The second and last time I gave birth was 19 years ago to a perfect baby girl. My first labor was an emergency cesarian section where I was completely put under anesthesia after being in labor for two days and robbed of the moment of seeing my son’s first moments of life.<\/p>\n
I was often told that once you have a c-section, you can’t give birth naturally again but 19 years ago in North Central Hospital in The Bronx, a team of nurses coached me through a natural birth that took 17 hours.<\/p>\n
It was a such a different experience to give birth naturally, the instant my daughter was born all the labor pains magically dissolved and I actually asked for a cheeseburger and fries.<\/p>\n
Nineteen years can go by like a dream, hopefully you fill your years with joyous moments of pleasantry and loving cooperation as I’ve done my best to do. A birthday turns to two turns to ten turns to today and all I can say is that I’ve loved each and every moment along the way.<\/p>\n
Being a mother was always something I wanted, more than anything, I wanted to raise a child and the universe gave me two. I feel beyond blessed, because being a mother taught me how to truly love and after loving my children so unconditionally,<\/p>\n
I learned how to love myself that way too. I wasn’t taught to accept myself as I was, I was raised with unreachable standards of perfection. So no matter how perfect I tried to be, I never truly felt beautiful and never really loved myself. Loving my children has been easy though, because they are mine.<\/p>\n
I chose to bring them into this world and loving them was my duty, not a condition I’d share with them only if they pleased me. Even through the difficult moments over the years, I felt peace knowing I always did my best with the intention of creating a happy home and an undying bond with my children.<\/p>\n
They were raised to love and respect themselves, as well as each other. Do no harm, take no shit, is pretty much how I taught them to live. Now that my youngest child has reached the age of 19, I am confident in the person they have become.<\/p>\n
Them\/They\/Their are the pronouns my daughter identifies with, not She\/Her\/Hers and at first it was confusing but I have come to understand it this way…<\/p>\n
If someone leaves something behind and you don’t know who it is, you’d say, “Someone left Their belongings.” It’s the same with gender non-conforming people, They are Themselves, not a gender but a being.<\/p>\n
Hopefully, this will help you too. It’s disrespectful to assume or ignore how someone identifies, so it’s time to start asking and adjusting. The courage it takes to stand their ground and face the world has given me courage, not to change the pronouns I identify with, but the courage to embrace the changes that come with aging as a proud right of passage.<\/p>\n
I stopped dying my hair to hide the gray and walk around with no makeup a lot more often than I ever have, feeling like a child again and feeling more beautiful than ever. My child’s love for me gave me the strength to become this way. Little did I know that what I was birthing 19 years ago was the love I’d wished for my entire life.<\/p>\n
Happy Birthday Carina!<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The second and last time I gave birth was 19 years ago to a perfect baby girl. My first labor was an emergency cesarian section where I was completely put under anesthesia after being in labor for two days and robbed of the moment of seeing my son’s first moments of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/caridaddelaluz.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Carina-Papo.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caridaddelaluz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/caridaddelaluz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/caridaddelaluz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caridaddelaluz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caridaddelaluz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1047"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/caridaddelaluz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1054,"href":"https:\/\/caridaddelaluz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions\/1054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caridaddelaluz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caridaddelaluz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caridaddelaluz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caridaddelaluz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}