At some point during my pregnancy with Beatrix, I decided I would have another natural, drug-free birth.
My desire wasn’t born out of a conviction that natural is superior to what I refer to as supernatural birthing (no pain is super!).
It was because of the two pregnancy losses I had before she came along. I wanted to feel every millimeter of dilation and effacement, every fiber in my being seizing the rollicking boil of contractions.
Not sure if I would ever have that experience again, I needed to feel it all.
It didn’t work out that way. During labor, before I was in much pain, I had a strong feeling I should get the epidural. So I did. I was lying in the bed, listening to my iPod when the song “Love” by Newcomers Home came on. It was the anthem of that pregnancy. These lyrics always haunted me with what I felt was a promise:
Cast a shadow on the life behind me,
Cast the burden to the wind,
So I can see the line for you
To hold on to,
I’ll pull you close to me
And the rest is history.And love won’t get away this time.
I felt tremendous peace about my decision at that moment. My love for our baby could not be deepened by a particularly fiery moment of crowning. Something big was coming, beyond the bigness of having a new life to love. I felt it in the air.
A few hours later, the umbilical cord prolapsed. The epidural allowed me to be awake during the emergency (and I mean emergency) c-section.
There is no such thing as a pain-free delivery of a child. It catches up with you eventually. My daughter was pulled out of a gash seven-layers deep into my body. I guarantee you feel each of those layers healing even though you don’t feel them being made.
Archie was lifted through the same curved red line.
24 hours after he was born, his life was in grave danger. When he was admitted to the NICU, his pulse oximetry reading was 67. His heart was in the center of his chest, displaced by oxygen that was leaking from a lung. He was a very sick baby boy. I have never been more terrified.
In the early hours of January 7, 2009, I was in my room trying to sleep. I kept dreaming a nurse opened the door to tell me he had died. I’d wake in terror, fall asleep, repeat.
When a nurse really did walk through the door, my heart thought about stopping. But she didn’t come to tell me Archie was gone. She came to tell me she had decided to let me sleep instead of giving me my pain medication. Would I like it now?
I said yes, of course, and noted I had to go to the bathroom. My husband, who was sleeping in a cot next to me got up to help me ease out of bed.
The moment I stood upright was the moment I experienced the most physical pain I have felt in my life. I cannot describe how horrendous the pain was, other than it felt like I had been cut in half. Seven layers deep, you know. I screamed.
All my worry about Archie, the pain I felt at the mere idea of losing him, was equal to the volcanic searing I felt at that moment. In a strange way, I felt like the physical pain was a gift because it gave me an outlet to explode all that was building inside me.
I felt utterly alone in that pain. I felt like God put me on a jagged, craggy rock in the middle of a churning, angry sea. Pain like that is the riptide. It grabbed me and pulled me under and there is nothing I could do but succumb.
It was the worst moment of my life and I am blessed that was the worst moment of my life. I do not care to repeat it.
Archie recovered. He exceeded the expectations of everyone. I like to give credit to God, awesome nurses and doctors, and all the prayers that flew up on Archie’s behalf. Prayer works.
But what about all the babies and moms who do not get their miracle, despite fervent prayers?
I don’t know. I don’t understand. I don’t know the purpose of shaking faith until the membranes of the heart are separated forever into a life of Before and After. How do you go on?
The pain from my c-section incision was eventually eased by strong drugs. Then I healed. I have a scar that is completely numb. It’s a dead line, smooth and silvery pink.
I like it. The source of so much pain has become a symbol.
Without that line, there would be no little daughter and perhaps no little son.
Today, I am thinking about a mother named Natalie and her family who lost their two month old son, Gavin, to Pertussis. PERTUSSIS, something that could have been wiped out long ago. But.
I think of Arianne who went to her big ultrasound only to hear the horrible news her baby was gone.
My heart goes out to both of them.
It pains.
