You Only Fail If You Don’t Try

By Jenny

A fact or circumstance bringing disgrace or regret. That is the definition of shame as I relate to it and as I see it and as how I felt when I wrote about my laboring experience for my previous entry here. When I first wrote that other blog entry I was writing under a pen name I had manufactured for the great American novel I am still attempting to write (random brilliant thoughts on post-it notes scattered throughout the house don’t count, do they?). After I sent the entry to the editor I requested that my “name” on the page change to my real name, Jenny. It felt dishonest to write something so open and truthful while hiding behind another name. I was still fooling myself, however. The blog entry was posted on a blog that had not been widely publicized or shared outside of the group of mama contributors. My first name the only used. And my accompanying picture one of me walking away. I was still able to hide. Until the editor posted my blog entry on her main Facebook page with a leading line of “For Those Mamas Who Delivered Via C-Section.” With 72 mutual friends I had no place to hide.

That night over dinner the conversation went something like this:

Me: So … Sue posted my c-section shame story on Facebook.

Hubby: Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

I might have coughed.

Hubby: Did you want her to post it on Facebook?

Me: No.

The sociologist Brené Brown has a brilliant talk on Ted Talks in which she speaks of shame and vulnerability. Toward the end of her talk she states “if you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment.” I was existing beautifully in this dish unbeknownst to me until my come-to-Jesus moment in that obstetrician’s office. Foolishly I believed that writing about the experience, the feelings of failure—of being one—would be enough to help guide me outside of the reach of that clutching Jungian shadow. Subconsciously, I must have known I was still being safe. The pit in my stomach when I not only saw the post on Facebook but then saw it tagged by another friend (now there really was no hiding) was enough proof for me to know my subconscious was still in control and had no intention of letting me out of that dark place; leaving me foolish until my next birth experience with all of its undealt with fears at the helm. And one of the worst things one can have at a second attempt to not repeat past mistakes is all of the baggage that comes with those mistakes.

Brown goes on to state “if you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.” I didn’t plan to put myself out there in such a way; in a way where people I work with would now know something so intimate about me. Where friends, or rather acquaintances, were now basically invited in to my home, the door opened by another visitor and not by me. I didn’t want the attention because I feared the attention. I feared it all. I was in for a big surprise.

Some of the comments that I received:

The only one that failed was that doctor. You did the best you could with the circumstances you were given.

I deeply hope that you will have a next birth that you are satisfied and at peace with.

You were dealt a whole lot of crappy conditions … and yet you still managed to come out the other end with a beautiful, healthy baby and the courage to even discuss doing it again.

Great post, Jenny. It’s always nice to know that we all had things we wish we could have done differently.

That made me cry.

I cry when I read the comments. I still do. Days later.

I passive aggressively removed silence from that shameful Petri dish. Sue removed that and secrecy quickly and without pause. The judgment, I realized, was all my own. I secretly feared others would judge me for my weakness, for my lack of resolve. And I never wanted verification that my own self-judgment was to be mirrored and echoed by those around me. The comments I received proved otherwise.

I am far from being in a place where shame no longer exists. And I would be foolish to think that one blog post and one set of positive comments is going to change any of that. It will take some time until I can look back at my laboring experience and feel any of the strength I owned before contractions began. After all, I was the woman in my Lamaze class who proudly proclaimed that I was birthing my child; that the doctor was merely assisting. Somewhere in me that woman still exists; the woman who looked at the Monty Python labor sketch and vowed to not be the woman who was unqualified to give birth to my child.

In the early months of Henry’s life I liked to joke that he was my “test” baby. Whether you like the phrase or not, the truth is your first child—if you plan to have more—truly is your test baby. He is the baby you buy everything for (read Cristin’s brilliant chart for more on the difference here), the one you read every book for, the one you try every method for—CIO, baby-led weaning, etc. Part of my reclaiming of my strength, my warrior woman, is to see my first laboring experience as the test experience. That was my first trial and I will go in fighting with the next one. I might not win the fight—in the sense that I successfully have a VBAC—but I know I will win if I will give it my absolute all, to have every breath that passes my lips be in effort to have the experience I want. I will only fail again if I fail to try.