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The Birth of Isaac
It was midnight plus one second on Isaac's due
date that my wife's water broke and spread
across the mattress in a warm, wet pool.
The invasion of dampness awakened me. Miriam
made a high, surprised sound "Oh!" that
somehow combined aspects both of pleasure and
anxiety. Suddenly and after long expectation we
knew we were off on a journey we desperately
hoped would be full of wonder and joy; but my Irish
negativism told me one thing for certain if it wasn't
good, it was going to be very, very bad.
Months earlier we had decided to have the baby
at our ramshackle, clapboard home in rural Texas.
My wife, a risk taker, believed passionately in the
healthful properties of home birth. Me, I fretted and
nagged, visualizing a catastrophe. I wasn't yet aware
of facts like that the Netherlands, which has an
infant mortality rate far lower than our own, gives
birth to 70% of her children at home. I only knew
that what we were doing was, by American
standards, weird and if one of my kids died
because I did something weird, my Gaelic guilt
would burn forever.
The deciding factor, I acknowledge with shame,
was money. Like forty million other Americans, we
had no health insurance, and for us paupers it was
much cheaper to have the baby at home. One
thousand dollars covered the whole deal prenatal
exams, birthing classes, and the birth itself. For a
broke Irishman it was like hearing that an uncle had
just died and left you a horse.
It was midnight plus five minutes when I
feverishly dialed the midwives' telephone number.
Now, Texas is a lot of different things to a lot of
different people, but the one thing it is for everyone
is big. They told me it would take about two and a
half hours for them to get to our house.
Miriam's strong, clear contractions were about
four minutes apart. You didn't have to be a Rhodes
scholar and I wasn't to realize that if the birthing
process proceeded apace I would end up playing the
part of Dr. Zhivago. Gently replacing the phone in
its cradle excuse the foreshadowing my first
impulse was to fall apart and begin the process of
blaming, which would extend years into the future.
"Why did you have to talk me into this crazy
idea?" I would shout. "How come I always have to
be the rational one? Just because I almost have a
doctoral degree do you think I know thing one
about how to get a baby from inside you to the
outside world? No! No! I can't even believe that it
happens at all! It's a deep, mysterious process that
should be handled by deep, mysterious people!
Would you have me bite off the umbilical cord with
my teeth and circumcise him with my safety razor?"
I looked to where Miriam lay on our bed, happy,
excited, and, yes, expectant. Sensitivities honed over
years of training told me this was not the time to fall
apart.
So we made brownies. We sauntered around the
kitchen, in the quiet small hours of the morning,
moving with the practiced care of meditating monks,
speaking in whispers, soundlessly arranging the
bowls and pans and spoons. It was ritual time. The
contractions slowed. We relaxed.
At 2:45 A.M. the midwives arrived in force, with
their assistants and the children of their assistants,
with party hats and kazoos and confetti and one red
hat with tiny electric lights all around it, mine to
wear as long as I dared. The contractions took off
again slowly, like a pelican struggling to raise its big
body from the surface of a lake.
Soon the work of the birthing process was in full
swing. Miriam lay on the bed, propped up on
pillows, breathing through contractions of increasing
intensity. I knelt over her, gazing into her eyes,
matching my breathing to her own. Again and again
we focused on images of "opening" and "down." I
moved my hands in a flowing, backhanded motion
over her shoulders and belly and hips, all the while
whispering, "down," "open," "relaxed and smooth,"
and the like in time to her slow, deep breathing. Her
need allowed me to have some effect.
Meanwhile, she labored with increasing passion;
occasionally, she grasped my hand and squeezed,
hard, digging her nails into my palm. During one
difficult period I massaged her lower back and hips,
then withdrew as the next moment she could not
stand to be touched, then came forward again as we
reestablished the rhythm of our breathing.
"Down; open and down; smooth and relaxed and
open." When Miriam experienced an intense need to
urinate I helped her to the toilet, where she sat in
blissful relief as I sat on the edge of the tub, holding
her hands and gazing into her eyes. We have not
since shared a bathroom experience as intimately.
The midwives called out measurements, arranged
Miriam's body this way and that. At one point with
labor well advanced and the top of the baby's head
just visible, things got stuck; progress slowed and
Miriam appeared, for the first time, to be
experiencing real discomfort.
Was there some dreaded problem, I wondered? Is
this when the nightmare starts? The pain, the
complications, the ambulances, the surgery, the
regret and the guilt and the grief? Is this where the
wonder of the beginning of life ends and the anxious,
fretful encounter with finitude begins? We shared
the panic of this transition.
The midwives now were laboring also, serious
and intent. We helped Miriam off the bed and
supported her as she hunkered down on the floor
like a southern farmer drawing directions in the dirt.
She went through a couple of contractions in this
position then struggled back onto the bed.
The crisis was past, the corner rounded, and the
flow of life continued apace.
At 6:36 A.M., with the light of dawn shining
through the worn curtains and morning birds
warming up their song, Isaac Joseph came into the
world.
As he emerged, slowly at first and then with a
great rush, I learned what it meant to have "a catch
in your throat"; it was a tiny inhalation that happens
when you're overcome with, yes, FEELINGS. Of
course, I was frightened, not by any of the
circumstances of the birth but rather by the
unexpected power of emotion. Then I surrendered
and again beheld Isaac, at nine pounds four a
perfectly formed linebacker of the future. The
midwives put him up to Miriam's breast, where he
nursed for a moment, she smiling and weeping like
the winner of a great marathon; then the midwives
severed the cord and gave him to me.
At the midwives' instruction, I took Isaac into the
kitchen, where we guys were alone for a while. I
first noticed his eyes: calm and clear, none of the
"What am I doing in this crazy place?" sort of birth
trauma. Just a pure, balanced vision of the world as
his happy eyes traveled from the lamp on the kitchen
ceiling, to the bright light of the window, to me.
This next part is really true; I mean, the rest is
true as well, but you might have a hard time
believing this part so I'm reassuring you that it is
fact.
As Isaac lay on my lap drinking in the world with
his eyes a simple, happy word came out of his
mouth.
He said, "Hi!"
He must have known I was stunned, so he
repeated it a few times, in each instance addressing a
newly noticed part of the world.
"Hi! Hi!" he said. Then he looked right at me
through his clear, new gray eyes. "Hi!"
Pierced to the bone, I bent close to warm skin and
smelled his perfect infant's breath, the first of a
hundred thousand times I would do this during his
young life, and felt my heart leap toward that of my
new son.
"Hi. Hi, Isaac," I croaked, as best I could through
my tears. "Welcome to the world."
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