holding still

So, an update. This will probably be all over the place. And it will lack all poetry. But I want to be writing here, so anything is a start.

Thank you all for your hugely loving responses to our loss of Love Child. That is still ongoing. Love Child’s heart likely stopped beating nine days ago, and I started spotting pretty much immediately. Spotting turned to bleeding within a couple of days, but we’re still waiting for my body to let go of the baby. We are hopeful (I am hopeful) that this will happen naturally, but at some point we will turn to Cytotec. I hope to avoid a D&C. I delivered Emmett Ever at home, and I hope to do so with this baby too. For me, the sense of failure is great. It would mean something to be able to do this well, to lose well. For anyone who wants to know what natural miscarriages can look like, here’s a good account. And by good I mean sad, but honest. This is not unlike our loss of E, though in her case, I was told that it wasn’t happening, so the pain just made me crazy. And I fought it. Resisted every single contraction. And the agony of that resistance nearly broke me. Now I’m having contractions every day, though usually only for two or three hours. And I don’t fight them. I ask for them. I breathe through them. I don’t tell myself that they aren’t real because I wasn’t further along. I don’t dismiss what I’m feeling, nor what J is feeling as she loses another non-gestational child. Mostly, we just wait. We feel paralyzed. We want to grieve, but it feels impossible while we wait. I have rarely felt more stuck.

And then, last Thursday, the day after we didn’t hear a heartbeat, our beloved boy cat Hades died very suddenly. I was working in Bram’s playroom while he and his babysitter A were playing, and A called me from the bedroom. Hades was dead. He was curled up in my armoire with his (litter-mate) sister, which was exactly his favorite place to be. He had been sick for a year with kidney disease, but we’d been giving him subcutaneous fluids every other day and, though he was vomiting liquid frequently, he seemed to be doing better: he played his favorite game of make-the-bed every week, he chased B’s puzzle pieces around the room, he dragged his favorite orange mousy up the stairs twice in his last week, he was eating. We opted not to do an autopsy on his little body since knowing what happened wouldn’t bring him back. So we’ll never know. He left in peace. And he left with mystery, not unlike E and Love Child. The many mysterious creatures we love.

Hades and his sweet girl-cat sister Nemesis came into my life when I was only twenty years old. I found them in Japan, behind a door that said, “Caution. Feral cats. Do not enter.” I entered. They each fit into the palm of my hand. They purred and hissed at the same time. I knew they needed love, not caution. When J came into our lives, she signed a contract vowing to share their care with me. She adopted them. We even notarized it. Those were sweet sweet days.

Though I very much hope to have many other much.loved animals in my life (and though I deeply love Nemesis), I have a theory that you only get one soul animal. One animal who looks you in the eyes and understands, one animal you just get. Sort of like your daemon, if you’re a Pullman fan. Anyway, Hades was mine. Now there’s a hole in my heart and our home is full of sadness. Bram is confused. He walks around calling “cat” and “Hadie” because when he did that, Hades always came. And Nemesis is lost. She’d never spent a night without her brother until now. Her eyes are one of the saddest things I’ve ever ever seen. I’m not sure she’ll make it through this, though she and J have a special thing, and J thinks she will. I’ll write more about our puppy-cat soon. And post photos.

And then, last Friday, I finished and submitted my dissertation. After eight total years of graduate school (MA, teaching, PhD) and two and a half years of writing, I am done. And right now, that feels pretty empty. We were going to celebrate. Celebration feels impossible. I was waiting to submit my dissertation to even begin grieving my dad. Grief feels a little overwhelming now. As our friend Jessica says, we have grief fatigue. It is a thing.

There’s an odd stillness here. J and I feel stuck. Slow moving. Trudging, as if through heavy water. This almost.baby is holding still, and always will be. Hades is still. Ever still. Only Bram seems truly full of life, and thank the gods for his joyful self. But for his smiles, these days might be unbearably dark. We have waited for spring, and now spring has come, but it feels like more winter. And so we wait still.

I said there would be no poetry, but I do have this, Mary Oliver. This is where grief can carry you if you let it. So I guess mostly right now, we pray for the courage to let it. Thank you for being here with us. We know you are, and that is something larger than I can explain.

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had His hands in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it -
books, bricks, grief -
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled -
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?

Mary Oliver, “Heavy”

saul spencer, 1

Hi, beloved and so.so.so.missed community. So.so.missed.

We’ve been gone for four weeks, which is exactly how long (less one day) that we had Saul with us.

This story’s going to take awhile to tell, so here’s what I’m thinking. I’ll try to write (or J will) everyday, and to post a photos when we can. Hopefully we’ll have everyone caught up in a week or two.

So where to start. Gods I’ve missed this space. This month of all months. I would never have been silent here of my own volition; our agency asked us not to blog until the TPR hearing, so we complied. I’m glad we did now because otherwise I might have wondered if we’d caused this to happen. The TPR hearing was supposed to be last Monday. It wasn’t.

But the beginning. The hospital was so hard. L was clearly processing a great deal (so much about her ex, Saul’s birth father), and she only slept for two hours those first two days. We took turns with her there, and she never turned off the lights or got quiet. I wanted to give Sauly the dark, quiet warmth I knew he needed, but I felt like she needed us to be there mostly for her, so I tried to devote myself wholly to whatever she wanted: company on trips outside to smoke, reassurances, advocacy. Most of all I tried to be a good listener. My gods, did I listen to her (and I know that’s all J did during her shifts too). The baby felt very secondary, which made me deeply sad, but it felt like what she needed. We took him to the nursery or the nurses whenever she wanted to smoke. It was hard to leave him so much. He got antibiotics unnecessarily, and fourteen hours of formula, which made me sad. He never got skin-to-skin in the hospital. I told her that if she changed her mind, I would help her come up with a plan for how she could keep him. I meant it. I held the baby, but not like he was mine. I ceded to her entirely. I believed she was in agony over the decision to place him, but that she thought it was best for him: that she was generous and loving despite the chaos. All of this seems foolish now.

When she was discharged, L went through with the placement, and we all came home a happy (if shocked and overwhelmed) family of four. I remember being discharged from the hospital and heading back across town to pack up our hotel room. It was our first experience alone with two, and it was intense. One month into parenting two, and I can’t imagine why it seemed so hard, but in that moment, without our support system, and with no sleep, learning how to do this – let alone do it well – felt impossible. The drive home, on the other hand, was one of the sweetest times of my life. It started to snow: the first snowfall of the year. I had wiggled my way into the backseat between the two car seats, and I had sung to both boys (Sauly for the first time), and somehow, miraculously, both of our sons fell asleep. I could hear Bram’s breathing, and I kept my hand on Sauly’s so.so.tiny chest, so I could feel his soft inhalations. We were quiet and amazed and falling in love.

J started maternity leave, I took two week off of writing, and we hired our dear friend as a postpartum doula to help us spin up VERY quickly for the exhausting art of parenting two under one. We took turns downstairs with him at night, sitting in the quiet darkness learning the smell of his skin, his sweet little squeaks, the complex color of his wide-open and watchful eyes. B wanted to nurse a lot more at first – I think he was threatened by having to share his milk. There were nights where he woke up eight times, and each time either boy needed to nurse, we had to switch. Saul loved to nurse, so between his demands and Bram’s, J spent most of her time with at least one (and during the day, often two) sons attached to her breast. There were nights when we got two hours of sleep total. There were tears. J often felt empty, afraid she wasn’t making enough to feed them both. As it turns out, she was. By Sauly’s one week check, he’d gained a half a pound! As our dear friend Christina says, my wife makes seal milk.

Saul also took to skin-to-skin like nobody’s business, so I spent nearly every night until 3:30am, and often again early, with his bare chest against mine, heartbeat against my heartbeat, breath against my breath. By the last week he was with us, I brought him to bed with me between 5 and 6am, and carefully settled him on my chest, where he got his longest stretch of the night. For those hours, we were together in bed, a peaceful family of four. Those were some of the happiest hours of my life.

Bram immediately learned the word “brother” and would delight in hurling himself across the room each time he was asked: “do you want to smooch brother?” He knew not to kiss him on the mouth, and not to touch him with his hands, so he would wait until Saul’s sweet baby head was lowered so he could plant his (not remotely closed) lips firmly on the top of Sauly’s head. He delighted in the new person in our family. Friends got us a swing (attachment parenting or not: you can’t parent two under one without at least one baby containment device), and when Saul was sleeping in it, B would watch and swing his hands along with him. He looked for him first thing in the morning. He was a little jealous when I wore Saul, and when J nursed, but mostly: he was a wonderful big brother, and he was clearly falling in love.

As for Saul, he has the most intense eyes – they just stare at you with an unreal amount of comprehension for a newborn – and the sweetest, fastest flash of a smile, which seems to come out of nowhere and explode on his face. He has strawberry blonde hair that only looks truly red when set against white or cream, pale skin that looks nearly translucent in photos, and a seriousness about him that is unmistakable. He is so, so different from Bram. For such a new being, he feels introspective. Though he has quite a set of lungs on him, he is largely quiet. He is an odd and magnificent baby, and falling in love with him was easy.

That’s all I have time (or emotional energy) for tonight. As is no doubt evident, L took Saul back. We drove him to our social worker yesterday, one day shy of four weeks after his birth. We had nearly a month with him as our son. There’s plenty more to write.

Bram’s Birth Story: Part One

We decided to write Bram’s birth story now while it’s still fresh in our minds. Our minds, however, aren’t all that fresh, so you’ll have to forgive us any subpar writing (or, for readers who were there, inaccuracies). We also decided to write this together – our first joint post on Breaking Into Blossom – as bringing our son into the world was a team effort. Since our labor stretched from Monday until Thursday night, it seems most logical to separate the days (though they all run together in our minds). J wrote the regular (un-italicized) text below: she is the keeper of dates and details, apparently even in labor. R’s impressions of the NGP labor experience are in italics (a style borrowed from N and Lyn, whose strong voices lent shape to the NGP thoughts here). The photographs were taken by our heroic doula. We’ve split the birth story into three parts so as not to overwhelm readers. We’re publishing all three parts at once, though, so read at your convenience (if you want to read at all). Our beloved Christine wrote about being on our birth team on her blog, too, if you’re interested. She’s a beautiful writer. She kept notes throughout the labor, which are invaluable to us now.

Monday, January 16th, 2012 

I should probably have suspected that something was “up” on the Sunday before labor began. I desperately wanted to get manicures and pedicures with R (an experience I’ve had exactly once before in my life, namely, before our wedding).  I then proceeded to drag R clothes shopping (again, an activity usually reserved for never). If R hadn’t put the brakes on our afternoon, I would have then taken her to dinner and a movie. As it was, she was exhausted and wanted to go home. Back at home, I went into furious nesting mode, including baking impromptu from-scratch brownies. Again, I should have recognized that something was “up.”

The last pregnant (pre-labor) photograph I have of J is of her making those brownies. And she wore me out that day, which I too should have registered as significant. It just seemed impossible that after all those preparations, the baby would actually come.

On Monday, January 16^th, I didn’t have to work because of the MLK holiday. We had had quite a bit of snow, so R and I decided to lay low at home for the better part of the day. By evening we were getting antsy, so we decided to go the local mall to do some walking (both of our gyms were closed for the holiday). While at the mall, I lost my mucous plug in the bathroom. I remember feeling strangely elated. I knew that the mucous plug could come weeks before the baby, so I wasn’t really expecting labor to begin straightaway, but it was still thrilling that things were “progressing” toward the birth of our son.

We finished our walk at the mall, came home, and went about our normal nighttime routine. Around 10:45pm, just after finishing some night reading, I started having my first contractions. Initially, they were about 10 minutes apart. I had some minor bloody show and a lot of wetness (we weren’t sure at the time if my water had broken – in retrospect, I think it was just more mucous).  Those initial, intermittent, mild contractions were quickly replaced by more intense contractions coming as quickly as two minutes apart. They weren’t super-consistent, but I felt like early labor was slipping too quickly by. I felt panicky at how fast things were progressing and I didn’t feel like I had time to adjust to the contractions.

Oh, was I devoted to J getting some sleep. To BOTH of us getting some sleep. All those childbirth classes where our doula stressed how important it was to sleep during early labor. And I just kept thinking “I don’t know if I can do this if we don’t get a little rest. Oh, please let us get some rest.” I pleaded with her all night. We never did, though, and at first that really panicked me. I doubted my ability to be a good labor partner sans sleep. I also found her first contractions unsettling. By the next morning I knew what to expect: how her body would move during them, how she would look. They stopped scaring me (until the last day). But at first they frightened me a lot. I felt small and useless in the face of them.  

R and I were both overwhelmed by how fast things seemed to be moving along (little did we know how long we still had to go), so we called in our dear friend Adrienne to be with us through the night. Ad came over at about 2:30am and, upon laboring with us for 30 minutes or so, agreed that it might be time to call in our beloved doula, Jessica. It’s worth noting at this point in the story that we had only finalized our doula contract with Jessica at lunchtime on Monday. She had been our natural childbirth educator, but we had been on the fence about using a doula until very late in the pregnancy (not because we doubted a doula’s immense benefit, but because we were working on a tight budget). I am so so glad that we made the choice to have her with us. I truly believe that the consistency of her patience, presence, and expertise throughout spared us from having a c-section (though no-one on our hospital staff ever brought up the possibility of surgical birth, nor did we ever feel rushed to labor on anyone else’s timeline).

That we should absolutely.without.a.doubt hire Jessica had occurred to me about five days before J’s labor started. I’m pretty sure I woke up to the realization. It wasn’t that I was scared, I just felt sure we would be better off with her by our sides. I wasn’t sure J would go along with it, so I tentatively broached the subject on a walk at my university’s track. She was all in. We called Jessica the next morning, with not a day to spare. 

So Jessica came over to the house at about 3:30am. We all labored together at the house until about 6:45am.

At that point, I was feeling very eager to know whether or not we were making cervical change, so we decided to venture into the hospital. I think that we were all expecting that I would be at least 3 or 4 cm dilated. So when we went to the hospital to get checked, I was very disappointed to find out that we were 0cm dilated, the cervix was still anterior, I was only 50% effaced, and it was possible that the baby was in a posterior position. This was the first of many painful and disappointing vaginal checks to come. The on-call midwife joked that she had to reach up to my tonsils to get at the cervix. Until Bram shifted much later in labor, the vaginal checks were really painful because they literally had to go around the baby’s head to find the cervix.

The midwife, though, felt confident that progressive labor was imminent, so she let us leave while remaining registered (she even let us store our suitcases in her on-call sleeping area). Throughout this story, I hope I’m able to convey how supportive and generous all of the midwives and L&D nurses that we interacted with were during the course of our stay. Of the eight rotating midwives in the practice, we managed to work with six of them during our stay! This is impressive considering that they work in 24-hour shifts.  After the vaginal exam, R and I decided to head back home around 9am. There was a lot of crying on the way back home. It felt so defeating to be where we started after nine hours of difficult contractions.

I remember checking in at the hospital early on the 17^th, and thinking, “this isn’t right. Rabbit isn’t coming on the 17^th.” Though it was disappointing to head home, it made sense to me. This was a much bigger blow to J than to me.

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

Tuesday is sort of the lost day in my memory of the laboring sequence. My contractions were present but irregular throughout the day. Sometimes they were 10-15 minutes apart, during which points I was able to rest between peaks. Sometimes they sped up to being 2-3 minutes apart again. We had been advised to wait to return to the hospital until they were 2-3 minutes apart, lasting 60-90 seconds, and staying that way for more than 2 hours. Throughout Tuesday, R and I tried to rest, watched Buffy re-runs, and ate a few small meals. That evening, around 9pm, our friend Jessica (not our doula) came over to the house and labored with me for an hour or so while R tried to get some sleep. I really think there was a circadian rhythm to my hormones, because every night between about 10pm and 3am, things really picked up. Again, we found ourselves having regular, stronger contractions in the middle of the night, and, again, our friend Ad and our doula came over in the night. This time, everyone felt pretty sure that we would be 4 or 5cm by the time we went back in, so I was feeling equally optimistic…

We only managed to watch one Buffy re-run, but it took all day to get through. We slept spooned together so I could apply counterpressure and give J reassurances every time I felt her body tense up. I think her contractions subsided long enough for one 2 ½ hour nap in the afternoon. I baked sweet potatoes when we woke up, and J devoured hers. This is something she did really well throughout labor: eat. It was impressive. I only got a few bites down at a time. Leaving this second time for the hospital was so much better, since all of our baggage (there was a lot, though to our credit we ended up using almost everything, and still needing my mom to bring us some things) was already there. I remember taking the time each trip, though, to straighten the bedclothes and the couch cushions, and to stack rinsed dishes neatly in the sink. Somehow the thought of bringing a baby home to mussed-up bedding was too much. I needed at least that bit of order.  

Bram’s Birth Story: Part Two

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

Upon our return to the hospital, the new on-call midwife performed another very painful vaginal exam. I had only dilated 1cm, the cervix was still anterior, and there was increasing reason to believe that the baby was posterior (I was having hard back labor).

On the plus side, though, I was now 80-90% effaced. Again, I burst into tears of frustration. I felt like I could be laboring for days still, or that, worse yet, labor could stop completely and the baby could wait for another two weeks to be born. Somewhere in this time, our dear friend Christine joined us, which completed our birth team.  Wednesday was the day of a thousand positions. Our doula had me cycling through all kinds of different movements: side-lying, hands and knees, birth ball, walking, laboring in the tub, using the rebozo (which I kept saying sounded like a muppet), some crazy pelvic position that had me hanging off of the side of the bed, nipple stimulation (which brought on some hardcore contractions), the list goes on.

Throughout the day, R and I were both able to maintain our sense of humor, but I did have the distinct sense that this baby was never going to come out.

This check – the 1cm check – really broke me. I had been laboring alongside this woman for over 30 hours by this point, and even if the contractions weren’t of the change-the-cervix kind, that is a long, long time. I had prepared myself for long labor plateaus, but 1cm at 30+ hours felt unthinkable. So I had to stop thinking. This is the point at which I left my head and went straight into the moment. One contraction at a time, no big picture. This was the only way I knew to be helpful.

By mid-day is was obvious that the baby had dropped considerably. There was a large gap between my belly and breasts, and I had a lot more lung capacity (our birth team joked that I should record the sounds I was making during contractions – like orca whale songs)! By Wednesday night things were getting very intense. For several hours it felt like we were making a lot of progress. My contractions were coming one on top of another. I lost all modesty and began shaking from head-to-toe. Obviously, everyone got very excited that I was nearing transition. In retrospect, though, I think that (while I was making cervical change), I was also hitting the wall with regards to sleep deprivation.

It’s true about the orca whale sounds: entirely beautiful. I will hear those moans for the rest of my life. This last period of laboring was lovely, but overwhelming and too intimate for me. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to write about it. 

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

Around midnight, I consented to another vaginal check by the third on-call midwife we worked with. Again, I think that we were all waiting to hear that things were finally progressing. It was a dark time in the labor to find out that we were only 4cm dilated and that the cervix was still anterior and the baby still posterior (the back labor had really intensified throughout the day, and, lets be honest, it’s more ass-labor than back-labor really). R had been such a pillar of strength throughout the whole labor to this point: applying counter pressure, keeping me focused on my breath, offering a sweet, reassuring face when I was scared and in pain, retreating to the tub with me to have little one-on-one pow-wows about how things were going. But I could tell that she was exhausted and starting to get scared for me and the baby. She tried really hard not to show it, and to talk it through with our birth team out of earshot from me, but I could see it in her face.

At this point I just felt totally lost. I was the most sleep-deprived I’d ever been. My contractions were coming steadily, though I had ceased believing in their generative power, and I was beginning to lose it. I started hallucinating sometime around 1am. I thought that our girl cat was in the hospital room with us and I kept trying to call her up onto the bed. Someone suggested that we try the tub again, which I did, and I remember calling out to R, “I’m in hell” when a particularly difficult contraction washed over me in the tub, Finally, I said the thing I had been hoping to avoid through the whole labor, “I want drugs.” My whole birth team had been instructed to ignore my requests for drugs, but, seeing as we were at hour fifty-something, I don’t think anyone felt comfortable ignoring my wishes.

I still really didn’t want an epidural, but I was beginning to feel like I was losing my mind. I was also concerned that without some rest, I wouldn’t have the strength left to push the baby out. After several consulatations with the midwife on call and our doula, I decided to take a low dose IV narcotic, nubain. Given my past history with narcotics, this was an extremely difficult choice for me to make. I remember crying when they gave me the first dose and apologizing to God and to the baby for taking the drugs. I still think that it’s the part of our birth story that will require the most personal processing for me.

At the three-day mark – and at nearly the exact hour that we lost E – things started feeling hopeless to me. We hadn’t slept since Sunday night and it was now Thursday. After getting J calmed down a little (after the decision to take the nubain was made, and maybe after they’d given her the first dose?), I went downstairs to find my mom (who was sleeping in the waiting room) and our birth team (who had stepped out during the last check). When I found them and filled them in, I looked across the waiting room and locked eyes with a woman who had just (seconds before) been told that someone (my guess is her husband) had died. She was mid-thirties. Beautiful. Dark-brown hair. Pale skin. My eyes found hers just as that horrible look of realization swept across her face. Her new reality. Her nightmare. This was by far the darkest moment of this labor for me, and one of the worst moments of my life. Her loss has nothing to do with me, and I feel terrible for taking it personally, but it comingled so entirely with so much: days of sleep deprivation, days of watching my love in pain, flashbacks to losing Emmett one year before, growing fears about J’s safety, about the baby’s. I practically ran back upstairs, but I couldn’t get her face out of my mind. I remember saying, over and over, “Oh my God.” There was nothing else to say. I tried to pull it together, but I know that I returned to our room a broken wreck. I still think about that woman. I track the days her loved one has been gone by the days we’ve had Bram with us. Maybe someday it will feel like a cycle.of.life thing to me, but it doesn’t yet. For now it’s just a confusing, heartbreaking, terrifying part of this long, long labor. I wish I knew who she was. It seems impossible to me that our son was born in the same building, on the same day, as her beloved person died.  

The nubain didn’t knock me out, but it allowed me to sleep between contractions (which had slowed to every 5-10 minutes) and it rounded the pain at the peak of contractions, so that I didn’t wake up startled and in agony (which had been the result when trying to sleep between contractions before). Each dose lasted two hours – I could actually rest during the first hour, then I had to work through the second. I did this three times for a total of six hours of semi-kind-of-resting. I had crazy instant REM dreams about national geographic zebras. They talked to me and told me when it was time to wake up and have another contraction.

Christine stayed with J throughout the night, and I was able to sleep: about four hours total, I think. I’m not sure I’ve ever been more grateful to anyone as I was to C that night. I could not have stayed up with J. I couldn’t. I was collapsing quickly, and I needed time to build myself back up before I could be any good to her again. These hours saved me. Knowing that J was being loved, being supported, being held, was enough for me to let go. And the sounds changed during these hours too. J’s pain lessened and her moans were softer. Easier. Less earthy somehow. Jessica got me settled on a couch, covering me with a towel. Sometime later, one of the nurses brought in a blanket and laid it over me. I think I started crying from the sweetness of that one small act. When I woke up, I found that J had written this in the condensation on the window.  

Bram’s Birth Story: Part Three

Thursday, January 19th, 2012, continued

The last dose of the medicine had worn off by about 7am.

At first, this morning was a little better. We had passed the actual hour of losing E (around 1am). Light was coming in through the window of our room. C had comforted and reassured me each time I woke up, and J was in a much better place. She had made a list of priorities in the night. Oh, my wife. She passed that list around, and we all got on board. No more checks until mandatory. No assumptions about progress. Just in.the.moment laboring.

By midmorning, our dear friend and massage therapist, Alexis, came in to do massage and acupressure.

While J was working with Alexis, I went downstairs to be with our birth team. Our doula had realized that J worked better with only one or two people, so we decided to give J and Alexis some time alone. I stood in the waiting room, half expecting the woman to still be there. I wondered about her, and my heart ached. This is when I had my biggest external breakdown. I knew we were looking at a c-section if things didn’t progress pretty soon. I was terrified about J undergoing surgery when she was already so exhausted. I couldn’t imagine a way out of this with a healthy baby and a healthy mom. I thought that, in my desire to have children, I had caused all of this. I thought this was all a sign, this happening one year after Emmett. I thought I wasn’t supposed to parent, and the universe wanted me to know that, and it was going to keep taking my family from me until I stopped trying. I wished the pregnancy away. I just wanted my wife back. I think if I’d been given the choice, I might have undone all of it, delivered J and I safely home and given up the chance to have children forever. I thought: “maybe we [gay people] are not supposed to have kids. Maybe they’re right.” I thought, “this could cost me the most important person in my world. This could take her from me.” I didn’t think about Bram. I didn’t want him. Not then. I just wanted my beloved wife back. I wanted us both to be whole again. I think I said all of this at a table in the waiting room. Jessica, Christine, and Adrienne all reassured me that none of this was true. I didn’t believe them, but I stopped saying it out loud. I ate some yogurt. It was nearly impossible to eat that day. 

At noon, our doula again raised the possibility of keeping me in a pose called knee-chest for several contractions in order to try and turn the baby. I finally consented, though I was afraid of the pain of holding this pose. The deal was that I needed to stay in the pose for four contractions (including the time between contractions). This was unbearably painful, far worse than pushing I would say. At one point during this sequence, our beloved midwife, Christina, came in to check on us on her lunch break. When she arrived, I remember telling her that she was “my only friend.” Pain be damned, the pose worked like a charm. On the fifth contraction, I felt a weight like a bowling ball turning inside of me. From the time I felt that shift, it was only nine hours before the baby was born.

Once the baby turned, I really felt like I was making progress, but I was so tired that I could barely stand during contractions. I could tell that everyone in the room was getting worried. No-one said it aloud, but I could sense a looming c-section if things didn’t move fast.

People were saying “c-section,” just not in front of J.

At 2pm, Christina (who had been following our progress throughout the labor via the networked monitors at their main office) came back over to our room. I got the impression that she, our doula, and the on-call midwife had had a pow-wow. This is the first time that anyone had suggested intervention (remember, I asked to be given options regarding the nubain). Our midwife explained that if this were a home birth, this would be the point at which she would have the laboring woman transferred to the hospital for an epidural. Our doula echoed her sentiments by gently explaining that this is the type of labor situation that epidurals were made for. I explained that it’s not the pain that was upsetting me, but the sleeplessness. I asked if I would be able to sleep with the epidural. When they answered with an emphatic “yes,” R and I both burst into tears. That seemed to decide it: I was going to get the epidural, we’ll do another vaginal check to see where I was at, and then we’ll have a conversation about pitocin if needed.

I had to receive a certain amount of IV fluids before the anaesthesiologist would see me. So they hooked me up to an IV pole and put me back in the tub to labor down while I absorbed the IV.

J seemed so small during this last time in the tub. She seemed broken. Scared. Relieved, but not in an empowered way. I kept stroking her back, her hair, her face. I was so proud of her. I loved her more than I thought it was possible to love. 

About half an hour later, the most personable anasthesiologist I’ve ever met came to hook up the epidural. I was very afraid of getting the spinal catheter (I had visions of dying instantly – a little dramatic, I know). Honestly, though, it wasn’t a particularly uncomfortable procedure, and the relief came quickly. Within a few contractions, I was feeling considerably less pain and a warm, heaviness throughout my lower torso.

Oh, the relief of this moment. The muscles in J’s face beginning to relax. Her moans subsiding for the first time in days. My heart felt a thousand times lighter. Things felt possible again. Life. Birth. Motherhood.

The on-call midwife returned to do the next vaginal check. I was then 5cm, the baby had turned, and my cervix had dropped. It was about 2:30pm. At this point, it was recommended that I try what they called “a whiff of pitocin.” I was hesitant, but agreed. They hooked me up to a 2 on the pitocin drip (the lowest setting). Fortunately, it worked so well that it was never turned up for the remainder of the labor. A fact I’m very grateful for. Within four hours I progressed from 5cm to fully dilated and ready to push. Somewhere in there my water broke on its own.

I wasn’t in the room when her water broke. When I came back in, I was crushed to have missed it. J was alone with Jessica when it happened, though, and I think it was a meaningful moment. Jessica, who had quietly guided us there. Who had waited with us. Whose contract stipulated that she could bring in a back-up doula at the twenty-four hour mark. Who stayed with us throughout. Who slept for a few hours here and there in the midwife call-room. Who was a beacon of peace, and faith, and comfort. A few days after the labor, when we were writing out a check for Jessica, J said in earnest, “can we just give Jessica all of our money?” I think if I were rich, I would fund doulas full-time so they could help families who can’t afford their services. I can no longer imagine having a baby without a doula. I hate that anyone has to.  

Through the first three hours of the epidural, I was able to get some much-needed rest (though I don’t recall ever actually sleeping). At about hour three, the epidural began to wear off and the sensation returned to my contractions, my left leg, and my vaginal area. I was pretty grateful for this breakdown in the effects of the epidural, as I really wanted to be able to feel as much of (and be as active in) the pushing stage as possible. By the time it came to pushing, I could feel everything except my right leg, which my lovely friend Ad held steady for me. I was able to try hands and knees and the pushing bar, but ultimately semi-sitting/reclining was what felt most natural to me.

As pushing began, a small unruptured part of the amniotic sac was the first thing to present. Apparently, this is fairly uncommon, so several of the nurses and midwives took a look at it and our doula took some photos. I think that I said something to the effect of “it looks like I’m birthing a snail.” So Bram was born partially, “in the cull” which is supposed to be lucky. During the pushing phase, everyone seemed impressed with the fact that I was breathing the baby down instead of actively pushing the baby out. For me, though, it just felt like the only option. Hard bearing-down type pushing just seemed exhausting and unnecessarily painful. So it took a little longer for him to come out maybe, but I was reasonably calm and relaxed throughout. I remember having lots of strange thoughts and quips (asking for potato salad between contractions; complaining about a particular natural childbirth video we had watched; cracking jokes).

After all that we’d gone through, I still can’t believe pushing went the way it did. My incredible wife seemed to find strength in the earth, seemed to tap into something great and unfathomable. I swear she could have pushed him out alone, silently, in a field somewhere. Part of this was hurtful to me: she didn’t need me in the end. But she owned this experience, and I’ve never been more in awe. She was dancing with our boy, and we (the rest of us) were just spectators, lucky enough to see this magic happen. And our midwife, Christina, came in for the delivery itself. After coming after work and on her lunch break for days, Christina left her daughter and her partner at home and sped back in to catch our son. I remember the flood of gratitude that hit me when I heard her voice at the door. I remember proudly showing her the part of his sac that came before him. I remember watching her face as she watched J. I remember loving her so much for being there.

I kept repeating to myself to “relax the butt” during contractions, so that he could come down further. I joked that we should make it into a bumper sticker, R seemed displeased with this idea ;-) For the humor I’m reliving on here, though, it really was a very magically charged atmosphere. In the room with me was R, our friends C and A, two midwives (our midwife “specialed” us and came in for the delivery on her night off – very special indeed), and two L&D nurses (one for me and one for the baby). It was an incredible honor to be among all of these strong women helping me to birth our son.

The many midwives and labor & delivery nurses we worked with left me in awe. Those were some loving souls. My gratitude for their presence in the world (not just with us, but with laboring women and families everywhere) runs deep.

I know that R said she was mostly in shock during delivery, that it was too much to take in at once and that she felt like I went to a place inside where I didn’t need anyone’s help. Her presence, though, was integral to me finding that place of inner reserve and feeling safe there. I didn’t need to worry about whether I was safe or the baby was safe. I didn’t have to worry about what came next; I knew that I was going to be upheld consummately, so I was able to just stay in the moment. I had a few moments of anxiety once he was actively crowning. I found myself very fixated on what kind of progress we were making. At one point, I felt like surely he must be halfway out given the intense pain I was feeling, so I touched his head during a contraction and was disappointed to find that only the top of his skull was peeking out. I kept my hands to myself after that. After two hours of pushing, he made his appearance with a flourish as he did a 180-degree turn as he left (with a fist presenting with his head). I had a second-degree tear. Our midwife said that it was “creative, but not severe.” R caught him with our midwives guidance and held him while his cord pulsed. She then brought him to my chest and cut his cord.  He was born at 9:00pm on January 19^th, 2012 (on the one-year anniversary of the day we lost his sister). He weighed 7lbs. 13oz. and was 20.75 inches long.

I was so scared to catch him, but Christina’s hands stayed right with us until I knew we were safe. I can’t describe this moment. It was other-worldly. It was pure, sweet joy. I felt like I’d turned into nothing but love.

Those immediate afterbirth moments were completely overwhelming. I felt flooded with relief and joy. R and Bram and I were in a little bubble built for three. As grateful as I was for the presence of everyone on our birth team, those first hours were just for our new family. He was perfect in every way and I think that we were in disbelief at the sight of him in our arms. We spent about two hours alone trading the baby off for skin-to-skin contact with both of us. We were able to put off all of the routine procedures until the two-hour mark, after which our parents visited briefly. The remainder of our stay in the hospital (36-hours or so) was very hectic. Between visitors and staff, it seemed like there was a different person in the room every hour of our stay.

I sang to him. The same song I’d been singing to him since thirty-two weeks. I noticed the room get quiet. I kissed J over and over. I announced his name, told Ad that he would always carry her name, as she was our family. As we were so proud to know a woman with her strength, her grace.  

Bram.