My first blog was a joint effort with my husband, D, that he started when I was in labor with Z to keep our friends and family updated. Because I was in labor for a rather long time. And things didn’t go according to plan. Many of you read those entries and followed along with us as we tried to bring our first baby into this world. While that blog is long gone, I do have several emails from dear friends and family from that time period and it was lovely to read them, to remind myself of those days when I was so blissfully in love with this tiny person and learning how to be his mama. I remember waking up at night to feed him and sometimes, not going back to sleep because I couldn’t stop watching his sweet, dear face as he slept. What a true miracle newborns are.
I had planned to have Z in a birth center and had been seen by wonderful midwives throughout my pregnancy. The birth was going to be a natural one. I had read all the important books on natural births from Ina May Gaskin to Birthing from Within. I had taken a Hypnobirthing childbirth class. I had been raised in a community where many women had natural births, my sister had recently had a home birth. My aunt, who would come up during my labor, had birthed her three babies at home and worked in a freestanding birth center. I had done all my homework, set the stage for the birth I wanted. I was used to that being all I needed to do for things to go well. Z’s long and complicated entry into the world would be my first lesson in holding plans lightly when raising children.
I. Birthwork ~ for my firstborn ~ You and I worked together so hard and for so long for your arrival. But it was the first time for both of us and we never did get it quite right. When you sounded the alarm (that plummet in the rapid fluttering of your heartbeat, enough to make my own heart stop) I had already agreed, my body stopped opening, starting to close back up around your tiny perfect head. And the midwife, the blessed midwife, said your birth would be surgical. I answered for us both knowing we had no other choice: We’d worked as hard as we could. And so the gentle, quiet, lovely birth I had dreamed of and imagined for months turned. Your birth was bright lights; gloved hands; shiny, cold, metal instruments. And the time between our first separation— when you were twisted and turned and pulled from my belly— and our first touch, soft warm baby cheek to mine, cold and shivering, was longer than the four days of labor, the ten months of pregnancy, the six excruciating months when I was trying and hoping for your conception. But your little elfin face dimmed the bright lights (or maybe it was the tears in my eyes) and warmed the cold, sterile, operating room. And though I couldn’t hold you, I saw you: The most beautiful, perfect little being, proclaiming your own protest of this entry. You wore your birth journey like a badge of courage on your forehead—just as I had 31 years earlier. And I knew you were already learning from me— learning to wear your struggles with pride. ~Rachel Latta
After almost four days of labor, I was admitted to the hospital where I was promptly given an epidural so I could sleep. I was firm and clear, even in my haze of exhaustion, that I did not want pitocin (a drug given to induce or progress labor). I just wanted to rest so I could start up again and bring this baby into the world without any extra medication or intervention.
The nurses chose to override my wishes.
After not even a 15-minute nap, I was awoken by the sound of machines beeping and nurses rushing into my room. His heart rate was dropping. It was too low.
His birth would be a surgical one.
If natural birth is not something you wanted or have experienced, it is hard to explain why this can feel like such a dramatic failure. My husband was so worried I would fight them, that I would refuse the c-section. He knew well my feelings on the medicalization of birth.
But I knew. We had tried. So very hard.
And we just couldn’t get to the birth on our own.
When my midwife told me this was what my baby needed, I trusted her. And they prepped me for surgery, woke up the obstetrician (who I was told was the only doctor left who hand stitched the incision rather than using staples), cut me open, and pulled my baby out into the world. The first Apgar score was low, and D saw several neonatologists rush in to assess our little baby. He tried to keep his worry from me. Telling me only after the second Apgar came back at a nine, and the gloved hands moved away from my baby.
All these years later, I can be right back there. On the surgical table, worrying that the anesthesia was taking too long so lying to the doctor and saying I couldn’t feel anything. When I absolutely still felt everything. And felt the start of the incision before my pelvis finally went numb. The pain of that cut after four days of labor, after worrying that my baby was in distress, was nothing. Hearing my baby’s cry and aching to hold him. An ache I had never known before. Something so primal and instinctual, I felt like I would bound off the table and go to him, if I didn’t know that my body was still sliced open and being put back together. The love that enveloped me when they handed me my tiny, perfect baby. How can you describe that feeling? How can you put to words something so complete? Something you can’t imagine how you lived without before that moment?
Perhaps I should have known, given how hard his entry into this world was, that I would struggle mightily with his entry into adulthood, with leaving for college. That my difficulty letting him leave the warmth of my womb was predicting my challenge with letting him leave my life to start his own.
Perhaps I also could have learned from his birth, that while the entry was hard, once he arrived, he was perfect.
And I wouldn’t change a thing.
This post is dedicated to the people who helped me bring my babies into the world:
My husband, who has been with me on every step of this parenting journey
My beloved midwives
My mom, who had seven unmedicated, natural births
My aunt Jenny, who has helped me through the many labors of birth, mothering, and marriage
My dad, who has loved my babies with the same pure, unmitigated love with which he loved his own children
My sister, Bronwyn, who was there to care for my older child(ren) when I had their sibling and was a faithful companion when Z wanted to go to Starbox (:
And my sister, Stephanie, who supports mothers as they bring their babies into the world as a labor and delivery nurse. And is about to be a certified nurse midwife. What a source of strength and love she is for so many babies and their mamas.