Roanna Rosewood - Cut, Stapled, and Mended: When One Woman Reclaimed Her Body and Gave Birth on Her Own Terms After Cesarean

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Table of Contents

Praise for Cut, Stapled, & Mended

Roanna Rosewoods Cut, Stapled, & Mended is a bold statement of our birthing times. Every womanwhether youve birthed a baby naturally or notwill find elements of themselves in her story. Please listen closely, notice how this ode to a pregnant womans human rights is a plea many women feel too silenced to speak. Thank you Roanna for offering your voice and speaking your truth.

Karen Rachel Brody, playwright, Birth and founder of BOLD

A riveting, personal story, a true heroines journey of the authors pregnancies, motherhood and the quest for a natural birth. A deeply compelling, rigorously honest, humorous, poignant, and inspiring tale. Anyone interested in the power of natural birth, anyone planning on having a baby or in supporting someone on their journey to motherhood needs to pick this book up. And once you pick it up, you wont be able to put it down until youre wiping your eyes, sharing her joy, sharing a heart filled with her triumph.

Sheri Winston, founder amd executive director of the Center for the Intimate Arts and author of Womens Anatomy of Arousal

I blamed my midwife for my failure to progress but secretly knew it was me; my lack of confidence lead to my failure to progress. Reading Cut, Stapled and Mended made me realize I can start building confidence in my body, mind, and self, now. It gave me the kick in the pants I needed to start getting my life in order, my heart figured out, and my mind straight. Thank you.

Jennifer Quarne Minsch, mother

In honor of the women through whom I was born:

My mother, Ani Nyima Dolma (1944), daughter of
Verna Theurer (1921), daughter of
Arverna Grant (18921963), daughter of
Annie Mariah Hunsaker (18621933), daughter of
Katherine Jensen (18431927), daughter of
Annie Mariah Clawsen (?1848), daughter of
Anne Catherine Urbanson, daughter of...

And those who will be birthed through me.

With special thanks to the friend and midwife who made my story possible, Laura Roe.

Note to the Reader

In telling this story, Ive changed a handful of names to protect others privacy. Everything else is exactly the way I remember it. You wont approve of all of it. I certainly dont. If I could change my past, this would be a very different story. Tread gently through these, the pages of my life. Regardless of your stance in the birth wars, we all want the same thing: healthy and happy babies and mothers.

1 She Visits

I share a bed with my husband, Ben; our children, Avram (age three and a half) and Jonah (fifteen months); and Sky Kitty. We did not plan it this way. There was a time when I was adamantly opposed to family beds. But as each newborn, so small and sweet, came into our lives, it seemed natural to welcome him into our bed. These darling babies have grown into sprawling, long-legged, kicking, leaking, not-so-sweet-smelling boys. And over time, our bodies learned to bend and flex around them in sleep, eight arms and eight legs tangled together with four paws and a tail.

This is called co-sleeping, a term that flusters most Westerners. Elsewhere in the world, co-sleeping is common. Tactfully, people ask how we manage to get any sleep, but what they really want to know is if Ben and I still have sex.

Smiling mysteriously, I like to tell skeptics, It just takes creativity. But thats not completely true. Most often sex involves nothing more than dropping our bodiesalong with our standardsoff the bed and onto the floor. Our children are heavy sleepers. While the couch would be more comfortable, it would also involve planning, or at least enough energy to get up and walk into the other room.

For now, we are into the spontaneous thing. While that sounds exciting, what it really means is that we often forget to have sex until after we fall asleep. When I feel a hand or mouth at my breasthere is the impressive partwithout waking up, I determine who is doing the caressing. Jonah I bring closer, tilting my body to give him easy access to nurse. Avram I face away from me while pressing him in close, using his own body to shield my nummies from him. My husband... well, the response varies. But it rarely involves going all the way into the other room.

Though the floor is now our standard routine, last night was different. A bed was involved, and we were both wide awake. Apparently being awake is conducive to great sex, because it was great sex. A place deep inside of me, a place I didnt even know existed, was called to respond. I held back as long as I could. I held back until some other-world goddess possessed my bodyfor surely the extraordinary woman riding cowgirl style with her face thrown back was not me. Orgasmic Amazon Queen had taken over, her hands running over my body and through my hair, her voice filling the room, leaving the person previously known as me lying there speechless.

Its not often that I find myself without words. Then again, I had never before been possessed by a goddess. Like a fish, my mouth opened and shut. When sound finally passed through it, I heard the last words I could have imagined myself saying: Im pregnant.

Its a girl, Ben replied, and just like that he fell asleep.

What kind of time is this to fall asleep? Does he realize what he just said? Why would he say it unless he, too, experienced some strange thing? If he did, what was it?

As the endorphins wore off, my normal brain regained control and lectured me.

Get it together. You are not someone who gets all woo-woo goddessy or stuck in feelings. You are rational; there is no reason to think you are pregnant. Your only two conceptions were well planned. Both times, you found out the normal way, with a pregnancy test. No weird hunches or cosmic energy was involved.

I am not a New Age sort of person. In fact, I am antiNew Age, probably because my parents tried to raise me to be New Age. In their home, we slept on futons and ate seaweed, tofu, and brown rice daily. Tai Chi, moxa, yoga, meditation, yin and yang, alternative healing, and philosophical discussions were the norm. As a result, once I left home, I did my best to avoid all things New Age.

Im not saying that numerology, crystals, palm reading, channeling, and psychics are bogus. They are simply irrelevant. I prefer coffee to mate, the internet to astrology, and deodorant to patchouli. I dont care what color my chakras are. I create my own future and have enough to do in my busy exterior life that I dont see reason to analyze the inner one.

Rationally, for I pride myself in always being rational, I conclude that the whole goddess experience was not real but the result of great-sex-meets-too-much-spicy-food. I resolve to not think about it again and, wrapping my arms around Bens peaceful body, join him in sleep.

When morning comes, there is no time for indulgent baby girl thoughts. My boys, still in various stages of undress, have turned the couch into a fortress and are whacking each other with pillows. Sky hides from the commotion under a table, the tip of his tail twisting in disapproval.

I make breakfast, wrestle the boys into clothing, feed them oatmeal with butter and maple syrup, change their sticky, syrup-covered clothing, do dishes, fold laundry, put the couches back together, get the boys into their raincoats and rubber bootsa must in our Oregon springherd them out the door, and buckle them into their car seats to take them to their annual well child exams.

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