by Sarah Dakin
I’m the sort of person who likes to be prepared. In university, other students would groan as I pulled out my pages and pages of color-coded notes. I like to succeed. I graduated with a smug 4.0 cumulative GPA and gloated over the fact that scholarship money was paying my tuition. When I went to Japan to teach English, I took a suitcase stuffed with dictionaries, rolls of newly minted pennies, laminated restaurant menus, wigs, and even a beaver puppet to help make my classes above and beyond. When the Japanese Ministry of Education asked me to sit on a committee studying best practices for English instruction, I patted myself on the back. I had what it took.
So when the little plus sign appeared on the white stick of pregnancy I dove into preparations for motherhood with a frantic determination. Here was my next challenge. Once again I planned to use research, preparation, and hard work to chart my way to stellar success. This baby was going to be one contented kid and I was going to be “Super Mom.” One prenatal class was not enough for me. I insisted my husband and I benefit from two different classes, to ensure we wouldn’t miss any information. It was not enough to get all the cutest brand-name baby wear a child could ever want. I challenged myself to collect it all secondhand so this baby would not only have the best, but at the best price. I went to La Leche League while pregnant to learn about breastfeeding, and of course I hired a midwife. A natural unmediated homebirth seemed to be the Ironman of birth experiences, so I set my sights on that pinnacle of birthing achievement. I wanted to prove I could birth, and mother, with the best of them.
And how I worried. When I caught the flu, my extensive research revealed that certain viruses can harm the unborn child and I chided myself for being so irresponsible. What was I thinking catching a bug! Then, a child at the school where I was teaching came down with rubella. Mental retardation, deafness, and spleen problems danced like demons—rather than sugarplums—in my head until the blood test came back confirming I had already had the disease. I worried about the triple screen. I worried about folic acid. I worried about gaining too much or gaining too little. I worried about Down syndrome, club foot, the Mozart effect, how big my belly was getting, whether our house had too many stairs for a baby, and whether or not he/she would go to college when eighteen. Rather than feeling joy at the flutterings of new life in my belly, my nine months were filled with the thumpings of anxiety. I lived in constant terror that I might not do this pregnancy thing right.
One night, my husband was driving a friend and me home from watching some fireworks. I was relaxing in the backseat, enjoying the warm summer air coming in through the open car window. We passed some laughing kids on the side of the road, then WHAM, something hit me like a power punch in the stomach. One of the youngsters had thrown an unripe peach at our car and it just happened to come in the window, hitting me in my pregnant belly. As I doubled over in excruciating pain, all I could think about was the baby. Was he or she injured in there? Would I miscarry? A purple bruise started to swell as we frantically called the midwife. I was stunned. Despite all my research and careful worry, I hadn’t planned for this. There was no website about the unripe peach coming in through the window. Waves of vulnerability flooded my system as I realized I was utterly unprepared. My fears eased a little after some reassuring words from my midwife and an ultrasound, but I still couldn’t get over the shock of it all. What else was out there beyond my planning and my control? What was life going to throw through the window next?
Then suddenly it was a Friday morning, and I was having strong menstrual cramps. By that evening, I had phoned my midwife who came over right away. “You are not in labor,” she laughed. “Go to a movie! Enjoy yourselves. And call me back when something is really happening!”
We went for sushi. Of course, I didn’t allow myself any raw fish as good pregnant mothers don’t risk the possible contamination. I could hardly swallow down the soft slab of egg sushi or the salty miso soup. The pain in my belly was still minor but the anxiety rose around me like a tide, carrying me out over my head.
After dinner we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean at a local theater. I sat in the dark looking around at the audience and feeling alone in a different world. I headed for the bathroom. The mirrors over the sink had frames painted on them like a movie star’s dressing room. I leaned over the sink groaning with a contraction, secretly wishing someone would say, “Are you OK?” just so I could casually reply, “Oh . . . I’m just having a baby.” No one asked. The rest of the world continued on as if this were just another Friday night. “Don’t come yet,” I hissed at the child within. “I’m not ready! They are all coming for my blessingway ceremony on Sunday and we haven’t finished setting up your room!” Also, it was August 15, and I wanted to have my child born on an even number. I like things to be symmetrical and sixteen, with its four groups of four, was a much more lovely number. No uneven three piles of five for this family.
After a restless night of trying to get comfortable and being amazed that my husband could sleep at a time like this, I was getting cranky. The pain in my abdomen kept increasing but when my midwife stopped by to check me I was a mere centimeter dilated. My friend, who also happened to be a doula, came as arranged and spooned smooth creamy yogurt sweetened with maple syrup into my mouth as I cried. I tried my pretty birthing pool, the shower, sitting on the toilet, walking, the birthing ball, my birthing music—but nothing helped. I discovered to my disgust that I am one of those women who vomit while in labor. At the time I was too immersed in the waves of pain to care, but afterward I did wonder what my neighbors must have thought of me, out in nothing but a sundress and sandals, staggering and leaning on my husband, puking in every hedgerow down the townhouse driveway.
By 10 p.m. on Saturday night, I was still only three centimeters dilated. My midwife came in somber faced and pronounced we were going to the hospital. “She needs some rest and some pain relief. Then we can carry on again in the morning.” “No!” I thought in my delirium. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this! Now I will end up with a cesarean. I have failed . . .” But my weary body was also relieved. It was time to give up. Time to surrender.
They loaded me into the backseat of the car, where I knelt on all fours, moaning, bowl in hand. My mother laughed nervously about how she guessed seat belt laws didn’t apply for birthing women and we were off. That fifteen-minute car trip felt like I was being driven to my execution. Pain dragged me down, gnawing at me like a wild animal. My supportive husband’s comforting, massaging hands now on the steering wheel rather than my back, I found myself alone in the deepest despair. Here I was in this precious test of motherhood and I had failed. It was a straight chute down into a C-section now, I told myself. Just what I didn’t want.
My husband helped me to the admissions desk and from the shocked expression on the nurse’s face I realized I must have looked a bit scary, my thick bushy hair unbrushed after twenty-four hours of tossing and turning, my old sundress barely covering the nakedness below. “Straight on through!” she ordered, and I was glad we had come in ahead of time to fill out the admission forms, just in case. We staggered into the birthing room. My midwife was happy we got the coveted room with the tub, but I didn’t care. The pain overtook me completely and I desperately clawed at my husband, the nurse, the midwife, whining for relief. Laughing gas was brought but it only made me less able to complain. I fought to stay connected to reality through the fogginess of the gas. I became the patient, discussed in third person as if I were not there. I would have been angry if I had had any strength left.
It was now midnight. “She’s exhausted,” the midwife pronounced, looking back at my friend’s, mother’s, and husband’s concerned faces. “But she is now ten centimeters dilated, so no time for an epidural. She needs to push this baby out.” It seems surrender was a better labor strategy than all my careful planning.
And so the pushing began. I came to understand why they call crowning the “ring of fire.” “Touch down here,” said my midwife, guiding my hand down between my legs to feel a soft squishy mass that felt nothing like a skull. “You can feel his hair,” she crooned. “Hair?” I yelled angrily, the pain cracking my voice, and no tenderness or compassion entering the equation at all. “Can’t you pull him out by the hair? I want this baby out of here!” Everyone laughed but I was desperately serious. I wanted the ordeal over with.
“Cut?” asked the new nurse after shift change, dropping the word like a bomb. I had been pushing for hours. “No!” said my midwife, “She does not need an episiotomy. And no, you cannot go get the forceps or vacuum crew.” “But it’s been long time, she tired,” the nurse continued, shaking her head with disapproval. “No!” said my midwife. “Sarah is going to push this baby out herself.” The midwife rummaged in her bag of tricks and pulled out a jar of honey. “Sarah,” she said, cupping my face in her hands, “You can do this. You need to focus and push this baby out now. It is time to do it.” Her voice was serious, intent, and concerned. “Here,” she said as she pushed a heaping spoonful of honey into my mouth.
Immediately my bone-weary body felt a tingle of new energy. I mustered my strength and pushed with all my might. I don’t care anymore, I told myself. Even if this rips me open, and breaks my body, I just want to be done with this. I want it to end! I pushed right into the pain, pushing to assert my will, pushing to reclaim my dignity, pushing with a primal energy I hadn’t known that I had. Pop! My right labium split as his head emerged and then with a slosh my son was out and on my chest. Eight pounds and six ounces of fresh miracle. “A baby! There really is a baby!” I cried out in shock. In all the pain and struggle, I had completely forgotten this would lead to a child. My mom laughed and cried at the same time and my friend snapped pictures. And suddenly it didn’t matter anymore. The missed blessingway, not being at home, the puking, the long labor. None of it mattered. All that mattered was me, this beautiful baby, and my beloved husband, mother, and friend. I was filled with gratitude. It struck me that the grace and peace I thought I would find in my perfect homebirth, in my careful planning, in all my anxious hard work, was right here, in this messy, unplanned present moment. Time stood still and that one little room became my everywhere.
My little Tristan, as we later named him, had chosen to be born on August 17, which is a prime number and the worst kind of number in my quirky personal system of symmetry. His first act was to stick his flag down and declare, “Mommy, you cannot control me!” I could hear his feisty spirit laughing. They say that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. My teacher was here. I didn’t get my serene homebirth. Instead I got just what I needed: a reminder that life is what happens while you are making other plans. There is a sweetness in the rawness and vulnerability of the present moment. Constant planning can rob you of that. Little Tristan had come to teach me that life is all about the cricket on the sidewalk, not getting to the bank on time. They say you birth the way you live; and I was dragged, kicking and screaming, into a birth that didn’t fit my tidy vision. It was exactly what I needed.
Sarah lives in Richmond, is a “reformed perfectionist,” a mother of three, and a Learning Support Teacher with the Delta School District.