|
|
|
|
|
|
We are at Bimbo's 365 Club in North Beach, San Francisco with our friends Erin & HazMatt to see Southern Culture on the Skids (SCOTS). In line a partially restored Ford Starliner bears the bumper sticker "I [heart] Mormon Pussy."
We get a table back behind the soundboard; cause 9-month pregnant girls need to sit! Or at least that's what people say.
At Frankie's Bohemian Café earlier I told Peter I thought the baby would be early, perhaps a week early or so. I had had a hunch about it for a while. I never open my mouth about those hunches, perhaps fear of jinxing it, or fear of being wrong. I should learn to trust myself more. That evening I had a few contractions, which I assumed were Braxton Hicks as normal. When I commented to Peter that taking the Cotton Root Bark made them a bit more intense, his comment was why haven't you been telling me about them? At Burning Man in late August I had been having them frequently. (Turns out hauling lumber, building shade & dancing were not on the list of OK activities for pregnant girls…I seem not to have been issued that list!) He had asked me then to tell him when whenever I had one. I thought it was because we were in the desert & if I went into labor it would have been considered an emergency two hours from Reno and six from home, not to mention being two months early, but he also wanted to be in touch with the process. Since we returned home in early September they had lessened in frequency & I had stopped telling Peter about them. Being at home I felt comfortable that when things started we'd be fine, so I didn't even think to tell him. As we walked down Columbus Ave I told him I would let him know from now on. Bimbo's is an amazing venue. http://www.bimbos365club.com/ Built in 1931 by an Italian immigrant & his partner who dubbed him Bimbo, which means boy in Italian. It's been famous ever since for swank shows & it's Lady swimming in a fish bowl. It's rumored that Rita Hayworth kicked up her legs here as a dancing girl. The waiters behind the bar all wear white short jackets. And there are attendants in the bathroom at every show who pass out towels, lotions etc & help you to remember your drink, wash your hands & don't pee on the seat. Tonight seeing Southern Culture was a treat. They are the WARPED southern cultural experience; they rock out singing about Banana Pudding, Fried Chicken & Dirt Track Date(s). Sometimes proclaiming that there is Too Much Pork for Just One Fork; they are Toe-Sucking Geek Rock at it's finest to steal a phrase. Perhaps it was just that we were sitting in the back, instead of dancing up front but I didn't think the band was as jumping as usual. But they always LOOK cool! Mary was wearing her pink bouffant wig, with overalls and her bass slung low; she's always mighty styling. Rick, wearing tan colored shorts & a black t-shirt proclaiming Men's Stag Parties is a guitar god. The drummer was standing in mirrored shades & the keyboardist, Crispy was getting his hefty bulk moving around in a crazy rhythmic vibration. Towards the end I couldn't stand it any longer and we decided to make our way up front. After one more pee break. Which took soooo long (imagine a long line & long stories from the bathroom attendant about these drunk girls that kept saying they weren't drunk, only one of them was barfing in the stall) we just made the last few songs. Being pregnant, but not really as big as you'd think a 37-week pregnant woman should be, I was wearing 34" 501's, boots & a SCOTS t-shirt. I'm shaking my booty, snapping my fingers, wiggling all around. They do Nitty Gritty & Soul City. And then it's encore time. The lights come back on & they walk back out on the stage. The first chords of Jack the Ripper run through the club & I'm ecstatic. This nasty punk surf rock song is where Rick struts his guitar god stuff. Man it's amazing energy. I'm doing the swim like crazy and feel a contraction that is somewhat more crampy than I'm used to. I pause in my gyrations. I think hmmmm to myself that's weird. I had a few earlier that evening that seemed like normal Braxton Hicks, but this was different. I turned to tell Peter, and felt another crampy contraction. Then quickly a strange sort of rush in my pants. The kinda rush you shouldn't feel, I momentarily thought, did I pee myself? That's before the huge GUSH of fluid; I'm still turning towards Peter & now say "MY WATER BROKE." I'm sure my eyes are huge with excitement & I laugh. "WHAT???" We have to yell over the music, "YES, LOOK" as another GUSH of fluid flows down my legs. My jeans are wet from zipper to hem, the only dry section is the four inches of fabric that include the seems on the outside of my legs. I waddle off the dance floor trying to keep the now cooling wet fabric off me. I'm walking fast, Peter behind me. We hit the table & I grab my coat telling Erin & Matt, "we have to go we're having a baby!!" They are stunned, we all laugh they grab their coats & go out with us. I'm glad the song didn't end as we hit the lobby, cause there was no crowd to push through. We just walked out past the mermaid paintings, past the venders selling T-Shirts that say "Hillbilly: SCOTS racing team" on them. I'm so full of adrenaline. I feel like I'm vibrating out of my skin, it's finally here. I've been waiting for the labor experience eagerly. We sorta stand outside the front door, SO, WELL GOOD LUCK Erin & Matt say….We say goodbye as more amnio fluid soaks my legs, making my socks wet. My feet now squish in my brown leather moto boots. We head down Columbus towards Alcatraz hidden by buildings & darkness. In our Rodeo I put my sweater under my butt to try to keep the fluid off the car seat. Contractions seem pretty regular now, as we drive over the Bay Bridge. I time them bout a minute apart, but I can talk through them pretty easy. Peter & I discuss our situation at home as we drive the short distance to our home in Oakland. It's about 11:30 pm on October 16th. We've planned a home birth. We have three midwives. We've ordered a birthing tub. We are three weeks early. Consequently: the area where we planned to have the baby is currently being remodeled to some extent. The laundry & open space I've been using as my office space is where we plan to put in a baby area, and it's just recently been painted. Due to weather, all of the furniture, books & negatives, and other implements of a photographer and bookkeeper are all stacked up neatly in OUR BEDROOM. Our bedroom looks like a swap meet preparation area. There is room for one person to walk around the bed an aisle to get shoes, get undressed & get into bed. Our first task is to call the midwife, Deborah, second task is to empty out the bedroom & prepare for the birth! I leave a message & page Deborah as well as Lisa, the student midwife. Turns out Sue, our third is on a cruise right at this moment so we don't call her. Deborah's pager doesn't seem to be working, but she gets the message and calls back. Turns out she just got back from a birth and after she talks me through a contraction we decide that we should both try to get some sleep. Here's the decisive moment, she gives me her cell phone number, since her pager doesn't work and I write this at the top of our emergency numbers list. I help Peter move stuff out of the room & directing him to prepare the plastic over our sheets then cover that with old flannel sheets. I decide that I should take a shower & get some rest, so I do that. The shower feels great. Walking over a thick canvas tarp that is now laid between my bed & the bathroom; I crawl into bed & almost slide off it because the flannel is so slippery on the sheets. I lie down & close my eyes, but there is no sleeping. The contractions start to get more intense. I have to concentrate on them. We try a bath, which is nice but the bath is too small. I sit in it cross-legged facing out at Peter and leaning on the side. I can't lay down in it. It doesn't really work as well as I'd like so I get back into bed. Things start going pretty fast and soon I'm in my own world. This middle part is so confused & cloudy in my head. I can remember walking around a bit, peeing a lot, squatting, I had my robe on at one point, then off, then on…. The details are fuzzy & blurred. I can sense that Peter is around me, but I can't seem to communicate what I want him to do, which is to support me as I lean forward in a sorta hug. Since I can't communicate what I want, I go further inside myself. The contractions are huge waves of tight crampiness. In between contractions I try to grab some sleep. I know I need to rest. I need my strength. For a couple hours I coached myself to keep my voice low, I lay on my side & did pretty well, but then lost it. My loving strong husband I can sense there supporting me in ways I can't see, since he's not touching me and many times he's upstairs getting away from what has become a screaming laboring woman. I was tossed like trash in a flood on the tide of this powerful pain. I lay in bed, thinking there is no way I can do this. I'm going to be the first one in all my friends to ask for drugs, when Deborah gets here…when is Deborah going to get here??? At some point, I think about 2am I ask Peter to get her here. I know it's happening fast. Unknown to me at the whole time there is this OTHER storyline going on. Peter is trying to get the midwives here; he keeps calling the cell phone and leaving messages, perhaps every hour. For a while I think it helped, he left a couple messages, they didn't call back so that must mean everything is OK. It didn't occur to Peter or I that things were happening so fast. We had these two examples of classic births that had prolonged first stages, so we just didn't clue in to how fast I was going. So we both are pretty out of touch at this point with what's happening. I suppose it was a forest for the trees things. From where we stood, the trees seemed so big, it didn't occur to us to even ask if we were in a forest? Does that make sense? Although writing this now I have to put conscious thought on the experience, there was no conscious thought for me during the experience. Not until the break after transition. All the analysis and descriptions were added later I lost track of time, I'm either in a vice of pain or in another world. I had strange visions. Colors were deeper. At one point I distinctly had a vision of bank statements lying on the ground near my desk. Only the vantage point was really strange, as if I were about two inches above them. They were huge. I can only guess that I was out of my body, floating around the house, distant from my body/experience. I am lying face down on the bed. Ragged voiced through the contractions. I am lost. When I come out of one I see Peter has put purple ear plugs in, but I can't even comment on it before another comes. Later Peter tells me this is around 4am. Throughout this time numbers float through the air, I know they are related to me, 45 seconds, 30 seconds, and one minute. I think if I have to do this for 10 more hours I'll kill myself. I can't do this for much longer, how long can this go on. I'm picturing my friend's labors, at 14 hours & 24 hours, I envision this pain for that long & dread creeps into my brain. I am trying to coach myself. I had envisioned the possibility of a painless birth, why was this painful? I was afraid. As I looked at my fear, I realized that if I could let it go, the pain would diminish. The next contraction proved this to be true. It was my fear that was causing them to be so sharp, but I just couldn't hold on to that. My control crumpled. I am desperate. Now with his earplugs in Peter is able to be in the room more with me. Peter had been upstairs drinking a cup of tea. He was drawn downstairs by the change in my voice. At my last prenatal appointment, just a couple days earlier I had ask the midwives how they handle the pushing stage. Now he's lying on the floor by the bed where I can see him. I eye him out of a haze, face mashed by mattress. He sleeps as I sleep. I hear his voice soft in my ear…you're doing great... but I don't register his body near mine. I come out of a contraction and realize I'm going to throw up…I scramble towards the side of the bed, Peter comes to help me, "what's going on" ... I push him out of the way and launch myself onto the floor. On hands and knees I convulse, wracked by a uterus & stomach contracting at the same time. I throw up on the painter's tarp. I see spots of old paint, recognize the green from when we painted our rental home, and recognize the slate blue from the baby room. I crawl back into bed and as I rest I think. OK I'm in transition. That's really odd, that can't be true. But I know that the panicked feelings of not being able to do it, and throwing up are classic signs. I think hmmm that's really weird. What if I'm not dilated? Another contraction comes up and almost off handedly I bear down during it. I only notice this later with hindsight, at the time I am just going with the contraction, which is now more bearable. During my rest I think OK I've got to figure out if I'm dilated. Perhaps I can start pushing. Another contraction, I bear down again. Sometime during rest I realize OK I've been bearing down for a bit now... this is crazy I better go check. So I get up & go into the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet I reach into myself and try to see how dilated I am. But here's the basic problem. 1. I didn't check earlier so I have nothing to compare it to and 2. I have no idea what I'm doing, never having been in labor before. What I feel is a round perhaps half dollar size squishy thing. That doesn't help much I think, could that be my cervix? If so I'm killing myself right here, cause that means I'm not dilated at all and this is too much. Having just attended my best friends birth I was sure that being rushed through her pushing was what caused her to suffer some pretty serious tears. I wanted to manage that process myself and I didn't' want to rush if at all possible. Deborah told me that the pretty much hang out until they hear that certain tone in the woman's voice. At that point they know it's time to push. So Peter now was on the same alert that I was, thinking OK her vocalizations are definitely different, she sounds like she's getting ready to push. When I came out of the bathroom he asked me well what did you feel? I said I don't know…. What do you mean you don't know? I repeated myself. Do you mean you can't describe what you felt? YES. His instinct was I KNOW she knows what her cervix feels like, so this must be the baby. But he didn't tell me that at the time, I am brought to my knees by a powerful pushing contraction. I am amazed at their power. I am at the mercy of this power, there is no me, there is some other force squeezing my body. I'm kneeling on the ground on the side of our bed on my right knee, trying desperately to pull my left leg out wider, thinking maybe if I can make it wider. Please let me make it wider. This part is now comical to me. I feel a burning sensation. I reach down & support my vagina top and bottom with both hands. A tiny voice in my head says you must control this process, images of Jenn & Gina in their labors, thinking episiotomies, stitches…. This is separate from my animal body that is saying uh huhhhhhh... I try to pull back from pushing, I pant. It slows down. It passes. Peter says what's going on?? I say JUST LOOK.... What he sees is the black wet surface of the head. The baby is crowning. He puts out his hand. The force takes a hold of me again and the baby is traveling to the outside world. My job is to guide the process, to gentle the process; the baby is obviously taking care of coming out by herself. I try to pull back from the burning. I am blessing my friends for going before me and giving me this gift of knowledge. I feel every bit of her head pass the thin rim of my skin and then there is a small pause. I am like earth, moved by tremors. Slight pause and then a rotation & rush of fluid as her body surfs out slippery. Epic sized relief. Half dome, granite rock of relief. I don't have to do THAT anymore!! There is silence. Peter has caught this little alien. The baby was blue & red & covered in vernix. An egg sized lump on her head, and the mashed nose of a boxer she looks like a lizard to me. Peter is trying to thrust her at me. I am mindless...I'm still kneeling and there is no lap or stomach available yet for this baby. I am looking at the pool of blood & fluid, he's thrusting a baby at me, finally I push back a little and sit on my ass, my left foot in the blood. And I've got a slippery baby in my hands. Peter dashes past me into the other room. Where are you going???!!!! "I've got to make a phone call". The baby isn't breathing, and this is the first thing that worries me the whole event. Before there was just doing, now there is concern. I stroke the feet & back & soon I hear a little mew & can see the chest move up & down. Peter is leaving a message in the other room. I can hear him say, there is a baby here, so if you could get her anytime soon, that'd be great, so polite. As I'm sitting there I assume I'm holding a boy. It occurs to me that I should look just to confirm this and big surprise it's a girl! Just as I dreamed back in February we have a girl. Peter comes in the room & then is moving past me to go back out...it's a girl I say. He says WHAT? Oh! Wonderful & he's back out of the room again. When he comes back he helps me into the bed, we wrap baby & me up nice & warm. Peter checks to make sure I'm not bleeding much, which I'm not. Baby is warm on my belly. I look around my room & realize it's perfect. Peter has worked part of the night while I labored to make sure I have our beautiful uncluttered bedroom to look at. It's wonderful. Still dark outside, the sun hasn't come up yet. We talk about the night a bit I think we talk about where the midwives are. When I realize Peter has just been leaving messages, I ask him, why don't you try the other numbers? Oh! He calls the first number on the list, and Deborah answers right away. It must be about 6am now. I'm not sure exactly how the conversation went, but what I hear is him saying, yes I left messages several of them, I guess you didn't get them, on your cell...no that's not important...0 there is a baby here! Sounds like that that stopped her inquiries! Turns out she was sleeping with that phone by the bed. Total misunderstanding. I guess she just meant for us to use the cell in place of the pager. WE assumed because that was the last number she gave us that we should use that. Well no matter. We were all fine, it was over. She was here. Everything was perfect, dark primal & crazy. I wouldn't trade it for anything. About an hour later Deborah & Lisa come, they completely take over. Which is perfect cause we're exhausted. They are so apologetic! I'm just glad they got there when they did. They check me, and we finally birth the placenta. Which is strangely double lobed. It looks like lungs. When they ask if we want to cut the cord, we're like hmmm no, why don't you go ahead, we had our excitement! Then Deborah helps me into a shower, we change sheets & bedding. The midwives are cleaning up. Peter is also. I am lying in bed holding this little bundle that is a baby girl. Eventually we weigh her at 6 lbs, and do the apgar, which she passes with a 9. Healthy. Deborah makes me a wonderful breakfast, and feeds me. I devour every bite of eggs and tofu while the baby is feeding. She had no trouble latching on. It's a dream. It's not real yet. I'm ecstatic. I call my stepfather who is in a clean room at Bayer. He has to sit down. I call my Mom at around 8am, she's at work, she starts to cry. We get on the phone and call and call and call all the wonderful people who mean so much to us. At around noon, the visits start & by that evening our bedroom is full of our wonderful extended family. We have a celebration of love, my best friends with their week old baby boy Skyler, my parents, Peter's parents, Gina & Russ with Dante their 13month old. Russ bought champagne, with strawberries & cheeses my darling girl Laura, my cousins Brooke and Cory who stare at the baby as much as I do. Beth, Peter's best girlfriend and my dear friend.... The beautiful party is a blur...and that is how her life as an air breather began. Boldly, surprisingly, primal, instinctive, perfect & received at dawn into joy with love, then celebrated with strawberries and champagne, the love of her parents and the love of her community. Later people would ask us a lot of questions but a few stand out. 1. Didn't you think of calling 911??!! (this from Andy, my stepdad) a. No. Nothing was wrong, it never occurred that anything was wrong, it never occurred to us to deviate from what was most important to do, birth this baby. 2. Who delivered the baby? a. Um that would be ME and Peter caught the baby. 3. What did you do about the cord/placenta? a. Waited till the midwives came. It's fine to leave it attached for a while & the baby nursing causes contractions to birth it, so we would have done that by ourselves too if need be. Mostly what occurs to me is that in our culture we don't have much direct information about birth. Not many of our friends knew the baby was fine not breathing as long as she was attached. Not many of them know what labor & deliver is like at all. Even many of the women in my life who actually have babies! It seems a shame. We should be sharing this information and directly experiencing this for ourselves. It's magic. It's powerful. And with all the force of western medicine behind you to catch you in an emergency it should leave us feeling more free to experience this emergence for ourselves. It is a complete transformation of all who witness it. We had prepared for an unassisted home birth, and had decided NOT to have one due to the wonderful care & relationship we developed with Deborah, Sue & Lisa. But it turns out the universe delivered what we had intended after all. And I celebrate! |