04/22/2026
✨🍼🩸𝓢𝓲𝔁 𝓦𝓮𝓮𝓴𝓼 𝓣𝓸 𝓢𝓽𝓪𝓷𝓭🩸🍼✨
Leading up to the day I gave birth, I did everything I thought was “right” that would help The Birthing Process.™️
In my illustrated vision, sans epidural, I would give birth via the lore-rich squat - because this was One Way To Prevent Tearing. While squatting, I would experience only minor discomfort due to my obviously extraordinarily high pain tolerance, mind you, and also ripplingly powerful muscles I’d gained from toting around x amount of pregnancy-related pounds. After a few gentle and controlled pushes, a tiny, 6-pound baby would slip out - plip! The void in my body would clap shut faster than a piece of pineapple could be pulled from jello, and the nurses would ooh and ahh and applaud for me. This perfect stream of events would happen due to my dutiful weight-lifting, daily minutes of hip-stretching, and all-around positive thinking.
Meanwhile, I lost a lot of blood, had two hours of reconstructive surgery, and a few minutes after leaving the operating room, hospital staff insinuated a gauze pad might be lost somewhere in my uterus. Specifically, I remember hearing something along the lines of, “We are missing one from the surgery and can’t locate it.” Wondrous news, and especially a good thing that insurance billed me for that x-ray!
It has been nearly six months since I gave birth. In that time, I have seen others share stories about their birth being empowering (even out-of-body, in a good way!) and I feel so confused that mine was so perplexingly the opposite. I was *very* in my body. I can recount the timeline of events a little too vividly. I am still actively healing and hoping that I am not at a plateau with healing.
The expectation that women will heal from birth in 6-8 weeks is baffling and absurd. I don’t think many people will argue with this or even disagree, yet this freakishly precise window of time still stands for so many different kinds of birth experiences.
