New Life

Yesterday, my dear friend gave birth to her baby. When we heard the news that she'd gone into labor we lit a candle and, when it went out the next day, we lit another one which we'd keep lit until well after the baby was born. Each time I saw the flickering flame, as I went about my daily tasks or got up to go pee in the dark, I was suddenly reminded again of what was going on for her, at this very moment, imagining her in the throes of the wildest, most intense ride of her life.

Today, I’m feeling immensely grateful. Grateful for the birth of her baby. Grateful that my husband is taking the week off, and letting me have a stretch of three mornings to go write. And grateful that on Friday we will take off for our first camping trip of the year, to Mt. Rainier, and that the weather is actually forecast to be sunny!

Yesterday, my online birth story workshop also ended, and next Monday, my “letter writing” workshop at the Hugo House will begin. In between the two, I have this wonderful week ahead of me that, despite the usual childcare duties, chores, and sleep deprivation, still feels like a vacation. A good part of this sense of pleasure I think comes from having completed the birth story workshop—a goal that started out as an idea, that I dreamed of long ago, then planned and advertised for, made a reality, dove into, and accomplished on my own. My daily work of motherhood on the other hand is also deeply satisfying and challenging, but it isn’t a job that one ever “finishes” and is thus allowed that sense of satisfaction that comes from something that has a clear beginning and end.

             

The birth story workshop was deeply satisfying in so many ways. I love the process of helping other people find the time to write, delve into their memories, let go of expectations, find their voices, confront their sorrows and joys, and go deep into their interior landscape. And I especially loved doing this within the context of writing about the births of our children—such a profound experience that so many of us women go through, and yet that the world at large so rarely gets the opportunity to hear about in detail.

             

Prior to being pregnant and preparing to give birth myself, I don’t think I’d ever heard a birth story told in person. Perhaps I remember a crazy video of a birth shown in a high school science class (or am I imagining this?), and perhaps I’d read some brief account here or there (right?), but to actually hear what it felt like, what it looks like, how many hours or days it could span, and all the variables of what could happen? Nope. Not a clue. How about you?

             

Why is it that we don’t collectively hear or know more about childbirth and labor? Well, for one thing, once the baby comes, parents are usually so overwhelmed and deeply immersed in the intense care of a newborn and the desperate hope to catch up on their sleep, that there isn’t exactly time to sit down and tell everybody about the crazy ride they have just been on. And yet, no matter what happens in a labor, no matter if it lasts four hours or four days, it is nothing less than profound. Think about it. Birth. All of our metaphors for talking about the journey that a person, a country, or a culture go through can be framed through the lens of birth and death. All of us are born—again and again and again—as we go through different cycles in our lives, different lessons, journeys, travels, jobs, tragedies, accomplishments. These are the stories we live for, the stories we look towards for all of our hope and inspiration. And all of this movement, all of these lessons and cycles and metaphors stem from the actual physical process of a mother giving birth.

           

When you strip life to its core, we are left with the image of a newborn baby, naked and screaming and thrust into this new life through her mother’s birth canal. Covered with bodily fluids, connected the darkness of the womb through the lingering pulse to the umbilical cord, so dependent on the care of others to survive, and yet nevertheless out here for the first time in the world, in the light, taking in your first breaths on your own.

             

It’s crazy really to think about birth. What happens, how it happens. The countdown of days, then hours, as the mother’s uterus starts to contract, as the baby signals to mother it’s readiness to be born. It’s crazy, really. Crazy beautiful and intense. There is nothing else like it, this journey that mothers prepare for, this need for her to let go into the experience—to let go of fear, expectations, inhibitions, life as you know it. To know that everything you’ve just done to prepare for the birth is both enough, and also could never possibly be enough to prepare you for the unknown journey of this labor—what it will feel like, how long it will last, how you will respond, how you will know yourself—or not know yourself, not even identify with a sense of “self”—in the act of giving birth.

           

My dear, dear friend of many years, perhaps many lifetimes, just gave birth yesterday. I still have not heard the details, but I thought of her throughout the day and night each time I looked up and saw the candle we’d lit: burning, a constant reminder that while we were going through the daily acts of our lives, she was in the throes of sweating, breathing, and pushing—of what will probably be the single most intense act of her life. Unless you count her own birth—or her own death. Neither of which most of us are able to remember and put into words.

Giving birth to our babies, though? We do have the capability to translate and preserve these stories. For ourselves, for our loved ones. And as much as giving birth is an “out of mind” experience, as much as we seem to forget so much of it in its aftermath, there is still so much of the experience that we can convey-- for ourselves, and for others. To help us touch upon the mystery that is life, the mysteries embodied within nature and our internal cycles, the mysteries embodied within this act of a new life coming into the world.

             

Who are you, who will you be, little one? Why is it you, chosen, for this couple, and not another? Why is it you, only you, that is meant to be the one to radically alter your mother’s lives? How is it that birth happens all around us, every day, and yet there is only this one small window, when the memory of labor is still fresh and the sense of your unfathomable newness to this world still so breathtaking. Before long, at least on the surface, all the human rituals that we attach to babies seem to take precedence, or at least this is what we see and talk about: the cute outfits and photos posted on Facebook, then the endless conversations about feeding, burping, and sleep.

When you reach a certain age—mid-thirties for our generation—all kinds of people in your immediate world (tidily represented by Facebook) who had held off until now start to pop out babies. First, you hear the announcement, usually when they are about 3+ months (with a lesser risk of miscarriage), or else with the first cute belly shots, when they really start to show.

             

Then, depending on the person, you are reminded of their pregnancy through weekly updates on their changing sleep, eating, or energy patterns. We get updates about  finding out the sex, about going on a “babymoon”, pictures of the new nursery, and then finally those last posts when entering the final stretch of days left at the job, the Braxton Hicks contractions, and a mounting sense of anticipation, anxiety, and excitement.

             

Then: silence. Then: the first trickle of news, the baby is here! The name, the length, the weight. Then: the first photos. A giant wave of congratulations. The biggest news that one could possibly share. The greatest achievement to reflexively ‘like’. What’s not to like? A new being is here. No one has died in the process. Another fleeting reminder of the miracle of life. Something we’ve all gone through: the birth canal—or at least the transition from darkness and womb to air and light.

             

Then: silence. Mom and Dad (or Mom and Mom, or Mom and whomever she has) are exhausted. Learning. Overwhelmed. Busy. Swept up in a vortex of sleepless nights, breastfeeding, diapering and swaddling. On the sharpest learning curve of their lives. If they are lucky, they are brought meals, cared for by family, ushered into a cocoon of safety and soft voices, all for the love of the baby. If they are lucky, they are able to sleep a bit, to rest, to cry, to stare with wide open gaping mouths of sputtering love. If they are lucky, they have people around them to help them, to care for them as they are newborns themselves. If they are lucky, these same people make sure to give them their precious alone time, time to nap together as a new family of three, time to stare with mouths open agape, time to cry.

             

No matter the birthing experience, it is a proper response to cry. No matter vaginal or cesarean, no matter long or short, no matter tearing or no tearing, no matter boy or girl, healthy or not healthy—no matter the experience, there is no more appropriate response to the entrance of a new life into the world than to cry.

             

Oh, dear God, dear Universe, dear Allah, dear Nature, dear pagan gods of the underworld, dear unfathomable Unknown: a baby has been born.

             

Oh, dear mother, dear father, dear heartbeat, dear blood line, dear family and friends and all of my relations: you have helped give birth to a baby.

My dearest friend has just given birth. And soon, in a matter of days, my sister will give birth too. Just recently she asked if I could be available as a back-up support person, in case her husband needs help, or in case she wants me there at her labor. My heart leapt. Yes, of course! I will be there, if I can be. I had figured she was okay with just her husband being there, and also she’d probably assumed it’d be hard for me to commit to being there because of my responsibility for my son. I went ahead and scheduled a camping trip for the few days leading up to her due date, figuring it’d better to schedule it before the due date than after (as it is more likely that she’ll be late than early for first-time births). But now, I’m hoping more than ever that the baby won’t come early and that I’ll be able to be there for my sister and her husband. And, although I don’t assume this, that I might even get to witness the birth if she wants me there. This possibility feels akin to being offered the opportunity to go on a spiritual retreat of unknown proportions, for which you must commit to dropping everything in a minute, quite possibly emerging ragged and exhausted, but from which you can be absolutely sure you will emerge profoundly moved and changed.

Even if I only get to rush in with flowers and tears after the drama has unfolded behind closed doors, I am incredibly excited for my sister to give birth to her first baby, Cedar’s cousin, my niece.

I feel poised on the cusp of so much new life right now—with one baby just arrived, and another on its way. Also, with one workshop just completed, another on its way. And in between, this stretch of days left open to enjoy and revel in life, summer, nature, family, writing, home, my own incredible good fortune.

I love you, my sisters. I love you, my babies. I love you, my students, my teachers, my friends. I love you, my life.

Thank you for the never-ending, unfolding reminder that this, this act of creation, is what it’s all about.

Dear Heart Radical: A Free Write

Dear Heart Radical,

You were an idea before you were the title of my manuscript. Book. Collection of Memoirs. Essays. Memoir singular. What to call you?

Does it even matter? Not if I don’t care anymore about “marketability”. I think, truly, you are essays. Searching for the Heart Radical: A Collection of Essays. Or Linked Essays by Anne Liu Kellor.

And what about the old subtitle: “A Journey Between East and West.” Scrap that? 

This is all not important. What matters is to love you again. It’s been so long that all I’ve done is loathe you, fear you, dread you, avoid you. I want to love you again. I want to appreciate all the love and sweat and experience poured into your pages. I want to share you, because sharing you is, too, a part of the writing process. Birthing process.

What is the Heart Radical? It is inner fierceness, not necessarily visible to the eye. It is an inner compass that helps the thinking, doubting part of me make choices that are aligned with the deepest, wisest, most transparent part of me. It is instinct that is allowed to function freely when all mechanisms of self-preservation have failed.

And the Heart Radical is also me, finding my voice. It is contradiction and complexity, demanding to exist and not be easily simplified or packaged for digestion’s sake. The Heart Radical is me, striving for authenticity, striving to walk the path I’m meant to walk, striving to do what my heart calls out to do, even when certain choices may not seem practical.

Because I am a writer, the Heart Radical is also about writing, about me staying true to my need to write, but I do not write about this in the manuscript. In the book, the Heart Radical is mostly about wandering. About revisiting my past through stories and travels. About seeking my roots, both geographical and familial. About risking exposure to find love, or at very least, connection with others. About risking vulnerability, for the chance to be seen and known. About learning to be okay being alone, as well as alongside another.

The Heart Radical is also about articulation, subtleties, and layers of truths. It is about learning to feel comfortable in who I am and what I believe, and learning to be okay with all my shortcomings, weaknesses and mistakes.

The Heart Radical is all of these things, and so much more. I love it as a title, as something to search for, because the Heart Radical is never stagnant and unchanging. Each passing day, year, season of my life, the shade and tenor of the Heart Radical is slightly different. Yesterday’s burning need in my heart is different than today’s subtle yearning. Yesterday’s longing for a lineage that could encompass my spiritual beliefs, is today’s longing for time, simply time, to remember what all those pressing questions were about.

Before I had a child, I used to have so much time—to wander, to ponder, to long and cry and feel lonely. Now I have so little time, and I do not feel lonely; I simply want more time for myself to even remember all those private heights and depths, all that scaffolding, elaborate cathedrals erected around my heart.

These pages are filled with stories and images of other people and places—in China, in Tibet, in L.A. But they are mostly filled with ideas and visions of myself. The book, the journey, is primarily an interior one, even if you are most interested in the parts where I take you to a sky burial or through the streets of Chengdu. I am only partially joking when people ask me what the book is about, and I say, “Me.” That sounds kind of arrogant, so I try to avoid that answer, but still I resort to it in moments of uncomfortableness when I don’t feel like exposing myself. It is also a lie if I say that the book is about “my time in China,” which makes it sound like a travelogue, and does not account for the pieces that are rooted in the States. It's about going back and forth, being in between. And if I say, it is about “exploring my cultural identity, spirituality, and relationships,” well that too is vague and non-revealing.

Anyway, that is all for now, I have to go finish my chores before I pick up my child from next door.

This free-write is just a beginning. A way for me to remember, to trick or cajole myself into falling again for my old lover, for these old stories, essays, occasional misplaced prose poem-- whatever they are, this collection of mine.

And why? Because it’s now or never time. I’m feeling this. It’s put it out there, find closure to this cycle, this part of this journey that is tied to this particular cycle of words, and move on. Because sharing the words is a part of the process for me. For even though they were originally written for me, they are ultimately not for me. To me, now, they are worthless in this form. They fester, they evoke a certain loathing. I need to let them go, set them free, release. Holding on to them any longer feels like a form of selfishness, selfishness born of fear. (What if no one likes them? No one buys them? What if I can’t stand to even read them aloud they feel so old? What if they don’t do justice to what my writing and thought process is like now?) Fears. I hold these pages to high standards. Perhaps you will too. Perhaps you will love them (love me!), perhaps you will judge them (judge me!). Do you see how it’s all tied up in my ego and mind?

That’s why to publish them—and self-publish, because I can’t wait any longer-- is the final act in this particular Search for the Heart Radical. That’s why I must. Okay, so I’ve convinced myself. Now, I just need to do it.

Versions of My Birth Story

I’ve been trying to find the time to finish writing my birth story, but I sense that I will not be finished with it for a long time. So far, I’ve made a couple different attempts. The first one came in the form of a mass email I sent out about a week after Cedar’s birth, in which I spelled out the gist of what happened: my first contractions came around seven a.m. on March 24th; I was in active labor by around five p.m.; my water broke at nine; my contractions quickly escalated in frequency and intensity. Then, sometime around 1 a.m., I started to get an urge to push. But I was only dilated to six centimeters; it was too early to push. The baby’s head was positioned low and thus triggering the urge. It continued to grow, and I could not help but push at times. Eventually, my cervix got swollen. And after more than four hours of intense rapid breathing in order to repress the pushing reflex, I finally transferred to the hospital at seven a.m. for an epidural to hopefully allow me to rest and my cervix to unswell.

My cervix had since gone from six cm. now down to four and was still tightly swollen. At the hospital, I lay there for hours, poked and prodded at by the nurses, unable to sleep. Meanwhile, contractions had slowed, so in the afternoon, pitocin was started to try and get contractions closer together again, and the dosage was slowly increased over many more hours of waiting. But there was hardly any progress. And by seven p.m., 36 hours after I’d gone into early labor, I was advised to have a c-section. Told of all the potential increased risks of infection and stress to my baby if I waited. Plus, now there was meconium. And after 27 hours of active labor, I was exhausted, questioning how important a vaginal birth really was to me, and ready to meet my baby without worrying about putting him at greater risks. They had me prepped within minutes. Surgery took half an hour. Our baby came out crying and vigorous.

Cedar took to the breast right away, and the nurses who cared for me were wonderful, but after more than three days at the hospital, we were more than ready to come home. There were way too many people in and out of our room all day and night, and it was time for me to heal in my own space. I needed to sink into a nest with just my husband and my baby in order to begin to process what the hell just happened. This bare bones account I’ve just given you cannot do not do justice to the intensity, pain, gratitude, disappointment, resignation, relief, joy and awe that flooded through me during those days of labor and recovery. But there you have it, a two paragraph version of Cedar’s birth, in a nutshell.



About two weeks after I delivered, I was finally able to sit down and free-write a longer version of the story—eleven single-spaced pages of every last detail I could remember. The ‘spew out as much as you can while it’s fresh in two sittings while the baby is sleeping, and don’t worry about flow or grammar’ version. Inevitably, questions started to arise. Questions about what happened from hour to hour-- when I was checked, how far I was along, when I started to get the urge to push, why I was initially told it was okay to push by my midwife’s assistant, how low was my baby’s head in my cervix, how long did I breathe those rapid fire breaths, how much longer could I have afforded to put off the c-section, and what else might have been done to avoid it. I wanted to talk to, and get copies of my chart from, both my midwife who attended the home part of the birth, and the midwife who attended most of my labor at the hospital, in order to be able to see from a linear perspective how it all went down. During the labor, I was not aware of time and I could barely talk to others. But now, in trying to write about it, I needed to understand as much as possible and be able to relay the details with precision-- with a precision that could help me feel like I fully owned the experience. Like there were no questions remaining I had not asked, even if I already knew that many questions could never be answered.

During the first couple weeks following Cedar’s birth, any mention of the experience could bring tears to my eyes. And although that period already feels like a long time ago, the whole journey is still so intimate to me and not an easy one to convey. With the help of my midwife’s chart, and also through talking to my husband and to my friend, Amy, who attended the birth, I’ve started to write a more polished, concise and thorough version of what happened. I am writing this for myself, first and foremost, because I want to have a record before the details grow fuzzy and my motivation to record them less profound. I already largely feel at peace with what happened, but I know that just as my incision from my c-section may be healed on the outside, I am still healing in layers on the inside. And for me, writing out all these versions of my story, and beginning to share them with others, is an integral part of my healing process.

I showed the detailed, play-by-play, in-progress version of my birth story to my friend, Amy. What do you think? I wrote her in an email. I want to post my birth story on my blog, but I’m not sure I’m ready to yet, it’s still so intimate to me. She wrote back,

I feel like you got the story line, the this then this then this. It's all a bit fuzzy for me. Something’s missing though. Emotion? It was such a powerful experience Anne. You were a rockstar! There you were on the bed, Matthew at your side and me at your feet and the cat at my head for hours. And you were breathing through these powerful contractions (I like your train out your ass metaphor!) It was pure magic. The space was infused with magic because you and the baby and the universe were manifesting this baby to be born. It was the most amazing thing. I want to feel more of the power and enormity of the experience in your writing. The goddess incarnate breathing on the bed and in the tub while Matthew and I witnessed and supported and encouraged as the midwives slept… and how he said, as we all lay in bed: it's raining, cedars love the rain. and Miles meowed with you as you labored. And I felt the ancient traditions coursing through me as I poured teakettle and pot after teakettle and pot of boiling water in the tub (I know, that wasn't your experience and you do write about it but it was very ancient and maternal and remembered)…

I knew she was right. My version, so far, was lacking emotion. It was written, for the most part, out of my motivation to understand exactly what happened on the linear, physical plane-- how much, how long, when and where. It was about recording all the details, getting them out of the way, so that I could eventually arrive at the deeper questions and emotions—the mixture of disappointment and relief that I felt when I decided to have the c-section; what it really meant to me to want a home birth, an un-medicated birth, and a vaginal birth and what those meant to me now that I hadn’t been able to have them; and, of course, what it felt like to meet my son. I still need to explore these questions, to honor both the part of me that is disappointed and sad that it didn’t go “as planned,” and the part of me that had prepared myself for this possibility-- that nothing ever goes quite “as planned” and that it would be okay if I ended up at the hospital, and okay if I ended up with a c-section, even though I hoped I wouldn’t. People always say, “What’s important is that you have a healthy baby and healthy mama.” And although I ultimately agree and that’s how I felt in the moment of making the decision to go ahead with the c-section, that doesn’t mean that there still isn’t sadness and questions I need to process, and that these aren’t important.

So what about my friend Amy’s version? The one that honors the magic and power of the experience? Yes, perhaps I will in some other essay be able to tap into that too. But, of course, it can’t be the same version as the one Amy experienced. Because although I was aware of the things that she wrote of—our cat Miles on the bed with us, what Matthew said about cedars and the rain, the procession of kettles of hot water poured into the tub—and so very grateful that she was a witness and could remind me of them, those details were very much in the periphery of my experience. Everything besides concentrating on my breath in order to manage the pain and my urge to push was in the periphery.

My labor was such an ‘out of mind’ experience that I’m having trouble expressing all of its parts in one whole—the timed, chronological, charted part and the physical, painful, visceral part; the spiritual, magical, ancient part and the reflective, looking back on it, redemptive part. All I know is, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. And mostly I’m talking about the physical energy and effort it took. But even the pain I experienced was quickly forgotten once I moved into the next stage of the labor at the hospital, and the huge relief of the epidural. Then the long procession of I.V.s, catheters, monitors, heart beat scares, interventions and procedures. And finally, after so many hours, my son’s birth. Hearing, seeing, touching him, and bringing him to my breast for the first time. Sleeping with him close to my body those first few nights. The dreamlike fog of pain medication, sleep deprivation, and awe at this creature by my side. One life-changing experience on top of another without time or space to process each layer and shade of emotion on its own. No ‘time out’ after birth to pause and recoup before being launched into this huge responsibility and fierce instinctual drive called motherhood.

Maybe months, or years from now, I will be able to write one version of my birth story that supersedes all the others in grace, understanding, and scope, and thus puts all further attempts to tell the story anew to rest. But, for now, I won’t worry about trying to arrive there just yet. For now, I will just piece together whatever fragments I can while my sweet baby sleeps on my chest.

Hijacked

Where to begin? Where to begin to describe the emotions-- the awe, the relief, the rawness, the exhaustion, the overwhelming newness and love coursing through my body during the last three weeks since our son’s birth? How to describe the love I feel, the fierce protective, we belong to each other forever kind of love, the I can’t believe you are here love, the who are you love, the where did you come from and what will we have to teach each other kind of love, the I can’t believe I have a baby, and you are this baby, this perfect, miraculous, incredible, adorable baby and I am so grateful that you are here, we are healthy, and the three of us now form a family kind of love.

How can a love like this arrive so swiftly, so completely, so immensely with no reserve? “Emotionally hijacked,” the nurse from New Zealand said, that’s what happens to us when our children are born, and this phrase stuck out to me through the sleep-deprived, drug-laced fog of the three days I spent at the hospital. Yes, my heart has been hijacked, sucked out from within my former self, fueled by my tears, my hormones, and the sweet soft whimpers you make in your sleep.

Cedar. I love the noises you make—the grunts and the sighs, the ravenous gasping and rooting, the soft dolphin clicking, and the steady persistent wail when nothing but the milk of mama’s breast will do. I love the relationship we already have formed, the way my voice and the sight and smell of my breast placed in front of your face will calm you, how together we complete a bond that no one else can fill. I may complain of sore nipples, poor sleep, and constant feeding, but beneath it all, I am happy—no, overjoyed—to be this nourishment for you. For you, my sweet baby, for you.

Who will you grow to be? What are you here to do in this life? How will we learn and grow together? You have arrived, and our life has changed, and we knew this would happen, yet nothing we read or did could prepare us for what it feels like, to hold you in our arms, to stare at you as you sleep, to marvel at this immense mystery called life and the way it arrives in our world.

Cedar. You came from my body. I grew an organ to feed you. I felt and watched your rolling movements in my belly for months, and now I watch you as you make these same movements here in mama’s outside world, and my brain stretches to comprehend this transition. You were in there, apart from us yet with us, moving and hiccupping and kicking and dreaming, a little aquatic creature who is now learning to live on land and in air, exposed to this world and all of its elements with only mama and papa to protect you, to wrap you up warm and wipe your bum dry and keep you as safe as we can.

Cedar. We have been waiting for you, and now you are here, healthy and whole, and I bow down and give thanks for this blessing. I know you are the perfect child for me, whoever you are and have yet to become. You who have already claimed me, seized the pulse of my heart.

Trust

I am eleven days away from my due date. Babies come early, babies come late; for first-time mothers, babies are often late-- and yet-- it is also true that I could go into labor any day now, any place. I feel my body growing heavier, I’ve been more achy and tired with increasing menstrual cramp-like sensations. There’s less room for my baby to move in there, so when he does move, whole sides of my belly stretch and protrude. He moves, and I immediately feel pressure on my bladder. He moves, and I cannot help but notice-- and wonder, and imagine-- at what point will this movement translate into my first contraction? My water breaking? Sudden cramping or pain? At what point will the realization sink through: this is it. Sweep the floors, make the bed: our baby is to come.

Corresponding to his impending arrival, I’ve been thrust into the “nesting” phase of obsessive-compulsive task- completing and list-making. I’ve gathered all the home birth supplies, including a huge stack of old towels, and tied them in plastic bags now stored under our changing table. Baby diaper service has delivered our first week’s worth of 70 cloth diapers. My husband and I have gone to Costco and stocked up on toilet paper, laundry soap, soy milk, tomato sauce, black beans, pasta, fluids for labor, and much more, to avoid as much shopping as possible in the months to come. We’ve cleaned out the attic and basement, and dropped stuff off at Value Village and the dump to make room for all the baby gear slowly populating odd corners of our house. We decided last weekend to sell our two old station wagons in order to buy a newer car for me to drive the baby in. We’ve chosen our baby’s doctor, written a birth plan, ordered a birthing tub, held two baby showers, written thank you cards, attended classes on labor, newborn care, post-partum planning, and breastfeeding, reorganized our dresser drawers… and the list goes on.

Thankfully, most of the important stuff has been taken care of, and now I’ve moved on to tackling other projects on my list. I am currently scanning and transferring hundreds of old slides of my old friends, Els and Frank, onto my computer; I also have a stack of Els and Frank’s letters I still hope to transcribe; I am making a digital scrapbook of the last two years of me and Matthew’s lives; I am about to start collaging a belly cast my friend Amy helped me to make—and I’d still like to make some other birth art with the watercolors and pencils I bought for this purpose.

I’m trying to strike a balance between staying busy, and slowing down. People say it can be good to stay busy around this time or else you might go crazy with anticipation, especially once you reach your due date. I enjoy these projects, and it would feel great to finish some of them or else who knows when I will return to them. But conversely, and more importantly perhaps, I want to slow down and spend time moving through my days aware of these last quiet moments alone, breathing, anticipating the changes to come.


***


My home is my temple, and may never feel like this more so than when we welcome into it our baby, this new life. I want everything to be clean, to feel open, uncluttered, and relaxing. To be perfect. And yet this is where the paradox comes in: I know that true perfection can only be realized when I let go of caring about all the imperfections. I know that when I go into labor not every last inch of the house will be scoured, all my signs of every day living may still be strewn about, my husband may very well be on the road for his work and hours away from me yet, or that something will be “out of place” or not quite as I imagined, and I’ll just have to breathe and say “holy shit it’s happening,” and go with it. Know that I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Trust that my body will know what to do. Trust in the awareness training I’ve cultivated for years. Breathe and greet each contraction anew. Be curious about the pain as it evolves and grows stronger. Groan, grunt and dissolve into the wild creature I’ve learned I can be. Let go of my fears and inhibitions. Accept that I am not in control.

I believe that I can do this, that I can give birth without drugs at home, and that I can labor for hours or days if that is what it takes. Yet I also know that I am not a failure if I need to transfer to the hospital. If the pain or fatigue becomes too much for my body to take, or if there are any complications. I trust that they will take care of me there too, and that nothing about this labor is a fight or a show. That it is an experience handed to me from God, a dance, an interplay of what is given and how each moment is received. And while I am not in control of what happens, I know that the connection between my mind and body can play a huge role in how it unfolds.

I’ve carried so much anticipation in these past months, learning and thinking about this day when my baby will be born, what my labor will be like, and who my son will be. Now, it is so strange and overwhelming to know that this day is soon to arrive.

I’ve been in training for what feels like the most important day of my life. I’ve checked things off lists, read scores of books, attended classes, talked to friends, written blog posts, and yet, ultimately, I sense that it is the slow, steady, internal transformation that has been preparing me most of all. It is the sudden brimming of tears, the “holy shit” moments of reckoning, and the deep deep surrender to a trust that I must now embrace.

Turn, Baby, Turn

Almost every day, I lie in bed and feel my belly, trying to recognize body parts, trying to guess how my baby now lies.

For, during the last couple visits to my midwife, my baby has been in the breech position (head at the top). She showed me how you could tell it was the head—it is hard, and when you push at it with two fingers held a few inches apart, it bobbles back and forth but does not move the rest of the body. Whereas, when you push at other body parts, this often moves the whole body, or else the baby pushes back, so you know you must be prodding a leg or an arm or something.

It seemed easy enough to locate, but now, left for weeks on my own, I can never be sure what I am feeling. There are so many body parts, so many hard surfaces—is this the back, the bottom, or what? I feel movements in so many places, and I try to imagine what kind of contorted position my baby might be in that elicits these jabs and rolls from all sides. I palpate my fingers along the sides, bottom, and top of my uterus to try and distinguish a rough shape, and sometimes I think I’m on to something. But ultimately, I have to give up and let go. It’s too hard for me to tell for sure, and it’s too early to really start worrying.

They say that there is still plenty of time for him to turn, and I know this is true. Something like 50% of babies lie in the breech presentation at some point during pregnancy, but only 5% stay in that position for delivery—which these days usually means a c-section. OBs aren’t even trained in vaginal breech deliveries anymore. Some midwives still do breech deliveries, but fewer and fewer have the experience—and in turn, fewer will pass on this knowledge to their students. It is a dieing skill. Breech vaginal deliveries used to be common, until sometime in the 1970s when a study was released that found c-sections to be the safer alternative, although some might contest this. Today, a very small percentage of breech babies are delivered vaginally.

To my surprise, I learned that my midwife actually does breech vaginal deliveries. She speaks of her experience with a calm confidence, and says that they do not scare her. This news filled me with both gratitude and trepidation. I’d simply assumed that if my baby was breech I’d have a c-section like all the other women I’d talked to. (And I seem to know quite a few women who have had breech babies, considering that they supposedly only occur in 5% of births.)

But I haven’t wanted to go here yet. I haven’t wanted to start weighing the pros and cons, tapping into my intuition, and discussing in detail with my husband and midwife what we would do. For everyone tells me we still have plenty of time… I’m at 32 weeks, and it’s usually around 35 weeks or so that babies assume the position that they will stay in. Yet even then, plenty of babies turn at a late date. My friend’s baby, in fact, flipped into the breech position in her last week of pregnancy. Babies know best, some say, how they want to be born.

So, with the exception of a few quickly scanned articles, I have resisted the onslaught of Internet research and statistics for now that would no doubt make me feel stressed out and worried. And I have resisted talking to too many people about this, for fear that talking and thinking about it too much will make me more anxious. Instead, I have tried to concentrate my energy on encouraging my baby to turn.

There are many things one can do, with varying reports of success. For example, talking to the baby or playing music down low is supposed to help, as babies will gravitate towards the sounds. Or doing flips or handstands in a pool. Or lying with your pelvis elevated and feet up against the wall at an angle. Or taking pulsatilla, a homeopathic flower. Or acupuncture and moxibustion. Or visualizations. Or putting an ice pack up high, and something warm down low. Or shining a flashlight down low. Or later, a more invasive procedure where the doctor manually tries to push your baby into a new position.

I’ve tried a few things from the list above, and later on, if my baby still hasn’t turned, I will no doubt try more. But for now I am trying not to obsess over the process; and trying every single strategy on the list would, for me, constitute obsessing. You don’t want to worry about it, my midwife said, for stress itself can keep your baby from turning.

Easier said than done of course. Not worrying about something for me usually means not thinking about it at all. But it’s hard not to carry some worry, however far back it lies in your consciousness, when you are suddenly given this new list of things that you should be doing, in addition to all the things you are already supposed to be doing—like getting 70-80 grams of protein a day, plus all the necessary nutrients, omega-3s, vitamins, and vegetables; like drinking enough water, exercising five times a week, doing Kegels, and prenatal yoga; like buying infant car seats and figuring out where he will sleep, choosing a pediatrician, reading up on childbirth, taking classes, identifying support systems, and a million other little things that one could possibly do to prepare for childbirth and parenthood.

So, my husband and I have made a tape of our voices talking that I can play each night at the bottom of my belly when my husband is away; I’ve been taking pulsatilla; and I bought a maternity bathing suit and have started going to the pool (something I haven’t done since I was a child). Floating, stretching, and moving through the water has felt wonderful, and I am grateful for the way this ‘turn’ in my pregnancy has gotten me to do something so therapeutic that I wouldn’t have done otherwise. I am also thankful for the way this process has forced me and my husband to talk more to our baby, and to think about all the ways in which he is listening.

***

Faith, acceptance, and hope are tricky mind-heart states to balance. I’m trying to trust that my baby will turn (and I know the statistics are in my favor), at the same time that I’m trying to hold the awareness that whatever happens will be okay. That in the end, he either will or he won’t turn, and there won’t be anything I can do about it. All I can do is make the most informed and most intuitive decisions possible, each step of the way.

Next week, I have a prenatal appointment, one I’ve anxiously been awaiting. My midwife will be able to tell me again what position my baby now lies in. He is definitely an active one, moving all the time, but I don’t think he’s turned head down yet, because I have yet to feel his kicks up real high. But then again, I’m really not sure—for, by now, his legs might be wrapped up around his body, and surely there must be plenty of positions he could be in that I can’t visualize.

For now, I try to remember to breathe and send my baby love. To feel calm, rested, and at peace as I lay in bed with my hands on my belly. To let go of the fears and what-ifs, at the same time that I pray for a gentle birth-- for both me, and my child.

I pray that whatever decisions I may still have to make about this pregnancy and delivery will come clearly and easily.

I pray that I can carry an open acceptance about whatever needs to happen.

And I pray that my baby hears my voice whispering, now, turn, baby, turn.

Anticipation: Second Trimester

My baby has been moving a lot lately. I’ve been aware of his movements for about a month now; he is especially active at night when I am still. His movements don’t feel sharp or jarring, but rather like gentle bubbles or rolls. I wish I could visualize how he is moving in there—is he turning full somersaults, or just stretching his arms and legs? And how much are his movements related to my own? Does he kick when I am putting too much pressure on the side where he is curled? Is he rocked and thus soothed when I am active? Does he grow hungry when I am hungry, or is the transference of nutrients not so direct? There is so much that is a mystery to me, so many questions I could ask of my midwife, and yet only so much time to find out the answers before another few months—and new stages of development-- have flown by.

It’s hard to believe I’m nearing the end of my second trimester, soon to enter the final stretch of preparation for birth and for HUGE LIFE CHANGES-- not to mention entering that physical stage where things start to get more uncomfortable.

I am so grateful for the time I have had during this pregnancy to read, to write, and to ponder this great unfolding mystery. I know that most pregnant women don’t have this luxury, and instead must carry the usual stresses of work and home at the same time that their bodies go through so many cycling surges of joy, fear, worry, awe, and excitement. I wish that all pregnant women could take the time to go into personal retreat, or to at least take as much time to pay attention and listen to their emotions as they do to thinking about practicalities like procuring baby supplies, maternity leave, and childcare.

For what other event do we go through that is as momentous and life-altering as giving birth? Death—of a loved one, or our own—is the only equivalent I can think of. Yet with death, so often we are less prepared for its arrival; even if we rationally know it will come, only in the most opportune situations do we have the emotional and spiritual presence to openly honor and welcome it.

In childbirth, a part of us also dies as we give birth. Pam England and Rob Horowitz write in Birthing from Within: “The mounting intensity of labor forces complete surrender of our body and will, dissolving our egos, ideas, and familiar sense of self. We’re not afraid of dying because there is no “self” left to resist and fear. At that transcendent moment we have become birth itself. This is the spiritual birth of woman into mother.”

I am soon to become a mother. In some ways, this feels like the most natural role I could possibly prepare for, and I trust that so much will come intuitively. In other respects, my husband and I have so much to learn and get ready for. We need to go to childbirth classes, as well as classes in breastfeeding and newborn care. We need to decide where our baby will sleep, what kind of diapers we will use, and where we will fit all the baby gear into our tiny one-bedroom cabin. We need to figure out how much unpaid time off my husband can afford to take (after his one paid week of paternity leave is over), and who we can count on to help us with meals and care in the weeks that follow the birth. We need to write a birth plan that outlines our wishes (although this seems less pressing now that we’ve made the choice to give birth at home), and I need to practice my squats and Kegels (squeezing the pelvic muscles to help prepare for birth), get plenty of exercise, eat enough protein and ingest all the necessary nutrients-- do all I can to prepare for a healthy baby and smooth labor.

I also need (want) to secure a book deal for my old completed manuscript, and make as much progress as possible on my new writing project, because I know that whatever I don’t complete before the baby is born will have to be put on hold for some time. I want to honor my writing projects and life as much as possible in this sweet spacious time I have right now, for I know that it will be a long time before I ever have this kind of stretched out time to myself again.

In short, I have plenty to think about and do, even without formal employment. And this list doesn’t even touch the emotional preparation that my husband and I are going through, that is slowly building in intensity. In January, we will go to our birthing class, a class that will not only teach us about coping with labor pain, but will also encourage us to journal and make birth art, to prepare for our new lives with a focus and intention that is more rooted in the spiritual, and less in the planning/worrying brain. And soon we will also go on a “babymoon,” or at least take a couple long weekends to be alone together in nature, away from our normal routines, acknowledging what is ahead of us, and saying goodbye to what we will be leaving behind.

I want to make sure that we take the time to make ritual. I’ve heard that the period following a birth is one of the most common times for marital issues to arise, and I want to make sure that we do everything we can right now to honor our partnership-- as a couple, the two of us—- as well as what it means that we are already becoming more than just the two of us, as we begin to welcome this new being.

My husband likes to joke that “our lives are over” and anticipate the birth of our child with an “Oh, shit!” tone, especially when talking to others. When I question why he must always give more weight to expressing the fearful side of things as opposed to expressing the excitement and awe that I know he also feels, he corrects himself “our lives as we know it,” thus softening the drama of his claim. Though I know it is healthy to openly express our fears, I want to encourage him to also practice affirming the trust that we will be capable and passionate parents, fueled in new ways we can only imagine even as we will surely be worn by exhaustion. And although my husband has not spent as much time contemplating birth as I have, I can see in his eyes his shifting awareness when I say things about "our baby" who becomes more real each day; and I can hear it in his voice each time he puts his hand on my belly and exclaims how “trippy” it is. The other night when I was spooning my husband, my belly against his back, he finally had to turn around because the baby was moving so much he couldn’t fall asleep.

All in all, my second trimester has been gentle and sweet. I stopped feeling nauseous long ago, I’ve had plenty of energy, and I feel so much more grounded in this whole process. Once we decided where to give birth and I chose a midwife whom I trusted, I could finally relax into the pregnancy, knowing that there was plenty of time to soak in everything else I’d need to know. “That’s why they give you nine months,” a friend said. Indeed.

This is my time-- to be present, to dream, to write, to stay open. To dwell as much as possible in a place of awe and awareness, good health and good energy. To prepare for the birth of my child, and the birth of myself, as a mother. To prepare for the passing of one phase, and to welcome the coming of another.

Into the great fathomless unknown, we plunge. Let us plunge with steady breath and open eyes, my dear, for once we arrive on the other side, we may quickly forget that there was ever another.