Don't drop the monkey

I slept in today, under the "still a little sick, definitely still pregnant" banner. I just thought of another reason too: not likely to happen much after mid-August.

For the last couple of hours, the sunny ones from 6:30-9, I had vivid baby dreams. I was holding a baby in a snowsuit and taking her (I think she was meant to be Emily) on the streetcar and in cars and I was trying to figure out how to work with the baby and once I left the baby in a supermarket for a half an hour and all kinds of odd things. And each time I picked the baby up I was surprised to find her still alive.

I woke up having to point out to myself that I would never forget my baby in a supermarket, but some piece of me is not convinced. I feel guilty, which may drive a harder writing session which would not be a bad thing.

I'm starting to lean towards a c-section, which is surprising the hell out of me. Normally I'm more the kind of person that would accept the physical challenge and figure that we should just push through it (pun somewhat intended). And surgery scares me. But I'm just not sure I want to risk it - any of it, risk freaking out; risk the stress on the system of being back in the exact, traumatic position we were in with the exact, traumatic sensations; risk being in charge of pushing again; risk cord accidents and shoulder dislocations and all those things for the baby. Maybe all that coping energy should go into the after-the-birth...

... the problem of course being that the recovery of a c-section is quite different and longer, and breastfeeding may be harder to establish, and all that. There is some slight pressure from our medical team towards a vaginal delivery and I'll ask about that again next week.

I feel like I'm reacting a year and a half too late. I still feel responsible for continuing with Emily's labour, even though that's what we were told to do. Not wanting to press through labour is coming too late for her, and is that guilt affecting my judgment? It probably is. It's hard to know what to do.

I just know that when I am watching anything to do with childbirth on tv and people are saying "I don't want a c-section" to meet some ideal of natural parenthood, I feel like freaking out at them. Don't be stupid.

I'm just not sure which way is stupid.