Break on through to the other side

This again. But let's look at it from a different perspective this time:

He stood in the next room, his head leaning against the doorpost, and heard shrieks, howls such as he had never heard before, and he knew that what had been Kitty was uttering those shrieks ... 

"Doctor! What is it? What is it? By God!" he said, snatching at the doctor's hand as he came up. 

"It is the end," said the doctor. And the doctor's face was so grave as he said it that Levin took "the end" as meaning her death.

 Beside himself, he ran into the bedroom ... Kitty's face he did not know. In the place where it had been was something that was fearful in its strained distortion and in the sounds that came from it. He fell down with his head on the wooden framework of the bed, feeling his heart was bursting. The awful scream never paused, it became still more awful, as though it had reached the utmost limit of terror, suddenly it ceased. Levin could not believe his ears, but there could be no doubt; the scream had ceased and he heard a subdued stir and bustle, and hurried breathing, and her voice, gasping, alive, tender, and blissful, uttered softly, "It's over!" 

He lifted his head. With her hands hanging exhausted on the quilt, looking extraordinarily lovely and serene, she looked at him in silence and tried to smile, and could  not. 

Falling on his knees before the bed, he held his wife's hand before his lips and kissed it, and the hand, with a weak movement of the fingers responded to his kiss. And meanwhile, there at the foot of the bed ... like a flickering light in a lamp, lay the life of a human creature which had never existed before, and which would now with the same right, with the same importance to itself, live and create its own image.

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

Why is it that when I say "unmedicated" in my head it always sounds like "unmitigated"?

Funny article here, and it got me thinking about the time my doctor hustled into a prenatal checkup late. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting," she said. "I was at a delivery. First time mom, no drugs. She did it." "Oh, good for her," I said without thinking. But what did I mean by that? I did NOT mean that this newly delivered mother had achieved something better than she would have if there had been drugs involved. I do not believe that load of purest bull at all. What I meant was that I was glad that she knew. She knew she could do it. That was what she wanted: to know.

Childbirth is something one is either physically able to do or not, and a mother finds out into which category she falls when her child (each child, individually) is born. The unmedicated childbirth question is not who can and who can't (although we now usually have the luxury of providing some alternative to death or horrible maiming to those who fall into the "can't" category). The question some women want answered is, "If I'm someone who can, can I do it without asking for help?" It is not a question of physical strength but of will. It is a game of chicken, and as such it has a large component of silliness, and sometimes foolhardiness. It is as silly as being a strongman or climbing Mount Everest or running a marathon. Everyone knows those tasks are undertaken not in the service of humanity, but as a challenge to the one who undertakes them. Most of us are content never to make the effort. Those who are physically unable to do so would be unreasonable to think less of themselves for their physical incapacity.

The strongman or the Everest aspirant or the marathon trainer is certainly to be respected for his strength of will and the painful discipline to which it drives him. But at the same time, any of these trainers who cannot also laugh at himself a little and see that his goal has no inherent value is a bit uncentered. The lifter or climber or runner who becomes a bore on the topic is no stranger to any of us, and for those of us who must keep running in birth circles, the childbirth bore is every bit as familiar.

Perhaps the hippies will forgive me for pointing out that homebirth is a bit cheaty on this front. ;) At home, one can't ask for an epidural, or at least, one can't get it. One increases her chances of "succeeding" by eliminating the possibility that she could get any real help. A runner can always quit a marathon, and that is what makes it so hard. This is the only reason unmedicated childbirth has become a big deal (although making a virtue out of the hobby is a cherished and profitable endeavor). When there was no possibility of getting real help, it was no unique accomplishment to deliver a child without it. Now that there is, some women have proven that "the urge to perform feats of strength for no good reason is deeply embedded" not only "in the male psyche." 

So when a pregnant lady seeks to answer the question, "If I'm someone who can, can I do it without asking for help?" she faces another question also: "If I can do it without asking for help, can I maintain my perspective, recognize the accomplishment for exactly what it is and isn't, and not become as insufferable as my friend who's training for a marathon?"

Groan.

PS--some of my best friends are training for marathons.

Failure

Recently several women have described themselves to me as failures. One was unable to breastfeed one of her children. One was unable to deliver her first child in the usual way, and followed the experience with an unsuccessful VBAC attempt. Another was unable to conceive a child at all.

Nothing has demonstrated to me more effectively my own impotence than my apparent success at each of these tasks. Boob Hell I survived, but my laughably excessive reflections on it leave me nothing but bewildered as to how I did so. The births of my children have revealed to me only a body beyond my control and a mind and heart full of weakness and sin. I cannot imagine using the verb phrase "I conceived." How could I claim agency for an event I did not even know was happening? It is inelegant, but I always say, "I got pregnant." That sounds more like the truth: that someone else was the effective force. If I have succeeded as a nursing mother, as a laboring mother, as a bio-mother, I have not succeeded as a person, for each of these successes has crashed out of me in an avalanche of resistance, resentment, fear, anger, and ungratefulness.

Maybe it is easy for me as someone who has nominally succeeded in these tasks, listed above in order of decreasing "controlability," to downplay their importance. I don't even exactly mean to do that, because the tasks are important. But their importance is not in some measurement they may grant of the person who accomplishes them. The important thing is that the baby gets fed. The important thing is that the baby gets born with minimal damage to mother and child (and when a C-section is the least damaging way for that to happen, my stomach is too weak to ponder the alternative). The important thing is that a woman receive what God would give her, whatever that is or isn't. The important thing is that a woman who is given the gift of motherhood make a good faith effort to do what is best for her child. At this she will fail, for goodness and faith are not natural to her.

All this failure notwithstanding, we must still be cautious. Success, real or apparent, is a dangerous gift, for it always tempts to pride, the chief of sins.

Another miraculous crisis

[Ramblings of a recently postpartum mind trying to make sense of the experience. Skip unless you’re into L&D details.]

Typing up my latest birth story, I noticed something really odd: if read by an objective third party, it might not sound like such a bad deal. I mean, from an outsider’s view, the main post-water-breaking action could be boiled down to three ginormous contractions that made me wish desperately for instant death (but that were spaced far enough for me to fall asleep (!) in between), fifteen or twenty more minutes of unrelenting, excruciating back pain, 2.5 pushes, and---Baby!

Wow, what a lot of women wouldn’t give for that, huh? Although the doctor, in a post-action review, described this L&D as somewhat “surreal” even from her end of the proceedings, she still seemed inclined to classify it as not such a bad deal, considering. In my mind, however, this L&D looms large and terrifying. Go through that again, ever? I can’t even begin to mentally broach the edges of that thought without reaching for a paper bag to breathe into.

In fact, I think I was more nervous heading into this L&D than any of the preceding ones (possibly excepting the first). What gives? Am I the only one who’s actually losing confidence as she goes along? Shouldn’t the fact that babies and I have come out all right on the other side five times now make me ever more assured?

The pain is not fun. I dread the pain, but I can deal with pain, especially pain that I know is finite and productive. And there are drugs to deal with the pain (though unfortunately it seems I’m becoming less and less likely a candidate for such interventions, should I be inclined to request them).    

The uncertainty is unsettling, to say the least. Does anyone really have “textbook” labors, going to the hospital when regular contractions are 5 minutes apart, proceeding smoothly through transition, etc.? I kind of doubt it, but I’d settle for my own stories resembling each other, at least. Deliveries #2 and #3 were somewhat semblant, but that’s about it. Well, at least I can count on the fact that the doctor will have to break my water every time, either as an overdue induction, or to get things progressing in a labor that’s already underway. Oh, except for the time that my water spontaneously broke first, and then nothing else happened until they started the pit drip. Oh yeah, and the time that it actually broke on its own mid-labor.

Well, at least I know that my babies are always late, or else reasonably close to due date. Oh, except for the one that was two weeks early.

Well, at least I know that my babies come pretty fast once it’s pushing time. Oh, except for the time I spent 45 (drug-free) excruciating minutes pushing to turn a large-headed misrotated baby.

Well, at least I’ll always know for sure when it’s time to head to the hospital. Oh, except for the time I showed up for a scheduled checkup kind of thinking things were getting going, and amused and alarmed the doctor by being at 8 cm already.

See what I mean? There’s just not even a hint of a pattern to go by here.

Well, at least I know that the babies always come out OK, with no hint of delivery-related complications. Oh, except for the time a baby swallowed a bunch of amniotic fluid that I think he’s still working out years later ;P. Oh yeah, and that time a few weeks ago when I delivered a purple baby with an almost-triple nuchal cord.

And there, I think, is where the real terror comes in. Those babies were safely delivered. And statistically speaking, and as my own personal statistics have borne out, I am much more likely to lose a baby in the first trimester than in the delivery room. But—what if there hadn’t been enough slack in the cord? What if his head had still been rotated the wrong way like it was when then doctor first checked? What if I had run out of strength to push him out fast enough so that the little bit of “fetal distress” became an unbearable amount of distress? (The fastest our little hospital can pull off an emergency C-section is probably an hour.) What if? What if?  

My delivery room stories have all had happy endings. But I know that not every story does, and I ache for those who have endured a harsher turn of plot. In the delivery room, as a mother pants and struggles through what should be the most natural and fulfilling of roles for her, the bearing of new life, the words of the curse echo loud.

In the delivery room, these present sufferings, this eager longing, bear down sharply. The cursed crisis of the delivery room under which we groan is at once both intensely personal and weighted with the collective universal pain of our foremothers, indeed of all creation.We labor under the weight of the weary world: small wonder that we should groan!

In the delivery room, as the world condenses to another miraculous crisis, Eden is mere memory too distant to be anything but mockery, and the New Earth gleams just beyond the far horizon, promised rather than perceived. Between paradises, we labor by faith and not by sight. We must fight back the vivid uncertainty of What Ifs with the unseen but Realer than real, sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.

The curse is visible. The pain is tangible. The What Ifs, not just of pregnancy and delivery, but of the entirety of the child’s future life, are overwhelming. But hope that is seen is not hope. And lest we forget, Eve was called, in sure and certain hope, mother of all the living--after the Fall.

The What Ifs can be terrifying—but they cannot have the last word. As my overanxious brain would do well to remember, the last word has already been spoken. The plot of every life is watered by tears—for some a trickle; others a torrent. But take heart, o my timid soul: the Ending is happy beyond measure, its luster all the more brilliant for the gloss of each precious tear shed.     

Banalogies

I hate it when writers write about writing. No one cares. Shut up and write. But I just have to say this one thing which may be of interest to maternal types now that I have become as qualified to do so as I ever will. (BTW--thanks for all your nicenesses and buyings and internetty goodwill. The truth is I am feeling deeply silly about all this but my husband believes strongly in monetizing hobbies.)

Alliums, or why any number of intervention-free deliveries do not a NCB advocate make

The following comes of my sick, terrible habit of hanging around birth-junkie websites in the weeks before my due date. GOT to stop that.

The main reason I wanted a med-free birth with our first baby was curiosity. I wanted to know what it was like. Not everybody gets to find out.

Now I know, and I haven't wanted one since, but I keep getting them. Lucky me. As I've said here, there are some valuable lessons in the experience, but the most valuable one for me has been learning that it wasn't really my choice. It was my preference the first time around, and it worked out. I didn't have any complications, so I got my curiosity satisfied. (In a hospital. Yes.)

Then all my friends and relations started having babies, and I started seeing that childbirth isn't any different from breakfast on a busy morning. You can't always get what you want. Some wanted to go "natural" for whatever reason, and they couldn't, honest. 2000 miles or 150 years from here, something bad would have happened to mother and/or child, no matter how ideal their birth ideals (and why the ideal would be anything other than an experience which does not induce terror upon its remembrance--which for a few of us weak-minded people would involve pain relief of some sort--is beyond me). Some decided along the way that hours of voluntary agony weren't worth the Natural Childbirth Award, which doesn't exist. Some regretted not having an anaesthetic in place when it came to the measures which had to be taken upon them after the baby's birth. Some wanted pain relief and it didn't work, or even made things worse. Some got what they planned, whether it was Interventionpalooza or a moonlit glade attended only by maiden wolves. Everyone had preferences and made choices, but not everyone got the birth story they wanted.

The only thing I feel like telling someone any more about how to have a baby is You can do it! Unless you can't. You won't know until it happens. If you get the delivery you think you want, thank God in heaven because that is the third cherry on the real whipped cream on the hottest of fudge on the Haagen-Dazs of a healthy baby. If you don't, don't feel bad AT ALL, because who cares? It is ultimately not something you can control. And however it goes, turn off the comments when you post your birth story because there is always going to be some fool out there who thinks she knows better than you what should have happened.

But I still want to lodge my major complaint about the NCB universe, and that is its ridiculous self-satisfaction. I cannot take pride in my deliveries, much as I would LOVE to after this many times, any more than I could be proud of surviving a lightening strike or bout of ebola. They prove nothing except that God dealt with me mercifully (which is pretty blasted hard to admit, considering). That first time when I got myself all educated and prepped, I was told I'd stride away with this incredible sense of strength and accomplishment. Instead I hobbled off feeling completely ruined and, moreunder (or is it lessover?), lied to. There's no buzzkill for that post-baby rush like the thought of earning it again, or maybe ten more times. I came with onions and left with garlic.

Unlike the farmer and the monk, I also left with six perfect babies. So that helps.

Update: the comments upon this post, while non-explicit, are frank. If that would trouble you, dear reader, do not attend.

Internet doula

Big thanks to Pastor Weedon for saving me some one-handed typing. :D She's here, she's great, and we didn't have to use the carbirth preparedness kit. How can we thank thee, Lord?

If Scrooge had been in prodromal labor instead of haunted

"You may be an undigested bit of pickle, a blot of yogurt, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone macaroni. There's more of Baby Ruth than of baby about you, whatever you are!"

Or is it?

Childbirth Orthodoxy Translation

And it came to pass, as [Rachel's] soul was in departing (for she had special circumstances) that she called his name Benhazak: but his father called him Benjamin. Genesis 35:18

The need to trust their bodies took hold upon them there, and powerful sensations, as of a woman breathing down her baby. Psalm 48:6

Therefore are my loins filled with pressure: surges have taken hold upon me, as the surges of a woman that birtheth Isaiah 21:3

I have long time holden my peace; I have been still, and refrained myself: now will I vocalize like a woman experiencing uterine waves Isaiah 42:14

For we know that the whole creation chanteth and worketh hard toward the natural expulsive reflex together until now. Romans 8:22

And she being with child produced harmonics, deeply relaxing in birth, and visualizing to be delivered. Revelation 12:2

Quit scaring women, you medicalizing medicalizer!

You awful hospitals it's all your fault!!

Look, CNN, just don't publish stories that annoy pregnant ladies. They might spend way too much time when they should be sleeping writing long and pointless rants they'll wonder why they bothered posting as soon as they hit post.

But hey, what else is going on here today? So: this story contains claims I have a lot of trouble believing. The headline itself is indicative of its outlook on responsibility: "Hospitals need to do more to encourage breastfeeding," handmaidens that they are of leviathan state (where breastfeeding is in esoteric vogue right now) rather than private businesses free to offer whatever services they choose. Sheesh.

As for the claims: "nearly 80% of hospitals were giving babies formula, water or sugar-water." I've had newborns in four different hospitals. As soon as I tell the nurses I'm breastfeeding, they slap a sticker on the baby's bucket that says I'M BREASTFED. What it means is, DON'T GIVE THIS BABY ANYTHING IN A BOTTLE. And they don't, because if they did I could (and would) go medieval on their hineys for violating my instructions.

I suspect that the real trouble is not hospitals sneaking formula into babies (in fact I have never seen a hospital do anything; they are quite inanimate), but mothers not saying, "I'm breastfeeding." What mothers say is, "We're going to try breastfeeding. Where's the pump?" They are uncertain that they'll be able to breastfeed, whether they really want to, and with regards to all the stupid things some anti-breastfeeding great aunt told them. Moreover, virtually no one breastfeeds using only their breasts any more. So suddenly, it's not an I'M BREASTFED baby. It's a DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO GET SOME NUTRITIONAL SUBSTANCE INTO ME, IDEALLY BREASTMILK BUT REALLY WHATEVER WE CAN GET TO WORK OUT OK baby. And the dear nurses, bless their baby-loving, new mom-pitying hearts, do.

Another one: "Only one-third of hospitals allow mother and child to stay in the same room." I'm curious about the "allow" here. I don't doubt that at many hospitals, rooming in is not actively offered or encouraged. I have a hard time imagining it prohibited. At least one of our babies was born in nursery-normed hospital. When a nurse came in to wheel my baby off I just said, "Oh, she'll stay with us." And the nurse said, "Oh! Well . . . OK. Call us if you need a break." The hospital administration did not barrel into the room demanding that we give the nursery our baby. No one cared. Again, I wonder if this isn't a matter of mothers simply not knowing their options. Otherwise, I guess I'm just really lucky that out of four hospitals none of them "disallowed" rooming in when statistically 2.667 them should have.

Also regarding the "allow," if there's one thing I've learned from delivering in hospitals it's that, at least on the relatively minor questions I've had come up, hospital policy bows to fear of lawsuit. We've had nurses opt out of assisting in our room because of my weirdo demands like "Don't stick that pointy thing full of creepy juice in me." "That's hospital policy," they say. "Don't stick it in me," I say. "I'll have to go ask Dr. Important," they say importantly. A different nurse comes back, nothing gets stuck in me, and we all go on our way.

Let's see, what else? Oh yeah--want skin to skin contact with your baby immediately following birth? Say, "Hand over my baby." You can even be polite about it if you want because it turns out that being the person who gets to hand a brand newling over to its mom for the first time is a really awesome job that humans, including evil hospital doctors and nurses, like doing. (My only baby who didn't get immediate contact and nursing was the one who wasn't born in a hospital--freakin ha ha.) What if I need breastfeeding help after leaving the hospital? Well, there's a case to be made for the fact that I've, um, left the hospital. I don't expect Pizza Hut to keep supplying me with pizza after I've driven home. Etc.

Much of this "oh those horrible hospitals" report also strikes me as a bit optimistic with regard to mothers. The stories I hear from real live moms who called off breastfeeding usually go something like, "I was just so tired!" (this is before their 24-72 hour hospital discharge, not after three horrific weeks of trying to nurse at home) or "The baby liked the bottle better" (of course he did; he didn't have to work for it).

They honestly don't get it, and how could they? Few baby-free people in our comfortable society have any notion of how much a newborn needs. Asking one significantly injured person to deal with all those hitherto unknown needs is objectively sobering, and contextually insane. One hospital where I delivered DID actively encourage rooming in, and offered extensive breastfeeding services. The nursery was full, and the babies chowed down Enfamil without scarceness. When I availed myself of its breastfeeding assistance in the dark weeks that followed, it didn't help in the least, because breastfeeding problems are one of the main things that cannot be helped, but only endured.

I've got no shortage of objections to hospitals. The extremes of my delivery-related complaints and praises, though, are never for hospitals, but for a horrible doctor or a saintly nurse. Of far more relevance than the hospital are the individuals who happen to be on duty during one's stay. A hospital is not evil. It is too big and stupid to be evil. Its only motive is to attract my business again. The real potential for good or ill lies with the nurse in my room and the doctor or midwife I've hired. Bad ones ruin everything. Good ones make everything as good as possible.

I'd contend that whether or not a woman ends up breastfeeding is in most cases consistent with her previously held ideas about breastfeeding, and that in those cases where her intent is thwarted, it has a lot to do with a circumstance no hospital could have changed.

The words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart

Pregnant lady says, "Hey, dude. You ready for breakfast?"

Pregnant lady is thinking, This baby is going to come out of me.

Pregnant lady says, "I think you left them on the porch."

Pregnant lady is thinking, This baby is going to come out of me.

Pregnant lady says, "Don't poke him with toothpicks. Why do you HAVE a toothpick?"

Pregnant lady is thinking, This baby is going to come out of me.

Pregnant lady says, "I do, I like green eggs and ham! Thank you, thank you, Sam I am!"

Pregnant lady is thinking, This baby is going to come out of me.

Pregnant lady says, "He's out, can I take a message?"

Pregnant lady is thinking, This baby is going to come out of me.

Pregnant lady says, "Can you take that laundry busket up when you go?"

Pregnant lady is thinking, This baby is going to come out of me.

Pregnant lady sings, "And on earth peace, goodwill toward men."

Pregnant lady is thinking, This baby is going to come out of me.

Pregnant lady says, "Thank you so much!"

Pregnant lady is thinking, This baby is going to come out of me.

Pregnant lady says, "Asked and answered. Listen if you want to know what's going on."

Pregnant lady is thinking, This baby is going to come out of me.

Pregnant lady says, "How bout them Hawks!"

Pregnant lady is thinking, This baby is going to come out of me.

Pregnant lady says, "No, sixth."

Pregnant lady is thinking, This baby is going to come out of me.

Pregnant lady says, "About four more weeks."

Pregnant lady is thinking, This baby is going to come out of me.

Pregnant lady says, "They can't blow up the Enterprise!"

Pregnant lady is thinking, This baby is going to come out of me.

Pregnant lady says, "Roy Rogers. Four cherries."

Pregnant lady is thinking, This baby is going to come out of me.

Pregnant lady says, "How can it not be bedtime yet?"

Pregnant lady is thinking, This baby is going to come out of me.

Makes no sense

It seems really weird to me that the internet can't tell me when this baby is going to be born and how it's going to go.

What am I paying you for, anyway?

F everyone's I

I have been advised by countless individuals since the carbaby incident that I should just have a homebirth this time. I looked into it, assisted by a number of variously connected and convicted people. Here is why I'm going to disappoint everyone.

I cannot have a homebirth for the same reason that I need one; namely, my precipitous labors in combination with my distance from a maternity hospital. I have been unable to find a homebirth midwife who can get to my house in well over twice the time my last labor took (or the three before that). If there were such a person, she could not without use of a tesseract get me to a hospital quickly in the event that we should need to go (and I thank everyone who has refused to offer me false security along the lines of probably not needing to go anyway).

Although I live in a very small town surrounded by cornfields, I'm not light years from civilization. There are four hospitals with maternity services within 45 minutes of my house. For the factors we have to consider, that's not close enough. I, with my good health and good L&D history, am a good candidate for homebirth. Our baby, to the much more limited extent that this can be determined, appears to be a good candidate for homebirth. Our home isn't. Delivery options are not the universal Burger King menu that pregnancy books make them out to be.

This leaves me with a few other choices, none of which are good. But a [competently attended] homebirth, I learned, was never really among them. So I'm pretty blamed unhappy about the situation, and ever moreso as we see the day approaching. :(

In an old girl's brain

I weary of the mysticism attributed to various parturitional phenomena. Why does it have to be magic*? These things just make sense. Call it hormones if it makes you happy, I guess; I'd rather imagine that I still have some capacity for a valid analytical response to stimuli.

1. Nesting: a completely rational reaction to knowing that one's house will be mostly neglected for something like a year after the baby is born. No, this shape I'm in is not the most practical for some of the random projects I find myself undertaking in trimesters 2 and 3. But if I don't do them now, they absolutely won't get done later.

2. Post-delivery "high": again, a totally reasonable and predictable reaction to having a healthy baby, having L&D over with, and not being gordo pregnant any more. Freakin duh. (Not to mention that if the alleged nursing "high" were more widely or meaningfully experienced, more people would nurse for longer than three weeks. Oxytocin, the least effective miracle hormone in the universe.)

3. Pregnant/postpartum brain: The BSG "33" sleep schedule alone accounts for this; why even mention the other variables?

*I know, it's not magical, it's brain chemistry. Magical brain chemistry!

Practice makes crazy

Back on Baby 1, I did my Bradley labor relaxation exercises faithfully for months in advance. I have to admit (despite my animosity toward Bradley) that when the big day came, for as long as anything could be helpful, they helped.

On subsequent babies, I did them somewhat less faithfully, but I at least gave some old college tries.

This time I'm powerful inclined to skip the whole stupid project. Point 1: I've gotten into an indisputable pattern of bypassing nearly the entire part of the labor experience for which they are helpful and going directly to the "I cannot do this I'm going to die" part. Point 2: on that first baby, I didn't know what I was getting into, so I was able to really relax. Every time since then when I've tried to relax like I mean it, I just end up thinking about what all this relaxation is for and I end up freaking out. Also, Dr. Robert A. Bradley, that weird arm position is totally uncomfortable and I've never used it in labor no matter how much I've practiced it. It really worked for you, though, huh? Is that another idea you got from the piggies on your farm?

I'm really wondering if I'd do better just to keep making every effort to act like none of this is going to happen and think about it as little as possible. At this point in my life, thinking about labor profiteth absolutely nothing and no one. :P

New wives' tales

We all know that the old ladies are hopelessly wrong about whether it's OK to Jazzercise and put pots on high shelves and pet outdoor yetis while we're pregnant. Here are the things that our educated, scientifically advanced, medically informed populace is incurably right about.

1. If your first baby was late (or early), your other babies will be late (or early).

I have personally disproven this, having given birth at 40 weeks, 39 weeks 1 day, 41 weeks, 41 weeks, and 39 weeks. You tell me, genuises: do I have babies late or early? I know Reb. Mary would also like an answer to this question.

2. Babies' birth weights just keep getting higher the more you have.

Again selflessly and personally disproven by my. My fourth baby was my smallest. 2nd and 3rd tied for heaviest. My pregnancy weight gain is always the same. I do not know one single person, of my many friends with more than 2-3 kids, for whom the "they keep getting bigger" theory is true in any meaningful way (ie, she started at 8 pounds and is now up to 12--yup, that's just the way it goes. Everyone knows that).

3. Having a lot of babies is dangerous.

This is true, but there has never been a time in history when it was less comparatively true. How many people do we know who have actually (not almost or could have) died as a direct result of having a baby? How many did our great-grandmas know? It has NEVER been safer to have babies, any number of them.

And while we're on the topic, how many people do the new wives know who have actually had more than three kids? Why do we all think the personal stories we know constitute sufficient evidence for our scientific beliefs and medical convictions? How many of us can actually read and understand a medical study? Maybe none of us know much about what happens in that shadowy realm beyond 2.1. Maybe none of us know much at all.

The droid I'm looking for

This week's snap post has already expired in terms of superlative usefulness.

Why you didn't see us on Good Morning America

Oh look, a baby born in a hospital elevator. Not exactly ideal, but then again, the same thing happened to my husband's cousin. I worked with an ex-cop who had delivered two babies in his squad car. The week after our baby was born in the car, a relative of a family at our school caught her own baby while her husband called 911. Et cet.

People here wanted to know why we didn't get famous, especially when another couple with a carbaby showed up on one of the morning "news" shows shortly after our event. Locals were particularly disgusted since a bystander delivered that baby "and Pastor did it himself!" No doubt; what was that slacker dad doing? :D

Anyway, here's how it works: the ambulance shows up and takes you to the hospital, and the EMTs have no idea what to do with a just-delivered mom and baby, and the ER has no idea what to do with a just-delivered mom and baby, and you finally get to Maternity and everybody gets inspected and mopped up and reassembled and you wonder when the heck somebody is going to bring you a cheeseburger and then the head of OB comes in and says, "Wow, what a morning! Great job, Dad! Would you like us to call the paper?" And you say, "Um . . . no thanks." And your zany tale doesn't go out on the wire but remains a community and familial legend, and you go on with your life and don't have to worry about getting skinny in time for your big TV appearance.

However, you do worry about where the next baby, if there is one, is going to be born. :P

Birth pains

One of those long, thick, repetitive things I post selfishly for my own self. Do with it what you will.

I am due to have a baby in but a matter of days, but I've forgotten everything I ever once thought I knew about having babies. The fire of my previous births has washed from my feeble brain all political detritus, all desire for preparatory dialogue with my care providers, all vehemence for my supposed rights to birth Romantically. I have only one opinion about giving birth left to me: please, God, don't let either of us die.

One would think that the more one does something, the more confident about doing that something one would become. But, no, not here. The more I birth, the more I am rendered inert, bewildered, afraid. The pain, the blood, the crushing helplessness poured liberally out of me, upon me, over and over and over again, teach all too well that in birth I am no goddess. Rather, I am caught and shaken like meat in ravenous jaws. There can be no escape. There can be no exertion or insistence or distinction of self, for I am but the matter upon which Birth enacts its form. In short, I am a woman, and accursed. All the baths, balls, and balms in the world detract nothing from the shame of my flesh, which cannot—not even when hoisted on rhetorical crutches—do well that which it was most especially designed to do: carry a child into the world.

If even the most blessed Virgin cried out in the agony of birth, how can I expect anything but agony? If even our most holy Lord was born under perilous circumstances, yea, even under the cross of death, why would peril be missing from the births of my children? Kyrie eleison.

And yet, even so, why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance and my God.*

The curse of Eve—which enshrouds even the easiest of births, which renders every birth perplexing if not mangling—this curse justly pronounced from the mouth of God yet works good for those who love Him. Women of Christ, the hour of our affliction is even the hour of our salvation. Be still, and know that He is God. He who will be exalted among the nations will triumph especially over the earth of your flesh. It is He who brought you forth from your mothers’ wombs, and it is He and He alone who will deliver you and your children in the coming tribulation. Christ knows our suffering; He has provided for our release: with every celebration of the Eucharist, Christ Himself enters into the tombs of our mouths, descends into the hell of our flesh and there declares victory over every particulate of our beings. To our Lord are we bound, His most holy, eternal, living body and blood graciously and incredibly given to mix with the humble flesh of His people. He has died Once, and will not die again. Thereby are we, people of His flesh, holy, eternal, living. Death shall have no dominion, no, not even in birth.

And what is more, the dragon that perched presumptuously at the Virgin’s blessed feet, ready to strike and kill the fruit of her womb, has been chained and cast aside. Come what may, our Lord has prepared something far better for our sons and daughters than what He allowed for Himself. The waters of Baptism lie just beyond the doors of the womb, and in those waters are to be found the blessed birth that washes our darlings free of the sin that we, their finite mothers, so helplessly and insidiously confer. It is a painless, bloodless, sweet regeneration that imparts all the promises of eternal life

God knows what must be done to save me, His love for me will never cease, for He upon His palms did grave me with purest gold of loving grace. My God desires the soul’s salvation, Me also He desires to save; Therefore, with Christian resignation all earthly troubles I will brave.*

Bring on the baby.


*Verbatim from Stark's Motherhood Prayers. If you haven't gotten your copy yet, well, why not?

Hear, hear

Father William commends to all the General Prayer, which is every bit as good as he describes. I very much appreciate that our parish prays every week for those "in the anguish of labor." The Church cares.