TRANSCRIPT TO ANSWER

So you might have been wanting a natural birth and you might have set yourself up for success and you’ve taken childbirth education classes. You’ve even hired a Doula, you have done everything in your power to help this baby come into this world and the manner that you believe is best. At some point, if your labor doesn’t follow that yellow brick road pattern and you find yourself in an operating room, the one thing I wish I could say to you in person would be you are not a failure. You’re a mother and you just gave birth to your baby. It wasn’t the way that you planned, but life often isn’t the way we plan. And so you surrendering to something bigger than that. Most of the time it’s mom fear to have a cesarean. So you’ve conquered your biggest fear. You were able to breathe for your baby. You were able to supply nourishment and oxygen to your baby and only you could do that. So this is the time that you were able to just absorb the fact that you’ve done everything in your control and you’re so thankful for the opportunity to be holding your baby right now. When you go into the recovery room, you might have a lot of emotions and one of them being, what have I done? What did I, what could, what could I have done different? Don’t go there. It robs you of the time, the precious time that you could be bonding with your baby. If you don’t get to hold your baby right away. And if you have had a cesarean and baby wasn’t doing well, don’t think that you can’t get that bonding because you can. All you have to do is when baby gets back into your arms, you unrobe, that baby, that little burrito that they hand you, unrobe that burrito and put him or her skin to skin on your chest. And you go back to that womb experience and you talk to your baby and you tell your baby all the things that you hope for your baby to be, and you bring back that bonding experience because it’s yours and whether you have it right from a vaginal birth right on your chest, or whether you have an operation performed and are absent from your baby for a long period of time, you can get that bonding time back. And it’s so important to understand that you are in control of that and that your baby wants to be on your chest. And so when you get that baby, just take some deep breaths and smell your baby’s head and all those pheromones that are coming from that baby’s head, and understand that you did a good work.