She Came With The Sun: The Birth Of Lucy June

Lucy had told me she would be born soon, but when it began I tried not to notice.  I tried to chat it away.  I tried to yawn instead of breathe through the contraction, because I was just tired.  That's all.    Because it wasn't a contraction.  Every five minutes, my eyes darted to the clock above my friend's fireplace before they rolled to the back of my head.  Every five minutes the contractions that weren't contractions, that weren't happening... were happening.  Just like contractions do.

I wanted to meet her, I did.  But suddenly I was so very tired.  The months of uncertainty, of worry, of grieving, suddenly a weight I didn't know if I could carry through the night.  Through the work of bringing her here.  I wanted sleep.  I wanted to close my eyes and wake up with her in my arms, at my breast.  I wanted to see that she can find comfort there.  I wanted to see that they were wrong, that I can nourish her myself.  I wanted to see that she is strong and healthy.  I wanted to see that, yes, she has a cleft lip and palate, because that is part of who she is, but that it doesn't matter at all.  

But I don't know what I will see.

I sit on my friend's couch for an hour.  Every five minutes I ignore my contractions until I can't anymore.  I leave for home, intending to sleep.  I have contractions that make me moan in the car.

I get home and take a bath.  This is not labour.  I get into bed and try to be comfortable because I want to sleep for days.  There is no sleep.  I get out of bed and pace the bedroom.  This is not labour.  I feel a small panic flutter to that tight place in the back of my throat.

I don't want a hospital.  My bed, my bed, I want my bed.  I want it here.  Just like last time.  I want it to be like last time.  I don't want to leave my home.  I want to have my baby here, like last time.  She will be healthy, like last time.  We will spend the night in our bed, together, gazing and nuzzling and breastfeeding.  Like last time.

I make sure the bag is packed.  But I don't want a bag.  Because I don't want to go anywhere.  I feel the panic grow in the back of my throat and want to gag.

They are going to take her away.  How soon?  How long will I hold her before they take her?  Who will they be?  Which doctors are on?  I don't know them anyway...  I don't trust them.  They don't know how important it is for me to hold her.  To have her.  To keep her with me.  They don't need to take her but they will.  And I won't know what is best.  I don't want to go.

I can't get comfortable.  I can't stop pacing.  I want to crawl into my sleeping daughter's bed and hold her.  I want to sleep with her small body.  I want to tell her that I don't want to send her away for a day?  A few days?  A week?  While we learn to feed the baby.  I want her to know that this wasn't the plan, that she had a starring role in the original plan.  I want to curl up with her and wake up to the spring time.  But it isn't even winter yet.

This is not labour.

I want the doula but if I call the doula then this might be labour.  I am annoyed and I recognize this feeling.  The building of my irritation.  The sensation that gets bigger when you want it to shrink.  The wave that returns again and again just before you are able to rest in the pause.  It doesn't go away.

I pile up the pillows and lean into them.  Buried in a tower of pillows I rock from side to side.  I can't stop rocking.  I want to lay down but I can't stop moving.  There is a building force I can not slow down, that I can not will, or rock, or pace or beg away.  This is labour.  I want the doula.  We call the doula.

I pile up the pillows because it is a small comfort.  I pile up the pillows again and again because this is what I did last time.  Because I want this, so badly, to be like last time.

I press my face deep into the soft tower as I moan and rock from side to side.  I close my eyes.  As it subsides I slowly push myself up and open my eyes.  This is all wrong.  This is nothing like last time.  I know a minute.  I know an hour.  I can find no escape from time.  The seconds stay with me ticking steadily as I rock from side to side.  I find no internal departure, though I try.  I close my eyes and wait for it to happen.  I wait for pain to rip through me at a mind-numbing pace, with time-stopping force.  But it doesn't.  There is pain.  There is a lot of pain, but it doesn't suffocate me into oblivion.  It stops short, only just.  It is like a massive presence in the room, leaving just enough space for me to exist with nothing else, except time.

UGH.  I feel like I have missed a step.  I want to go back and start labour again.  I want to go back to look for the exit I have missed.  I am so present and I don't like it.  I don't like it at all.  I am remembering my daughter's labour.  I am remembering burying my face into the tower of pillows and resurfacing to ask "how long?"  I am remembering how my irritation was tempered with relief to be told that hours had passed.  That I had buried my face into that pillow a hundred times before I asked how long.

But I didn't need to ask this time.  I knew exactly how long.

I rely on my voice, a deep and constant tone to power through the mounting pressure surging through my body.  With every ebb my thoughts build a different peak of tension in my mind.  Is it really her?  Is it Lucy?  Will she be OK?  Is she healthy?  Will she be able to breathe on her own?  My baby... I want my baby, but I know they will take her away... 

These thoughts would knot themselves again and again into a small panic and gather in my throat, urging me to hold my breath until it was all over, but I could never hold it long enough.  Finding no escape inside myself I would turn to him.  My partner.  I would sink into his chest, the crook of his neck, the circle of his arms.  I would feel the echo of my own worry, my own grief within him.  But also, I would find his quiet comfort.  I would buckle under the weight of all the worry I had carried and cry into his checkered shirt.  I would breath in his smell and dare to believe that it was all going to be OK.  Until the pain returned and my mind's reprieve was my body's hardest work.  Again and again I would look to him, and every time he was there.

And then at 2:00am my constant, steady, intense contractions dissipated.  I crawled into my bed hoping for my precious rest.  Hoping to sleep and dream the cleft away.  My body released tired knots of tension and as I sank into a sweet relaxation I felt the twinge, like the distant roar before you feel the earth shake beneath you.  This mounting force was so much bigger than me, my insignificance was a visceral aspect of the pain.  It didn't care about me.  It didn't care that I was tired, or that I was scared.  This birth was happening and no amount of toning, or relaxing or visualizing could shape it into an experience other than it was.  It was going to squeeze and push and pull and force every part of my body past reason to accomplish it's goal.  And so began my conversation with myself:

This is an ordinary day.  This is not special.  You are not special.  This baby is no more special than every baby is special.  This is what women do.  Every day, all day, women everywhere are doing this.  This is fine.  You are fine.  This baby is fine.  This is normal.  You don't need anything other than what you have right now.  You are fine.  This is fine.  

This is surrender.    

Time passes and then it changes.  My tone is demanding, needy.  My pelvis wants to open further.  UGH.  There is new effort.

Are you pushing?  Do you need to push?

I don't know.  I don't know.

But inside I know.  I know I am pushing.  It isn't there though.  It doesn't feel quite right.  I have the urge, the effort is involuntary, but the pressure doesn't intensify like I dread and hope that it will.  UGH!   My voice, I can hear, is raw.  I am still annoyed by my lucidity but I have given up on the search for exit signs.  It is intensifying and I am relying on my doula's hands and my partner's presence more and more.  UGH!  It is a call.  An involuntary primal call to my baby.  Come out.  Come out now.

The bag is ready and I don't want to go.  My dad is on his way to stay with my daughter while we are gone.  The car is waiting outside.  I don't want to go.  I haven't left and already I miss my daughter.  When will be home together again?  

My dad arrives and I don't want to look at him because I don't want to cry.  I gather everything he needs for my daughter and my instructions are brief.  I put on my sweater but I don't want to go.  I try to hurry before I have another contraction because I know my dad won't like it.  I don't want to upset him.  I slip my feet into my shoes but I don't want to go.

Outside my front door I lean over a patio chair and let it flood me.  It is a wave that takes up all my space, flooding my eyes, my nose, my throat... the feeling of drowning.  My voice is the only thing that can cut through it and carve out the smallest breathing room.  I know I am closer to meeting her because I don't care anymore.  This is labour.  I am leaving when I don't want to leave and I know this is happening and I  know it doesn't matter what I do.  I don't care that my father can hear me trying not to drown and that he might be upset. I don't care that my neighbours can hear me, that if they want they can look out of their window and see me in my striped nightgown, bending over the patio chair toning like an animal in the night.  I don't care about anything, because my birth doesn't care about anything, other than birthing, and there is room for nothing else.  Not even me.

I am grateful for empty roads.  I am grateful for the handle above the window - he calls it the holy-shit-handle.  I smile.  I am grateful for an empty parking lot and big, wide, quiet, empty hallways.  Walking slowly, three loud echoing contractions to the elevator I don't want to step into.  

There is a woman behind a desk with a paper she wants me to sign.  I want to throw the clipboard back at her.  I want to slap her impassive face.  I want to go home.  She tells me to go ahead and have my contraction before I sign the paper.  I will go ahead and contract however and whenever I am going to contract and I don't want her to give me permission. I want to go home.  I want her to realize her papers are a stupid idea and I want to go home.  I wonder if she knows there is something "wrong" with my baby.  I wonder if she cares.  I don't look at the paper I sign, I don't even know what it is.  I imagine briefly, that the typed words say, sign here if your baby has a cleft, and I sign my name.  My baby has a cleft and I have no idea what that is going to mean.

I walk into the room that I will birth in.

I didn't want this bed.  I want to go home.  I want it to be like last time.  I feel the knot grow in the back of my throat.  I find him.  I cry and cry.  This is the room I will be in when they take her away from me.  My body is working to birth but my mind is holding her in.  And so began my second conversation with myself:

This place is full of hands that can help your baby.  Many mothers are not lucky enough to see this room.  So many mamas are forced to surrender much more violently.  You are fine.  This is fine.  Your baby is fine.  You don't need anything other than what you have right now.    

My midwife's familiar face is a welcome comfort.  There is a quiet excitement and I wonder if the people supporting me are wondering how I will cope when I meet her, when they take her away.  I wonder if they are wondering if I am going to break down.  I wonder if they are wondering if I can do it.

You are doing great, I hear them say.  I want them to say it a million times because I'm not sure if I'm doing great.  I'm not sure if I'm doing it at all.  I feel so tired.  This is taking so long.  Why is it taking so, so long?  I build my pillow tower to recreate a tiny piece of home.

I hang onto him and try to not have anymore conversations with myself.  I try to not need anything other than what I have.

 Because I have a lot.

  This is surrender.  This is what it is to let go of yourself and allow something more important to pass through you.  You become nothing in the passing, a rare cleansing of the self.

Labour began to not begin because it wasn't happening at 8:00pm on my friend's couch.  By 4:00am I was tired of pillow towers.  I didn't know what else to do so I laughed into his arms.  I told them to turn up the music.

I wanted the music my friend had chosen for me to transform this space.  I wanted it to carry me from hospital to home.  For weeks I had been listening to that CD in my car, wondering which song would welcome my baby to earth.

I listened to it again and again and again.  

Until I couldn't hear the music anymore because the Pain was loud.  It was big.  It was sitting on my chest, breathing in my face, and hitting me with a hammer so big I couldn't even see it coming.  This is surrender.  Let it go.  Here it comes again.

I would feel a small urge.  A feeble effort would rise within me to fight against it.  And I would breathe and look for a deeper place to unlock, to allow it to pass through.  It wanted everything.  This is what it is to be wrung out like a wet linen by an unforgiving hand.  

Again and again and again I willed myself to not matter.  Do not hear the pain.  Do not see the pain.  Do not care about the pain, let it rush through you and let it bring the baby with it.

I sat on the toilet.  I rocked from side to side.  I paced.  I showered.  I rested.  I built my pillow towers.  I laid down and tried to curl away from the endless surges and turn my back on the force of birth.

I sighed into a quiet room tiredly, "motherfucker..."

  

And it felt like an eternity.

 I had been trading battle cries with the woman labouring in the room next to me for hours.  She was screaming, each one ending in a shrill peak.  She was cursing, working so hard.  I felt so badly for her.  She would rest and I would answer, low and loud, a building roar.  And then she didn't answer me anymore.  I heard a baby cry.  If my heart had eyes, they would have blinked widely.  A baby?  

Did that lady have her baby?!  

I glanced around to quiet nods.  I felt a quiet outrage.

But I want MY baby!  I could hear the whine in my voice.  Soon, I was encouraged, you will meet your baby very soon.  

And suddenly I had had enough.  I couldn't not matter anymore.  I couldn't let it pass through me one more time.  I was getting angry and I wanted to sleep so badly.  I wanted to sleep for days and days.  I wanted to tantrum but couldn't find the energy.  I made my announcement: I am not freaking out.  But I am going to freak out.  I am going to freak out in about three minutes.  I need this to change.  I need something to change.  I am tired.  That unfamiliar whine in my voice rang in my ears and I wished it wasn't there.    

  

What can we do?

I declined the "lunges".  I didn't want to walk.  I knew they would tell me they could break my water.  But I asked, weakly, for what I didn't want.  I can't do this.  Just... can you get me an epidural?  They said I was strong, that I was doing so well... I didn't care.  So much was happening that I didn't want to happen, I didn't care anymore about what had been important to me.  I had to throw away my home birth.  I had to throw away breastfeeding.  I had to throw away keeping my baby on my chest for days on end.  I was tired and angry and now I was going to throw away my desire for no intervention.  Except I didn't want to.  Not really.

What will happen if you break my water?  I already know the answer I just need to hear you say it.  It will be intense, but your baby will be here very quickly.  I was scared.  I knew it would be intense.  But how much more intense?  Will you break my water and it will get more intense but the baby still won't come?  Will you break my water and will I still be here at dinner time?  No, we won't let you go until dinnertime.  It will be soon.  I'm so tired.  

Will you break my water and will my baby come, but will my baby still have a cleft?  Will I be able to feed my baby?  Will my baby be OK?  Will they take my baby away?  How long will I get to hold my baby?  Is it her?  Is it Lucy?

I agreed to rupture my membranes.   I didn't want to roll over and allow her to do it, but I did.  I didn't want her to hurry this along, but I didn't want this to take a moment longer.  We talked about the gas.  I was going to use the gas when she broke my water.  I hadn't wanted to use anything.  But I hadn't wanted a lot of things.  I clamped the gas to my face and breathed in hard.  She broke my water. 

How can I tell you what it was like to hear that train coming?  She gave me instructions in her calm, confident voice.  I did what she said, mildly aware of her comments... and within a short minute I hear her report my progress - 7, 8, 9, 10 centimetres... Now, the room is filling up with people, she is telling me.  But I can't hear her anymore because the train is getting louder.  I didn't know that there was a train that ran through the hospital.  Deafening, rumbling, shaking my bones.  There was a train in the hospital.  There was a train in my room.  There was a train running through my skull, down my throat and charging through my pelvis.  There was a giant sound in my ears and it was my voice.  It was the noise I made when my baby made her seismic shift and dropped into the birth canal.   Finally those faint urges became my body's primal demand.  PUSH.  I am the train.  PUSH.  She is the train.  I want her out so badly.  I can't stop pushing.  Don't push unless you have a contraction they urge me... slow down... don't push, you don't have a contraction.  "WELL THEN SOMEONE GIVE ME A FUCKING CONTRACTION."  Time has finally disappeared.  It is thirty minutes, but it is a breath, it is thirty minutes but it is a lifetime.  She is crowning and I know she is on her way.  Look at the sky, the clouds are pink!  The voices are getting excited.  There is a sunbeam shining into the room right onto your baby!  The head is out and I don't believe them.  But it's true.  My baby is almost here.  

 And I hear it.  I hear the song my baby will be born to.  Reach down and feel your baby.  I reach down.  That's it, get your baby.  I hook my hands under warm, slick little arms.  I try to pull my baby to me, but there is resistance.  Give a little push and pull your baby up.  And this is a gift, I am pulling my baby into my arms and this is the greatest gift.  My baby I have waited so long for.  I don't care what bed I am in.  I don't care if they are going to take her away.  Right now, I can hear Hallelujah, and I am pulling my baby to my chest.

There is a tiny moment, a fraction of a thought.  They were right, I see it.  There is a cleft.  And then it disappears faster than it arrived...I can't see it at all.  Is it Lucy?  Is it Lucy?  Oh my girl.  And she is beauty.  It feels like the sun has risen in my arms.  The weight that I have carried dissolves into a breathless awe.  I am flooded by a deep sense of home.  I am not in my house, I am not in my bed, we are each other's home and there is nowhere else I can possibly be, because nothing else exists.  

Until I look up.  WHO ARE YOU?  I am startled by the woman looming over me.  She tells me her name.  But who ARE you?  She is the nurse that has been holding my leg for I don't know how long.  

I want confirmation of what I already know... Where is the paediatrician?  People indicate, over there.  I don't know who it is through the crowd of people, who are these people?  Which one is the paediatrician?  She smiles brightly and waves at me from across the room.  Is she OK? I need an absolute yes.  She says something like, she looks fine and that she will check her over in a few minutes.  And then I want her to go away.  Don't check her.  I know she's fine.  Do not take her out of my arms because you don't need to hold her.  I do.    

How?  How can she possibly be so beautiful?  So perfect?  I thank my doula for helping me bring her here.  I thank the midwives.  I feel the reeling, the indescribable falling.  The complete surrender of a free fall right into her, flying so fast into love.  I see him, his eyes just like last time.  He is proud of me and I know my awe for her is shared.  It's over, the relief is so complete... for him too.  

She is wide-eyed and cooing.  She is not crying but she is calling to me, again and again.  I feel it reverberate through me, be my mama, stay with me, be my mama, I was waiting for you too...  I am startled by the power of her presence, by her total alertness, meeting her mama, meeting her world.  

I make my happy phone calls and know that I am the luckiest mama.  I know they will take her, but right now she's mine.  Every moment I'm fathoms deeper into love.  

Before they take her even across the room, I need her to know us.  I need her to feel her home.   

I am filled with gratitude.  For my beautiful girl, finally, finally here.  For my fears of having her snatched from me in a crisis fade away, never to become my reality.  I thank him.  I never could have brought her here without the comfort of his arms.  Without crying into that checkered shirt.  Every time I looked for him he was there.  

And then they took her across the room and I plunged into my internal retreat.  I swam into the hormone flood ignoring desperately the empty space in my arms.  

And then I took her back so happily.  I brought her to my breast, as I had longed to do.  As I had dreamed we would be able to.  And she tried... Oh honey, you are trying so hard.  Good trying little one...

I was so proud of her valiant effort, showing me how strong she was.  I tried to help her.  And though I had thought I had thrown the dream of breastfeeding away, I found it again... A faded illustration of me and her, curled in our bed at home.  Me cradling her as I had cradled her sister, her tiny hand sleeping on my breast.  A faded illustration reduced to tiny folds, tucked away into the palm that clutches my heart.  I tried to bring that illustration to life.  She rooted so frantically, but her suck was not there.  She couldn't close her perfect little mouth around me and draw the milk out.  I took a breath and willed that hidden image to be carried away, on my breath out the window and into the pink sky.  I knew it wasn't really a picture of the two of us anyhow... though the resemblance was cruel. 

And he had his own private moment with her.  They had their own conversation of hearts.

I watched him be a new dad again.  I watched a beginning, not knowing exactly where it would go, but that it would be good. 

I don't think I stopped smiling, ever.  Lucy means light and she was a solar flare, radiating joy, powering my world.  I held her as he made his happy phone calls.  As congratulations and goodbyes were said again and again.

And because it was our hospital's policy, and because I didn't have the confidence or the energy to fight it, I knew I would have to hand her over.  All babies with cleft palate are sent to NICU.  I knew that they would take my healthy girl to the NICU.  I knew I couldn't feed her by myself... but I also knew she wasn't sick and that she didn't need NICU monitoring.  She needed her mama's heartbeat.  There weren't the resources for someone to help me feed her while she stayed with me on my ward.  And again I found my internal retreat and soaked up the love coursing through my body, storing it into every cell to carry me through the hours and days ahead.  To sustain me through our separation.  

And I knew I was lucky.  I didn't want that hospital, but I am so grateful it is there.  I didn't want the NICU but gratitude is insufficient for what they do for babes and all the hearts connected to them.  For having not wanted so many things, I was lucky, I got more than I could have dreamed of.  

Lucy means light and she came with the sun.  She arrived brighter than I could have imagined, my own little solar flare.  I was given the gift of pulling her into my long-waiting arms to the tune of Hallelujah, silhouetted against a pink sky.  Every year we wait through the winter for the warmth and light of June, like we waited for her.  On the last day of summer, the last of the light, she spilled from me right into a sunbeam, then onto my heart.  We love you Lucy June, you light up our hearts and illuminate our world.  And we know we are lucky.