• We also learned that Bram still has jaundice. His bili levels aren’t dangerous, exactly, but there’s some concern that since it now looks like breastfeeding-induced jaundice, it may be very, very slow in abating. The quick way to fix this, we’re told, is twenty-four hours without breastmilk (i.e. on formula), but we’re not big fans of this approach, nor is our nurse practitioner. The plan now is to check his bilirubin again at six weeks and discuss options then. Anyone have experience with this?

• In other news, B (and by proxy we) slept for an (unprecedented) CONSECUTIVE 4 hours and 40 minutes last night. I wish we could have videotaped the look of shock on our faces when we saw 4:40am on the clock. I had enough energy for a dance of joy with our son (not something I ever thought I’d do at 4:40am), and I caught a glimmer of what life will be like when we’re sleeping again. Oh, sweetness.

• It’s Ash Wednesday today, and though we’re not Christian (and we’re certainly not Catholic), we practice a kind of secular Lent. I’m sure this annoys people for whom this is a religious practice, but they have plenty of beliefs that more than annoy me (birth control. gay marriage. the whole animals.don’t.have.souls business), so I’m okay with that. I do it because it’s the easiest time of year to give things up. If you’re in a restaurant, for example, and you say you need something taken off of a dish because you’ve given it up, it’s easiest to say it’s for Lent. I also enjoy the community of knowing that so many others are going without things too. This year was a little tricky because with the elimination diet looming, giving up any of the few foods we can eat (since I cook for us and don’t have time to cook two meals, I’m giving up whatever J gives up) seems cruel. So we decided as a couple to create some mindfulness practices instead. Here they are: The first is resentments. We both feel like we’ve been nursing some resentments lately, and those aren’t healthy for anyone. I mean, we barely have time to brush our teeth; there’s certainly no space for dwelling on hurt feelings. So when we find ourselves doing that (either in our heads or with each other), we’ve committed to moving on. It’s happened a couple of times today, and I’ve found it pretty easy to avert my attention. I mean, there are plenty of thoughts more deserving of my time. The second is bickering. When you’re barely sleeping, bickering is an easy habit to fall into. Not fighting, just being short with one another. Being petty. Being critical. So the same rules go: for the next forty days, if we notice we’re doing it, we just move on. No snide comment we’re inspired to make at 2am is worth saying. The third is internet time. When you have a baby who won’t sleep anywhere except your chest from 9am to midnight, you bond with the internet. And when it come to watching How I Met Your Mother on Netflix Instant (we can’t handle the seriousness of our usual style of television when we’re up at night, so we’ve settled on the lightness that is HIMYM), or writing blog posts, or keeping up with friends on Facebook, that’s okay. But the bleary-eyed hours we spend just surfing? Those seem like a waste. So we’ve both committed to five-minute checks. When we’re stuck sitting still until the boy wakes up, there are better ways to pass the time. For example, I can read for my dissertation or for the class I’m teaching, and J can read the texts she has to finish before she starts doula training next month. Has she told you about doula training? Oooh, you should get her to share! It’s exciting news. Anyway, we’re hoping that forty days into these practices they’ll have become habits. Because, really, who ever has time for nursing resentments, bickering, or pointless internet surfing? Especially when there’s a Bramble Bunny there who needs baby massage, and baby yoga, and songs, and snugs, and high-contrast books, and walks, and lots and lots of smooches all the time!

• In work news, my union (how blessed am I to be at a university with a teaching assistant’s union?) is bargaining, and I feel badly for not being there (rallies. negotiations.) in solidarity. I haven’t been involved enough since we started TTC in 2010, and right now the only rally cry heard around these parts is: “What do we want? Milk! When do we want it? Now!” But I look forward to B being big enough for marches and rallies soon. I hope we keep our revolutionary spirits. I hope Bram is the son of activists, and not the son of former activists. I hope he makes us even more committed to social justice.

• Finally, here’s Abram Adrien at one month – February 19th – which was the one-year anniversary of the small memorial we held for Emmett Ever. We got the idea to take a photograph of B (next to a teddy bear) on all of his month-iversaries from a fellow blogger. We’ll photograph Bram growing on the glider my mom got us, and next to Ramona, the sweet sweet Vermont teddy bear J’s mom sent along (in keeping with one of her family’s traditions).  That look of curious surprise has become a standard on B’s face. Gods, how I love this child. I feel like I’ve known him all my life.

As of last Thursday, I cut all of the dairy out of my diet in the hopes that it might resolve the issue. I’ve also eliminated or moderated some of the other “colic” culprit foods, though I’m not doing the full elimination diet at current (out of the hope that it’s simply a dairy allergy). We’ve also been keeping him upright for at least 30 minutes after each feeding and we raised his changing table to a 45 degree angle (since this was a place he was spitting up frequently). Because of the overactive letdown, I’ve already been feeding him exclusively upright (in the “biological nurturing” position). Still, he seems to not feel good during most of his waking time these days. It just breaks our hearts to not be able to take his pain away. He cries real tears and screams out at a high, warbling pitch. We’ve tried infant massage, baby yoga, playtime sitting up in the boppy, allowing him to take all of his daytime naps laying on us, etc, but nothing satiates him for more than a little piece of time. We also ordered a Mamaroo swing through Amazon yesterday, which is supposed to mimic parental movement. We’re hoping that if he’s comfortable napping in the swing, we might be able to put him down for stretches during the day. As it stands, it’s hard for us to get much work done. This is especially difficult for R, as she has grading, prep, and writing to do. Not easy tasks while holding (and trying to only jostle just enough) a 10 pound baby on your chest.

We’re planning on making an appointment with our FNP early next week to get a professional opinion. In the meantime, though, we’d love to know if anyone in blog land has dealt with these sorts of issues. We know that they aren’t major issues, but it would be great if anyone had any tips or tricks that made this time more bearable for Bram and for us…

In fact, the fleeting nature of this time has had a pretty profound influence on me overall. It’s worked better than anything else I’ve ever tried at getting me into the moment and out of my head. What I want now is born of the present: the hours of getting to know him, what he needs, what it means to be his mother. And this makes sense, I think, because babies are prefect at just being. They exist in that state of mindfulness that the rest of us (older folks) have to work to cultivate. I love this about B; he’s a great model of present-living. I also love his uncensored willingness to ask for what he needs. He feels no shame (the only learned human emotion). No guilt. No sense that his needs are in any way a burden on those who love him. I hope this lasts well into childhood. I hope no one tries to introduce my son to shame or guilt, especially shame, which serves us in no way I can see. I adore his clarity.

I also love his love of music. He digs classical music or quiet jazz in the mornings: easy time with whatever NPR gives us, or with one of the two delightful mixes Madeline made for him. We also sing a lot because if I’m not wearing him, and J isn’t nursing, it’s one of the only sure-fire ways to calm him down quickly. I’m not much of a singer, but this boy does not care. He’ll stop fussing the second I start a song and start fussing again the moment I finish. Song after song after song. This has led me to scour the recesses of my memory for any and every song I’ve ever memorized, and has led to some strange resurfacings. We sing a LOT of Tori Amos. We sing Cowboy Junkies’s “Mining for Gold” and “Misguided Angel.” We sing Leonard Cohen and Ani DiFranco. We sing Dar’s “After All,” Simon and Garfunkel’s “America,” and John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery.” We sing Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You,” and Elton John’s “Your Song” and “Tiny Dancer” (the last of these because this boy’s moves continue to be rhythmic and dancer-like). Aunt Nancy, we sing lots of Melanie: mostly the sweet stuff like “The Good Book” and “Beautiful People,” but when I get desperate I find I remember all of the lyrics to that song about Psychotherapy too. We sing songs my parents sang when I was little. We sing “Brown-Eyed Girl.” We sing Wyclef Jean’s “The Stripper Song,” for Pete’s Sake. Anything will do; the boy is just not picky and he doesn’t mind my proclivity towards melancholic tunes. He also likes lullabies in the early evening: especially his new favorite – Laura Veirs’s Tumble Bee – which the awesome mommy and mama over at Love Invents Us just sent him (along with glow-in-the-dark baby legs, SmartWool booties, and some sweet, sweet reading materials). The boy likes a song.

So I guess this post is just to say that things are good. Though this newborn time hasn’t been easy, I think we were well prepared for its challenges, in no small part because of all the insights this community has shared with us. And by the way: thanks for that. Though we’re dealing with some digestive problems, overactive let-down, and possible dairy allergies, Bram is a pretty laid back soul. He seems like he’s in pain sometimes after eating, and he’s spitting up a lot, but he’s usually consolable with lots of upright movement, white noise, pinkie-sucking, and snugging. He rarely sleeps more than one 3- or 4-hour stretch followed by two 2-hour stretches at night, but that feels surprisingly sufficient most days. He sleeps at night in his crib (the portacrib in our room), but he’ll only sleep there when he’s swaddled, and we don’t swaddle him at all during the day, so he takes all of his naps on our chests. I know we’ll be more productive once he starts day-napping in his crib, but for now I’m happy with all this connection. And he’s growing so much! By three weeks he was up to 9 pounds, 4 ounces (the 52nd percentile) and 22 inches (the 82nd percentile). His fingers are going to be long and lean, but right now they’ve chubbed right up: fat and adorable. He has HUGE thumbs and big toes (just the big toes). Sissy Hankshaw thumbs, for you Tom Robbins fans. His legs are still skinny, his knees still knobby, his ears still big. For weeks J was worried about his hearing (they forgot to give him the hearing test at the hospital, so he still hasn’t had one), but he startles every time I blow my nose, so I think we’re in the clear on that one. (J will tell you that my nose-blowing is louder than a train whistle, which is rude, but probably true.) Maybe this is too much detail, but this blog is where I keep track of things, and I don’t want to forget these little details. I know they’ll go by too quickly.

This four-week mark also finds me settling in with more confidence to my equal role as a mom. Because this boy needs me every bit as much as he needs J, and that is clear in the way he settles into my arms, in the way he looks at me, in the countless mama-son hours we spend. I loved him immediately, and I was confident right away that I knew (more or less) how to parent him, but it’s taken me awhile to stop worrying about the fact that others consider me secondary. At first, I needed a lot of reassurance that I would be respected as an equal in all of this. And I needed it from people who are acculturated (hello: American media) to see biology as primary in the parent-child relationship. What I’ve started to realize is that it doesn’t matter what they think. What matters is how we live, our day.to.day reality, the unrivaled bond I already share with this creature. Because unlike so many, Bram won’t grow up to think that biology defines family. And, since any other kids we’re blessed with will likely come to us through adoption, B will probably only share a biological connection with one of his family members, so it will take on even less importance as time goes on. Anyway, what I mean is this: I’m all done needing others to validate my status as a mother. This child is my son in every way. I know we’ll face all manner of unequal treatment, but none of that can undermine this bond. We are an us, our little family of three. And it is sweet.

• I started teaching again on Tuesday night. I cried all the way to campus. Then I got over myself. I’d love to take a few years off with this boy, but I can’t. And, I mean, you can’t really have everything you want. What I do have is a super flexible schedule and a job that – when I have to be out of the house – is so all-consuming that it’s hard to think about anything else. I always thought I’d raise at least one child I gave birth to. I always thought I’d stay at home for a period of time. But when those were my dreams, I didn’t have this: a rock solid marriage, a son I adore, and a job that I’m good at, that I make a difference in doing. I am one of the lucky ones. This is better than my life would have been if all my first dreams had come true.

• Your comments on our birth story meant a lot. It should have felt (maybe?) strange to send such intimate details out there to be read by strangers, but you don’t feel like strangers. You feel like our people.

• Bram took his first tub bath last night. J got in with him and nursed him throughout, and he LOVED it. We seem to prefer our baby a bit on the unclean side, but it was fun to wash all his bits a bit more officially than one can do with a wet washrag on the changing table. I think we’ll try it again.

• We also started introducing a bottle (of breast milk) yesterday, which was a great success. J is an AMAZING breastfeeding mom, but she’s been feeling a little oppressed by the ever-present necessities of the breast-feeding relationship. I think the occasional bottle will give her just the break she needs, and it was a joy to feed my son for the first time. I cried. Oh, the hormones. If you drive by, you can probably see a cloud of them hanging around our cottage.

• We took our first real outing today: running a few errands on my campus (J and B stayed in the car) and heading to our favorite lunch spot with B’s Aunt Adrienne. It was lovely to see the sunshine together. To see our little town as a family of three. A glimpse of the sweetness to come.

• I’ve thought a lot lately about a phrase Gail used in a post over a First Time Second Time. The phrase – “tilting at windmills” – comes when Gail discusses Lyn’s initial reaction to non-gestational parenthood, “how invisible she felt, how afraid she was for the future, cherishing the process of becoming a mother but feeling left out of it. We talked and talked, because, frankly, that’s what we do. Sometimes I heard her. Sometimes I thought she was tilting at windmills (she wasn’t).” This is the part I love: Sometimes I thought she was tilting at windmills (she wasn’t). I sense that people think I’m doing this. Not so much (though sometimes) J, but some of our friends and family. I think there’s a subtly with which NGPs are left out that’s just invisible if you’ve never been one. Some judgment about how often I’m holding him in our professional photos. A preference for photos with only the two of them. The occasional narrative that (accidentally?) leaves me out, that almost makes it look like J is a single parent. An emphasis on their shared looks (which: boy does our boy favor his mum; it is BEAUTIFUL to see, though threatening). Is it just my insecurity that makes me notice this?

• Things I simply love: Bram’s breath, and the smell of his head. How quiet and sweet he in the morning, and how we share this. How he prefers a cool room to a warm one (my winter boy). Listening to J and B together in the next room. Folding stacks of clean diapers and putting them away again. All of his hand-me-down clothes, and picturing the other kids who wore them. How his big ears get caught on his clothes when I change him. How much eye contact he’s starting to give us. How he loves my singing even though it’s always off-key. Every single second of quiet wakefulness. The new intimacy of co-parenting with J.

• Things I’m looking forward to: Our CSA starting up again. Asparagus season. Taking the boy to this wedding in July (Bram’s Aunt Laura is getting married!). Seeing our nearest Great Lake with him in the spring. Regular outside walks together as soon as it warms up a bit. Traveling back to Charleston in August: B’s first ocean-sighting, peninsula walks, time with our great, great friends there, a visit with his Grandmom Sarah. Heading up to Aunt Kippie’s city for mama’s favorite vegetarian sandwich this side of the U.S./Canadian border. Bram’s first Art Hop. A movie date with my wife in the spring. His first (intentional) smile.

• Oh, and here’s a slideshow of Bram’s newborn photos. Have we mentioned how much we adore our sweet and talented photographer?

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.  

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.  

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.

I’m putting this picture up because I think it best symbolizes what I’m trying to get at in this post: there is definite empowerment to be found in intense vulnerability.

I’ve been feeling a bevy of emotions in recent days and I’m not entirely sure what to do with all of them. On the one hand, I feel like I’m beginning to climb the walls with being home all the time. I feel tethered to Bram because of the breastfeeding relationship, so when I do leave the house to run errands or take a walk I find myself easily panicked and feeling rushed back to home (this is, of course, all self-imposed, as R always does an excellent job of comforting our boy). In my frenetic dashes to be in the outside world, though, I’ve put a bit too much strain on my healing body. It is in the process of telling me to slow the hell down, which I’m working on this weekend.

On the other side of my emotional spectrum, though, I feel like all I want to do is be snugged in close to B taking in all of his sweet little newborn creature-ness. I’m so damn analytical, though, that I have a hard time just resting, finding peace in being laid back, and letting myself totally fall in love with this baby. The vulnerability of this new found intimacy is destabilizing. When I first fell in love with R, my whole world changed in ways similar to this: sleep deprivation, changing priorities, the seeming absence of time. It was different, though, to be having this experience as two adults. We could talk about what was happening, we could rationalize, we could plan (albeit poorly). With a baby, though, it’s the best I can do to surmise his needs in a given moment (hungry, wet, cold, hot, gassy, lonely) and to meet them to the best of my abilities. R and I can communicate with one another throughout this process, but B and I are just beginning to develop our lines of communication. It’s terrifying to 1) love someone this small this much, 2) feel 50% responsible for his well-being, and 3) not be able to guarantee his safety in the world.

I find myself having lots of dreams where I can’t find the baby or he’s hurt. I wake up panicked and rushing to his crib to be sure he’s safe and sound. I recognize that some of this is the by-product of sleep deprivation, but, I suspect, a lot of it is the process of my subconscious making peace with this level of vulnerability in the world. The early parenting experience has certainly ripped away another layer of the illusion that I move through the world with. This will be, in the long run, a positive thing. After all, what’s true is always already true. Denial doesn’t change that. Still, I find myself longing for a little bubble that I can keep him in…just for now…

n.b. We’re dilligently working on our birth story, so that should be up in a few days.

I don’t know that there was ever any intention behind this routine, though if there was it was all J’s. Neither do I know how long it will last. What I know, though, is that it’s a sweet, and peaceful, and lovely way to start each day.

Some photographs:

How we find him in his porta-crib when we catch him before he starts to cry:

Hades and Nemesis often join us for family mornings:

This isn’t morning skin-to-skin, but it is the general (though overly-clothed) idea:

My breakfast-making hero and our dressed-again boy:

Post-morning-time alertness. How beautiful is this person?:

*Thanks for all the thoughtful advice on my last post. My plan is to respond to you all individually, but my plans fall apart these days, so if I fail at that: your encouragement means a lot.

I had to start working this week. This feels far, far too soon. To be fair, working for me involves grading, reading, researching, writing, revising, and prepping from home, with only a few hours of teaching when I have to be away. I won’t teach for the first post-Bram time until next Tuesday night, but I’m behind on grading, reading, and prepping, I’m not sure I even remember my dissertation topic, and I’m up against a fellowship application deadline. So it’s time.

Until I actually started working yesterday, the thought of pulling my attention away from my family – of putting it on anything other than J and B – made me feel vaguely nauseated. When a dear friend came over when Bram was about four days old, and she and J started discussing queer theory in relationship to Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body (a text my students read last week), I had to leave the room because I couldn’t even follow their conversation. This is my field, folks, but I felt like that part of me had been shut off, and I wondered if it might never come on again. “What other careers might I be good at?,” I asked myself all last week. “If I never get this back, what else might I do with my life?” Though I didn’t come up with any alternatives, the thought of leaving academia wasn’t upsetting.

When I finally forced myself to start reading yesterday, however, I found the routine of it surprisingly comforting. Gather coffee, a glass a water, the book, a pen, and a big blanket. Oh, I know how to do this! Unlike skin-to-skin with a mysterious new person, near-hourly diaper changes, and learning how to use my baby carrier, these tasks were familiar. The slow paragraph-by-paragraph read, taking the time to mark passages that might be useful in the classroom, as well as those important to the dissertation – there’s muscle memory there. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I didn’t mind working. I even liked knowing that while I read, my son was sleeping in the next room or nursing with his mum. It felt a little like coming home from a much-planned, deeply-desired vacation, only the vacation was still upstairs, just waiting for me.

But here’s the tricky part. My very meager goals for yesterday were to read fifty pages of J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians (which is a part of my third chapter, and which I’m teaching next Tuesday) and to do one set of revisions on my fellowship application. What I managed, however, was about eighteen pages of Waiting. And nothing else. That’s it. And I came back to it about a dozen times, so I don’t even know how this is possible.

So my question to you is this: Do you have any suggestions for how I might begin to achieve a work/life balance, working from home, with a newborn I’m madly in love with? Any and all suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance; I’ll reward you with sweet Bram photographs if you help me. :)

*** Good luck to the mamas over at Baby Mama(s) Drama! We’re holding you in our thoughts as you prepare to meet your sweet, sweet son, and we can’t wait to hear that you’re all together, healthy, and happy! ***