Parts I, II, III.
V___ checks me and says, "You've got a bit of a cervical lip."
"Oh, no, not THAT again," I grumble fiercely. In two of my previous labors, J____ manually pushed aside the "cervical lip" -- an edematous bit of cervix persistently blocking the baby's descent -- while I screamed through contractions. It's the worst part of any of my labors. I brace myself for V____ to tell me that's what she's going to do next.
But instead she says, "Just try to breathe through the next one, try not to push. Just breathe through it." This is novel. I pant and try to stay open, neutral. I carefully skirt the reflex that hovers on the edge of my consciousness. It doesn't hurt not to push, it doesn't frustrate, it's just difficult. I almost make it, but at the end my control peels away and the push spills over. The expulsion reflex distends me, and distends my voice as I say, "Oh, sorryyyYURGH--I can't help it."
"It's fine, you did fine," comes V____'s voice from behind me. "It's almost gone. Try that again with the next one."
I do, losing control at the end again, and: "It's gone, you're all done. The lip is gone."
I'm so pleased not to have had to endure the lip-shoving again that it doesn't quite sink in that I am, so to speak, cleared to push the baby out. But it is not many more contractions before I know we are almost there.
I made the notes only five days later, and oddly enough by that time I had already forgotten the pain of crowning. I remembered the stretching, but not the pain. The baby crowned to the brow over the course of one contraction and stated there till the next one, and that was new and intense -- staying there so wide and full, and me expecting the next push would bring me past that. That moment of waiting. And the next one did bring me past that: his head was out. I hoped for the shoulders to follow. They didn't.
Here we are. This is what I had been expecting from the beginning.
Mark told me later that he wasn't worried at that moment, because what he saw was that the baby had turned; he was not anterior anymore, he faced up as I labored on hands and knees. Hannah told me later that she saw no sign of worry on the midwife's face, that she set her face as if to say, "you're coming out, baby!" and then she got to work.
Put your knee up. I put one knee up. Mark comes to my side to help. I reach out to Hannah and cling to her and push again. My face is in her hair. My breath comes in and out in prayers, my body pushes out the prayers too, I could not stop them if I tried, it is good that my lips have formed them so many times before. V_____'s hands are working on the baby. (Later she told me: "I really got in there and lifted your sacrum up.") I picture a ship in a bottle, rattling against the neck. I can feel his bones sliding and pushing against mine as she works on him, turning and adjusting this living key in the lock. It occurs to me that I should try to push harder, so I do.
It takes a couple of minutes. They are long minutes for me. Hannah and Mark are able to see that V_____ is still firm and determined and unworried, and so they aren't worried. I can't see this and although it has not risen very high in my mind, because not helpful, I am a little afraid. Still there is a certain peace in that there are no decisions to be made, no possibility of doing the wrong thing, only to do what I am doing as hard as I can, and there is no possibility of doing it less than as hard as I can. From here on out, it's not possible to make a mistake.
I push hard, trying to keep my balance, and clutch at Hannah's hands. My eyes are tight shut. I can feel V____ wrangling with us. Finally, with a last violent yank he is freed, and I fall a bit forward onto Hannah and kiss her hair and say, thank God, thank God, thank God -- and the baby squawks immediately, loudly, and I can't say anything but thank God, thank God, thank God, and then my head clears a little bit and it's as if my own good self wakes up, and I say to Hannah, "That's a command, you realize," and she says "I know," and then oh, how I enjoyed listening to that baby squall.
The cord is very short and I am kneeling on my bathroom floor. I can't see the baby, he's behind me. We can't quite pass him forward between my legs. After some struggling I am maneuvered over the baby onto my back leaning on Mark (the floor presses painfully against my lower back and tailbone) and the baby is on my belly, squirming hotly, while V____ busies herself between my knees, doing I know not what. There is a picture of me from these moments, my face is relaxed and blissful and radiant, more than anything else relieved and tired.
I am really uncomfortable, but it is difficult to maneuver with the cord so short. We decide I will stay where I am until the cord is cut, and then I will make it to the bed. After it stops pulsing, I watch V_____ carefully clamp it in two places, bring the curved sharp scissors around it (I resist the impulse to tell her to be careful of his toes) and cut. Then it is time to move to the bed. I release the baby to Hannah and am helped to my feet.
While we are working on getting me upright, Mary Jane wakes up sleepily. She stares up at Hannah in bemusement and asks, "Hannah? Why are you here?"
Hannah tells her, "I'm here to meet someone new in your family. Who do you think this is?" Hannah whispers to her, lifting the bundle to show her.
Mary Jane decides, "It's Hazel," who is Hannah's 5-year-old daughter, and she drowses back to sleep.
Meanwhile, I hobble to the bed; the bottom has dropped out of my lungs and my breath is ragged and shallow, a familiar sensation. Turn, sit gingerly on the bed (watch out for that cord). I stay near the edge of the bed to deliver the placenta. I say to someone, "I'll feel better when the placenta is out." For some reason I'm worried there will be a problem with the placenta too. But it is not much time before I feel it appearing between my legs, and I push it out with a last and very satisfying grunt. "OH that feels SO good," I tell everyone. And it does. Better even maybe than getting the baby out. It feels like being DONE.
With help I crab-walk backwards until I can collapse at last on the pillows and be covered with warm blankets. Somewhere in there J_____ arrives. The baby is examined briefly. I get my baby in my arms. It is a little bit difficult to connect with him, I feel as though our messages are zinging past each other and not quite registering. It seems as if it has been too long, as if we've missed those "moments after birth." But I don't think I could really cope with anything except my own tired hurting body until just now. I am sorry we missed some of that, but I know he was in good hands, between his father and our friend Hannah. We have plenty of time to get to know each other.
I put the baby, who is red and cross-eyed, to my breast and he latches on immediately and hungrily -- I peer at his lower lip and announce that he has a perfect latch.
A happy, happy end at four in the morning on January 29th.
(Postscript: Hannah took all the pictures, stayed till late in the morning, let us sleep in, and made breakfast for our family before going home to get some sleep herself... for which we are very thankful.)
I gave a quick answer for the combox:
I think it's a question worthy of highlighting for further discussion, don't you?
My point, in putting Roe v. Wade within a unit on the experience of childhood, is to point out that it affected the legal status of children primarily -- much more than it did the legal status of women. Of course, this only follows from the notion that unborn children are, in fact children; but I am sure the commenter understands that this is a fundamental assumption in my homeschool.
As with all my educational theories, we shall see how it plays out as my children get older and ask tougher questions. My philosophy about imparting the conviction that the unborn deserve protection is that it's necessary to go beyond "abortion is bad, so don't ever have one or pay for one or recommend one, try to help people who think it's their only choice, and vote against it whenever you can."
What's more fundamental than that? What's more necessary than that? Well -- ask yourself why abortion is a bad thing, why people shouldn't have them, pay for them, promote them, why it's better to help people make different choices, why its legal status should change. The only good answer is that the unborn are persons, children, and all those judgments follow from it.
The Catholic novelist and short-story master Flannery O'Connor once famously said about the Eucharist, "If it's just a symbol, then to hell with it." Well. About the anti-abortion movement, I can say: "If the unborn aren't persons, than to hell with it."
And so the thing that must be imparted is the gut-and-brain knowledge that unborn children are nothing more nor less than children, younger than themselves. A ten-year-old boy will protect his little sister like a Rottweiler: I have seen it. A four-year-old girl will carefully care for her baby brother: I have seen it. The whole family will gather eagerly around Mom's belly to watch for the tiny kicks: I have seen it. They know. They mustn't lose this knowledge.
If you know that an unborn child is a child, you don't need to be told that she needs care, not violence.
If you know that an unborn child is a child, you don't need to be told that a scared pregnant girl is a scared young mother with a baby, that a boy with a pregnant girlfriend is a worried young father. I'll have completely failed any one of my sons if he makes it to adulthood without being able to imagine what it might be like, what it is like for too many American men: to fear that he can't care for his family. I'll have failed my daughter if she grows up without putting herself in the place of a mother who's afraid she can't care adequately for herself and for her child.
I believe that to awaken compassion for young mothers and young fathers and their children is to awaken a desire to help them all, not a desire to harm any of them. Political positions come long after that.
Readers: What do you think of Emma's question and challenge? A good one, no?