This post was written during my 4th pregnancy, my journey towards a VBA3C. Throughout this pregnancy I was fit and healthy yet classed as high risk due to having had three previous c-sections.
Don’t call me high risk.
Don’t take heed of the warnings that spew out into the papers at an alarming rate. A VBAC is not a disease, or a dirty word. A woman who has had a c section is not ‘risky business’. I am a woman who wants to give birth to her baby. To feel her baby. To be awake to see her baby take the first breath, open their eyes onto this world and feel their skin against mine. I am a woman who wants to be one of the first people to hold her baby. I am a woman who wants to sit up and hold her baby. To feed her baby with arms that feel the life within. I am a woman who wants to tell the world her baby’s name; not discover it for herself when she wakes.
Don’t call me high risk. Don’t greet my intentions with raised eyebrows and furrowed smiles. Don’t assume that my intentions will not be ‘allowed’. Don’t deny me the chance to be normal for once.
This weekend I came across this article by Milli Hill (@millihill) and I found myself nodding along to almost every word.
When my body screamed out to me that my son was on his way, the ‘High Risk’ label echoed the cry and we called the hospital straight away, as we’d been told. We went straight in, as we were told. We never questioned a thing and we never assumed that we were anything but high risk. The fact that I was labelled as High Risk left me in no doubt- what I was doing was scary. I wanted no part of it. But in actual fact, lots of women have a VBAC, and the fact that we didn’t should not be held against me.
This time, I am a woman striving for a VBA3C. And supposedly higher risk than ever before. And yet I feel more positive this time than I ever have. Whether it is age, experience, or having come to a point of peace with what has gone before, I do not know. But I do not feel scared. I do not feel High Risk. I feel like a woman who passes a mirror and catches sight of her swollen body and smiles, stops to capture the moment; when once I would have collapsed inside.
I feel like a woman with a life growing inside. I feel special. I feel on the edge of something wonderful. I feel strong. Strong enough to question decisions that are made for me. Strong enough to face the fear that I know will come as the weeks pass by. Strong enough to cast aside my label and just be a woman giving birth. For once.
That is my positive pregnancy. It’s taken four attempts to get here and I’m going to hold on to it.
To find out more about #MyPositivePregnancy, #TeamMama and Mama Academy,please click here. You can also read about the Made to Measure campaign here and if you have a moment, please sign the petition urging all UK trusts to help save 1000 babies by adopting The Perinatal Institute’s GAP programme.