It's OK

    Recently I was in a room with 2 new moms and as is always the case if you get new moms and a birth worker in the same room the talk always turns to birth. They were expressing their various feeling about their births and the sadness about parts that did not quite go as planned. Not that they were not happy they had good births and their babies are healthy and doing well. Just that they were both disappointed in various aspects of their birth. They were both still trying to process their births and felt bad that they were not just happy that they had a healthy, happy baby. 

    Women are often told when they did not get the birth they expected that all that matters is a healthy baby, healthy mother and they should be glad that happened. That they need to just get over it and deal with any disappointment they may have. I think it is perfectly ok to mourn for lost aspects of the birth you envisioned. Even perfect births may have aspects that the mother wanted and did not get. Birth is unpredictable, but many of us have visions of how we want our births to go, and when that does not happen we may feel sadness about the loss of that perfect birth. Perhaps it is a little thing like planning a water birth but at the last minute the tub did not get filled in time. Wanting the birth filmed or photographed and baby coming so fast that there was no time to film it. Maybe you wanted the dad to catch the baby but he was too afraid to do that himself for fear he would drop the baby. These are little things that would not have adversely impacted your perfect birth but perhaps you feel a slight bit of sadness for missing those opportunities. Many births are more distanced from that perfect birth like planning a natural unmedicated birth and having a long hard labor that necessitates an epidural in order for you to get the relief you need to birth the baby. Wanting an epidural and laboring too fast or it does not work, and ending up with no medication when that was not your plan. Needing medication to get labor started and not having the gentle start to labor you envisioned. So many other scenarios that may happen that were not a part of your ideal birth. Some births are so far from the mothers’ ideal they are traumatic events that need to be work through with others in order to process them and move on (www.birthtraumaassociation.org).

    From the little things to the traumatic any feelings you have toward your birth are valid. You have the right to feel anyway you want about your birth. It's OK to feel that way and process it however you need to, in order to enjoy your baby to their fullest.