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Thoughts on giving birth. Again.

Now that I'm pregnant with baby number 2 (and made it to the 12 week mark! Yay! It's a sigh of relief), it's been slowly dawning on me that I'll have to give birth again.

Yes. It's obvious. The baby can't stay inside forever, right? Although when my daughter was first born and we got the shock of our lives as to how hard parenting is, I did sometimes wish she could go back in.

I mean, being heavily pregnant is pretty uncomfortable, but at least they don't cry then.

Anyway, now that we've made it through the scary first trimester, I'm realizing that this baby will have to come out, at some point. And my feelings on that are . . . mixed (as though I have a choice in that matter!)

I'm not scared of birth. I'm not dreading it. I don't feel anxious about it (yet, maybe check back on that one closer to the time). And I know that I can do it.

But right now, the thought of giving birth just sounds really unappealing.

And now it's totally okay for you to say, "you're kidding, right?"

Unappealing. Not a stronger emotion like horrible or terrifying or exciting? No. Just unappealing.

It sounds really stupid to write, because saying that giving birth seems unappealing sounds so tepid and silly. I mean, it's not like someone would use the word appealing to describe how they feel about giving birth.

And that's just it. The thought of it makes me grimace, slightly. I'm not looking forward to experiencing the birthing process again (I do hope that my feelings on this change as time goes on!). Since having my first, I can no longer stomach birthing videos, whereas before she was born I would watch them all the time. But that's all it is, really. A discomfort about the impending discomfort (okay, I'll admit that using the word discomfort to describe labor is the understatement of the century). 

It's interesting though, because I was incredibly lucky in that I had a really positive birthing experience with my first. It was uncomplicated until right at the end, when the umbilical cord prolapsed, but our very skilled midwife handled that impeccably. I felt safe, supported, and empowered. It was doable. It was good. I was really proud of myself.

Although the birth was all of those good things, it wasn't one dimensional. It was, without a doubt, the hardest thing I've ever done (maybe aside from caring for our newborn, but that was a different type of hard). It was excruciatingly painful in a way that I don't even have words to describe. The feelings of labor, like the pain and the pressure, had an intensity to them which I can only compare to that of a tidal wave or a volcanic eruption. I knew it would be painful, but I wasn't prepared for how intense it would be.

I don't know. Maybe I just feel hesitant or cautious in case my experience isn’t so positive this time around. Maybe it's the aftermath of birth, of having a newborn and a toddler, that worries me. Maybe it was because I tore badly last time and I don’t want to go through that again. Maybe it’s all of these things.

So yeah. These are my rambling thoughts about birth round two. There will probably be many more as time goes on, so I might dump them here. We’ll see how we go.
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