Fear. This is the first emotion you feel when your labor takes a turn for the worse. When your progression slows. When your baby’s heart stops beating. You feel fear. You fear for your life and the life of your unborn child. The fear takes over your body and survival mode kicks in. No amount of research done or books read prepares you for this. You don’t really think at all. You just focus on the fear, your mind goes blank, and your body goes numb. It’s extremely instinctual: fight or flight. If it wasn’t for the epidural turning my legs to Jell-O, I may have chosen flight. Run and pretend that nothing was wrong. Just rewind and go back to when everything was seemingly fine.

Then you feel failure. Why couldn’t your body do the one thing it is physiologically programmed to do? What does this say about the kind of mom you will be? If your body didn’t know how to have a baby, how will you know how to be a parent? What if I wasn’t meant to do this? You feel like your body failed you and like you have already failed your child. You spent 9 long months nurturing and growing this baby just to have things go wrong now. You wonder if you could have done something, anything, differently to prevent this.  You wonder if you did everything right. Or everything wrong. You blame yourself and you feel the failure to your core.

But then there’s a moment. And you pause. When you hear your baby cry for the first time after not knowing if he had a heartbeat. When they put him on your chest and you can feel him move. After dreaming of what he looked like for months, you can finally see him.  No longer the mysterious bump and squirming in your belly…you finally have your baby. It is the deepest feeling of relief and happiness I’ve ever known.

The emotional rollercoaster is tough. In the beginning, you will continue to feel fear and failure every day. The more people ask about your birth, the more failure you feel. Having to explain why a C-section was necessary, as if you’re trying to justify to yourself that it wasn’t your fault. You over explain and try to convince yourself, more than anyone else, that it was the only option.

People will say (over and over again) the one thing that should never be said to a woman who had an emergency C-section: “You are so lucky you didn’t have to push…” That feeling of failure will rush back every time.

You’ll be tempted to correct them (or yell at them.) That you aren’t lucky. You aren’t lucky that your baby’s heart stopped, that you couldn’t have the birth you wanted, that you didn’t get to experience what you’ve waited 9 months for, that you couldn’t do what your body is supposed to do. That you failed.

But instead, you’ll smile and nod.

It’s not easy to cope with an emergency delivery, but the feelings get better. You will come to accept the delivery for all that it is. The good and the bad all blend together, and you just remind yourself how amazing you are. The more you see your baby grow and thrive. Every ounce gained. Every inch grown. Every milestone reached. It all reassures that you did what was necessary to save your baby’s life. You made a decision that ensured your baby was safe. You kept your baby healthy. You did not fail. You did not run. You made the choice to fight. You’ll start to see your incision as proof of your strength and bravery. As the gateway that brought your baby safely into the world. As a beautiful battle scar.