It's the twenty-third day of NaBloPoMo and my daughter is 23 months old today. This means...it's time for a guest post! My pal Jenny (Stella's godmother) was at her birth, and at Stella's baptism she gave me her account of it. Such a treasure! (All typos are my doing. Thanks again, Jenny!)
I wasn't expecting Jamie to be the person calling at 8:30 pm on a Monday night. I thought maybe I was being called in to work, and since I'd been working for the last couple of days and Jamie had been adamant that her baby would not be born until the next weekend, I was surprised to hear her voice.
"I've been having some contractions, but maybe they won't really turn into anything." Oh! Maybe the baby's coming! "No," Jamie said. "I'm not ready. I was planning to have the baby next weekend, definitely not tonight. I am not ready." Umm, okay, I said. I mentioned that if the baby were born after midnight, she would be born on my husband's (baby's godfather) birthday. She sounded so sure that it made sense that she was just calling to let me know that she'd been having some contractions but that they would surely not be leading up to, say, childbirth. I asked if she wanted me to come get the kids, but she said no, only Pete was still up, so maybe I could come there. Just to help with Pete in case the baby did decide to come tonight, which it probably would not. I tossed on my coat, extracted myself from the one child still awake at my house, and went out into the night. What a night! The sky was clear and the world was covered in crystal ice. Snow coated the streets and it was perfectly cold, but the wind was still. I walked to the house quickly, my heart full of cautious excitement. Jamie's warm yellow house is just around the corner and down the street, and the house fairly glowed against the frosted winter backdrop of late December.
Jamie and Elwood were puttering around the house and Pete was eating a sandwich at the table. He was surprised to see me at his house at bedtime, but accepted this new event with curiosity. Truly, I was still not sure Jamie was actually in labor. Once in while she'd stop walking around and sway back and forth for a minute or so, but she was still her lovely and gracious self. She asked if I wanted tea but by now I was too nervous. Pete let me take him up to bed in the spare bedroom. We looked out the window over the backyard at the tree covered in ice, the lights on in the neighbors' houses. Pete and I read stories for half an hour, and then I turned out the light. Pete lay for a minute, then rolled over and said, "Should I go to my bed and lie with Mama and have nonny?" No, I said in my best sleepy-parent voice. Mama's busy with her baby tonight. We'll sleep here. He thought about this, then turned back over and went to sleep.
Downstairs, Jamie and Elwood had set up the house for birth: plastic shower curtain on the floor, pads, and birth instruments set out on the table. What to do now? Boil water? I walked around the house looking at the books. Jamie was still calm and managing each contraction. Midwife assistant J arrived, and we shared nursing school stories. Jamie's contractions were still manageable and she was still upright, but they did seem to be taking up more of her attention. She sank to her kneees and rocked her hips back and forth, and J and I stopped chattering to pay attention. Hmm. Maybe there would be a baby tonight!
The midwife arrived and Jamie planted herself on the birth ball. Elwood rubbed Jamie's back, walked with her to the bathroom, and murmured sweet little husband things to her during contractions. Jamie was still smiling when at around midnight she asked what time we thought the baby would be born. She seemed so relaxed, standing and smiling. I really thought it might be hours, but Jamie is not always easy to read. I guessed 2:25. Elwood guessed 1:00, which I thought seemed wildly ambitious. [Ed. note: baby arrived at 1:05.] Jamie sat on the birth ball for a bit more, and then said, "B, I'm feeling a little pushy. Would you mind checking me to see how far I am?" Fifteen minutes later, Jamie was still in the bathroom, and judging from the sounds of effort and encouragement coming from behind the door she was clearly farther along than my estimation. I sat at the dining room table and prayed. I could not for the life of me remember the name of the patron saint of childbirth and pregnancy (St. Gerard), so I just prayed: God, be with Jamie and ease her struggle. Help her hear your voice in this wilderness and offer her suffering and labor to you.
Jamie went in and out of the bathroom several times, but this time was the longest. When she finally emerged, she was not the same. I remember at times during my own births wondering if perhaps I was not having a baby at all, but was in fact dying of some rare and horrible tropical illness, of which people were too polite to inform me. Let me also say that of all my friends, Jamie is the most consistently optimistic, patiently enduring, modest, and polite. [Ed.note: This sentence kept me hesitating for weeks about asking Jenny if I could post this, because how immodest is it to put up a blog post touting your modesty etc.?] So when she came out of the bathroom half-naked, flushed, and angry, it was unnerving. Her shirt was up over her enormous pearl of a belly, her skin was tight and pink, and her hair! Her glorious red hair was wild and loose, curling in all directions from the heat of exertion. She looked ready to burst into flames. She stomped by me and said only, "I hate this part. This part really sucks." "Sucks" is not a word Jamie tends to use in the usual course of conversation. I suppressed a giggle. She positioned herself on her hands and knees and rocked, interspersing the rocking with moaning. Elwood and the midwife sat near her, and we prayed part of a rosary.
Labor was so difficult now. Each contraction hit Jamie like a powerful wave, and left her shaking and hot. Between contractions she lay her head on her arms on the floor. At one point she wept silently from the effort, but only for a few moments. She said, "I'm starting to feel like something is really wrong." As a nurse, I take a statement like that pretty seriously, but her midwives were calm and reassuring.
With each contraction, the baby was indeed moving down. Now B sat behind Jamie, ready for the baby. Elwood held her as she pushed in a standing position; helped her back down, murmured things to her in the secret language shared between husbands and wives. It was beautiful to see.
Between each contraction, the midwives were monitoring the baby's heart rate. I counted along, worrying a little when her heart rate seemed to drop. It climbed back up at once, and dipped again with the contraction. Jamie asked with alarm if she was having late decelerations, and the midwives assured her the baby was recovering and managing. Birth was hard work for her, too.
Back on her hands and knees, finally birth was imminent. Jamie pushed with new determination. As the baby's head emerged, Jamie cried out, and it sounded as much in surprise and joy as in pain: the entry of life into the world! Creation, beginning, the Holy Spirit -- the room was bathed in golden light, suffused with happiness. Her head emerged and B told Jamie to reach down and pull the baby to her. A new sound in the room: I thought it was Pete waking suddenly, but it was not. It was little Stella, breathing and squawking and announcing her life in this new world. Jamie laughed with happiness and relief, looking at her baby and saying hello.
We cleaned things up, and I got to be useful. We warmed Jamie with blankets and the heating pad, tucked the baby into the cozy nest with Mama, and admired her. Her bright little eyes blinking at the light, her small sticky head, ten sweet fingers and toes all accounted for. Jamie was Jamie again; radiant, joyful, and the best kind of tired. Elwood made her a lovely grilled cheese sandwich, and baby Stella sampled a little nursing. I think it was around 2, and time for me to go. I said my good-byes and blessings and walked back into the night.
As I trudged up the slope of the street, I thought about the world. The end of December, the economy in utter shambles, the world full of war and rumors of war. You cannot turn on the news or open a paper without hearing that surely the End is Upon Us! Despair, despair! And yet... I stopped at the top of the hill, and listened. A hush of wind, the delicate tinkle of ice-coated trees barely moving. The black night sky and the stars. For a moment I thought I could feel this ancient, beautiful, battered old world turning; our patient God, waiting for us to turn our faces to Him.
Welcome to the world, dear Stella.
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