Scar of love

C-section Mama,

Let me remind you how powerful you are.

How you birthed life.

How because of you and what you’ve been through, someone’s adventure has begun.

You were the beginning and you always will be.

Let me remind you that birthing this way isn’t the “easier option”. And those who think that don’t know.

They don’t know what it’s like to have layers of flesh and muscle cut through as you lie on a surgery bed, with many unfamiliar faces around you.

They don’t know what it’s like to have a sheet in front of you and your partner beside you, as you wait for the sound of your baby crying.

They don’t know what it’s like to be left in such physical pain. The exhaustion seems nothing compared to the cut on your lower stomach. And that pain doesn’t immediately dissolve with the immense love you feel for your baby. It hurts to move for weeks, sometimes longer.

They don’t know what it’s like to process a different birth than what you imagined, or mourn what you may have dreamt about for months. To learn to let go of what wasn’t, or couldn’t have been.

They don’t know what it’s like to deal with others who don’t understand your elective choice, and who do nothing but add to the stigma of birthing this way.

They don’t know what it’s like to see their scar and be reminded every day that their birth was different to what many in the world think it “should” look like.

They don’t know.

But C-section Mama,

You and those who have walked this sort of birth story know.

You know what it takes. What you went through. The details of your birth story.

You know exactly what that scar represents, what power it shows and how beautiful it is.

You know how endless your love for your baby is no matter how they came into the world.

But please know just how worthy you are.

And that it’s not just you who thinks that.

Birth is birth,

No matter how it happened.

Birth is the gateway.

And no matter what,

It started with you.