I woke up at 5 a.m. on Monday, November 30, 2015, with mild discomfort in my lower abdomen. I turned onto my side in bed and wondered what to do. I was five days past my due date, but I’d always assumed the start of labor would be accompanied by unambiguous pain, screaming, and a desire to breathe via panting. I felt none of that. It was more of a meek crampy resonance below my bump. So I googled “early labor” on my phone while Nate snoozed unaware. I saw no point in prematurely waking a man whose life was about to radically change. When our alarm went off as usual at 6 a.m., I told Nate that something was definitely happening. He leapt out of bed and asked what he should do. I told him to take the dog out and make breakfast. I had an app on my phone to track contractions, so I started punching the buttons for time and duration. I don’t know how people tracked this stuff before technology. The idea of doing math at that moment in time seemed about as possible as riding in the Tour de France.
I enacted the ironclad first (and really only) part of my birth plan: take a shower. I have a thing about being clean. I once showered before going to the ER to have a softball-size sprained ankle examined, and I was absolutely showering before giving birth. The only problem was that I had to keep opening the shower door and stabbing with wet hands at my phone, which was sitting on the bathroom sink, in order to track the contractions. That charade finally over, I dressed in my going-to-the-hospital clothes, which I’d had laid out for a good month and a half, and ordered Nate into the shower. I called my doctor to explain the situation and she asked, in what I now realize was a tone of alarm, how far away from the hospital I was. It was only 7 a.m. and I’d assumed we’d be home for hours to come, days even. But she said it would be a good idea for me to come in now because, first baby or not, things were progressing rapidly. I gathered my bag (packed for weeks, naturally) and tried to eat breakfast (a ludicrous concept at this point). By now the pain had escalated to the level of confirming that this was labor, even to a neophyte laborer, and the entire ten-minute ride to the hospital, I grabbed Nate’s arm and asked how far away we were (this despite the fact that I knew exactly where we were as the hospital was basically in our neighborhood). I shot eyeball daggers at all the other drivers. How could they be on the road, sipping their coffee thermoses, listening to NPR at a time like this?!
Ever on the lookout for savings, Nate and I had planned in advance to park the minivan somewhere on a street close to the hospital since it’s in Cambridge and, as city residents, we were entitled to free street parking. This to avoid the $7 per day hospital parking garage fee. But as we neared the hospital, I used several expletives to tell Nate where he would be parking: in the parking garage in a spot closest to the door. I bolted from the car, leaving Nate to straggle in with our bags. We were met by our labor and delivery nurse, Karen, whom I am certain can only be described as an angel. Karen settled us into a birthing suite and we got comfortable, thinking we’d be there for hours.
I decided to hold off on getting an epidural since I thought natural birth was for me; after all, I’d hiked a four-thousand-foot mountain when I was six months pregnant and went to a ninety-minute heated Vinyasa flow yoga class the day before going into labor. Ten minutes later I was moaning into Karen’s scrubs-covered shoulder and alternating between begging for an epidural and chewing on my bedsheet. The epidural, accompanied by an entire team, came swiftly and was every bit as magical as lore had promised. I settled into bed feeling in control again and directed Nate to text everyone I thought we could reasonably inform of our current life status. Karen and my doctor were in and out of the room, checking on me every few minutes. Meanwhile, Nate and I chatted, held hands, decided what to order for lunch (I think we were the most excited people on that entire maternity ward for the free hospital food), and took selfies.
I was feeling good, let me tell you. The contractions had subsided from their zenith of knife-stabbing-accompanied-by-a-stiletto-grinding-into-the-top-of-your-foot pain to a dull throb, which was more of a light reverberation. “Oh! Another contraction!” I’d say, instead of “Mmmmmauuuuuhhhhh,” which was my pre-epidural chant. Before actually going into labor, I’d thought I’d do yoga and center myself while perhaps delivering my child into my own arms in a warm tub of water (something the hospital offered). I almost brought my yoga mat with me, thinking maybe I’d give birth while in downward dog. After going into labor, conversely, I was unwilling to even get off of the bed and was ready to administer the epidural myself. Long about 11:30 a.m., Karen reported that the baby was laboring down nicely and that I should get ready to push soon. I straightened up in bed, butterflied my legs into the one yoga pose I did manage that day, and said, “Oooooohhhhh! Pushing!” Being a person who gets drunk on one glass of wine, the epidural had me positively radiant. Karen came back to check dilation a few minutes later and suddenly turned frantic. She stopped smiling, reared her head back while keeping her arm on me, and told Nate to pull the emergency call button. He did and nothing happened. It was broken. She then told him to run and get help. I was now moderately alarmed, although still feeling much like I do after a three-champagne brunch accompanied by a small eggs Benedict. Nate, being six foot two, bearded, and imposing in the best of circumstances, apparently raised the alarm quite effectively since a phalanx of doctors and nurses streamed into our once-tranquil birthing suite, dropping clipboards and cups of coffee in their wake.
As they wheeled me away, I couldn’t understand what was happening, why we were on the move, or why Karen was sitting on the bed with me. From their urgency, I gathered I should be scared. They also left Nate standing helpless in our birthing suite, which I considered a bad sign for a hospital so progressive and water-birth-encouraging as this one. All I could see was the ceiling, which was one of those drop-ceiling jobs with intersecting metal bars holding up pock-marked, white tiles. I stared and stared at it, willing it to give me answers. I kept asking if the baby was OK and then not understanding what I was being told. I couldn’t make out the words. I heard the doctor yelling “faster, faster, faster.” At some point, three people crowded around my head to try to make small talk. There was a wide-ranging discussion about Boston versus San Diego weather, and requests for me to squeeze someone’s hand. After what felt like two hours, Nate burst through the operating room door partially clad in scrubs with his little tissue-paper hat on backward and two face masks, one to cover his beard. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he was handed a baby. “Is that ours?” I asked. He smiled and brought the baby’s face close to mine. Then they were gone and I was back to looking at the ceiling. As I learned later, I was in and out of consciousness throughout the entire cesarean section, which explains why I thought no one was answering my questions. I’d wake up long enough to shout them out and then pass out before hearing the responses.
What felt like hours as I lay there prone, unable to move, and unsure of what was happening to my body and my baby, was actually about seven minutes. After my surgery was complete, they wheeled me back into the birthing suite where Nate was standing next to the window holding what I assumed was our daughter. She didn’t look like I’d thought she would. I’d imagined her all those months as a toddler, a kindergartener, a Girl Scout, but somehow not as a newborn. She was so tiny and fragile and red and mushy. But she was dazzling and beautiful. I was captivated. Nate and Karen settled her on my chest to nurse and she latched immediately, sucking away as if she were designed for this, this moment of connection and sustenance. I was the one wondering what to do, where to put my arms, whether she could breathe through her impossibly small nose that was now smashed against my chest, but she was wholly absent the anxieties of awareness. She was hungry and she knew how to eat. We lay like that for almost an hour, me sleeping, my baby eating.
When I woke up, Karen sat down next to my bed and explained what had happened. When she’d come to check my dilation one last time before telling me to push, she’d felt what’s referred to as the midwife’s curse: a prolapsed umbilical cord. This means the cord was protruding ahead of the baby, which is a life-threatening situation since, if untreated, the baby will lose oxygen. Karen immediately tried the first remedy of pushing the cord back inside next to the baby, but that didn’t work. The only other remedy to prevent oxygen loss, and thus extensive brain damage, is an immediate cesarean section. Karen held the cord in to ensure the baby wouldn’t lose oxygen until they could cut her out. That’s why her urgency was so raw and why she had Nate run screaming into the hall. Protocol was no longer important. That’s why they’d whisked me off without letting Nate catch up, and why the C-section was underway before I even understood what was happening. Thanks to Karen’s swift response, our daughter was born perfectly healthy, boisterous, and yelling with full lungs and an intact brain. My gratitude to Karen, our doctor, and the dozens of people who leapt into action that morning is deeper and more profound than anything I’ve ever felt. Cord prolapse is rare and occurs in fewer than 1 percent of pregnancies, but it doesn’t feel rare when it happens to you.
Since I’d had a C-section, we’d now be in the hospital for four days as opposed to two, which sounded like a fabulous plan to me. I was exhausted, heavily drugged, and in excruciating pain. We called our parents to let them know that they were now grandparents to Estelle Juliette Thames, the middle name my grandmother’s, and we told each other that the worst was over. Two days later, a doctor and a nurse woke us up in the middle of the night holding our daughter. Estelle (whom we quickly started calling Stella) had gone to the nursery for the night and while there, the nurses observed what they called “oxygen desaturation,” which basically means she wasn’t breathing properly and had turned blue. The doctor said they were admitting her immediately to the Level 2 NICU nursery for observation.
Estelle’s minuscule hands, feet, and chest were hooked up to four different monitors to track her vital signs. These tethers meant she couldn’t be more than a few feet away from her crib at any time. And so, Nate and I walked an expanse that, to me, felt like several miles from my room to the NICU every two hours so that our baby could nurse. Nate sandwiched a rocking chair in the corner behind her plastic box crib and moved the wires out of the way in order to nestle her on me to eat. Initially, the doctor planned to keep her for observation just overnight, but she continued desaturating, which kept extending her stay. She had to make it a full forty-eight hours with no desaturations before she could be discharged. While sitting in the NICU, nursing our mostly healthy, heavily monitored, full-term infant, we saw dozens of other babies in far worse condition and with dire prognoses. We felt guilty at how grateful we were and we’d grip Stella tightly any time a new infant came in, as if their malady might be contagious.
I was scheduled to be discharged after four days, but since Stella had to stay on, the hospital arranged for me to sleep in a room down the hall, not as a patient, but as a guest. My gratitude was now a deep well that kept expanding. Despite being a hospital, with all the bureaucracy that entails, they valued our desire to exclusively breastfeed and be close to our days-old child. Nate couldn’t stay in the room since I had to share with another mother, so he trekked back and forth every day. He’d come at 6 a.m. and stay until 10 p.m., when I’d kick him out for fear he’d fall asleep while driving home. What I’d all but forgotten was the fact that we were in the midst of negotiating our offer on a homestead that was 150 miles away. Nate would pop out into the hospital corridor to answer calls from our real estate agent and lawyer.
He let me weave a protective cocoon around Estelle in the noisy, bright NICU while he dealt with this other looming, pressing element of our future. She and I would sleep together in the rocking chair, and invariably, one of us would shift and knock her mini foot monitor loose, setting off a peal of beeps and alarms. In spite of how often we had to have the foot monitor reattached, our nurses redefined the concept of compassion. One of them helped me shower and knelt down to wash my feet since I couldn’t bend over. They brought me juice and showed me how to bathe, diaper, and nurse Estelle, which was not part of their job, but which they did with love. They could not have been more giving had I been their own daughter. On our fifth day in the NICU, two nurses popped over with huge smiles and said it was time for our photo shoot. They stuffed Stella and her many cords into a giant Christmas stocking. It was early December after all, a fact I’d forgotten. They positioned Nate and me cuddling our precious gift. At the last minute, they squirted sugar water into Stella’s mouth to make her “smile.” To this day, it’s my favorite picture of the three of us.
After a week, Stella made it the requisite forty-eight hours with normal breathing, so we were allowed to leave. I’d become so acclimated to life in the hospital with the meals provided, the nurses there to help me, and Stella under observation so I didn’t have to worry about her, that I was almost hesitant to leave. I’d come to depend on this community of people to support me. Adding to my concern was the fact that the inspection on our homestead was scheduled for 11 a.m. the day of her discharge. Nate spoke with the doctor and was able to secure a rare 6 a.m. release for us, which would give Nate just enough time to drive us home from the hospital, install us in the house, and then drive the three hours to Vermont. When we walked through the front door, I saw that Nate had arranged the living room to meet our every need. He’d lined up our three different baby bouncers and swings, laid out a gigantic pile of blankets and towels, prepared a lunch for me in the fridge, and stocked the changing table with newborn diapers (I’d bought size one diapers in advance, but Stella was a peanut who wore newborns for a good two months). I still wasn’t supposed to lift anything and had a hard time sitting, standing, and walking on account of the major abdominal surgery I’d had. So I talked with my mom and sister, mothers of three children each, on the phone all day long, and gave them a minute-by-minute accounting of Stella’s activities. I couldn’t believe I was allowed to be alone with an infant who’d, up to this point in her life, been under constant surveillance by trained medical staff and a plethora of monitoring devices. I managed to keep her alive until Nate got home that evening and he told me our dream was a go. The homestead had passed its inspections, and we were sailing toward closing.