One of the moments toughest and most incredible I've lived in my life It is what happened 4 years ago, when I was studying the lactation consultant course. The consultant who was giving us class wanted to discuss the issue of childbirth a little and decided to turn down the lights, play slow instrumental music and talk almost whispering.
He asked that we close our eyes (about 70 women, almost all mothers and 3 men) and began to put us in a situation:
You are in the hospital, lying down. You don't know what will happen but you expect everything to go well. You have some cold and you wear that robe that is tied behind and leaves you half-naked. It seems that something is not going well and they tell you that they have to do a C-section. You expect someone to give you a hand, a show of affection, a “calm, that I will be with you”, but nobody does. You only see white and green robes that move from one side to the other without saying too much. Would you like to be explained a little more about what happens, would you like to be told why you won't give birth as you expected, but nobody talks, nobody hugs you, nobody ...
The consultant kept talking, but at this point, and probably a little earlier, several women cried taking a lot of what they had inside. It is not that he looked for them, it is not that he looked into his eyes to look for that tear that wants to come out shameful, it is that he saw and heard them, like the child who cries after falling to the ground, with the dismay of being scared and alone.
That day I realized that Caesarean section often "hurts". It hurts in the soul because it is not what a woman expected and above all it hurts because at that time nobody usually takes care of the psychological suffering that this woman goes through.
It is true that many women explain that they had a caesarean section with all the tranquility of the world, accepting the moment lived and living it as normal (and that is the ideal, that a woman can explain it calmly).
However, it is also true that many cannot almost talk about it because they did not expect their baby to be born in an operating room, surrounded by machines, coming out of the belly or spending his first hours away from his lap. It was not what they expected and many have a hard time overcoming it because at the time of having a caesarean section, nobody gave them the emotional warmth they needed.
Maybe they didn't listen to them or answer their questions, maybe nobody asked them how they felt, maybe they just said "quiet", as if that calmed down a lot.
In any case, that day I learned a lot about how much can a mother carry within her birth and I realized that a C-section can hurt a lot, a lot of time. Not the physical injury, but the emotional wound.
