You know how sometimes you say something and it doesn't occur to you until much, much later that you were highly inappropriate or insulting or both?
No? Just me?
Damn.
Sigh. It happened to me last night. We went to May and Dan's 10th anniversary party. I was excited to go since I knew there'd be a number of friends in attendance who hadn't yet met Essie, plus getting out of the house for such a fun reason is pretty sweet. One of the highlights of the parties that Maysie and Dan throw is that I always meet someone interesting and new at them and last night I got to meet a couple of people like that. One was a cool woman who was there with her husband and 9 month-old son and we chatted a lot about breastfeeding (which is on my mind a lot these days.)
The other woman is someone who went to high school with Andrew and Dan. She is nine months pregnant (and I think she even said that yesterday was her due date) and looked awesome. Glowing and energetic and lovely. I ended up having a great chat with her toward the end of the night and talking to her about my experience with pre-eclampsia and Women's College Hospital. At one point I mentioned that I was quite satisfied with having had a c-section and that given the choice I'd likely opt for a c-section again.
She was all, oh really? And so I proceeded to say that yes, I would, but that my experience might have been easier since they weren't pulling a full-term baby out of the hole in my abdomen and so I might have recovered faster. Then I went on to say that while I was in recovery I lay there listening to the screams and shrieks of other women going through natural childbirth and that I couldn't imagine what kind of pain they'd be feeling since nothing I experienced was anywhere near the level of pain that would cause me to scream.
She got a kind of bemused look on her face, but NOTHING registered to me at that moment that I was saying something awful to a woman who is about to give birth in the next week or so. I just blathered on about how glad I was that I didn't have to feel horrific pain and that I was thankful I hadn't been in such agony.
Oh, I am so dumb. This poor woman. I know that in the months that I was pregnant I went to great lengths to either not think about labour or convince myself that really, it wouldn't be so bad. That all the stories I'd heard were exaggerations, likely, and that women make it sound worse than it is. I was basically scared out of my mind and who knows how I'd have felt if I'd carried Essie full-term. At nine months I'd have likely been in weak-kneed terror and if some dumb bint had stood there talking about the horrors of childbirth I might well have punched her in the snout.
I would totally have deserved a snout-punching. I am so, so dumb.
6 comments:
Oh honey--
I think you are being WAY too hard on yourself here. Keep your snout intact, cutie-pie.
Hey - sorry we missed you guys! Would have been nice to see you guys and to have a few more people we knew, I think people were intimidated by Janelle's chair. She felt awkward so we ended up leaving pretty early. Hopefully will see you sometime soon!
Maysie, you are very forgiving of my awkwardness. Which is one of the reasons I love you so much. ;)
And Ers! You left just after we arrived! I was sitting on the love seat with Michelle and thought I saw you go sailing by the living room headed toward the entryway. I asked if it was you and was told yes, but you were gone. :(
Ha! Aren't you sweet! That nine-months-preggers-and-still-waiting-on-her-due-date chica was me and believe me, hearing from you that women scream during childbirth is nothing new and did NOT make much of an impression. My husband (aka "the doula") and I are ridiculously optimistic about how our upcoming birth will go, and have made sure to take a healthy dose of friends' and acquaintances' happy birth stories as a tonic against the *real* birth horror stories (what I think of as the "hey, look at that belly over there, I don't know who she is but I have an irresistible urge to tell her about my sister's friend's aunt whose baby died a horrible death during childbirth" reflex). We've also immersed ourselves in all manner of positive birth prep, courtesy of everyone from the Yoga Space to the Hypnobirthing(TM) empire to the wonderful folks at our midwives' offices, and we're looking forward to what we expect will be an excellent, healthy birth.
So what DID make an impression from our conversation was your beautiful sweet perfect baby, how happy you look in your new life as a mom, and how great you guys are doing as a family.
Well okay, and the tree mask was pretty cool.
Oh, PHEW! I was so worried that I'd left you thinking I was dumb and mean. And you do seem very well prepared and excited about the coming birth. I'll be really interested to hear about it afterward, you know!
I do apologize for being insensitive, though. If it had been me in your shoes I'd have been freaking out inside because I'm not the type to have it together as well as you, I don't think!
Well, seeing as the mom-to-be in question actually commented on this, I would say that you really shouldn't feel bad at all.
When I was expecting my daughter many moons ago, I got all the horror stories. I am sure that Rach (sorry to seem so informal, but easier than typing the above over and over) has already heard many of the horror stories and the 3 day long labours and all that fun stuff. Heck, even with having a child already, people still felt the need to tell me their horror stories, or the wretched labours that some mysterious mistress of an uncle's cousin's best friend went through.
Only advice I ever offer to people with respect to labour is the same thing that one amazing soul told me while I was expect DD, and that is "millions of women have done this for thousands of years, and you are at least as strong as most of them".
In short, you are being way to hard on yourself. (And if anything, I am sure that Essie will eventually provide you with a "snout-punch" for no reason in particular.
BTW, totally unrelated, but my verification word is not smash (without the spaces, of course)...just thought that was interesting.
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