This Mother’s Day, I’m giving birth to a stone. One comes along every 2 to 5 years. My kidney feels like it’s going to burst. They say it’s worse than childbirth, and after I had a child, I was asked, is it true? Yesterday after vomiting my guts out but before going to the ER, I had flashbacks to labor and felt a panic attack coming on and managed to block all thoughts and comparisons, all body memory from my mind.
Childbirth is traumatic.
Let’s say it again: Childbirth is traumatic.
Louder in the back,
CHILDBIRTH IS TRAUMATIC.
Struggling to conceive is traumatic. Losing a child is traumatic. Giving birth to a child is traumatic. Recovery is a slowburn black hole.
On this day we celebrate a mother’s love. How about we acknowledge our pain?
I probably wouldn’t be writing this if I weren’t in physical agony. The stone could pass in 10 minutes or could take two months. Thanks to the opioid epidemic, I was prescribed flippin ibuprofen. While at the ER, they wouldn’t give me painkillers until I had a pregnancy test because a woman’s barfing, moaning pain is less critical than potential harm to a hypothetical, extremely unlikely zygote, given I’m on birth control and started menstruating that morning. The nurse said she’d never had to do this in the nine years she’s been practicing. Is this because Texas? They are ramming through a 6-week abortion ban because fuck women.
“You’ll need to pee in a cup,” well, my pee’s all backed up, nothing comes out, that’s why I’m here, damn. 30 minutes later, I eked out an ounce, in another 15 got morphine, which helped about an hour. Had a CT scan that will surely blow through our entire HSA to find a 3mm stone, “too small to treat.”
I love my kid like crazy, and it’s crazy that I’m compelled to say it, that all this talk of trauma requires the consolation, to absolve me of being whiny and remind me I’m ungrateful and should feel ashamed.
But this stone? This stone can go to hell.
So anyway. Fellow mamas. Warriors and beasts. A grave nod and grimace to all the mothers out there —anyone who is or has tried to be.
(Pointing out the ghost moon in the brilliant blue sky. Blessings are many but feel abstract and scattered while these evenings without doubt are precious.)
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