Our Precious Baby

03.16.19

I’m sitting here with a precious baby boy sleeping in his Moses basket next to me. It’s hard to fathom that exactly a week ago I was in so much pain and discomfort I got desperate enough to take castor oil and headed downstairs to play ping pong with the boys in hopes that we could somehow get to see this sweet child’s face.  After my disastrous and highly nonprofitable results with Adam I’d vowed I’d never, ever touch a bottle of castor oil again.  Turns out I had no idea how to take it back then.

The ping pong was pretty much a failure on ping pong terms.  Did you ever try to play when you pretty much can’t walk, are having mild contractions, and the bathroom is upstairs?  I didn’t win.  I bet that surprised you.

The first dose of castor oil made me feel hopeful.  I walked and walked around the house, went up and down the stairs as I could, and walked some more.  The second and third dose were a bit meh.  And by 6:45 that evening I realized it wasn’t going to work.  Aside from the fact that my uterus felt much more toned and baby felt a bit lower, I couldn’t get any positive action.  I was sad, but resigned.  I mean nothing else had worked.  Not eating six dates a day for six weeks.  Not eating an entire raw pineapple.  Not any of many things.  I was exhausted and had turned into “that woman.”  You know, the one who really has to have Noodles and Company right now; but it’s too far away and so she compromises for a chicken salad croissant from Jacks Shop Kitchen.  I don’t envy David his role in this gig.

I gave the girls baths and helped them get to bed.  The boys asked hopefully yet again what percentage of chance he’d come that night and I said less than 50 because there was zero action.  At 11:30 as I was crawling into our bed I got hit with three contractions that were harder than the ones in the afternoon and I waddled around the bedroom hopefully with no luck.  So I crawled into bed and fell asleep.  At 12:30 my water broke and I got hit with a hard contraction.  David sat up with a shot and I went to the bathroom only to feel quite uncertain.  No more fluid.  A few puny, irregular contractions.  I voxed my doula… just in case … and David started grabbing the last two or three things we needed… just in case.  We’d been packed for weeks.  Literally.  I’d been living out of my cosmetic bag because when labor hits, there is typically no time to pack.  Looking back I keep wondering why I was so worried about an incredibly long labor because of his position and simultaneously preparing for a fast one?  I was packed.  I stayed in touch with our sitter a lot.  I even thought through what to wear to go to the hospital in case I delivered in the car and kept old receiving blankets to take along in case it happened.  So strange.  I’ve never done either of those last two before.  I was terrified of a roadside delivery with the girls because of how far we lived from the hospital.  Maybe having a thirty-five minute drive helped me believe it wouldn’t happen this time. Maybe I wasn’t worried because this time our entire route would only be minutes from emergency help as opposed to stuck on a barren interstate.  But I was super worried about the fact that David is working far from home and it would take him an hour to get here once I said the word.

So there I was trying to figure out if this was labor or just prodromal stuff like usual for ten minutes.  It definitely seemed like amniotic fluid but there wasn’t much of it (he had a tiny pocket of fluid in front of his head and must have blocked off the rest after that broke) and it had some mild staining.  Ten minutes later I was pretty sure we were going in so David took things downstairs to load and called the doctor.  My doula said she was heading in to meet us.  By the time David got back upstairs there was no question I was in active labor.  I said I couldn’t get dressed.  He is the most cool, calm, collected person I know; but goodness can he find his bossy voice when I’m in labor.  In no uncertain terms he said, “Yes, you can get dressed.”

By the time I was dressed I could hardly move.  He went to wake the boys to let them know what was happening and Liam happily crawled into our bed so Bella wouldn’t find it empty in the morning while I leaned over it Gregorian chanting, “Help me, Jesus,” through the hardest contraction yet.  We walked out into the hallway and I took one sinking look at the flight of stairs.  This baby was coming sooner rather than later and we all know what happens when you walk down steps.  I made it 2/3 of the way down and had to sit through another one.  A few steps more and we were in the dining room.

A few more steps.  Another contraction.  A stare down at the van.  It was forty degrees and raining.  David reclined the seat and I crawled onto it on my knees hugging the seat back with my arms. He took off and drove as fast as he dared.  The rain made it unsafe to push things too far.  The curves on the first road were almost unbearable.  After that it was a straight shot, but we must have hit half the lights red.  I couldn’t see because I was riding backward; but finally said, “You’re going to have to blow through those red lights.”

“I’m trying,” he said, “but there are cars at some of them and I can’t.”  Those were excruciating.  The baby was moving down so fast and every time David would accelerate at a light it threw my body backward the same time my body was trying to push a baby forward.  Three fourths of the way through our twenty-two minute ride I said, “he’s coming.”  Then another little pocket of fluid popped and I screamed.  “Breathe, dear,” he said as he kept racing.  I couldn’t even talk to tell him it wasn’t the contraction but just the crazy intensity of the moment. From then on instinct over.  I started prepping.  The contractions were insane even though they gave me space between them and I could literally feel my cervix stretch two to three centimeters during one of them as his head pushed through.  At some point David said, “Do we need to stop?” but I said, “Just keep going.”  I started pushing a little and then questioned myself.  What if I wasn’t fully dilated?  I tried to blow through the next one and then let go and decided to trust my body.  What else was there to do?  It was totally taking over anyway.  I felt him crowning.  David swerved up in front of the emergency room doors and threw the van into park.

The instant his door slammed I got the mother of all contractions and my body pushed his head three fourths of the way out while I let loose the most primal scream on earth.  I felt myself feeling sorry for the baby’s ears; but I was powerless to stop.  It’s a strange thing, the way birth takes over and you feel everything so acutely and simultaneously feel like a spectator to your own body.  The contraction was over and when it stopped I felt so sorry for him being in such an uncomfortable place that I gently pushed his head the rest of the way out.  I reached down and held it.  I’ll never forget that moment.  It was so perfectly shaped and wet and warm and I could feel his head full of hair.  I wondered if the cord was wrapped around his neck?  There was nothing to do but trust my body and his and God.  There was no knowing.

Meanwhile David had rushed in and told the security guard his wife is having a baby.  “Can she use a wheelchair?” the guard asked.  “Uh, I think she’s having the baby in the car.”  The guard looked highly flustered so David ran on in and said, “My wife is having a baby in the car.”  That got some immediate action!

David pulled open my door and I felt the rush of cold air.  “Close the door,” I heard myself saying, “the baby is going to get cold. Get in on the other side.”  This is where I wish I could change the script.  I wish so much I’d have had the presence of mind to tell him to grab the blankets behind me.  He could have caught the baby and that would have been THE coolest story ever.  But I was in full baby protection mode and didn’t have a single other thought in my brain.  All I could think was that there was a very wet baby’s head and that air was going to freeze him to death.  He closed the door and seconds later it opened again as an entire crowd of ER staff crowded around.

A doctor with the most gentle voice I’ve ever heard put her hand on my back and said, “Good job, Mama.  You are doing this perfectly.”  The strangest feelings ran through me when she said that.  One, I realized it was the first moment since David held my hand walking to the car that I’d felt human touch.  I hadn’t realized I felt alone until that moment.  David is the best labor coach; and this time he was equally present and involved but we ran like parallel tracks.  Both of us super focused because our roles were so intense and important.  We were together, but apart.  It took me until four days later to realize I missed that feeling of togetherness and the way it bonds you to fight through those layers of pain together until that moment of victory when they lay a wet baby on your chest and your eyes meet with laughter and tears.  Two, who in the world looks at that mess and crazy timing and says you are doing this perfectly?  She does.  In the past few weeks women from all over have reached out hands and words in the most incredible support and it has stirred something deep inside of me. It feels as though I’ve been given a vision of what it looks like when women really support each other.  It’s so incredibly beautiful.

“The head is birthed.  I need suction.”  I handed my huge fuzzy blanket out the door behind me and heard her ask, “What do you want me to do with that?”

“Keep the baby warm.”  Apparently I’m even bossy with ER staff.

“We have warm blankets,” she said in that same calm, gentle voice.

And just like that the next contraction hit and the rest of him slid into the world.  It sounds like a long time when I’m writing it; but from the time she opened my door until he was out was probably thirty seconds.  I never knew until the next day if he hit the van seat or she caught him because I wasn’t prepared for the force of his ejection and my hand didn’t begin to catch him.  Exactly one hour and five minutes after my water first broke.

I didn’t hear him cry.  I just heard her saying, “Did someone bring a scissors?”  I was still in full on homebirth have to get a list of supplies for the midwife mode and caught myself answering no before I realized she was talking to the rest of the staff.  I saw the top of that same sweet, black haired head.  I watched her do a tiny sternal rub.  I saw her standing in the forty degree drizzle and I just kept saying, “Is he ok?  Keep him warm.”  I heard him cry just a little.

They cut the cord, rushed him inside, and I walked to stretcher, cord still dangling.

It felt like an eternity until they brought him upstairs but was really only a few minutes.  And still, all I could see was the top of his sweet little head as his tiny body tried to get warm under the lights.  My doula was waiting for me and I’m still sad she missed the birth.  If I’d have thought to let her know we’re going in through the ER she’d have been able to jump in the van with me the second we got there.

So many what ifs.  And yet, it all feels strangely perfect.  I look back in awe at the fact that after the months of crippling anxiety, I was able to birth completely without fear, even though it was so far from what we expect birth to look like.  (I credit this largely to the many, many prayers for me and in particular a small group of women who really became the voice of intercession for me.) Because my pregnancy was so much harder, I fought the belief that my body must be too old to do it well and assumed maybe it wouldn’t be able to do labor and delivery well either.  Obviously that wasn’t an issue! Back when I first got pregnant and felt so incredibly overwhelmed, I kept hearing God say, “You are capable of more than you think.  I believe in you.”  And now in retrospect, I see that same message in his car birth and the way I was completely alone in the toughest moment of a delivery. There are a million feelings surrounding this child and this birth; but the ones that make me weep are the ones that showcase the way God has used his coming to heal places in my soul I didn’t realize were broken.

I often think about the verse that says “she shall be saved in childbearing.”  I wonder what all God meant by that, especially because not every woman gives physical birth.  But I do know that childbearing has been a deeply spiritual process for me.  It redefines your soul in the days and weeks of reshaping your body.

Late Sunday afternoon the same ER doctor came up to say hello.  She was as lovely as I remembered from the night before and it was such an incredible gift to ask her more details.  She stroked Harrison’s head as she told me her side of the story.  “You were so quiet,” she said.  “I put my hands down and just like that he was out.”  I found it so comforting to know he landed in someone’s hands and not on the seat; but I completely dissolved into tears with her next sentence.  She smiled down at his little body cradled in her arms and said, “I told him I loved him.  When I got back inside to the triage nurse I looked at him and said, ‘I love you’.”  I can’t think of a better way to be born than to fall into the hands of someone who knows the language of love.

Harrison Chan, your story has felt remarkable from the beginning.  I’ve called you my kingdom baby from the time I knew you existed.  I can’t believe we get to be the ones to love you and call you our son.  You are so loved.  So wanted.  The most delightful surprise gift from God we could ever imagine.

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