A Season of Gratitude

It’s a little early for Thanksgiving, but I’m feeling grateful. And since these grateful moments often flit away in the face of fear and doubts and worries, I am challenging myself to spend more time in gratitude this season. Instead of dwelling on the dread of winter, sadness for all the pain in the world (both actual and potential), and wanting more than I have, I will be here. Now. In the present. And grateful for all the goodness in my life.

I’m grateful for big general things like food, shelter, health, friends, family, love, living in a country where I am not oppressed, etc.  It’s easy to take these things for granted and find myself complaining about things that just don’t matter. To combat this negativity, I will try to draw my attention to all the specific things I am grateful for as I go about my days. Here’s a short list of what I’m thankful for today:

-Amazing California sunshine before sweater and scarf wearing weather hits.

-A sweet sweet husband who makes sure I’m fed. If left to my own devices I would subsist on frozen Trader Joe’s food, but instead I have a man on a crockpot kick who just made me a hearty autumn butternut squash stew.

-The satiny succulent stomach skin of my beautiful baby boy. And his chubby little feet. And his smile. Ok, the whole dang baby.

-Living in a city where I can take dogs to the beach and run in the sand with a backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge. Gorgeous.

-I have running water in my house unlike a staggering number of people in the world, and can take a nice, hot shower whenever I want to (or whenever aforementioned baby will allow it, and he’s finally sleeping, so off I go!)

What are you grateful for today?

Maurice Sendak is my hero

I went to see the Sendak show at the Contemporary Jewish Museum the other day. I had to whiz through because I was also there for a Litquake event, and I had Little Man with me (his first art exhibition! – this kid will be so much more cultured than I ever was). As a huge fan of Sendak’s work, (so huge I painted Little Man’s nursery with a Where the Wild Things Are mural), it was a treat to get to see so many original illustrations from his books. The show included some sketches showing his process, as well as many of the finished watercolors and drawings exactly as they ended up in the books. There was a video of Sendak, and a nook that begs you to sit and pore over his complete library. I’ll have to go back and spend more time.

The show is up until January 19, 2010,  and there are special events related to the exhibit to check out with kids older than my 3 month old.

I also want to spend more time looking at the rest of the museum, which had some really neat interactive projects like the StoryBooth.

Other cool Sendak fan sites: We Love You So, Terrible Yellow Eyes

I’m going to see the new Spike Jonze Where the Wild Things Are movie this week. Can’t wait!

Poor Baby

If Chuck Norris’ legs are trademarked Law and Order, my baby’s hands would have to be Mischief and Mayhem. Those doughy, dimply, pudgy digits seem innocent enough, but they are actually saboteurs of sleep. Just like in the popular video where the dog’s own hind leg conspires against him to steal his bone, my Little Man’s hands are out to rob him, and in turn us, of precious shut-eye.

At bedtime, we lay him on his back as instructed by experts who all but guarantee death by SIDS to dastardly parents who would dare put a baby on his stomach, and his hands rejoice for this is their preferred position for all manner of torture. As soon as we set our sleepy baby down, those twin evil-doers spring to life, lately coming together in a grip as if hatching a plan. Their signature move is to flail up and over his head to make him feel like he’s falling and startle him awake. More subtly, they busy themselves in irresistible games right in his focus range, doing a tantalizing dance he can’t avoid watching. Or they claw at his face, leaving angry little scratches sure to not only ruin his rest but the modeling career for which we have high hopes. If none of these tactics work, they simply whack him in the forehead.

Sleep doesn’t stand a chance against such attacks, so it surrenders and we are left with a wide-eyed baby whose hands seem to be attempting to give one another a victorious high five. Many nights he ends up on one of our bellies, sprawled like a baby orangutan on its mama, hands gripping our sides. He probably sleeps best like this because those impish fiends at the end of his wrists are too far apart to communicate with each other.

Veteran parents tell me they started laying their second babies on their stomachs much sooner than the first, less fearful and more willing to ignore expert advice in exchange for longer stretches of sleep. I’m almost ready to give it a go. It’s either that or call Chuck Norris in to put Mischief and Mayhem to rest.

My Anxiety – Nature or Nurture?

Sigh…today’s New York Times article, “Understanding the Anxious Mind” by Robin Marantz Henig, has given my already troubled mind more anxious thoughts to mull over. It’s very timely for me, as I was just talking to my husband the other day about how far I’ve come in dealing with my anxiety since we met, but wondering aloud if I would ever be fully free from the looming dread that lurks in my mind like a hungry lion waiting to pounce. According to this article, I don’t stand a chance in chasing it away, but perhaps by arming myself with a chair and a whip could tame it enough to keep it in check.

The studies suggest I’ve most likely been wired this way since I was four months old, and probably since the day I was conceived with genes predisposed to a high-reactive temperament. No one would have described me as an “ebullient” child. I was always “behaviorally inhibited” as the article describes anxious babies, reacting to new stimuli with signs of distress. In most of my baby pictures I have pursed lips and a frown, already looking like a worried old lady. My mother wrote things in my baby book like, “Makes awful faces.” “Doesn’t like to be picked up by men unexpectedly. Only likes being on their laps when she instigates it.” “Plays better alone than with anyone.”  And just like the babies in these longitudinal studies, at thirty-two years old these behaviors hold true for me to this day. The article claims anxious people “cannot outrun their own natures. Consciously or unconsciously, they remain the same uneasy people they were when they were little.”

I always chalked up the way I am to a dysfunctional childhood – parents too young to ever give me the love and attention I needed, too poor to provide any social, economic or educational opportunities, too alcoholic and issue-ridden themselves to instill a sense of stability and safety in me. It’s difficult to compare how my three brothers turned out because they started self-medicating with drugs and alcohol at early ages and haven’t stopped since. I went the route of Mary in the article, my anxiety taking on the form of conscientiousness and self-control, over-achieving and worrying my way through school and life. The studies in the article found that two-thirds of people with high-reactive temperaments “learn to manage their anxiety, structuring their life to limit triggers”, are “obsessively well-prepared”, and operate with “caution, introspection, and the capacity to work alone.”  This certainly applies to me. I channel my anxiety by making lists and getting things done and find refuge from it in books, writing and art (solitary pursuits I’ve never found success in because I’m too afraid to put the work out there for fear of possible rejection). To make a living, I became a teacher, but quit after five years because the anxiety dreams about speaking in public and never feeling fully prepared or able to make a difference became too much to handle. I created the perfect job for myself. Dogwalker. Limited contact with people, hours alone with happy dogs on trails and in my car. I must be the most conscientious dogwalker there ever was. One of my clients told me I should be CEO of a large company the way I handle myself, but that would require unmanageable levels of anxiety for me.

Several times the anxiety has become unmanageable on my own. Not dealing with it directly worked for a long time. I found a decidedly non-anxious partner in life. My husband is about as happy-go-lucky as they come. I also managed to keep myself very very busy, but eventually all this running led to a panic attack and a deep depression when all the pain in the world, the “clamor of terror”described in the article, took me over. Again, I assumed these were normal reactions to experiencing loss – the death of two friends, one to suicide, another to a snowboarding accident in a matter of months seemed to be the trigger. But not wanting to live anymore was not a normal reaction, and hiding in bed was not an option, so I sought professional help. Being the daughter of a recovered alcoholic, I am overly wary of all possible habit-forming medications, so didn’t go the anti-depressant route. Instead, I saw a therapist regularly, one who seems to be of the nurture school of thought, and had me dredge up all my family crap in the hopes that in facing it, I could banish the demons and learn to fill my head with a more positive thought track than the one that’s been looping in my mind all my life. This has worked to an extent over the years I’ve been seeing her. I feel somewhat equipped with the measly tools I’ve cobbled together to keep the lion at bay, but the dread that if I let down my guard for an instant I will be devoured is ever present.

The article calls anxiety at this level a mental illness and claims 40 million Americans suffer from it, not counting “the far greater swath who are garden-variety worriers, people who fret when a child is late, who worry when they hear a siren headed toward home, who are sure that a phone call in the middle of the night means someone is dead.” Having now received several calls of that nature for healthy people I’ve loved who died suddenly, one of them my mother at age 50, I realize I will never be a “garden-variety worrier”. I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop, to lose everything in terrible events beyond my control.

Apparently, this is just how I’m wired. Whether it’s because my cerebral cortex is thick or thin, because my genes are faulty, or because my childhood was less than ideal doesn’t really matter, I guess. I just have to do the best I can with what I’ve been given, and try to see the positive. Like the article said, “Without inner-directed people who prefer solitude, where would we get the writers and artists and scientists and computer programmers who make society hum?” And I can pray that my son gets my husband’s genes and not mine. Since he’s three months old and is all smiles, I am hopeful that he doesn’t have any lions lurking in his future. Just an anxious mom.

Coming to America

Today my husband became a U.S. citizen. Along with 1,144 other immigrants from 94 countries, Afghanistan to Uzbekistan. The San Francisco Masonic Center auditorium must have been the most diverse place on the planet for those two hours we shared. While cheesy videos played and voter registration was explained in four languages, families from all over the world stirred in the upper balcony. Babies screamed and cameras flashed as the loved ones on the lower level took an oath to renounce allegiance to their home countries and swore to support and defend this one.  We all cheered at never having to stand in line at the INS again, at being able to vote and travel with a U.S. passport, at not having to prove we belong here with proper documentation. From now on, simply saying “I am a U.S. citizen” will be enough.

I’ve never been overly patriotic, but since I seem to have a thing for men not from around these parts, I don’t take citizenship lightly. Also having traveled a good deal, I know how unique America is in its openness and acceptance of others and I value the variety these cultures bring to the American experience. I can walk down my street and have a burrito, pad thai, bruschetta or unagi. If I lived in Italy or China, it would be Italian or Chinese every night. Beyond food, the benefits of this blending of cultures has affected my life in beautiful ways. My son will be raised in a city where people are people no matter where they’re from. We are all in this together and no one will look at him sideways for being mixed.

Yes, this country has major issues and an ugly history in which the only way my husband would’ve been allowed here was as slave labor to build the railroads. And it wasn’t that long ago we couldn’t have been legally married. But we have come a long way, and we continue to move forward in ensuring freedom and opportunity for all people as equals and that’s why the huddled masses are still coming, why they came into that auditorium today from 94 countries and left belonging to one.

An Attitude Adjustment is in Order

Man, it’s hard to get anything done when you have a baby. As a compulsive listmaker, it’s very good (and extremely difficult) practice for me to chuck the to-dos and take life as it comes. Babies are a good reminder to be present in the moment because you just don’t know what’s going to happen next. Will he take a nap and give me an hour or two to get things done? If he does, which thing should I do? a)Hop in the shower. b)Write thank you notes for all the gifts people have given us. c)Try to get some art or writing or bill-paying or house-cleaning done. d)Take a nap when he naps so I won’t be such a sleep-deprived wreck.

Usually, he wakes up fussy or needs feeding as soon as I make up my mind. The less of an agenda I have, the more I can stop and enjoy these fleeting days of his babyhood. If I can put my own ambitions in check, I can remember that this stage will pass all too quickly, and he’ll never need me as much as he does right now. I’ve gotta get all my kisses and hugs and love in now, before he doesn’t want it someday.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin has a good quote to keep it all in perspective. “Do not forget that the value and interest of life is not so much to do conspicuous things…as to do ordinary things with the perception of their enormous value.”

Little Man, you are my to-do list for now, and that’s enough.

First Baby Book

My amazingly talented cousin Ria, scrapbooker extraordinaire, sent a beautiful handmade baby book for me all the way from Indonesia. Since I can’t seem to get my act together enough to make one myself, this was the perfect gift! All I had to do was stick some pictures in there and voila! A finished momento of some of my baby’s big moments. Thanks, Ria!!

You can see much better pictures of the album without any pictures in it on Ria’s site here.

Top 10 Signs My Priorities Have Changed Post-Baby

10. Change of Scenery – Pre-baby I wasn’t part of a “scene” per se, but my husband and I did enjoy living in a city with incredible restaurants and bars and when guests came to town we showed them a good time. It may seem obvious to all but the densest folks that bars and babies don’t mix, but that didn’t occur to my addled brain until I found myself struggling to keep up with some young baby-free visitors the other night. After watching my Bjorn-wearing husband get hit on, trying to breastfeed with bass booming in my ears, and wanting to give a breathalyzer test to anyone within ten feet of my baby, it sunk in that being a good mom trumps being a good host. Duh.

9. Suitcase contents – I used to pride myself on being a very good packer for a trip. I packed light and still always had what I needed. I remember scoffing at our first parent-friends who filled up their entire SUV with baby gear to go on a weekend trip. We won’t be like that, I thought.  We’ve now taken two weekend trips with Little Man, and there is no such thing as packing light with a baby. I’ve also come to terms with the fact that I need a checklist to make sure we have all the needed items for baby and ourselves, as the first trip we took I brought plenty for him, but forgot to bring any clothes for myself. The second trip, I ran out of nursing pads (these are my fave) and during the drive home, my screaming baby set off geyser-like gushes from my breasts the force of which could not be stopped by the mere stuffing of napkins. The lesson here is over-preparedness, people.

8. The state of my living room – I swore I would not allow my house to become the victim of a tidalwave of toys, like so many parents’ homes that look like a tsunami hit leaving only bright plastic garbage in its wake. We’ll keep it in his bedroom where it belongs, I said. Yet my son is only 7 weeks old, can’t even hold onto a rattle and  already his stuff has overtaken our tiny urban space. A giant neon playmat with all the bells and whistles takes up one corner of the living room while a behemoth automatic swing fills another. Anything that will occupy him for any chunk of time is considered invaluable and we’ve already gotten rid of a couch to make room for more.

7. Wardrobe choices – Function has fully replaced fashion. “Can I whip my boobs out of this outfit in seconds flat?” is pretty much the only consideration when considering my clothing options at this point.

6. My poor needy dog – Dude knows he’s been bumped from favor no matter how much I tell him we still love him. He acted out the first day we brought Little Man home by peeing on the glider while I nursed in it. He’s been sweet since, but spends most of his time moping under our bed or demanding attention from guests and trying to convince them to take him home with them when they leave.

5. Reading list – Before baby’s arrival you might have found a stack of travel writing, graphic novels, or books by great women authors like Joan Didion or Annie Dillard next to my bed. On my computer you’d find bookmarks to the NY Times, New Yorker, and blogs by artists and authors. Now it’s all mommy and daddy blogs like dooce and Metro Dad,  books related to baby care – mainly Dr. Sears and every book ever written on getting your baby to sleep – along with the Twilight saga that’s kept me company through the late night breastfeeding sessions. I have no idea what’s going on in the world, but I can’t wait to find out if Bella marries Edward and becomes a vampire. Wow…what’s happened to me?

4. Suffering blog and journal entries – My blog posts have been few and far between, and I can’t remember the last time I posted about anything other than baby-related rambling. My journal used to be full of lovely drawings, funky lettering, and long musings about who knows what I used to think about. If someone leafed through my journal now, they might think I’d had a stroke. How could this chicken-scratch – disjointed ideas written nearly illegibly – be by the same person?

3. Work, schmork – I’ve had a job since I was 14 (well, 10, if you count raising lambs for 4-H). I’ve always worked hard, and have been creative enough to create jobs that work for me and my particular talents, abilities and preferences. I never imagined being a stay at home mom and always assumed I would want to work. Along comes baby, and poof, all that goes out the window. All I want is to be with him. He was 5 weeks old when I got my first mural request post-baby and it fell through because I wasn’t ready to leave him for full days yet..and I was relieved. I’m sure it will change as he gets older (at least I hope it does since I need to start working again in a couple weeks), but I was shocked at how strongly I feel that I would choose a day with him over a day earning money any day of the week.

2. What love life? – I know I promised to keep my husband #1 in a previous pregnancy post but so far that just hasn’t been possible. Little Man is a 24/7 time and attention sucker and I’ve given it all to him. Big Man and I held our own little beer summit recently (he had a PBR and I had a guilty half-glass of wine) to discuss our “relations” or lack thereof and vowed to put each other first again. Yes, just after I feed and burp and change and comfort this little guy again… (this is another one I hope changes as he gets older. It will, right?)

1. Memory loss – Though it’s been less than two months since baby came on the scene, I’m already forgetting what life was like without him. And somehow, though my current priorities would have been unfathomable to the pre-baby me, you couldn’t pay me enough to go back to the way it was.

Smiles and Heartbreak

He smiled today. Not an “I’m pooping and it feels really good” smile, and not one of those lopsided smirks immediately followed by a frown followed by the next twitch in a string of uncontrollable expressions, but a real honest to goodness interactive smile. I had him lifted up in front of me admiring how strong his neck is getting and I said “I love you SO much” and he beamed a gigantic open-mouthed glorious smile. I kissed his cheeks to test if it was really a smile for me. Sure enough, another glowing gorgeous grin.  And my heart broke. In a good way. Just one more crack in a heart that’s swiftly becoming a bowlful of mush. There is just no room for hardness in a heart that loves a child this much.

But my heart is breaking for another not so good reason. It’s almost time to go back to work.  My plan was to return when he’s eight weeks old. Somehow in the midst of these crazy sleepless schedule-less days and nights, he’s become five weeks old. I’ve never been the type to dream of being a stay at home mom. I never even dreamed of being a mom until the last couple years, and always assumed I’d still want to work. Wouldn’t I want a break? Wouldn’t it be boring staying home with a baby all day? I had no idea how satisfied I would be staring into the face of my newborn, especially a smiling one. No clue how tied my heartstrings would be to his every need. How could I possible leave this little guy with anyone else?

Sorting that all out…but for now I’m enjoying every moment I get to be with my beautiful baby boy.

The Story – Part 3: The Real Deal

(This is the last installment of my labor story, which began with Parts 1 and 2. My son is now a month old, and like people said it would, the memory of the pain of his arrival fades as I fall more and more in love with this beautiful boy. I wanted to write about the labor and delivery not to scare anyone with my “horror” story, nor to convince anyone one way or another about natural birth vs. medication, but to document the details for myself in all their gory glory as well as share with others who are as curious about how things can go as I was when I was pregnant. Every labor is different, and this is just one of the possibilities.)

The morphine took effect immediately, like a warm weighty blanket being pulled over my battle-worn body. “I feel heavy,” I murmured to my husband as I surrendered into much-needed slumber. We were in a small triage room at St. Luke’s Hospital. When we stumbled in just after 4 am, the midwife on duty had examined me and found I was dilated 3 cm and was 100 percent effaced. The prodromal labor had prepared my cervix, but was still not progressing into active labor. It was not a busy time at the hospital, so they let me sleep there after administering the morphine, and my husband went home to sleep in our own bed after I passed out. I remember waking a few times feeling the pressure of the contractions and hearing the din of the hospital distantly as if I were at the bottom of a pool. I pressed my hand against the wall to feel something sturdy and real, then slept hard for nearly four hours.

I awoke slowly and groggily, greatly relieved from my rest. A nurse came in to hook me up to a machine that monitors contractions and it began to look like a record of spiky earthquake activity. I called my husband to come back, convinced I was going to have the baby that day on his actual due date. The midwife now on duty, Mary Newberry, came in and checked me out. Of all the midwives I’d met at this practice, she was the most reserved, always keeping a professional distance and an all-business approach. She seemed very capable, but not particularly comforting, like a couple of the others who were like cheery camp counselors. At 10 am, I was still only between 3 and 4 cm and the contractions were about 5 minutes apart, lasting less than a minute. She was not convinced this baby was coming any time soon. “First babies usually take awhile. Why don’t you go home and come back when the contractions are closer?”  Returning home to labor endlessly was not an option for me. At this point, all my lofty goals of natural childbirth had dissolved, and I didn’t care if they induced or cut me open, I was done hanging out in this miserable limbo.  “No”, I said, surprising myself with my assertiveness, “I don’t want to go home. I’m having this baby today.”

She decided to humor me and said, “We can’t officially admit you until you’re in active labor. I’ll give you one hour to prove to me that you’re making progress. Walk around, try some different positions, do what you need to do, and we’ll meet back here at 11 to see if you can stay.” Determined to get this baby going, I hauled myself out of bed and hobbled around a couple floors of the hospital in my gown, looking like sweaty, bloated death on two feet. As a modest person, one of my big fears before this experience was how I would handle going through this very private process in such a public place. Let me tell you, by the time this was over, I could care less who saw or heard what. Your body is no longer your own and you don’t even care when lactation consultants are grabbing your boob and jamming it down your baby’s throat. But I get ahead of myself. At this point, I already didn’t care who saw me drop to a squat in the hallway holding onto my husband for dear life and moaning my way through a contraction.

We headed to the postpartum floor to check out the nursery and ran into another couple from our childbirth class. They had been there for nearly a week, they said, and were finally going home today after recovering from a c-section after complications. “Don’t worry,” they said, ” We’ve taken one for the team. Yours will go smoothly.” They showed us their beautiful daughter and it felt like the motivation I needed. When this was finally over, we’d have one of those in our arms. With my eyes on the prize, everything sped up. I had contractions every couple of minutes on the way back to the triage room, and even had to stop in a bathroom to yak up my breakfast they were so intense. I don’t remember being warned about the barf, but man, I did a lot of it over the next few hours.

Midwife Mary met us back in the room and after seeing the monitor’s record of how close and strong the contractions were coming now, she officially admitted me. I could stay! I was in active labor! She said it would probably still take awhile, so I wouldn’t be transferred to an official delivery room until it was closer. “Take a shower, continue to walk around, do whatever you need to do to be comfortable, and I’ll check in on you in a couple hours.” At this point, my husband went back to our house to get our suitcase and walk our dog, since we live only a few minutes away. I took a shower, crumpling to the ground and gasping for air every couple of minutes. I waddled back to my room, and leaned over the bed. I couldn’t walk around any more. The world was suddenly blurry as all I could focus on was the acute agony of each contraction. Nurses came and went and I couldn’t track what they were saying or even look in their eyes. Finally Mary came back and saw the shape I was in, and talked me through a contraction. Suddenly she was not the clipboard professional, she was my savior. She laid her hands on by back and in a calm, soothing voice told me to stop fighting the pain. “Breathe in energy and courage. Relax your shoulders. Stay with the breath. Breathe out your tension. There, you got through it.” She walked through several more with me, saying just the right thing each time to give me a focus other than panic. And suddenly, I felt it.

“Water. Breaking.” I muttered as hot liquid gushed down my legs. She said, “Look. A piece of the amniotic sac!” but I couldn’t look. “Going to throw up…” I stammered as I dropped to all fours on the floor. She put a bin down in front of me just in time to catch another couple rounds of vomit. “So dignified, huh?” I managed a strained smile with puke on my lips and in my wet stringy hair. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ve seen it all.”  “So, how about that epidural?” I asked. She said she’d have to examine me again to see how far along I was, so with her help I got back onto the bed. “This is really unusual,” she said sounding shocked. In just two hours, I had gone from around 4 cm to almost 10 cm. “No time for an epidural,” she said, “This baby is coming. And by the way, where is your husband?”

He came in just as we were dialing his number. He’d taken his sweet time thinking we had lots of it, but he got there just in time to help me into the delivery room. And this is where it all gets fuzzy. I continued to retreat further and further into my interior world to be able to muster the strength needed to get through each powerful contraction only to collapse again between them. I couldn’t tell you what color the walls were, or how many nurses came in and out, or even if I was wearing clothes anymore at that point. I could hear Mary’s calm voice and I could feel my husband dabbing an ice cold washcloth on my face and neck, his lips near my ear whispering encouragement, but above all else was the pressure, and this fear that I couldn’t do anything to relieve it.

At first I was on a birthing stool, and Mary was telling me it was time to push, and I strained with all my might, but I didn’t have much of it left. Soon I couldn’t even hold myself up so we moved to the bed. I lay on my side and with each contraction my husband would lift my upper leg and Mary would insert her fingers into the birth canal and say, “Push into this. Right here,” and I could focus on that spot and push two or three times until that contraction passed, everyone telling me I was so strong and me feeling like I should have been in training for a marathon the last few months because I didn’t have any more endurance and I didn’t think I could do this and then all of a sudden, out loud, I said “Oh God, I’m going to poop!” That was my other big fear about delivery. The thought of pooping in front of people was just too much, a sign of total loss of control, which I am not good at. I don’t even like being drunk because of what I might do with my guard down, much less having a bowel movement in public when I’m stone cold sober. Even though in this case the “public” was a midwife and nurse who’d seen it all, and my own husband, this was a huge mental roadblock for me. I know some couples who can brush their teeth right next to their spouse doing their business on the john, but that is the one place we draw the line. We do our thing behind closed doors.

“That’s the feeling you want,” said Mary. “You’re almost there. You’re not going to poop. And even if you do, it doesn’t matter. Push into that feeling.” I remembered my sister-in-law saying that giving birth felt like shitting out your spine. I thought at the time she just seemed crass, but now I can say that’s exactly what it feels like. Just let go, I thought, just push it out. And I pushed with everything I had. I feel bad for any poor woman who was just being admitted out in the hallway. I was screaming and grunting and making noises like a wounded wildebeest.  I was fully out of control. And it was working.

“I can see his head!” Mary said. “Keep going just like that.” I always thought that once you see their head, it’s gravy from then on. A couple pushes and they slide right out, right? Oh no. For me, it seemed like his head was in the birth canal for an eternity. A push sent him two steps forward, and the pause before the next push sucked him one step back, creating excruciating pressure in my pelvis as he hung out in there. Finally I rolled on my back, my husband took one leg, a nurse took the other, and they pulled them up to my shoulders during each contraction. He made faster progress that way, which led to my next big fear. “I’m going to tear!” I screamed as he crowned and I felt like my body was going to rip apart.  “No, you’re not. He’s almost there and you’re stretching just fine.” Mary said as she rubbed some kind of oil on my perineum. “We call this phase the Ring of Fire. Push past it and you’ll be done.”

The Ring of Fire. No shit. I hadn’t cursed at all until this point, but choosing to push into the most exquisite piercing pain you’ve ever felt in your life and just knowing you’re going to die there on the table and leave your husband with a motherless child has to be accompanied by an F-bomb or two. Mary had me reach down and touch his head for more motivation. What a surreal moment that was, feeling a soft squishy surface that wasn’t mine down there. It reminded me what this was all for, and that he was so very close to being out and so what if I tore, and with another tremendous push and the help of Mary’s fingers reaching into “the Ring”, I let out a sound that must have echoed through the hospital like Westley’s scream from the Pit of Despair when a year of his life was sucked away, and my baby’s head passed through the Fire. Then, another heave ho and his body followed, along with immediate relief.

And then there he was. On my chest. A whole little body with big open eyes, deep and alert, staring at me as I welcomed him to the world. Commotion continued around us – there was the passing of the placenta, the cutting of the cord, a stitch in the one tiny tear I had – but none of it even registered on my radar. My baby was born. I had survived. I hadn’t pooped, though it wouldn’t have mattered if I did. I made it through days of prodromal labor, an intense active labor semi-intentionally without any pain medication and two hours of pushing, and here he was already smacking his lips and looking for my breast, ready to move on and embark on this new phase of life. I had done it, with indispensable help from my husband and my amazing midwife, and I’ve never felt prouder of myself, more in awe of life and how our bodies work, or more in love with any living creature. This is when my instincts finally kicked in. As he latched on and my body miraculously continued to provide for his every need, I knew what it was to be a mother. People say your life will never be the same, but now I knew what that meant. The extent to which I will live and die caring for my baby has no bounds, regardless of past and inevitable future pain. I am his mama, and there’s nothing else I’d rather be.