This day last year

In about a half hour,
I will be one year out from the start of my VBAC labor.

All day long I've been revisiting this day last year: June 8th, 2012.

So many thoughts. So many emotions. So many ways to process it all.

Mostly I just sit and watch it like a movie. And I shake my head and say, I can't believe it. It was so amazing.
So amazing that it happened.
So amazing that I survived. (emotionally) (And well, maybe in some people's mind's physically as well -- as I did a home birth after a previous c-section.)
So amazing that I signed up for the entire thing. (Pregnancy despite: fear, unknown everything (job, next place we would live, next person who would deliver my baby, how that baby would get out), and faith I felt was too weak to make it through.)
So amazing that the baby I got out of the deal is just the sweetest, happiest, fun-est, easy-going-est amazing little being who seems just totally oblivious of the fact she was swimming in pregnancy terror hormones for 10 months. (Yeah...I was pregnant forever.) She is her own person. Very unique, and not made out of my striving. She has His fingerprints all over her smiley face cheeks.

God, I am feeling just so grateful today for the way you have blessed me. Over and over. More than I asked, and I felt like I asked A LOT. Thank you.

The sunset tonight was pink and purple. And the air was thick for the first time this year, at least thick in the same way it was everyday last summer. And I finally felt it. In the sensation of time travel that air brought, I finally felt how, yes, it has been a whole year since Ruby was born. I can't believe it in so many ways. The time has flown by --- I had been saying that it felt like just yesterday that I did that whole home birth business. But tonight with the thick slimy summer air sliding over my ears, I finally realized how long ago it really was, and just how different I am now. Just how far I am from terrified. Just how calm I am in the July air now. Just how deeply I know some things. And how adamantly I feel them for others, not just myself. And how fiercely I want to fend for anyone I understand after all this.

If you have had a c-section (and ache over it) and don't know if you'll ever VBAC, at least know this -- that someone knows how strong you are.
I know you are strong.
I know you are.
And if you never know it.
I know it.

I want to smear it on you like paint.
A badge of honor.
You are so, so, so much stronger than you know.

When my second daughter was placed on my chest, on the floor of her room, after 2 years of me doubting myself, I finally felt proud of my c-section, because I finally saw that it was a bigger act of womenhood  and a deeper gift to give as a mother -- for me to have gone there and done that and kept on going, than it ever was to naturally birth. That was the first real sensation I had after her VBAC birth -- I remember laying my head down closing my eyes and knowing I had always been strong, I just took a long time to accept it.