Birth? ? ? ?

Well, I posted an update about me on the ICAN webboard. And I had a reply about how this is a birth.

At first I did not know how to react. Birth in the classical definition is the bringing forth of new life. Well, don't fit that description.

So is Birth also defined as the ending events of a pregnancy? I guess it would be how you look at it. My only living child was extracted from my body via cesarean section orchestrated by my obstetrical team prior to labor. Did I or Do I consider her arrival via vaginal bypass a birth? Nope.

Each person creates their own definition of the word so that it best fits for them. Some are ok rationalizing cesareans as a form of birth.
To me Birth signifies the achievement of a pregnancy, the moment your baby and your body orchestrate a dance that is only seen in humans. When a new life is brought into the world by the hard work of a laboring mother.

There is even a term for the delivery of a post 20 week pregnancy, still-birth. Born still to the world. But nothing for miscarriage.

No miscarriage is not looked upon as birth, or still-birth. It is looked upon as a pregnancy that was not meant to be. A mistake that was weeded out of the world. A "common" occurrence that happens to X% of pregnancies. NO BIG DEAL! Right. That is what the synopsis is. Miscarriages are medically managed, either with chemicals to induce your body to expel the products of conception (don't even call it a baby), or they surgically vacuum and scrape it out.

So how can I put the words Birth into this? I don't think I can. It is too emotionally tied to a good outcome, to an event I look forward to, to the moment when I meet my angel come to earth.

I will not send out "birth" announcements. There will be no "baby moon". There will be nothing. Just the big empty void that is left behind after each and every miscarriage I have.

The only person who will support me through this labor will be my poor husband, who is war torn and traumatized of the whole thing. There will be no midwife encouraging me. There will be no one there hoping of good outcomes, telling me how I can do this, how it will be soon when I can hold my child. Nope. Not me. Not this time.

I cannot call this Birth. I will not call the emotional hell I am experiencing my birth experience. It is NOT. It is so wrong on multiple levels of my consciousness.

So what is this? What is this to me? A loss. A physical event that I must endure. It feels like being diagnosed with a stone. You know, a kidney stone. One where you know you will go through hell, and in the end pass this object and life will move on.

That is what this is. It has stopped being a life to me a long time ago. My soul parted with the essence of baby that day on the table, when all I saw was an empty black sack. It was gone. I felt it go. Like a whisper escaping a dying mans lips. It evaporated, any dreams, hopes, desires died that day. Taken from me yet again. What is left is the mirror of that big black hole on my heart, my soul. I turned off.

Now I feel like I must endure a sickness, a plague, that somehow will never go away. Each day it is there, a tender breast, a smell that turns my stomach, but now it is just a retched reminder of what I will not have. It is merely no more than the side effects of this disease I have.

So, no, there will be no birth plan, there will be no birth day. It will just be an end. An end to yet another chapter of suffering in my life.

And it will also be a beginning. The day when hope will be allowed back in. The day I can start looking to my body beginning it's slow journey back to normal. The day I will allow my self to even ponder the idea of a next time.