What if Your C-Section Inspired Your Child’s Need to Escape?

Raise your hands if you’ve got young children who climb out windows, the Rabbi says to us—a small group of single Jewish mothers.

I laugh out loud until half—perhaps 15—raise hands. 

Now, keep your hands up if you’ve had a C-Section. The Rabbi barely glances from his book.

Two hands lower. 

The Rabbi moves from behind the small podium, weaves between us, hands flailing as he continues:

Your thoughts, every thought, while your child formed in utero transferred from you to them. The method they exited your womb and entered the world also influenced them. Everything—thought, experience, energy–has shaped their little personalities, built their traits.

I’m here in Saint Paul, Minnesota, November, 2011, while my sons, ages three, eight, and ten, remain back home in Idaho with my friend, Esther. I’m here because Esther secured me a scholarship. And I’m here because she knew before I did that I needed a break, needed support, needed one night to sleep four hours all in a row.

As you read this, you might wonder: Nature versus nurture. I’m certain this debate launched with Cain and Abel. Began with Eve asking, most likely herself, How could one of my sons hold so much generosity while the other carries a capacity to kill? 

Did she bother asking how we all hold all things? A better question, What pushes us to make hate, jealousy, murder brim over to the point we act it out?

And what about the transference of ancestral wounds? My grandmothers? My grandmothers’ grandmothers?

I raise my hand. I ask, Can I un-do those pregnancy thoughts? The bad ones that I pushed into my sons?

Religion is little if not the opportunity to infuse guilt.

My first-born, Zach, arrived broken in body—deformed hands and feet, visually impaired, defected heart, deaf. I once listed in my journal all of his medical anomalies and, next to the list, I penned a second list, this one of my contributions. Every bit of his suffering was surely my fault. Great, I think. Now, I can blame my pregnant thoughts. 

Truth? I freaked throughout that first pregnancy. I wish I would’ve learned to rest. 

I still wish I could learn to rest.

Every pregnancy—all three—I over-exercised. I feared fatness. I nested. I cleaned. I cleansed. I painted and then re-painted. I bought baskets and containers and label-guns and re-organized. I color-coded clothing, apparel, my spice rack.

My first pregnancy was the most intense. It ripped through my psyche with wind speeds up to 300 mph—violent, shredding cars, turning broken debris into lethal weapons. 

Throughout those months, I thought, I’m not qualified. I’ve never changed a diaper. Never fed a baby, baby-sat. Never rocked or sang or swayed. This baby will certainly perish in my arms, me, unknowing mommy-me. 

And throughout that pregnancy, I read every book on babies, took classes and courses and workshops. Re-read. Re-took. I think, to date, I’ve completed the Parenting with Love & Logic Course at least seven times. 

You can’t, the Rabbi says.

He searches my face, controlled but wavering on crumbling.

He continues, After learning this, you now understand their challenges. You now know bettter how to guide them.

I stifle a laugh.

If he only knew, the way my sons have guided me. Me-before baby me. 

I once confessed, My sons have transformed me on a cellular level. This. Truth. How much courage they poured into me as they stretched and distorted my belly. How much energy as I rose at one and three and four for feedings. How much hope I soaked in our post-op all-nighters—changing bandages, squeezing ointment into stitched eyes and heart wounds. I felt my ancestors feet stagger in sand, a babe on her back, as I hoisted one infant on my left hip, the other, carrying the extra weight of casted feet, on my right.

Today, in our kitchen, my youngest, now 16, rolls beef into meatballs and drops them into a crockpot. We take turns tossing my grandmother’s secret ingredients—garlic salt, ketchup, and grape jelly. We vow to tell no-one what’s in the meatballs. “Thunderstruck” comes on Alexa, I air guitar and burst the lyrics and my son, pauses, I swear, a meatball mid-air.

When did you learn those words? he asks.

When I was younger than you. I keep strumming, legs wide, flopping my head so my hair shimmies like a rock star.

After, we take turns shouting songs for Alexa to play: Squeeze. The Cure. Led Zepplin. Here, the strange and magical fuse. I know I played music on the radio as we rushed through errands. I understand a mother’s influence on culture and tradition. Yet not one of my sons enjoy gardening or prayer and still, these are my daily meditations. All three boys snuck bacon-double cheeseburgers, and here, I’m a kosher-keeping Jew in the center of Star, Idaho.

We know so little of inheritance. We know so little. 

This morning while in prayer, I ask that my boys absorbed only my good thoughts as they built out of embryos and into men. I ask that I poured enough love through each umbilical cord. I wipe tears, not realizing, I’m crying, but swimming in gratitude for each son, for all sons, all daughters, all of you.

I’d forgotten—we—each of us, are umbilically connected.