RE: To almost die is to live.
Thank you from heart, Valeria, for this photograph of yours. It so much fits the expressed.
I admire that you go hiking and that you appreciate this. I never was a camper myself and actually disliked it very much. I had only little "adventures" (I'd prefer to say pilgrimages but then I'd lie) in nature (mountain, river, ocean).
My most powerful experience was pregnancy and giving birth.
Yes, one does not love the experiencing itself when it comes to get tough. It is nothing one longs for on purpose. But exactly the moments of anxiety and despair do change something... You describe it very vividly.
I am so glad that you feel the same way. This gives me hope that I am not "the only one" who has this thoughts and who misses often what one calls "spirituality".
These are quite experiences, though. Unfortunately, I couldn't give birth in a natural way and had a c-section. I was preparing for the birth of my baby during all pregnancy: exercised every day, went to a breathing technique lessons, read books and so on.
In the end, my doctor said that the baby was too big for my body to deliver and she didn't want to put me at any risk. So, I had a c-section.
I was very disappointed and got the feeling that they delivered my baby for me and I didn't play any part of it. I feel like I just went to the hospital, took a baby from there and got home :/ I think it is messing up with my mother identity to some extent. For example, I never say "I gave birth" because the truth is that I didn't :/ Just recently I even had a dream that baby Ru is adopted.
You are right that something changes when you have these experiences and something doesn't seem right when you miss them for some reason.
Anyway, I couldn't agree more with you that we are symbolic creatures and reality has many dimensions to us.
My heart feels with you. I can understand very well how you are. To let the child "be brought" and not having born it, is a missing thing that you share with many women in this world.
However, I would like to congratulate you once again on your motherhood. For nine months you have carried the life in the process of becoming within you and made all the changes and experiences that accompany it. You took on the risk of pregnancy. That alone is a courageous act and I respect this as a woman and mother in your name. That is why we are sisters in spirit and recognize our experiences. And now you are a mother and everything happens after birth as it happens to all women.
Your dream is like a message. It is a good thing. Something comes to the surface and wants to be looked at. Perhaps you asked yourself the question whether you should not have rather decided whether a normal birth should have been risky instead of your doctor. Maybe you were less happy with it than you felt or still feel? Since this matter cannot be cleared up afterwards, it hangs in the air somehow, doesn't it?
Such incomplete experiences want to be completed and I have often wondered how it can be accomplished.
I think part of it is the exchange we are doing right now. An authentic and honest communication among us women of the world.
It has happened to me in such a way that I could not feel completely that I gave birth to my child myself. Despite normal birth. But I had had a PDA laid for me (I would never do that again).
My biggest misfortune happened during the expulsion phase, when I had the emergency handle ("Kristeller"-handle after the doctor). This is now forbidden in some countries, but it is still used here and there in Germany. I suffered in these minutes a great fear of death and was afterwards severely depressed.
The worst thing was that I hadn't even known myself that I had suffered a trauma and nobody talked about it, not even my husband at that time. It was simply ignored and so I thought that everything was normal. And that fear of death was not a big deal and that I had survived. But if one does not hear this from the others, then it is as if it had never happened. My subsequent illness was then also a taboo and it is still in parts. My family doesn't want to talk about it. None of my friends ever speaks about the subject on their own, except when I give it the initial spark.
Today I see it this way: I was a completely healthy pregnant woman and would have had my child normally if the staff hadn't had some form of haste that has remained incomprehensible to me to this day. I never had the impression that I or my baby had been in danger and the only ones who disturbed were the hospital staff. Until shortly before the clinic stay I felt vital, healthy and confident. After that it was all different.
Basically, I don't blame anyone, because we live in such times. My sad story nevertheless made the rounds in the family and it at least led to a relative of mine living through a natural birth and not even having a perineal incision. I had talked to her a lot and made myself unpopular, explained the dangers of modern standards and the benefits of low intervention births.
She was quite annoyed by me. But for there to be any sense in my suffering, it has to be shared. For other women to gain this knowledge and decide what to do with it.
Sorry, this has become a long answer, because I am still very moved by the subject.
Thank you very much for sharing, Erica! I appreciate it a lot! You are right that we women share these experiences in common. I would say that similar to your situation my family members cannot fully understand what bothers me and just ignore it.
Fear of death... I completely understand you. Facing the unknown when you are in pain and have little control over the situation... this is so scary! It must have been very difficult for you to go through this alone with no support from friends and family!
Kreissler is still used here as well, although there is a big movement against it. The other thing is that we are at the top of the list of c-section frequency in Europe. C-sections are something like 40% of births or even more! I chose my doctor because she was pro-natural birth, but she recommended a cesarian after all. Even though I had my doubts, I didn't have the guts to oppose the doctor's recommendations (and don't think that I would ever have). And she had good arguments. Your relative must be a very brave woman after all!
Anyway, as you said, what's done is done. I just have to work on my mother integrity by integrating my other experiences as a mother :)
Yes, we are all brave women. I think I myself would have liked to undergo a more spiritual education and witnessed more women in real life being pregnant, giving birth and nursing babies. This for women is still the best learning field to become confident mothers ourselves. It was a bit late to start learning that after I gave birth. But to live with this reality in a more conscious and mature way. I must admit that I was immature the moment I decided on having a family. And that the tests of which I should have undergone earlier in life came parallel with the birth of the baby.
I overestimated highly my abstract ability to deal with giving birth and the after. I underestimated the power of living experiences or better: was not aware of it at all.
So I in a way stretched my puberty way into adolescence and had to learn then what I had not learned before.
All the best for you and Ru, Valeria! Let us stay connected and share our experiences.
Erika
Thank you, Erica! All the best to your family, too! See you soon!