A Child Is Born

Every seven seconds in the United States. Eight every minute, four hundred and eighty every hour. Four every single second in the world. I thought about that this weekend, as we experienced the birth of our fourth child. It's such a common thing, the birth of a baby, not notable, really, in the great scheme of this world. And still, one of the biggest moments of your life, when it's yours.

So many stories playing out simultaneously, so much joy, grief, drama, relief, happiness. The story of one single child's moment of entry, one more drop in the ocean, doesn't seem all that important.

Except that this one is ours. Unique and miraculous.

I started having serious contractions shortly after my sister arrived on Saturday night and I stayed up most of the night, thinking about stars and snowflakes and other unique beauties and trying not to get too stressed out about the likely pain of the next day. We took a walk early in the morning. She drove me the five minutes down the hill to the hospital at 7:00, so that we could see if enough had changed and I could be admitted without implementing our entire, carefully delineated, nine-point child care plan.

(Bye-bye baby tummy.)

The hospital was church quiet, coated in a sticky feeling of cleanliness and anticipation like a house in the final moments before the guests arrive for a party. I had dilated to six centimeters overnight and the triage nurse handed us our tickets to the main event and showed me to my room, while Dianna drove home to collect Matt and my things and call in our reinforcements.

I loved this birth. It went exactly as I had hoped, right up until the actual pushing. My sister and my darling friend, Elise, Matt and I hung out, chatted and laughed and told stories. It felt a little weird, at first, to be sitting in that huge (hotel suite huge, this hospital has a brand new labor and delivery wing with all the bells and whistles) sterile, sunny room, on a hospital bed in a windy little gown, discussing politics and life and trying to ignore the contractions and the building anticipation and, for me, more than a little fear about the stages to come.

Matt went to McDonalds to get my traditional milkshake and buy everyone else breakfast (and because Matt likes any excuse to leave the room and have something active and, did I mention outside the room, to do). After two hours, the nurse did a quick check and declared me still a six, which plunged me into the depths of well-shit-I've-got-all-these-people-sitting-around-here-for-nothing despair, but about fifteen minutes later, my midwife arrived and I was an eight. We are going with the fact that I dilated to eight in those two hours because I just like the story better that way.

Sara said we could break my water if I was ready, and I was, except that I knew things would get hellishly painful and transitiony as soon as she did it. I tried not to panic and bolt. No, that wasn't so much an option either, considering that then I had a strong chance of breaking my own water and not conveniently sitting on their freakishly absorbent pad. I gave the green light and she let the floods loose and I don't really know for a while. We still joked a little, in between contractions, but it was quiet. The contractions were hard and I was focused on breathing and not hurting anyone.

I have to say the first three hours were pretty zen, on a scale of zen to out of control screaming. I just asked Dianna and she agrees. I have good memories. A little before noon, Sara said, "you're starting to look pushy when you breathe, you shouldn't be breathing through the urge to push." I know I was a little because pushing hurts kind of like...it hurts kind of like being split in half at your vagina to push a baby into the world. With a little nausea. And an uncontrollable urge to keep pushing as hard as you can even though it hurts like being split in half at your vagina.

Brace yourselves, this is where zen flew out the window and I screamed like a pig dipped in honey being chased by a swarm of angry bees. Those killer Texas bees that immigrated from South America, not regular old honey bees.

I pushed and started out just crying because I told myself I wouldn't scream inane things this time. That I would continue to be zen and calm and controlled. By the second set of contractions, I was sobbing that it hurt, that I couldn't do it, that it hurt. I think it took about five contractions? Thirty minutes? Twenty pushes, maybe?

I screamed that I was dying. That was nurse Laurie's favorite.
When the head started to show, Sara told me to reach down, to look, to touch his hair. I screamed, "NO LOOKING, NO TOUCHING, JUST GET IT OUT." That was Elise's favorite.
I screamed, "why is this taking so long." That was my doula's favorite.
I screamed, "someone help me," which, you know, hello? Duh? Matt, Dianna, Elise, the doula, the midwife and three nurses were helping me.

Elise was the most incredible friend. She was right there, holding my leg, telling me that she could see his beautiful hair. Dianna, my amazing sister, hid a little farther back towards my head, but she took peeks and took amazing pictures and cried at exactly the right time. They made the day extra specially beautiful. They also allowed Matt, my six foot three inch, strong as a rock lump of quivering jelly, to hide by my head, whispering that he loved me and resting his ashen head on the bed so that he didn't keel over and require medical care.

Right at the end, I screamed that I didn't think he was moving, that he was stuck. That actually turned out to be true, one of his huge football linebacker shoulders was stuck under my pelvis somewhere. Sara was amazing, she reached up there like on those slightly horrifying veterinarian shows and turned him a little so that I could push him out the rest of the way.

And then, there he was, our one in almost seven billion. Perfect. Huge, but perfect.



Matt managed to say that it was a boy. Our third boy. Nathaniel Patrick. Baby Nate. His story in this world started at 12:25 p.m. on Sunday, June 28, 2009. I can write that he was 9 lbs 3 oz, 22 inches, that he was a little shocked and bruised from being stuck and it took him a moment to breathe, that he nursed right away like a little pro, that we loved him instantly, beyond thought, and will always. He'll have to take it from there.



**********************************************
There's more to my story of the day. A little drama. I hemorrhaged severely about a half an hour after the birth. By the time we realized what was happening and got a handle on the situation, I had lost two liters of blood that had to be birthed itself as a frighteningly large blood clot. It was a long, horrible afternoon that ended with a blood transfusion. It ended well though, I was fine, Nate was fine. We are all home, adjusting, learning, loving the addition of Nate to our family. Or, as Quinn likes to call him, "Dat new one."

Thank you so much for all of your love and well wishes. Having your comments and tweets and emails to read as I recovered lighted up the whole day.