A Birth Story
This is a story about your birth. You are 4 and tomorrow I will be 41 years old. It has taken me this long to find it.
Before you were born we were given a baby journal. A little blank book to be filled with words about the first 4 years of your life, starting with the day you were born.
When you were new, I’d open the book with pen in hand, ready to fill it with the tender and sweet words I knew were meant to be written there. But the words I had were only coarse and awkward, and they strangled in my throat and withered at the tip of my pen. So the pages remained blank, a question waiting to be answered.
I am still a little resentful of this book – its presumption that I should so easily find a story of tender and sweet words, as if the work of being born is not coarse and awkward and terrible, and filled with all kinds of stories.
The day of your birth was filled with stories. A maelstrom of words filling the rooms where you came into life, and very few I think, were tender and sweet. In all of this somewhere is your story, but it is so wound up in my story that I can’t tell which parts belong to me, and which belong to you. I try to find the individual threads and tease them apart, but when I pull on one the whole thing unravels, words falling into my lap in a pile without shape or meaning.
First, here is a story about my birth. (These words are simple and easy to arrange.)
I was born at home (this was planned), during a snowstorm (this was not planned). The doctor drove to our house but got stuck in the snow. My father and a neighbor had to go and get him. (This is my father’s only appearance in the story.)
My mother tore and had to get 32 stitches. (I was an inconveniently large baby at 9lbs 11oz.)
Our granny made my sisters burgers for lunch that day (they were 6 and 3). The doctor stole these burgers for himself. (This part is told by my oldest sister, who is still resentful of the burger theft at every re-telling. I picture the doctor taking both burgers for himself while my sisters go hungry, with no more burgers to be made or eaten that day.)
That is it. That is the story of my birth. My granny was there making burgers, but she tells no part of this story. It is not surprising that my father’s part is limited, I don’t imagine he had much else to do with it all. What is more curious to me, though, is that I am missing from the story. Here it is, the day of my birth. I had nothing to do with the snowstorm. I was not responsible for my mother’s pain. I was not the one stealing burgers from small children. I am just a kind of empty space that the others are moving around (and rather reluctantly, at that). But this is the story I was given, and it carries the weight of my life. I am special, but fairly inconvenient, with a big empty space in the middle.
You might imagine why the story of your birth seemed so important and so difficult. When I tried to find the parts that belonged to me, it felt like I was erasing you, but when I tried to find the parts that only belonged to you, it seemed I had to erase myself. And I don’t want there to be any empty spaces in this story where people should be.
So here is a story about your birth. It is just one story, and not even the entirety of it, (some words still wither, unwritten) but it is a story I have found that has no empty spaces.
You were born late in the evening on October 24th, 2015. A Saturday, just a couple hours shy of your doctor-assigned due date. (I was born 5 days early in a snowstorm, so this timeliness I think is your part, but you don't have to hold on to it.)
Act I is hopeful and tenuous.
It is the tail end of a long summer. I am home in the afternoon on Friday, sending some emails as the last of my to-dos before your arrival, when my water breaks. This is decidedly un-dramatic, a small but notable trickling of fluid that I am not sure about at first. This is not the order things are supposed to happen in, and I struggle to remember what my doctor or the birthing class teacher had said about this. In any event, I am sure it is fine and no reason to rush, and the nurse on the phone confirms this.
The doctor who calls a few hours later disagrees, however. I want to write her out of this story. (I am.)
We ignore the doctor’s orders long enough to eat egg salad sandwiches for dinner before heading to the hospital. Our doula meets us there. Her name is Meg. She does not appear much in this story but she is there, filling the space around and between us. She holds our story at times and hands it back to us gently when we need it.
Your father and I are vigilantly watching for and trying to time contractions. Things are happening, but it’s confusing. If we hadn’t sprung a leak, these contractions would be inconsequential and we’d still be at home. But instead we are at the hospital wondering what we should be doing, and on the clock. (The doctors have strong feelings about how long one is allowed to be leaking before giving birth.)
Act II is interminable. It spreads across space and time like spilled water across a tabletop, threatening to drip over the edge and on to everything, but no one knows where the edge is and there is no towel to sop it up.
The labor at first is bearable, until it isn’t. Still I bear it, because I worry about getting drugs too early and having them wear off or slow down labor or whatever else I imagined might go wrong.
I don’t want to undersell it though. It is brutal. But as it happens people can’t just wish themselves into nothing. So I am here in my body and there is nothing else for it. This labor is an iron vice cinching tighter and tighter around my back and sides and front and down my thighs and it is fracturing my soul while holding me in this place.
At times I manage to sleep. I guess here I have managed to escape my body. At some point the doula wonders if my contractions have stopped. They have not, I have simply lost all my will to react.
Other times I ask how far along we are, wanting desperately to know how much longer it will be. No one can know this and because of the leaking they won’t check. No, that’s not true – they do check once, it’s not good news.
Somewhere there is an overnight. Your father also sleeps.
Somewhere they tell me I am not in “labor” yet. In my head I tell them to fuck off. The doula apologizes for the ignorance of the words but the anger still sticks to me.
They tell me my contractions are still too far apart. Was it 5 minutes? 3 minutes? More? I don’t know. But they don’t know that these contractions are 2 minutes long. They come at me like waves, just as one big one crests a little one sneaks up behind it and pushes me deeper under the water. I have only a second to find my footing in the undertow before the next big one crashes into me.
They tell me I have an infection. I don’t believe them. I don’t feel it in my body. What do I imagine it would even feel like? I get an IV.
Somewhere in the second half I ask for drugs. Two rounds of fentanyl so I can have a break. During the second round I start to feel these contractions again, a pain not far from the previous, drug-free, contractions. Either the drug is not working or these contractions have doubled in strength. I do not want to be around for the answer when the drug wears off. I ask for the epidural.
After all of this, somehow, getting the epidural is the single-most unbearable part of the whole ordeal. Or maybe it is, and I just have nothing left to bear it with. It must be inserted twice. I am sitting still for the anesthesiologist but I am shaking, crumbling. Your father is holding me up.
The doula tells me my heartbeat is too fast, I need to calm myself. I am caught off guard by this, imagining that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing in sitting still. But my heart is screaming and these machines can hear it and she can see it. (The doctors also have strong feelings about how fast one’s heart should be beating during “labor”.)
Briefly I think about all the times in my life when I was sitting still while shaking, crumbling, but there was nothing and no one there to hear my heart screaming. (Of course I am not thinking so coherently in the moment, but this thought skitters across my brain like a startled bug, hiding in a corner to show itself when I come back later to clean up.)
But this time she is there, and your father is here, holding me up. His hands on the sides of my face, his forehead on mine. I settle into those hands, breathe into him. I let him take some of this and my heart calms down.
I know your father is scared. I am destroyed, being worn into pieces by these waves, and I am resigned, but I don’t think I am scared. He still has all of his faculties in place to think and worry and feel helpless. But he is in it with me, in the way I need him to be. I am leaking and crying and crumbling, but he is holding me up, holding me.
And this here, is something. That two people who have struggled so much with how to be whole and connected, with needing and being needed, somehow in these moments know exactly how it is supposed to work. (Someday we will forget again, but not here, not in these first moments of your life.)
Act III is climbing a mountain.
After the epidural, I sleep. I am woken up. They say both of our hearts are screaming, and they are worried. In that moment what I know is that your heart is not screaming, it is shouting, and mine is shouting along with it, matching pace. Here we find your thread, as twisted up with mine as it will ever be.
The normal flow of time has returned to the room and you are ready to go. A kind nurse tries to console me, offering sympathy that this is not how I wanted it to go. I do not care, I feel ready to climb a mountain and want to get on with it.
As soon as we begin to push, our hearts calm down. In your eagerness to escape, I can feel your little foot pushing off my ribcage, until you are too far down to reach it.
(This pushing is also a gift, from Doctor #2, who tells us we have very little time to progress before the work is done for us, and this tiny little foot pushing you’ve been practicing for months has now become a kind of victory.)
This part lasts for two hours. I find it variously awkward and uncomfortable, unable to move or turn how I want with all the tape and tubes and people attached to me. I try not to think about how many people are now suddenly in the room watching. But my body has its own rhythm, steady, measured, and rushing for no one. These 2 minute contractions now come with a 5 minute break between them. I can’t feel them, but somehow sense when they are coming.
Here you begin to emerge. Somehow in the mess a nurse can see your silky blonde hair. You come out with your eyes wide open. (I hope you do hold on to that part.)
Here is where your thread loosens and begins to twist alongside mine.
I have done the thing that needed to be done, and have no idea what to do with the things that happen next. They put you on me for a brief time. It is slippery and disconcerting and the first thing I notice is how big your hands are. (I also hope you can appreciate the absurdity of a person crying out “his hands are so big!” the first time they lay eyes on their child. Your hands are normal size now.)
But now you are grunting and the crowd of people who had filled the room get moving, taking you to a little incubator across the room.
Your father stands by you, speaking gently. I see you calm and turn at the sound of his voice. (he doesn’t believe me when I tell him this, but I have no doubt). I think this moment is where your thread becomes twisted up with his. They take you away for a few hours, but this part of the story belongs to you and your father and is not mine to tell.
But somewhere in there your father finds me a coconut-granola yogurt parfait. It is the middle of the night, and I can’t remember the last time I ate. It’s silly thing to mention here in this story, but in that moment it is the most delicious thing I have ever eaten. It is sweet and soft and crunchy and I can still taste it in my mouth today. The parfait stitches my memory to that place and time.
Act IV is the top of the mountain.
It is full of moonlight and the green glow of hospital monitors on cold white sheets. It is tenuous and hopeful, but outside the window it is suddenly Fall, with yellowing leaves and a drizzly grey sky.
The three of us are in a regular hospital room now.
I am not sure if we love you yet, but our hearts break when you cry. When you become inconsolable the second night, our souls shatter into a thousand pieces and we call for help.
Your father tries valiantly to wrap a swaddle you can’t wriggle loose (we never succeed at this). I create a fortress of pillows so I can doze with you in my hospital bed when the nurses are not there. When the lactation nurse gets pushy, I can see it upsetting you as much as me, so I send her away and we work it out on our own an hour later.
I believe your father finds you beautiful. To me, your face is a shifting landscape I can’t get a bead on. I stare at it in wonder and confusion, trying to figure out exactly where I have found myself. (your face is beautiful, but my eyes have forgotten how to see).
You look at everyone with such awe and dismay on your face we marvel that you could be so new.
When we are finally allowed to leave and go home we are relieved to escape the nurses and the interruptions, but we can not comprehend that you are just free to leave with us.
We are still standing at the top of the mountain, but here the three of us have been twisted all together. And I am holding this beautiful pile of threads in my hands and wondering when it is I will learn how to weave.