But what about the times they don't?
Have you ever been hurt so bad physically that it destroyed you and changed the ways you saw things?
My c-sections were that thing for me. Recovering from them was full of a pain so pure and focused, it changed the way the world looked from where I stood.
Mamas, please don't hate me for saying so, but the first time I stood up after my first c-section, the first few steps I took afterward... they hurt infinitely more than my 9-10 centimeter contractions.
All I could think was, No. What has this done to me?
After Louise's birth, I woke up in the morning and the morphine was gone. A sweet, clunky nurse in a white cardigan told me that she wanted me to get up and shower this morning. I decided to attack this thing, head on. I decided to get up and moving as soon as I could, before breakfast and pain pills. I wanted to be an overachieving healer.
Standing up was nothing short of exquisite. It was a pain so deliberate and palpable, it erased the existence of everything.
Standing in the hospital bathroom, there was a plastic chair across the room, in the shower. I was going to faint with every step. The pain made me nauseated, I leaned over the toilet as best I could and my stomach heaved involuntarily.
Pain so real and so deep inside of me, it was everything.
The ticking of the heat lamp overhead.
The steam from the shower.
My face was grey in the mirror.
There were purple marks under my eyes.
I couldn't cry. I couldn't expend a moment of focus on anything but surviving this moment. I couldn't talk with any volume. I whispered instructions to my husband because it hurt too badly to project my voice into the air.
Kurt knelt at my feet as I stood gasping and gripping the shower wall. The warmth of the water was soothing. I felt like a baby. I felt like this was the first moment of my life. He only had the clothes he was wearing. He washed my legs for me. I shivered and bit my tongue. Looking down at him with the curtain open, there was a wide puddle of water gathering around him. He was soaking, so gingerly smoothing soap over the sagging surface of my body.
His face upturned, he said Thank You. Thank you for this and I am so sorry.
He doesn't ever cry.
It broke my heart.
From that moment on, he was the person who bathed my feet on the first day of my life. He was kneeling and soaked and his eyes were so blue. Drops of water fell from his eyelashes. Our baby was away with a nurse getting blood tests. He was the only thing that existed because he shared the pain with me, a little bit. He wanted to gut himself with my sorrow and take it.
Maybe nobody thinks to write about physical pain because it's not a secret. Maybe it's because it goes away when the other kinds of pain really don't.
i am with you, my c-section pain nearly killed me. my husband was right there with me too, i remember him pulling my underwear up for me because i couldn't bend over to get them.
ReplyDeleteheavens, I love your writing. It brought to mind my first, too, when I had the whole pushing-then-c-section thing, too, and how humiliating it all could have been. If Carpenter had let it be. But it wasn't. It was good, in the end. Love your writing. Sorry we didn't get together--lost my phone, ran late, got the plague, and now, I'm getting over it. All.
ReplyDeleteYou are an incredible writer. I am feeling tingles down my spine reading this...your description of this pain is very sharp and almost palpable. Wonderful blog.
ReplyDeleteMaybe nobody thinks to write about physical pain because it's not a secret. Maybe it's because it goes away when the other kinds of pain really don't.
ReplyDeletethis is poignant. i think also it could be because there's always someone stronger than you, more able to handle pain, and they sometimes end up a little, i don't know exactly what i'm looking for: judgmental? invalidating? condescending? there is a lack of respect for the pain you've been through when other people have the ability to compare it. so it makes it easier just to shrug it away.
Thanks for your comments, mamas. Katery and AJ, ugh. I'm so sorry that you went through this, too. it was outrageous, wasn't it? I heard about c-sections and how millions of women have them, but I was so totally undereducated about how extreme they really were. I thought that something was wrong... that there was NO WAY it was supposed to be THIS PAINFUL to recover from one.
ReplyDeletethismummaslife, thank you. I appreciate that so much and I'm so glad you're here.
ReplyDeleterain, that's so true. Isn't it weird that when somebody has been through a similar emotional pain to you, they seem to want to empathize, but when it's physical pain, they sort of just say, "I got through it, so will you."
ReplyDelete