While in eighth grade, I went to a hippie gatherning. I drove with my friend’s family to Ocala National Forest. I stayed in an RV for a week. I went to the bathroom in a hole outside, and spent the wet February nights around a fire with dirty strangers who lived in the forest full time. This lifestyle was more intriging to me than my dull Thursday mornings learning about economics. One morning my friend and I were bunked up in the RV, and a laboring woman came thrashing through the front door. Groaning and moaning, she was in labor. These sounds were unfamiliar to me. Until this point in my life, when I had thought about labor, I had assumed it was the way it was in the movies. I mean, how could I not? We are taught about menstruation in a very vague manner in middle school, but when it comes to reproduction or even the basic anatomy of a woman, the education is lacking, to say the least.
Your loving partner drives you to the hospital; you get hooked up to wires, you breathe a few hee ha hee haas, and out pops the baby. There is no blood, weird fluids, and heaven forbid you would throw up multiple times. When I was little, I remember asking my mom how I came into the world, and she said, you get a giant needle in your spine to help numb the pain, and that was it! (In her defense, I am sure she didn’t want to tell her six-year-old daughter the real gore and mystery of birth, and for that, I don’t blame her one bit: Back to the RV. The animal sounds coming from this woman continued and continued annnnnd continued. She labored, waiting for the midwife for what seemed like an entire month. I do not believe I let my eyes wander for even a second the whole time. I was hooked, fascinated, enthralled. I even got to sterilize a pair of scissors! I watched and saw this woman bring a life into the world. How could this be how this is done, I thought to myself? She never seemed afraid, not even for a second. I will NEVER forget it. Fast forward to adulthood; I am a birth doula. I have not seen any other babies born in forests. However, I have birthed two babies of my own and witnessed the miracle of many others being ushered into the world. Maybe if I were an L+D nurse and saw 20+ babies born in a day, the adrenaline would diminish, but I have yet to have that experience. When I had both my boys, I was the one harnassing those sounds, and when each was delivered, the euphoria that I experienced was a complete out of body one. (Small caveat—I have no issues with modern medicine and would happily have accepted at many different points throughout each labor, however for ME, I wanted nothing to rob me from experiencing something so surreal). However, I remember looking out the window seeing a flag waving on the Brooklyn bridge, and thinking, man, this is unfortunate. I am going to DIE on this bed before Hank makes his grand entrance. In my defense, his head was entirely sideways, and pushing him out took a total of 3.5 hours. Ouch!
When we received Amo’s TGA diagnosis, we later talked briefly about how he would come into this world. Among the mountain of grief, I felt knowing he would not be a normal baby; I felt a punch in the gut knowing I would be robbed of one of the biggest joys of my life–the process of labor and birth. I went from a soothing homebirth next to a fireplace to induction of medications or worse, a c-section with a panel of doctors waiting for the birth to take him away from me. The chances of me locking eyes with his are slim, and forget “the golden hour” meant for bonding with your baby skin to skin. Of course, his safety trumps everything, but it doesn’t take away the pain I will feel being separated from him so suddenly. My mind jumps from one scenario to the next. Will I ever get to nurse him? Will I be a slave to my breast pump? Will his cognitive development be impaired due to the lack of physical touch? Will he have a depleted immune system from the start due to the numerous medications and antibiotics that will be injected into his tiny veins?
When you deliver a baby, you are learning the act of surrender. When the baby comes on its own, you know to mentally and physically surrender to your body. It is a mind game. A baby headed straight to the NICU will need a spoonful of surrender as well.
I will have to ask God to help me surrender my desires and my needs on his behalf. This is a tough concept for me to think about and one I will def need God’s grace and strength to help guide me through.
tocarryamos.com 