MamaPingu, you wait until he's older and can articulate his feelings.
I felt so guilty and detached and in a lot of ways nobody could tell me that it was okay, that I hadn't let my baby down, that my body wasn't absolutely rubbish at this thing that was supposed to be natural. Then the strangest thing happened. DD grew up. She started to ask questions about the day she was born and the things she asked about weren't what I expected. She would ask for the story of how she pooed on the nurse or what did she look like and did I cry and can she see the hat put on her and a million questions besides. I realised a couple of things quite quickly. There were two people there that day. Birth wasn't a choice I made, it was a path decided by luck and the circumstances of the two people there. It didn't matter that I knew about hypnobirthing, that I had wanted a different path, that I hadn't managed a vaginal birth because it wasn't just about me. It was also about the baby I had and for whatever reason, that baby couldn't get through the normal way and actually wasn't it just a bit brilliant that modern medicine had an alternative? And because I'd focussed so much on me and what I had or hadn't achieved, it took the other person who had been there that day finding sheer delight and amusement in the little details of the day for me to see what it really was. It wasn't a cs. That was just an incidental fact. It was day one. It was the day we met. It was a story of the day I became a Mum and dd became her own separate entity. And retelling the story to her, making her laugh and sharing my memories, I started to reframe the whole day in my mind. I realised that dd didn't blame me. She hadn't suffered. She had lived and she was there asking me these questions about a marvellous and monumental day.
Time is a great healer, as is perspective. I so desperately wish that I could give birth vaginally but I know realistically that this is meaningless as wishes go. Because a vaginal birth can be a traumatic experience too, it has its own difficulties, its own permutations and what is it I actually want out of birth? A baby. And I achieved that bit. The other stuff outside of the healthy baby is very important and nobody should tell you that you can't be affected or traumatised but I can tell you that what you wish you didn't have is the feelings of trauma. Those feelings of trauma aren't caused by having a cs, people with ventouse or forceps or natural deliveries have them too. Once you've acknowledged it for what it is, you start to move on.
Don't forget too that you've had major surgery which makes feelings of fatigue and detachment and otherworldliness that much more intense. You're healing physically and emotionally and sometimes you just shut down a bit.
Silly films. It's all just rubbish really.