I cried during my first C-section

The woman on the operating table is bleeding out from the incisions made in her abdomen. We do our best to manage the pain, but every new cut is received with a cry from behind the curtain. I flinch. I'm not used to hearing these sounds. The sight is bearable, but the cries are not. After a couple of minutes, the baby emerges. 

But the first utterance that leaves the mother's mouth is not anything regarding her condition or pain, or the way that her abdomen has been violently ripped apart, or the blood that is pulsing out of the wound like a fountain pen forced onto paper. No -- she worries, desperately, about why she couldn't hear her baby cry. 

Nothing could have prepared me emotionally for that. I tried to hide my expression behind my surgical mask. I'm not easily moved, but a mother's love could move me. 

I think a father can love in many ways -- working years in a dead-end manual profession so his children could go to university, instilling the discipline necessary to correct a child after he had stolen something from the store. But a mother's love is different. It is urgent. It is anguished. It is, more than anything, obsessive and hysterical, which makes it incomprehensible for me. But, at least, I can understand the kind of decision that has been made. 

In an instant, her youth, beauty, and future have been snatched from her. If she delivers vaginally, her reproductive organs will be changed permanently. If she delivers via C-section, she will have a scar across her belly for the rest of her life. Either way, she will likely have loose skin and stretch marks. She may have difficulty controlling urination in the future. She will commit herself to the sole cause of raising her children for the next two decades.  

I often hear that having children is a woman's highest purpose. I have always disliked how easily this kind of statement could be asserted. It reminds me of how the mob lectures a victim (especially in the Christian sphere) into forgiving a perpetrator. Perhaps it is better to forgive -- at least in the abstract. But the weight of forgiveness should be proportional to the weight of mental suffering, and if one cheapens their forgiveness and gives it out too freely, then one also devalues the amount of suffering experienced. Then, I am forced to question whether one really suffered. 

Simply, one must come to terms with the full weight of their suffering to appreciate what forgiveness really means. Similarly, one must appreciate the full weight of pregnancy to say that it was truly worth it.