Birth Day

I desperately wanted to be a mother. I yearned for the feeling of carrying, birthing, and caring for a child, and when I finally became pregnant, I felt healthier and more connected to my body than I ever had before. I practiced prenatal yoga to prepare my body for labor, and I couldn’t wait for the moment when I would push our baby from my body and hold that screaming being against my chest, comforting my child as a mother for the first time. I pictured this moment in my mind whenever my body felt sore and tired from the hard work of carrying a growing human inside of me.

I looked at pictures of babies in the womb at each stage and imagined our little Sweet Pea growing and changing. Sweet Pea–that’s what we called our growing babe. We would talk to our Sweet Pea and imagine what our lives were going to be like when our Sweet Pea joined us. I would tell Tom what Sweet Pea had been up to all day, and he would hold my belly, hoping to feel Sweet Pea reach out to him.

My water started leaking at 4:00 a.m. just two days past my due date. It was time. I woke Tom by saying “I think we’re going to have a baby today!” He jumped out of bed, disoriented, and started to get dressed while I called the doctor. I had been having contractions on and off for the past few days, but they hadn’t become consistent. Because the membrane was now broken, however, my doctor instructed me to go to the hospital.

I called my parents to tell them that today might be the day they would become grandparents. I could feel their excitement through the phone. My mom, giving me some final words of maternal encouragement, told me “When you think that you have done all that you can, when you can’t push any more, that’s when the baby will come.” We were both in tears–nervous, excited tears.

We checked into the hospital at 4:30 a.m. By this time, two stronger contractions had come and gone, leaving me feeling that I was moving closer. Tom supported my weight as we paced the halls of the maternity ward. We paced and paced. I sat on the birthing ball. I stretched in the yoga positions I had so carefully practiced. Every once in a while a contraction would come, and I would have to stop. But they weren’t coming quickly enough.

At 10:00 a.m., the nurse broke my water completely, hoping that this would move things along. After an hour of feeling fluid gush out of me with each contraction, I was told that I wasn’t making much progress. They might as well have said “you aren’t working hard enough–you clearly don’t care.” I was giving this everything I had, literally all of the energy in my being, and my body was not cooperating.  

The word pitocin entered the room. Before this day, pitocin had been on my “absolutely not” list, right along with formula and disposable diapers and pacifiers. It was not natural. Let my body do what it was designed to do! For some reason, though, I didn’t feel that I could object. A room full of people in white coats and scrubs agreed that this was the best option at this point. It would bring on faster, stronger contractions. Did it ever!

After only 30 minutes of pitocin-induced contractions, I couldn’t take it anymore. My entire body was seizing with each contraction, which were coming one on top of the next with no reprieve in between. I gave in to the other intervention I swore I would not accept: the epidural. I felt a combination of completely defeated and even more determined; I had failed so far, but I now needed to prove that I was not completely incapable of birthing my child.

Tom and I both rested for a while, regained some strength, and then the doctor said that I was dilated enough to begin pushing. Hooray! Sweet Pea was on the way! This was the moment we had been waiting for! So I pushed…or I thought I did. The nurse tried to encourage/correct me, describing which muscles to use when pushing. I burst into tears.  I couldn’t feel anything because of the epidural. I couldn’t feel my muscles to know which ones I was using! I asked that the epidural be backed off. It was supposed to make me strong–invincible–but instead made me feel like even more of a failure.

Once I regained some feeling, I began pushing again. And I pushed. And I pushed. I pushed for three excruciating hours. In the beginning, the nurses encouraged me with a sense of urgent excitement, as though this could happen any minute. Tom was by my side, breathless, cheering me on. After a while, the nurses left the cheerleading to Tom. His support never wavered, but I was discouraged by the lack of enthusiasm from the nurses who came and went. The doctor came in every once in a while, and I would begin to think that we were close to seeing our precious baby. Then she would go away again, and Tom would continue to coach me through the never-ending contractions.

After what felt like way too long (because it was), the problem was discovered. Sweet Pea wasn’t facing the right way and had become stuck in my pelvis. As the tiny head became further lodged, the area around my pelvis became more swollen. My body began to convulse and shake, desperate to get this baby out. I very quickly moved from pushing on each contraction to throwing up on each contraction. I don’t remember many of the details from that moment on, but I have snapshot memories of the doctor telling me that they would need to deliver the baby via C-section, then Tom signing the consent-for-surgery form, and the anesthesiologist pinching my abdomen with thongs to be sure the epidural was still working. Yes, that’s really how he did it. It was all very surreal.

I was wheeled away while Tom was left alone in what was supposed to have been our delivery room. Lying on the operating table, I saw Tom come in wearing scrubs and a mask–my husband and my partner behind a barrier. He sat quietly next to me and tried to hold my hand, but my arm was strapped to the table. All I could hear was the anesthesiologist’s voice telling me repeatedly that I needed to relax and stop shaking so that he could get an accurate blood pressure reading. This is all I could hear, “You need to relax. You need to try to stop shaking.” I wanted to scream at him. My baby was about to be born, and I was missing it! I was supposed to be the one making this happen, and I was missing it!

“It’s a girl!”  The doctor lifted our beautiful Sweet Pea high in the air so that I could see her above the curtain. I looked over at Tom and felt as though we were the only people in the room. “It’s Kendall! Kendall is here!” he said, as he burst into tears. I was relieved. I was dazed and exhausted and relieved. The nurse brought a bundle of screaming blankets to my face, and I quickly kissed Kendall’s cheek. Tom took a picture; this is the only reason I am sure I saw her at this point. Kendall was then placed into a sterile bassinet, and Tom followed her out the door. Without warning, the anesthesiologist put me under, and everything went dark.

I woke up briefly when Tom came to see me in the recovery room. He was beaming from ear to ear, tears still in the corners of his eyes. He reported that Kendall was healthy and beautiful and that he had taken loads of pictures. He said that he was going to go back to the nursery to be with her, and he would then call our parents.

A nurse woke me again after a while…I have no idea how long I had been sleeping. She asked if they should give Kendall a bottle. What?! I became alert pretty quickly. Why would you do that?! My breasts have been leaking for weeks in preparation for feeding and nurturing this baby. Had I proven myself to be completely unfit to mother this little girl already? I had already failed at birthing her; please don’t let me fail at caring for her, too.

I wish that I had more vivid memories of the moment I first truly interacted with my baby. I don’t remember what I saw or how I felt when she came into the room, as I was still so woozy from all of the anesthesia. Thankfully, though, I do remember that when they brought Kendall to me, she latched immediately. In that moment, with her in my arms and against my body, I became her mom. I cared for her as I had dreamed I would. As her mom.

This confusing, painful, traumatic, miraculous day was 12 years ago. Our girl–the being we both built–came from my body on this day. I want to celebrate as much as I want to forget. This is her day, but it is our day. All three of us share the momentus day when we became the family I adore.

Happy birthday, Sweet Pea.