guilt leads to passion

So, yesterday V and I were alphabetizing the DVDs (I know, you do what you can to stay busy when you SAH :) ) and I came across the DVD the hospital gave us of his birth. I asked him if he wanted to watch it and he did so in it went. The first part of it they put to music, so we watch H cut his umbilical cord (and by that I mean the dr cut it from me to V, but H cut it shorter), V get his footprints done, get weighed and measured, etc, etc.

Then I realize that I am not there. I am not in the video of his birth. Like I wasn't a part of it at all. At the very very end, it shows H bringing him to me so I could kiss his cheek, but he was all bundled up in a blanket with a hat on so I could only see part of his little face.

It broke my heart that just a few nights earlier I watched the video of M being born and she doesn't leave my arms during the whole video (about 15 minutes long--well, except when I had to get off my hands and knees and onto my back so I could look at her). In V's video I am not even there.

After the part they put to music they have the "uncut" part. Ours is still somewhat "cut" because they show the dr handing him to the nurses after they took him out of my uterus and then it stops until they got him breathing. Watching that brought me to tears. His birth was so violent. Even after H cut the cord, the nurses literally pushed him out of the way. It makes me so sad to think of how scary that must have been for V. To be all happy and warm inside mama and then all of a sudden being yanked out into this cold room where all these strangers are touching him and poking him and putting things in his mouth and nose. How terribly frightening for him.

I sat on the floor with the video playing holding my son and crying. I wanted so badly to tell him how sorry I am that I let them do that to him, that I did that to him. I want to go back and change it. I want the first day of his outside life to be a peaceful, happy one. I want him to have felt love, not fear in his first moments. I feel like that was my first failure as a mother. That is guilt I will take to my grave.

At the end of the uncut version, I am laying on the gurney holding him and shaking so badly V asked me what was wrong with me. Then the nurses took him off down one hall and I was wheeled down another. It just makes me sad.

Today, I was getting dressed and he saw my c/s scar. He asked me what it was and I told him that is how he came out of Mama. He looked at me with curious eyes, so I explained to him as delicately as I could that he used to be in my belly like M was and then the doctor cut Mama's belly open to get him out. He said "Oh, then she put me back so I came out your 'gina." "No, baby. Then you were out."

It's like at almost 3 the child knows that babies are made to come out of vaginas (that may be because I am his mother and that was a hot topic around here for a while and once a month we have a VBAC Support Group meet at my house where we talk about it for hours, but still he gets it!).

I sort of expected a VBAC to heal my c/s pain, but it didn't. In some ways it actually made it worse because I now know what I could have given him that I didn't.

That leads me to my passion, though. I have never really had a passion. I mean I liked stuff, sure, but never really had something I was passionate about until V was born. I think I have found my life's purpose. I want to prevent other women from needlessly going through births like I did with V.