Easy labour

A fellow c section mummy informed me she'd been told that she'd had it easy and not had a real birth because her baby was born by c section. It's played on my mind for some time so I wrote this in response...

Don't tell me I've had it easy. 

You suffered contractions and pain for hours at a time. You pushed a human out of your body, you were tested to your absolute limits I understand.

But don't tell me I had it easy.

After 32 hours of labour, the terrifying 4 and a half hour wait to go down to theatre was not easy. 

Lying flat on a cold operating table surrounded by a masked medical team. Feeling somebody's hands inside you, pushing, pulling and tugging was not easy. 

Hearing a baby cry, from behind a screen was simultaneously the best and worst experience of my life. I wanted to jump off the table and grab him.

Seeing him put into my husbands arms instead of mine was not easy. 

The wait for the surgeon to put my bladder and bowel back in and stitch the seven layers of muscle back up so I could finally hold him was not easy. 

Holding him was easy, snuggling his tiny body on my chest was easy, natural, wonderful. 

Trying to breast feed was not easy, but I believe it's not easy for most of us. 

When your baby cried in the night you were sore and possibly bearing stitches. But I bet you got to your child a hell of a lot faster than I got to mine. That was most certainly not easy. 

Dragging my swollen sausage stump legs out of bed was not easy, I had to use both hands to pick a leg up most days. 

The 45 blood thinning injections were also not easy. The sepsis that nearly killed me was definitely not fun. 

I envied the ladies who had natural births, they seemed to stroll back from the labour ward and with proud looks on their faces. But guess what? I did not tell them they'd had it easy because I don't believe it ever is.