type of delivery range from shock to outrage. In fact, I've never been subject to the unfiltered judgement of others more than upon joining this club we call motherhood. From breastfeeding to sleep training to birth methods it seems like everyone from the UPS guy to my closest friends have an opinion on the right way to do things. I guess I do too. I just try to respectfully wait to be asked what my take is rather than accosting strangers in elevators. But I digress.

So now that we are about forty eight hours away from delivery day I am ready to share why I'm opting to have my baby surgically removed.

Family folk lore becomes fact the more the story is told. In our house, the story of my own birth has become something of a legend. It includes a labor that spans at least twenty four hours, a broken contraction monitoring device, and my mom's regular OB away on a ski trip. It all culminates in a cesarean that she never wanted by a man who was a stranger and treated her lady bits like a rough-handed mechanic digging around under a hood of a car. To say that she was traumatized would be putting it mildly. She swears they whisked the baby from her body and into another room where she waited a day to finally meet me. It sounds like the stuff of horror films if you ask me, so it's ironic that I would so enthusiastically follow in her footsteps.

There's not just one reason that I wanted a cesarean birth. I think I was certainly influenced by my mom's nightmare version of my entry into the world. I have long thought if there were a way to avoid a lengthy labor, full of misery and just jump straight to the surgery I would go for that. I think working in the medical field also de-stigmatizes surgery. I see people safely have surgery nearly every day at my office so the fears many  have about cesarean seem unfounded in my eyes. Probably highest on my list of reasons is that I am a Type A, control freak. It makes me good at my career but also means I'm not one to leave things up to chance much.

You may know that I became pregnant through fertility treatments that I wrote about here. My fertility doctor monitored my entire first trimester so I didn't see my regular OB until about week 12. On our very first visit I asked him what his opinion was on elective cesarean. He told me that it was completely up to me, he'd support my decision, that in Los Angeles it wasn't that uncommon and that I had a looong time to decide. I was satisfied with his response.

I made learning everything that I could about this method of birth my part time job. Nights and weekends I spent scouring the web for articles, stories, blogs, comments and books about what it's really like to have your baby surgically removed from you body. There was actually a surprising amount of information available. One of the most informative books I read was called Choosing Cesarean: A Natural Birth Plan. It laid out the risks, benefits and alternatives to mom and baby of having an elective cesarean. It had an agenda, but the agenda was in favor of cesarean birth instead of trying to convince me that going that route made me 'too posh to push'.

The other thing that kind of sealed the deal for me was talking to friends who had cesarean electively because of previous c-section births. One of my closest friends has had a vaginal birth, an emergency c-section and an elective one. She felt the elective was by far the least stressful, most peaceful, predictable and manageable recovery of all three methods. For someone who likes to know what to expect, predictable and peaceful speak to my very core.

I didn't make this decision lightly. I weighed all the ways my baby could exit my body. I watched The Business of Being Born and was really open-minded to the idea of squatting my child out on my bathroom floor. I watched countless vaginal births online and cried every... single... time. Not because I was scared, but because it was beautiful to see a mother's capacity for pain in the name of bringing life into this world.

I was acutely aware there is a subculture of women who believe that their ability to forgo medication during the birth process elevates them to superhuman status. But you know what? Birth isn't a pissing contest of pain and if you want to trade war stories about a mother's ability to deal with pain let me tell you about spending the better part of 14 weeks crouched over a toilet with crippling nausea. I suffered for my child, and if that is the measure of a good mom I feel like I competed with the best of them.

Even after considering all the methods of birth, I still came back to cesarean. I know I am trading one pain for another. And I recognize that the experience of giving birth will be different than my vaginal birthing friends. But I don't think it will be lesser. It will different and that is okay.

One incredible, unexpected side effect of becoming pregnant and joining the mom squad is a sense of confidence I have about deciding what is best for me. As a first born, I've long been a people pleaser. Pregnancy and all that goes with it has made me realize that I have to do me and it's okay if people disagree or don't like it. That's on them.

The moments tick down towards my baby's birthday and I feel more excited than ever to meet her. And more at peace with how she will enter the world. See you in a few days baby!