This article is dedicated to two of my friends that have recently given birth by C-Section. Before writing for the Odyssey, I didn't have much a voice to get this issue out there, but now I do, so here it goes.
Women who have babies through C-Sections ARE STILL MOTHERS.
Not all births are normal. Bad things happen.
My best friend Amanda had to go into a C-Section because they thought that her baby would be too big to fit through her vaginal canal and it could have potentially messed her up really bad inside.
My friend Kat just had to have a C-Section because she was bleeding too much and the babies heart rate was a dangerously high and there was a risk that one or both of them could have died.
LITERALLY COULD HAVE DIED IN CHILDBIRTH.
You can't tell me that these two women and other women like them are not mothers. They carried those children in their bodies for months. They lost sleep over them, they were in pain, and had morning sickness and lost their appetites (or gained them in the worst way) because of their babies.
It sickens me how someone can sit there and say that if someone doesn't have a natural birth that they're not "real mothers." That because they chose to make a split second decision to save both their lives, it gives people the right to tell them that they "took the easy way out." In my opinion, C-Sections are a lot worse than natural vaginal births. Not to say that birth is easy by any means, but when a child is born naturally, the body naturally heals itself and goes back to normal. It doesn't normally take that long. However, with C-Sections, they're literally cutting into them, all the way down beneath all the layers of skin, beneath all the nerves and vessels and are pulling the child out of their bodies. That takes much much longer to heal. Those women have to relearn how to do things in order to deal with their pain. It could take months for them to heal up right. Amanda could barely lift her newborn because she was afraid the stitching would come out.
Literally no one in their right mind would tell a women who gave birth through C-Section that they are not real mothers. They are heroes. They sacrificed their body in the worst ways possible because they knew it would be the best thing for their child. That baby wasn't even out of their body yet and they were already making life-saving decisions for them.
Those mothers in my opinion are heroes, not only for themselves, but for their child as well. Anyone else who thinks otherwise can go have a C-section after carrying another human being for nine months and see how it feels.
Nobody else is their mother, and they are just as good of mothers as any woman who gave natural birth. It's not how they have the children, it's how they raise them and how much love they put into them, and I am so proud of both of my friends and any other woman that has had to go through that experience.
