Birth.Day.Story.
A few weeks ago, our child turned eight years old while we were with a pile of loved ones at a Sierra mountains family camp. Per our request, the kitchen made a chocolate cake to mark this occasion, and we surprised the hell out of our kid when they brought it to the table after dinner on the actual birth day. The excitement was so sweet and pure you could taste it, and my eyes still well up at the memory of the angelic exuberance that came forth from our child in that moment. See below photo of said moment by the endlessly talented + wonderfully amazing, Henry Dombey:
It was a fitting example of how this kid walks through the world, which is to say, they light up every one around them from within. It is a true treat + a gift not to just know our child as a person, but to spend days and nights reveling in how they experience the world. I’ll never know how we got so lucky as to have the collection of molecules and star stuff and joy that made our child in to a living, breathing testament of the magical powers of the universe, but nevertheless, we are grateful as can be to call them our family.
I was feeling nostalgic the other day, so I went back and found a handful of drafts in my inbox about birthing this wondrous being, and others about the following few months and years. What I read made me nod along in remembrance, and I also wanted to somehow leap back in time to cradle the tired hearts and beraggled minds of our new band of three. Time truly does soften a lot of edges, but ours were sharp enough that I still shudder at the idea of being in charge of a child under two after the sun goes to sleep for our night. That feeling of ice in my veins as I panicked about if we’d get stretches of two or four or maybe even five hours of unbroken sleep, and if not how I’d roll over and over in my mind that if we just kept our heads down and did the good work keeping said child alive, we were promised we’d move through this specific flavor of exhaustion.
I’m so proud of my family. We did a lot with a little sleep, and while I giggle at our deranged ideas of what parenthood would look like before we actually had an Earthside child to care for, I also feel a soft fondness for those jokers. You can’t know until you know, and even when you do know, every single human being is different and thus, exciting and unpredictable. Wisdom for one child or family is not necessarily applicable to another, so while it’s great that your kid nodded off after one sip of warm milk and a special song… save that beautiful memory as an anecdote for a future celebration where someone specifically asks you about it, ok ;)
So, without further ado, an excerpt from me in 2016, a few months after the most challenging physical experience of my life, followed by a rolling series of “first times” for us as parents. If you’re fresh to this parenting game, about to become a parent, never had the urge to be a parent, or hate parents, I tip my hat to all of you, because its a personal choice, and one each person hopefully gets to decide for themselves, whenever possible.
Transmission from October 2016:
Well, as all pregnancies do, mine came to an end. It was 41 weeks and five days after it began. I'd been having sporadic contractions for a few weeks, but when I was awoken at 1:30 am on August 8th, I knew that labor was starting. The pain came fast and deep, and an hour later, as though to wipe away any final doubts, my water broke. We'd decided a month before to have a home birth for many reasons, so we contacted our Doula and Midwife to let them know that we were all systems go. Anne started setting up the birth tub after our Doula's arrival, and if it were possible to watch a video of the events, it probably would have been pretty comical seeing me hover next to her asking her if it was ready for me to get in every minute. As she hustled (read: sweat profusely as she worked at the speed of light) to get it set up, our Doula tried to distract me with back massages, bone broth, and funny stories, but I wasn't having it. I tried to convince the two of them to let me get in when there was one inch of water in there, but they assured me that it would in fact make me feel worse, not better to have contractions in a nearly empty birthing tub.
Fast forward a few hours, and it's now early afternoon. I'm eight inches dilated, laboring away in the assembled birthing tub, and the birth team and myself feel certain I'm going to be pushing in the next few hours. I start mentally congratulating myself on all of my hard work in prenatal yoga, and those many hundreds of deep squats that are about to come in handy... but wait… that's not how our story was meant to go.
After a full day (24 FREAKING HOURS) of laboring, and hours of being nine inches dilated, the team and I decided that while the baby's heartbeat had remained strong and steady, he simply wasn't dropping the last few inches necessary to enter the birth canal. I had reached the point that I could no longer sit or lie down at all, so with standing and walking being my only relief, complete exhaustion started to set in. With tears in my eyes, but knowing it was the right decision, I nodded to Anne, and she asked the midwife to call the hospital to let them know that we were on our way.
As we headed down the three stories to the street below, I was hit by wave after wave of contractions, each one seemingly more painful than the last. I think because I knew an epidural was in my near future, my resolve began to crumble around my very tired feet. The car ride held some of the most painful minutes of my life, as I loudly filled the air with sounds of animalistic, guttural groaning. It took us quite a bit of time to get inside the hospital doors, as I kept having to stop every ten steps for a contraction. As I was being admitted, I started crying, because I knew deep-down that if I wasn't able to get this guy out at home, I was likely going to require a cesarean. I so badly wanted to experience the pure, raw power of being a woman giving birth on her own terms, but I now know there is more than one way to have your child enter the world safely, as an empowered being.
I was given an epidural, which was simply fantastic btw, and I spent the next nine hours laboring with the help of Pitocin to see if I could dilate the final two centimeters. Somehow in transit, I lost a centimeter, and was trying every mind control trick in the book to help my body take those final steps. As we approached hour eight, a not so pleasant midwife came in to inform me that I would in fact be having an emergency c-section in the next hour. After a mini-mental breakdown, I quickly came to terms with the fact that this labor needed to end, and that myself and my son needed to be safely on the other side.
As I watched my wife suit up in her futuristic operating room scrubs before I was rolled out the door, I could see the fear and sadness in her eyes. She knew how badly I wanted to have a vaginal birth; all of the hours I spent trying to prepare my mind and body for the occasion, and her heart was hurting for me. With a final kiss goodbye, and wave of departure to my birthing squad, I headed into surgery.
They told me the room would be cold and bright, and they weren’t lying. It felt like how I would imagine the Antarctic is in midsummer; I'm surprised I didn't see icebergs floating around the room. I managed to have a few laughs with the surgical team, and pointed out that we had an all female medical staff (save for one last-minute male doctor's arrival), and that it seemed appropriate as our son will undoubtedly spend his life surrounded by strong females. Anne was allowed to enter the room after they were all set up, and then it was “go” time. I was alert and ready to meet our baby, but I was truly unprepared for how physical the surgery was. I could feel them jostling my body all around as they moved things about, and I couldn't stop imagining the horror that was going on just past the little blue curtain. As they announced they were nearly to the baby a few minutes in, I suddenly couldn't keep my eyes open.
The rest of the surgery is pretty much a blur to me, but is unfortunately not to my wife who was pretty seriously traumatized. Apparently, as they were pulling Miles from my body, my very tired uterus did not want to retract, and I started losing a lot of blood. They pushed morphine into my line, and as a result, I barely remember meeting my baby for the first time. This might be for the best, as he apparently stopped breathing and turned a frightening shade of blue. But still, to wait your whole life for that moment and then not even be able to keep your eyes open for it, was deeply upsetting to say the least.
In that moment, I was really grateful that during all of our planning and preparing, that my wife and I had actually talked about what we should do in this exact scenario: me on a surgery table, unable to move, and our kid in need of emergency care. We decided in advance that she would go with our newborn child, to ensure he had one of his mother's with him at all times. They departed the OR for the NICU, and had their own harrowing experience which I wasn’t present for, and isn’t my story to share. Back in the OR, I was hemorrhaging boatloads of blood due to a uterine atony.
The surgeon told us later that Miles’s head had been wedged in to my birth canal so tightly that they had to pulllll his body free, and that no amount of my pushing on it’s own would have freed him from that position. Due to the angle his chin had dropped down, his head had gotten stuck, and he’d just been pounding in to my pelvic bone for an entire day. He came out with an indent on his head, and had eight weeks of craniosacral sessions to massage his head, neck and spine back in to the proper placements. Fortunately for me and my loved ones, my body stopped hemorrhaging just shy of me needing a transfusion. The little bits I do remember from the OR after he was delivered are throwing up lots and lots, feeling generally pretty terrible and out of it, and then feeling very hot as I spiked a fever.
The first two days post-delivery were a blur, as we tried to soak up every moment with our son. I knew I felt terrible physically, but I took the minimal amount of painkillers needed to keep the major post-surgury pain at bay. What I hadn't been prepared for were the next two days and beyond, when my milk still hadn't properly come in, and my baby's hunger was increasing. Due to the blood loss, they said I might have trouble with my milk coming in and/or being able to provide enough milk right away…
End of Transmission
The story drops off there because, and I remember clear as day, Miles woke up screaming from his nap. I laid my head down on our kitchen table and wept for a minute. I was having so much trouble producing milk, I knew I’d need to set my ego aside and whip up another bottle of formula. I so wish I could have heard my wife reminding me I was a valid mother, regardless of how much milk I made for our child. Alas, it would take years before that could make its way in through the noise I had inside my head. I’m sending love and grace to anyone who is having or has had a hard time on that journey. I felt like a failure on top of a failure for birth and breastfeeding not looking at all like I’d imagined, when in reality, look at this kid. They are happy, they are healthy, and never once have they thrown the kind of angry shade I threw at myself regarding where their nourishment came from… fed is best y’all, always and forever.
Anne has a playlist for Miles that she started before their birth, and she’s been adding to it over the years of lived life. I highly recommend this if you’d like an actual soundtrack of tear makers to add to the slideshow of your child doing everything from picking their nose for the first time, to starring in their own art show in your home hallways. A gift like no other from a wife like no other. Ten out of ten stars all around.
My heart is filled with so much empathy for all of us humans doing our best to love and be loved. Thanks for listening today. Until next time: be well, sleep tight, and take care of one another out there.
