Birth, Revisted

“Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers — strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and known their inner strength.”

Barbara Katz Rothman

A year ago this weekend, I was due to have my second baby. Just like his brother, though, he never waited for his due date and came a month earlier. I’ve been writing and rewriting this birth story over and over this last year trying to find the words to actually share my experience authentically, especially as I have spent this last year just reeling between lovestruck devotion and absolute misery in the reality that comes with having a second high-risk pregnancy and a second premature delivery. Prior to even getting pregnant, I spent a year in therapy strengthening my mind and a year exercising my body differently to strengthen myself for the extreme endurance sport that is pregnancy and birth, even more when you add high-risk challenges and prematurity factors. In many ways this go around was very much the same as my first pregnancy, and it went identical with medical needs week for week, all except that because I was different, it was a healing experience.

Some know by their labor pains that it’s time to go to the hospital, but in both my pregnancies, I knew it was go-time by the feelings in my gut, the aura in my world. Things went from peaceful in my gut to an absolute conviction that I wouldn’t be able to carry that baby another week. I had spent 34 weeks and six days laboriously watching for the onset of preeclampsia symptoms which came like clockwork as soon as I met the third trimester. Even though the only thing scheduled the day I had Baby S. was one of my monthly ultrasounds, I followed the prompting in my heart and I made sure to braid up my hair in a way that would withstand a surgical cap, I put on an extra thick coat of that expensive waterproof mascara I bought the week prior, and I told my husband to put my go bag in the car.  With a kiss to my toddler, an appreciative hug to my mom who had come as designated childcare for Little J., my husband and I headed out. I tried to go through the motions of being calm, just another appointment, but like I said, I knew it was time.

 Only a week prior I had spent the night at the hospital walking a dangerous line of preeclampsia blood pressure issues, but Mercy would have it that the medication provided stabilized me long enough for one more week of pregnancy. At our ultrasound, the perinatologist confirmed Baby S. needed to come out that day. “You’ve done all you can, it’s time to let us do the rest.”  Despite being “prepared” to hear that, I bawled heartily on the way to the hospital. I cried because it was time for my second cesarean birth, because I hadn’t been able to finish my little oat milk decaf latte, and because I knew I would get to eat sushi and deli meat very, very soon. Such are the thoughts of the pregnant and weary. Those 34 weeks and 6 days had been hard earned. The doctors and nurses could only say how calm I was for all the intense things going on, the need for so many pre-baby procedures to ensure our healthy delivery.

That calmness, though, was thanks to a year of therapy preparing for Baby S. that focused on coexisting with fear, allowing it to be without giving into it’s deep, endless spiraling. Even as I tried focusing on baby arriving soon, I couldn’t help but whisper to myself as I walked myself to the L&D floor, “I don’t want to do it this way!” I didn’t want to go into the motions that would trigger all my previous birthing traumas, but I knew I really, really had to do it. They say go to a happy place when you’re undergoing difficult experiences, but I’ve found that when I try to escape the feelings and pain of such all-encompassing experiences, it just makes it worse for me. My goal this birth was to stay in the moment as best I could. The wait before a c-section, especially when you know what to expect, is so hard. When I would catch myself starting to detach from the moment, I would bring myself back into the present by focusing on everything as it happened and voicing my needs and experiences as they came: slip on the gown, sit on the bed, deep breaths, sit very still while they poke and poke to find a vein in my struggling body, thank them for caring, admit how much something actually hurt versus just bearing in silence, hunger pains, my husband squeezing my hand and kissing my forehead, nervous laughter, really bad jokes, the ticking clock, the need to pee again.  This monotonous routine broke when a nurse informed us that they needed to bump our surgery for another mom who was in a more dire place than I was. God be with that mom, whoever she is, but that was the boost I needed to voice to my trembling self that this experience was different, that it was safe to stay firmly in the present and open myself to whatever this birth held for me. Fear be what it may, but it would not be ruling my birth.

The most pivotal part of my birthing experience was the walk to surgery. If the truth that I was not the most critical case was not enough to lift my mood, getting to walk myself to the operating room sent me into a place of unmistakable peace with all that was and could be. It was my first embodiment of the phrase “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” Instead of feeling like I needed to just “get through this,” I could see the beautiful parallels between my births happening in real time. Forget that I was in a poofy blue surgical cap, oversized hospital gown – clutched closed because good Lord everyone is in the hallway -and only those hideous hospital socks. I walked myself to deliver my baby. Even though a nurse held my hand on this walk, she faded to the back of my mind and I was walking hand in hand with my younger 2019 self to this 2022 birth. Together, we went into this birth to reconcile the past with the present to actually have a future.

As if it was just meant to be a magical experience, my entire surgical team was female. Anyone who has had to steel their souls for being naked in front of strangers, men and women alike, understands when I say that I shook a little less as I sat myself on the table, feeling safe, seen, and heard among fellow mothers, sisters, women. Dreading the excruciating sting of the spinal injection of anesthesia, I asked to have someone stand in front of me in case I fainted. The nurse who walked me into the room cheerfully grabbed both my hands, smiling eyes above her masked face locking with mine, “I am right here with you,” she and the whole room murmured support as I Lamaze-breathed my way through the overwhelming fire of the numbing agent. She helped lay me down as the pain faded into the tingly, curious sensation of blocked pain. Once my body became numb, it was time.

A c-section is such a hardcore experience: your body sometimes goes into a little bit of shock as it processes the numbing agent, shivers make you feel out of control, dizziness and nausea can start abruptly, you feel touch but no pain, and you hear things you would really rather not but you also want to keenly listen for that first cry. This dizzying and conflicting time span is where my greatest challenge staying present began; my body desperately wanted my mind to check out. But I didn’t want to check out. Not this time. I did last time. I practically floated around the room last time. Trauma though this was, this was my baby’s birth and I wanted to participate, be present, to be able to voice my needs. Thankfully, I didn’t have to work hard all by myself. Every time I thought I was going to zone out, I was softly kept in the present by my husband squeezing my fingers and kissing my forehead, the anesthesiologist pressing rubbing alcohol pads to my nose, doctors peeking around the curtain to make eye contact and chatting with me about how everything was going fantastic.

Another unique part to this birth was having two obstetricians perform my surgery. Usually there is one, but somehow the timing was perfect and I had a two-woman team ensure both Baby S. and I had the best birth experience we could have. The whole surgery, I was very aware of the feeling of both doctors’ bodies snugly standing on either side of me, one in each armpit. Both took turns peering around the curtain to lock eyes with me in a way that kept me intimately in the moment from start to finish. It makes me woozy to acknowledge it but I felt all the touch of this birth without any of the pain. Truthfully, it was as scary as it was exciting. But then this is where the actual best part of the entire birth was made possible: I felt my baby’s body slip out of mine and into the world. Head and shoulders, arms, legs! With his robust cry of life, my heart exploded with a euphoria that I cannot put into words. Someone lifted my head for me so I could see my baby as he flapped legs and arms in the cold air of the operating room. He was loud. He was strong. He was here.

“Do you want to hold him?”

There is nothing more transcendent than holding your baby fresh out of the womb, wet from amniotic fluid, mewling for warmth and milk, arms stretched out to be hugged close. The snuggles in that moment are the most intimate thing I’ve ever experienced: lips touching, cheeks smooshing, everybody crying. I never got to hold my first like this, and I will forever grieve that. In my first birth, they whisked Baby J. away after a quick kiss and glance, and I didn’t see him or hold him until twelve hours later; even then I didn’t have the strength to hold him long. But this time, even though I felt weak and lightheaded, I held my son, comforted him through his frightened squeals until he lay quiet and content on my chest. There is something about this immediate bonding moment that helped dramatically shift my mindset from healing previous experiences to feeling joy in the present.  By the time they whisked Baby S. off to the NICU with my husband by his side, I found myself actually appreciating the sudden hush in the operating room when this very silence three years felt like being swallowed whole by doom. My anesthesiologist continued to keep me comfortable with whatever she had going on, a nurse would intermittently squeeze my hand and ask me how I felt, and one of the doctors peered around the curtain a couple times to let me know how close they were to finishing the stitch up. This experience felt like self-care: I’ve birthed, now let me stitch up. Because the room was full of women alone, it also felt like an honoring female-led birthing ritual, being stitched and washed and carried. Within half an hour, I was in a recovery room and my hunger pains were finally abated with Jello and cranberry juice. In a much shorter time than previously, I was rolled into the NICU to hold my sweet, littlest boy for a good, long time.

My second baby’s birth was such an incredible experience, but I feel I can only say this because of where I’ve been. Birth has been as much a process of bringing about a new human life as it has been about discovering my own new self. I am a lot stronger than I knew, a lot tougher than even I expected. Sometimes, I wish that my pregnancies had been as easy as it seems people like to portray or remember, but more often I am forever grateful for how I’ve been able to have two very difficult pregnancies, both of similar deliveries, but each a bookend experience of trauma opened and trauma healed. Even more, I am thankful that these two experiences taught me that I could create a safe place for myself to acknowledge and work through my fears, that I had the bravery to push out the people and the messages that did not serve my peace, and that in my walk of life I really have been paired well with a supportive partner who knows how to back me up. I didn’t have eyes to see myself as strong coming out of my first birth. My first birth wasn’t “bad” but it was all kinds of messy. Walking through a near identical birth story with this second baby, I see and applaud my own strength of mind and body for all it went through that first time, during all the time in between, and during this second time I leapt in to do this all again.