"At Least Your Baby is Healthy."

A woman sits in her hospital bed, recovering from a difficult birth.  She is holding her beautiful healthy baby, overcome with joy at this perfect and healthy child brought into this world.  Despite the joy, there is this nagging feeling of disappointment over her birth.  She is exhausted, hormonal and overwhelmed with emotions.  She collects her courage and tells a friend that it feels like she lost something important to her, that she feels like she failed.  She explains how she feels weak and powerless because she couldn't even do something as natural as have a baby.

The good-intentioned friend tries to assure her, "at least your baby is healthy..."

It's an innocent statement.  We've all heard it a million times.  There is certainly an undeniable truth to it.  It is also terribly damaging to a woman who is mourning a birth experience.

Realistically, a healthy baby is always something to praise God for, probably especially so if there was a difficult birth or life threatening emergency involved.  The problem with pointing out something so obvious though is that it's often used to indirectly tell someone, "You shouldn't feel anything but grateful that your baby is healthy."  So what happens when we still feel disappointed?

Women who prepare themselves for a certain birth experience can feel devastated when things don't go as planned.  I mean that word with all the weight it comes with.  It can be devastating.  When we tell these women, "At least, your baby is healthy...", are we hoping this masked statement of positivity will banish feelings of disappointment and inadequacy?  I assume so.  Is that how feelings work?  Not usually.

When we tell someone to look at the bright side or to focus on the good stuff, we are not giving them the space to process their negative feelings.  Negative feelings rarely go away because we tell them to, or because we're told we shouldn't feel them.  Often, when we're told "At least your baby is healthy", our feelings of guilt and inadequacy are compounded by feelings of shame and perceived selfishness for mourning a birth experience while holding our perfect, healthy baby.  We feel confused about why we're not overcome with joy, like we should be.  We feel like terrible mothers for focusing on the negative when all that should matter is our healthy baby.  We feel depressed, inadequate, guilty, broken, selfish and like a bad mother.  And then we're told through so many words that all that matters is our healthy baby.  Our feelings don't matter.  With no safe place to go, our feelings have nowhere to go but down deep inside of us.

Birth is an intensely emotional process for a woman.  I believe that if a woman doesn't recognize the power birth has in her life, there are probably other bigger things she has numbed herself to.  It is the essence of our womanhood.  The birth experience can shape our deepest core perception of who we are, our power as a woman; carrier of life.  It's not to say that cesareans, inductions, hospital births, car births or any kind of unplanned birth experience should change our sense of self, it's simply acknowledging that it is easy to feel like our power and capabilities as a woman are reflected in our birth experience.  It's as real as feelings are, right or wrong.

So what do you say to a woman that is mourning a birth while holding a perfectly healthy baby? 

Maybe you don't say anything.  Maybe you just love that mama, and give her a safe place to cry or even yell about how unfair it was.  Maybe you ask her what about her birth she would do differently next time?  Maybe you ask her if there was any part of her birth she feels proud of? 

At most, we can help these women, these all-powerful carriers of life, remember their strength.  We can remind them that they did their best and we can help them process their birth as an experience they can learn from.

At least, we can love these women, these all-powerful carriers of life, and we can cry with them that their birth was totally disappointing and it really sucks when things don't go as planned.  Tell them we understand.  Sometimes that's all anyone needs.