30 Days of Truth Day 3

Day 3: Something you have to forgive yourself for.


I ignored my blog because I did not want to write this one. Honestly! Well today is the day I own up and tell the truth. I need to forgive myself for my eldest son's birth and childhood.

This was taken after his conehead went away.

I was 18 when I had him, and was a week overdue, so stupidly I said induce me... well 9am they started. About 6pm the doctor broke my water to speed things along. Along the way I had an epidural. They kept asking, can you feel the contractions? I said yes, cause I could.... needless to say they turned it up way too high. I slept some and then in the wee early hours I started pushing. I couldn't feel anything so I was pushing as hard as I could. I broke blood vessels around my eyes from pushing so hard.... so i'm pushing and haven't eaten anything for hours and I started puking while pushing. Lovely huh. Then the doctor gave me an option, forceps or vacuum... I didn't know what to choose and I had to choose one so I wouldn't have a c-section. I choose vacuum. He was born at 6:36 am. He also had fluid in his lungs, so they took him away to put in an incubator.

After that was a blur. I wanted to see my baby but my legs were totally numb. It felt like a whole day later I was wheeled down to see him. I tried to breastfeed him but was struggling. I also basically had an out of body experience too. I had lost a lot of blood and was anemic on top of it so I wasn't feeling myself to say the least. The nurses tried moving me to a different room, and I refused. They went behind my back and told my doctor and I got a you just had a baby, you need to grow up pep talk. SO finally someone figured out I needed something because my blood levels were very low. They pushed a blood transfusion on me and I refused so they gave me an iron iv. Thank god, it made me feel normal again, well as normal as you can after having a baby.

I brought Victor home and I struggled with breastfeeding him more. Was told to supplement him (instead of breastfeeding education) and ended up supplementing him until he was exclusively bottle fed. I felt like a total failure. So I went back to work and let my mom raise him while I worked. She got paid to babysit so it was nice for her to have an income, and I could work where I knew what I was doing.

My mom helped raise him until he was 4 years old and I got married. Instead of getting the support I needed and me fighting for my kid, I gave in. I was so depressed. I never really bonded with my kid. When I had him full time it was an eye opener. I am sad because we're still not real close. He lost his grandfather to cancer that he was close to and he's not really close to his real dad either.

Instead of dwelling on the past, I need to look to the present and future. I need to be there for my kiddo and love him unconditionally.