Life After Cesarian: Knowing Your Body Isn't Broken

It took over two years to conceive our first baby. Conception came after miscarriages, fertility drugs, and pregnancy fraught with complications. Doctors advised against having more. They said we must wait at least two years before trying. Given my age, waiting only compounded risks. Having been an only child who longed for companionship, I was determined to have another.  

We waited a year and, with no fertility drugs, got pregnant in a month. We went back to the hospital where my oldest son was born. They had taken good care of us one medical crisis after another – from hyperemesis, to placental abruptions, to preeclampsia, and finally a stint in the NICU. They were great at triage, less adept at trust. The OB looked at my charts and then at us, peering over his glasses. With a stern voice reminiscent of my father, he said, “Everything you experienced before is likely to recur. There’s no way to deliver this baby vaginally. It’s too risky.” 

Until that moment, I had felt good. The ease of getting pregnant was an indicator of my body’s and spirit’s healing. But carrying my toddler back to our car, his bum resting on my newly emerging bump, I felt deflated. I’d been stripped of hope. This doctor didn’t know what was possible for my body. I knew his expertise mattered. If my last pregnancy and birth taught me anything it was that science was mighty powerful and  far from omniscient. I witnessed this firsthand as my three-pound preemie exceeded every expectation. He was on his own path, playing by his own rules. 

Though I’d always been a rule follower, I was determined not to have another Cesarian. I felt certain we would be okay. I couldn’t prove this by science, but I felt it in my core. I wanted a natural birth experience, and whatever came with it. I wanted to be a woman in her body in the most powerful, primal way. I wanted to reclaim something lost. 

At home, I culled through my Ina May collection. There were countless anecdotes of healthy vaginal deliveries following Cesarians. Why couldn’t I do this? My intuition told me this pregnancy was different. Western medicine leaves so little space for a woman’s intuition. Rather it’s statistics, facts, and certainties. An undeniable knowing sprouted inside me. I called the midwifery clinic where we’d planned to give birth to my first child before the calamities. I shared how much I wanted a natural birth. I wanted to live that experience. 

Confident and resolute, the midwife’s voice was a salve on my spirit. “There’s no reason not to try. Each birth is different. If complications develop, we’ll deal with them in real time instead of treating them beforehand. I trust your intuition.”

Trust my intuition. I’d been working a lifetime to trust myself, to have permission. Now this stranger who knew me so little, but knew women so well, reflected that deep reservoir of intuition. 

My medical records were transferred. I braced myself for the vomiting, for the possibility my intuition was wrong. Each morning, I searched the sheets for blood. I fumbled to find peace in myriad possibilities, to anchor into trust. If my oldest son’s birth taught me anything, it was that everything can go technically wrong and still turn out right. 

I never did start puking or bleeding. My blood pressure remained normal. I passed twenty-five weeks, thirty, thirty-three. Having never been pregnant beyond thirty-three weeks, I was unprepared for how big my belly would get. In my first pregnancy with a faulty placenta, neither of us grew enough. This time stretch marks ripped out from my belly button. I anointed them in oil, wondering if they’d fade. Now, when I see those marks on my mama body, I feel a pang of self-consciousness. But mostly I see beauty, indications of my body’s resilience. 

On February 20, slightly ahead of schedule, I woke with contractions. I pulled the curtains to reveal white powder falling from the sky. I looked at my husband, still deep asleep. It was his fortieth birthday. In the stillness and quiet, iridescent light from the moon reflected off the snow. It created a soft glow around us. His breath and the buzz from the baby monitor were the only sounds. For a person still recovering from a traumatic birth, I felt incomparably calm, rooted in my body. I lay there until the sun rose, contractions increasing. Our midwife was waiting, expecting the baby any day. 

Toddler babble ensued around six in the morning. My husband stretched. “It’s time,” I told him as our eyes met. He smiled his steady, knowing smile. He’d always trusted me. “Happy birthday to me,” he said with a grin. 

Within the hour, the contractions grew stronger, more consistent. They hovered between fifteen and seventeen minutes apart. The midwife calmly instructed us to head her way. My mom stayed with our son who bounced up and down on the sofa. He was ecstatic about the snow. We gathered our things, gave kisses, and took the first step into our new reality.

They admitted us to our room, more like an apartment than a hospital. There were no big monitors or sterilized tools, just a jacuzzi and fluffy bed. They took vitals and checked my dilation. I was already eight centimeters with hardly any pain. The next three hours were hard and exhausting, but also celebratory. With my cheering squad of midwives and husband, our baby did exactly what nature intended. My body was far from broken, far from danger. 

In what seemed like minutes, he was born. His victory cry small, but strong, filled the room while my heart sang. Neurons in my brain reconfigured from trauma to trust. We did it, he and I. We’d done this thing I’d been told was impossible, wrong, and risky. We did it with ease, grace and triumph. They placed his perfect, slippery body, chord still connected, on my chest where he rooted like an inchworm for milk.

Evangelical dogma taught me to fear my body. It taught me to see childbirth as the penultimate penance for Eve’s curiosity. I lived within a lineage of female disempowerment and subjugation. My penance ended the moment my son arrived, shattering forever the narrative that my body was broken. I’d thought my body was the problem when all along it’d been the gift. 

-Micah Stover

Raised on a farm in rural Tennessee by evangelicals, Micah is far from home in Puerto Vallarta where she lives with her family. Micah works as an integrative support therapist with trauma survivors and is in the final stages of a memoir chronicling the path to heal intergenerational sexual trauma with MDMA, psilocybin and guided psychotherapy. You can find her writing on Motherwell, SurvivorLit, Healthy Women and Huffington Post.