Author mama's note: This story is rated R for sexual content and frank descriptions of female reproductive anatomy.
There was nothing anyone could do, anyone else but me. I was ready, and I knew when it would be, and he was ready, and so we began. Or, rather, continued. Crescendoed. It was one long, slow crescendo, increasing faster and faster until the breakneck pace at the end. There had been nesting. My urgency to prepare came strong and clear, and we sent Ambrose to my parents' as February came to a close and March yawned so that I could paint Ambrose's new room upstairs. Then on a Sunday together, we moved everyone to their new spaces. Set up the changing table. Threw baby stuff in the new nursery. By then my cervical mucus had tripled, and I knew it was coming. Already I had the 9th in my head. April 9th. Back when I told my boss my plans for maternity leave, that date stood out to me and I knew.
Three weeks before that weekend, I understood that I needed to walk, meditate, and read in quantities of time unavailable to me, so I asked my boss to allow me to cut my hours to 32 a week before leave began. Rapture filled me at the thought that I could have these precious half days to hike and walk and listen to Hypnobabies tracks and recognize the fears I had and clear them away. At work I walked with a book - first
The Red Tent because it is the right book to read when pregnant, to be in solidarity with ancient women in their birthing experiences - and then I devoured birth story after birth story in Ina May's book, coming to a stronger understanding of what happens in labor, what happened to me in my first labor, and how different women react to these changes and feelings. One day I hiked with Zorey and listened to the "Fear Clearing" Hypnobabies track and addressed my fear, in the meditation of moving, that I would throw up during Transition like last time. And, in the magic of that subconscious space, my mind made the change asked of it.
Well, said my narrative,
if I do then I do, and that's okay. Which was a significant thing for emetophobic me. Another day, I walked at the mall with the mall-walkers and learned in my Hypnobabies meditation about sending "hypno-anaesthesia" to the middle part of my body with my eyes open, on my feet, moving instead of sitting in a meditative pose. It was as if I knew what my labor would be like and prepared specifically for that. But it was also, more concretely, because I knew I would labor in motion because I'm a mover. Sitting in meditation I become distracted, but running or walking I become comfortable in the motion and can let go. Though I ended up doing both in my labor as the day demanded, in timing and progression.
My labor.
I feel fiercely possessive and proud of that phrase. It was my labor. Even in a different way than Ephraim being
my baby, for he belongs to himself. But I cannot turn away from the luminous feeling of ownership of my labor - the thing I did almost completely by myself. I needed Brian to drive and be with me, and I needed the midwife and the nurses to do what I couldn't for Effie. But to obey my body and exert in the way necessary, there was only me and my strength and my will, and I
did it. I knew, from weeks before, within and without my logical reasoning, emotional reasoning, and physical reasoning, what I needed to practice, how I needed to be strong and prepare, what things to put in place so that decisions would be easy. And it played out in such utter efficiency and flowing ease that I almost tumbled over the edge of the cataract.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Wednesday we traveled to Knoxville to see The Book of Mormon because I had bought tickets in the relative certainty that baby would wait until Saturday. It was the best thing, to spend an evening with Brian, laughing and remembering at Tomato Head and together enjoying something we both adore - - a good Broadway show. I treasured the time and waited for signs. All was well and quiet.
Thursday I did prenatal yoga that had me squat and imagine my body opening like a flower, breathing my pelvic floor taut and released, taut and released. It felt like the right yoga, the right postures and visualization to go with the labor I wanted. I walked, fast but only for a mile or less, feeling the ground come up through me with each step and swinging my hips to wiggle baby down, walk baby down. I walked at work and listened to "Fear Clearing" again and banished my fear that I would not progress, that baby wouldn't fit, that the hospital would end up cutting me open. I made it be well; I was calmed. I would let it come.
On Friday I felt, as I have come to think of it, "labor-ey." A bit of my mucus plug came away when I checked my cervix, as I had been doing. I was just a little crampy. At work, I wasn't having so many practice contractions, but I felt strongly that I shouldn't be there in the office. We were at a building under renovation, inspecting the abatement work, for at least two hours - and the whole time I just wanted to leave. I told the client and the rest of the group that it felt very close to baby time. They joked that I could just tell my boss, "Hey, time to go!" and we'd make a break for the hospital. We laughed, and I made it through the site visit.
After lunch, a sleepiness set in unlike my normal after-lunch slump. It occurred to me that my need to be home and my sleepiness were clear signs - - my body demanding plainly: "Get somewhere safe. Rest now, for the work is coming." But I finished the day and even went to the opening of the Sculpture Fields at Montague Park with Ambrose and met Jaime there and walked the paths and got Ambrose chicken lobster quesadillas from a food truck and waited for it to be time to be home.
Finally there later that night, I felt like I could let labor come. I had been losing bits of my mucus plug through the day, and crampy contractions were ramping up as I got ready for bed. I told Brian I felt safe and felt like labor was coming. I texted my family and said it might be tomorrow or several days, but baby was on the way. I let Brian hesitantly and awkwardly practice giving me a perineal massage, stretching me gently and encouraging my elasticity while I breathed and imagined openness. I told him I wanted him to make love to me, knowing his seed could help me ripen and, more importantly, that our intimacy could encourage the hormones that would bring labor. And we were one in sweetness and passion, and I lay halfway on his chest in the pool of his scent, our flameless candles purchased for the hospital glowing their LED gold, bathed in the atmosphere we create when we love each other. And that feeling came over me that I recognized even as a child and then later associated with sex - - that feeling of being hungry and empty and thirsty and tingly, like a small but insistent micro-vibration or itch behind my sternum - - knowing now it was the feeling of oxytocin that is generated powerfully through both sex and breastfeeding. Everything came together in this unbelievable lake of feelings, and I was swamped with adoration, safety, intimacy, and clarity in the perfect cocktail to produce a baby. I drifted to sleep to this feeling and the low cramps like a distant storm.
Something woke me four hours later, in suddenness. My underwear was wet, but I did know if it was normal pre-labor wetness or if my membranes had partially ruptured. I can't remember if I woke during a contraction, but I became aware that labor had started and had awoken me. On the toilet, a much more significant lump of mucus plug came out, and some red blood, and my hip that had been bothering me twinged as the the baby bore down, and adrenaline washed through me cold and swift, destroying my peace, for it was upon me. I shook and trembled, and a wave of fear-induced nausea chased the adrenaline. I cut a sliver of ginger root to chew and found the "Joyful Affirmations For Childbearing" Hypnobabies track on my iphone. Brian was awake when I came back to bed. "Looks like today's the day," I said. He later told me he didn't really sleep after that, either. I listened in the prescribed joyfulness to the voice on the track tell me that my birthing experience would be beautiful and positive and that I would always choose to continue using my hypnobabies techniques, that my birthing time would go just as it was supposed to and that I would be safe. The nausea slid away with the adrenaline, and again I sank into a lake of calm. The contractions were regular and moderately intense, and I rode them in a deliriously happy high as I followed my breathing deeper and deeper into that place of relaxation, so thrilled that today I would meet my baby. I felt my body going soft, my heart beat calming to a gentle, easy tempo. After the meditation ended, I lay there for almost two hours, drifting in and out of the lightest doze and breathing openness into my cervix with each rush (Ina May's word for contractions, which is a harsh and binding word while "rushes" is like water, like "hushes," and like excitement, intensity), imagining, as each wave rose and wrapped my belly, a flower blooming or, amusingly, a turtleneck shirt pulling back, fabric sliding over fabric, to shorten the distance, widen the opening. I imagined sending soothing calm to my baby. Open, open, open. Loose. Open. Relax. Allow my body to do what it's doing without my conscious mind interfering too much.
Finally I felt sleep was eluding me sufficiently to make me take some kind of action. I was becoming slightly restless. Removing my mind from its deep pool caused some ripples, so I focused on soothing them as I used my phone timer to check the spacing of my pressure waves, and they were hovering between 3 and 5 minutes apart. This seemed, to me, pretty close together, but their intensity also seemed very manageable. I got up to again empty my bowels, which had dutifully gone liquid from when I woke at 3:30 am. Then I sat in the living room glider and timed a few more rushes. They were coming consistently at 4 minutes apart, so I decided to just check with Midwife Meg - - when I had my appointment with her at Amy's (my regular midwife's) request, Meg had told me she was on call this particular weekend. Knowing this was when the baby would be born, I was relatively certain she'd end up being my midwife at the birth. The answering service at the Center for Women said they would contact Meg and she'd call me.
The quiet phone exchange brought Brian out of our room.
"You ordering a pizza?" he quipped sleepily.
I told him I'd called the answering service and Meg would call me back. I told him about my contractions and said he maybe could still go in to work and I'd call him when it seemed like time to go to the hospital. He laughed slightly and said he'd stay home. When he'd asked at 3:30 whether he should stay home from work, I gave him a "wait and see," thinking about the long night and morning of contractions I had with Ambrose. Thank goodness . . . thank goodness he didn't go to work.
Meg called my phone and asked about my group B strep test (negative) and if I wanted an epidural (no, absolutely not) - - after I explained that the contractions were 3-5 minutes apart and moderately intense. I talked through one while on the phone with her and wondered if she could tell from my voice. She said she was about to leave Erlanger (my delivery hospital) but would be back later and advised me to come in if I wanted (not yet) but to wait awhile if I wanted. She said if my water broke or I felt any pressure, to come right in.
For a few more lingering moments I resisted leaving the glider, thinking that if I got up and started preparing, I would bring the waves on stronger and faster and things would go too fast.
I'd been drinking water, and I had just finished yogurt and honey with a little granola on top, which tasted good and felt easy to digest. In my wonderfully calm and clear state, I wasn't afraid that I would throw up. I merely knew I needed food energy and knew if I threw up later it wouldn't matter. I tried to have coffee, but my body said, vehemently, "No," as its bitter taste slid acrid over my tongue and carved a burning trail down my throat like vomit in reverse. Okay. No coffee.
I sent my family another text, saying it would definitely be today, but I didn't hear from anyone. It was only about 6:30 in the morning at that point. I moved around the house, leaning on the dining table and breathing release and calm into my womb, leaning on the wall and stretching out my calves, leaning on my dresser and inhaling slowly, exhaling comfort. My hip that had been bothering me in the last couple of weeks (I assumed due to loosening ligaments) was giving me more twinges during rushes, but I didn't think anything of it.
I thought I still had so much time.
I decided awhile later to call my family because it seemed like I'd want to head to the hospital in about an hour. I called my mom, and she was in a sleep haze and not making much sense. I told her they should leave soon because I'd be heading to the hospital in an hour, and she said, "Ok, Daddy has a meeting at the church at nine." I paused. Trying to be both gentle and urgent, I explained that if Daddy went to the meeting, they wouldn't get to Chattanooga in time and were they planning to drive separately? Was Daddy up yet? She said vaguely that Daddy just got up and they'd get ready to head that direction. This was at 7:20 am. I wasn't reassured. I called my sister, and she'd been asleep too, but we had a lucid conversation and she said they'd get on the road, after she heard about my contractions and when I planned to leave the house. Finally, I called Daddy and gained assurance that they'd throw some things in the car and head out.
Brian was up and around, taking care of morning things, and I told him I was taking a shower. I figured I'd wake up Ambrose after that, and Brian and I decided to get in touch with the next door neighbors since it seemed like my parents wouldn't be in town in time to take over Ambrose duty before we left for the hospital.
In the shower I let the water wash over me blissfully and breathed into the next rush. The intensity and power of them were thrilling me, and I gloried in my private, singular head space, high on oxytocin and smiling as each wave crested. ("After every pressure wave, you smile, so incredibly happy that you are that much closer to meeting your baby," Hypnobabies had told me.)
As the next wave gathered at the front of my belly, just above my pubic bone and wrapping in a band around to my back, I bent my knees loosely (like when a friend had tried to teach me Kung Fu ten years and a lifetime ago) and rested my weight in my pelvic bones, tilting my chin back and rolling my head slightly as I sent my breath out and up, delivering release and relaxation to everything between my thighs and my breasts. As the water ran down the front of my body, I imagined that beautiful hypno-anaesthesia flowing downward in place of the water. (This sounds like hippie-dippy crap, but I am telling you, none of this was painful.) As the wave crested, I smiled at the increasingly fearful power, relaxing my lips and face, feeling the weight of blood in my hands, palms out and up slightly as if receiving a blessing. I felt a gentle pop and thought that my water might have broken. I decided to check myself again and squatted in the bottom of the tub, inserting two fingers and almost tasting the pocket of salty fluid at the back of my birth canal. My cervix seemed impossibly loose and wide compared to a couple of short hours before, and as I withdrew my fingers, the pocket of fluid gushed out with a little blood and I rode the swell of emotion and got out of the shower.
(For the record, I know it's not medically recommended to check one's own cervical dilation if one thinks one's water has already broken because of the possibility of introducing bacteria. I was out of my mind, and I'm also a rebel. Still no excuse.)
I told Brian I thought my water had broken and that we should head that way. "Okay," he said, breathing in and nodding like he does. The wonderful neighbors had said Ambrose could come over, so Brian went out in the yard to hang up wet laundry on the line and I was about to go upstairs to wake Ambrose when he came down the steps in his freshly awakened state. I hugged him and said, "Guess what today is??"
"Stay with Mommy day? A movie day??"
"Nope - - it's baby day! The baby is coming today!"
He made a facade of excitement but behind it he was processing, as is his way. I started to explain that labor was happening and that sometimes it felt very strong, but it wasn't hurting me - - and then midway a rush took me and I let my head fall back and I breathed my deep breaths but faster, almost panting, as the new intensity of post-membrane rupture began to grow. He looked confused so I finished explaining after the crest swelled past, smiling and telling him it wasn't hurting me, it was just very powerful - and it was the truth.
I said I'd fix him a bagel for breakfast - - I'd packed the hospital bag before the shower - - but as I moved around the kitchen, the rushes began to take me to new places, from leaning on the refrigerator to down on all fours, panting. My flesh broke out in a damp sweat and suddenly it was oppressively hot in the kitchen.
I remember this feeling. I was entering Transition, like after they ruptured my membranes when I was in labor with Ambrose. The feeling was exact, unmistakable, and though I hadn't thought about it in five years, I recognized it immediately and intimately. I went out to the back screen porch and called to Brian out in the yard.
"Hey! We gotta go!"
Things started to really blur and jumble then. I think I remember a contraction in the dining room. I remember shoving Ambrose's half-toasted bagel into a plastic container and throwing it into the fridge. I remember getting an empty yogurt cup and a wet cloth for the car, just in case. No, I think I put ice cubes in the cloth. I remember standing near the front door and Brian telling Ambrose it was time to go to Pippin's (his neighbor friend's) house. Ambrose wanted to come with us and Brian was trying to explain that he wouldn't want to be there and see it. "But I'll close my eyes!" Ambrose argued, that pitch in his voice that means something is outside his control and he's mildly panicked about it. But Brian got him out the door and I collapsed onto all fours on the living room rug, rocking with the intensity and panting. I was unsure of what would happen next and how fast, and my fear was making me lose focus as the contractions revved into a new gear, sending the baby through the necessary tightened space.
My goal was to be in the car by the next wave, but it took me at the telephone pole on the sidewalk just before I made it. The relief of the cool morning air outside washed over my flushed body, chilling into my flesh pleasurably. I think Brian asked in the car about air conditioning. I don't clearly remember how I responded, but I needed cool. I sat in front rather than laying in back like I wanted to, but maybe I felt safer closer to Brian? I wasn't really thinking; I was only doing. Brian had been racing around packing things and asking me questions I could hardly answer, and somehow he was in the car too and we were off and as the next wave took me under on Tennessee Avenue just before the stop sign, my head lolled back on the top of the seat and I suddenly remembered the moaning they'd taught me during Ambrose's labor, moaning to keep everything low when everything wanted up and out in panicked screaming. I transitioned from panting to a humming tone, thinking that the drive was short but long and beginning to wonder if I'd make it in time and what would happen if I didn't.
When I rushed and hum-moaned, Brian said his coaching words, doing all he knew how to do - - drive fast and encourage me.
I managed a text message in the thread I kept with my parents and sister: "Hospital on gunbarrel" and "Happening right meow." And then I dropped my phone accidentally in the floorboard, and there was no use trying to retrieve it. With that contraction or maybe the one before came the urge to push, and I felt afraid for the first time since 3:30 in the morning, wondering if I could stop the labor, slow it enough to get from the car to the safe place where knowing people could help me. I began using a constant, quieter tone of humming in between the rapid rushes, somehow feeling that if I could maintain that evenness of my voice, I could hold the process where it was for long enough.
The familiar sensation took me several more times before we reached the hospital, that feeling of my body yawning open and down, almost a feeling of extra gravity or suction, like water down a tub drain, like everything being drawn down and out, bringing an immense fullness to my birth canal - - the sensation of a large spherical object moving through one's pelvis. It really does feel like exactly that. I needed to respond to the urge. There is nothing else my body does that is so overwhelmingly immediate.
Still I wasn't experiencing anything like pain - rather, more intensity. I was overwhelmed and my humming was more in the frequency of moans by then, and loud. Loose, unable to be contained. I nearly asked Brian to leave me in the car and go get someone, but being left alone seemed worse than trying to cross the parking aisle to the entrance. I hauled myself out of the seat and wrapped my arms around Brian's neck and hung there. In between my enthusiastic moans as my body demanded that the baby be borne out, I whimpered and panted in desperation for help from anywhere. Someone to catch the baby, a place to fall, a secure nest into which I could birth.
We made it through the front door and frightened an older woman in a chair in the lobby as another wave took me and powerfully forced sound from my throat. The receptionist gave us a blank look as I gasped, "Baby . . . having the baby right now . . . " and Brian tried to fill in the holes and clarify. She asked what doctor, but all I could come up with was my regular midwife's name and the name of the Center for Women. She shuffled out from behind the desk and retrieved a wheelchair in what I felt was totally unnecessary complacency and docility. Now now now now! I wanted to scream. I collapsed into it with all the gratefulness I had left, but it was only a moment's relief. Brian set off for the nearby elevators, offering a constant stream of comfort and assurance. When the elevator doors opened to let us off, I didn't recognize the hall we opened onto. We were on the wrong floor, and I was yelling, "This isn't it! This isn't it!!" But we corrected quickly while I squirmed against the head trying to be free of the pressure it must have been under. Once the descent was begun, the baby and my body both knew it was dangerous to try to stall it.
I tried to tell the ladies at the L&D reception desk, using only my facial expression, to open the doors and buzz us in, because verbal communication was really failing me in my desperation. Somehow we were through and into the hallway, Brian pushing me, and at the nurse station inside, with some nurse at the desk smiling - - SMILING - - while my body sent everything DOWN and OUT, NOW and I saw Meg, impossibly, down at the other end of the hall and maybe she held a clipboard and she was looking at me, and I may have reached out physically to her with my hands and I may have said her name or I may not have done either of those things, because another wave hit, crashed, washed over in utter swiftness, and it had me and my body was twisting loose and arching in the wheelchair and my low moan escalated and suddenly at least three doors on the hallway opened and the space flooded with women in scrubs pulling on gloves, women who knew that sound, knew that only a woman pushing a baby out makes that sound. Down the hall we flew and maybe a nurse at the desk called out a room number, and a room opened miraculously before me and in the space before the next wave gathered, the lengthened resting space (I was sure I should have pushed five times at least by then, so strong was the urge, the baby at the door, no longer knocking but pounding, about to barge in), I was ripping off my shirt even as they were saying "Go ahead and undress," and pulling off my maternity leggings and underwear - - "There's blood," I said of the large spot on my cloth pantyliner, testing those words to see if it concerned the women in the room, but it didn't seem to. I climbed up onto the bed naked and Meg said she would check me and I felt her fingers, expecting discomfort but finding none, and she said, surprised, "Yep, ohh yeah, the baby is right there," Or "Ohhhh yeah, I feel the head," or something along those lines, and then, gloriously, "Go ahead and push when you're ready."
Being told was utter relief. The long minutes my body was ready, the baby was ready, seemed to have stretched on yet been a blink. Compressed but forever. Holding back, holding in, eternally. Now I turned to my hands and knees and my next moan became a roar, just like pushing with Ambrose, surprising me with the immediate, physical memory of that chaotic, outside of control timbre to my voice. Again, I hadn't been able to recall that feeling in the five years in between, but suddenly I remembered vividly and knew in my body how much of me it would take to finish this. I felt everything inside leaving me as I roared like a train with my forehead to the bed. At some point, they were trying to get the fetal monitor around my belly, and they heard a slow heartbeat and seemed concerned and I was afraid, but one nurse told another (I don't know how many were in the room) that they were hearing my heartbeat, and I don't know if they found the baby's heartbeat, but they seemed to think I had to get the baby out quickly, because I wanted to rest after that contraction but they wanted me to push again - -
I felt the impossible size of what had to slide down my canal yet, and I felt my body stretching and I pushed against it, panicked slightly by the feeling I might have to push over and over, feel it again and again, before the head came out. But I felt Meg's fingers sliding around the flesh of my labia and I blessed her within my mind and heart and my being radiated thankfulness, grateful in every cell for anything that eased my work. She helped gently slide my skin around the head and then suddenly it was out. I could feel it, and my relief was consummate.
But when I wanted to rest and breathe, they wanted me to change positions. I moved to my side and someone put oxygen over my nose and mouth and I breathed in further gratitude, knowing it would help. The next rush came swift and sure and I roared well past the raw end of my voice, but push, they said. Push. And then they said to hold my breath and push, and I rallied and bore down without roaring, and I turned maybe to my back or my knees again and felt the body slide free and oh God it was done. Brian was smiling at me with that smile, telling me helplessly, happily, that I did it, telling me it was a boy (What? A boy? Oh my God, a boy!) and I saw Meg holding his blue-gray body, and he wasn't moving yet and I wanted him on me, but Meg was clamping the cord, and I asked without any breath left if the cord was done pulsing, but she said they needed to get him looked at quickly, something wasn't fine, and so they took him to a table with a light shining bright on it and swarmed him with nurses, and I didn't know what they were doing but I wanted him, my whole self needed to be holding him but I was too dazed to even feel panic anymore, too exhausted to fight so I had to trust . . .
It felt like forever while I listened to his little voice as he started to cry. He sounded like a baby goat, a tremble in his belligerent cry. I weighed the sound against my memory of Ambrose. Ambrose was froggy; he croaked his cry. Ephraim had a higher pitch, a cleaner vibrato. Finally they gave him to me in a diaper, just his skin tucked down under the gown and onto my bare chest, and right away I wiggled him down to allow him to find my nipple if he wanted to. He ate almost immediately, clever boy. As if we both already knew. We did.
Meg asked me to give a push and I let the placenta move out and away. They fixed me up - - Meg said no tearing, just one little scratch that wouldn't need stitches. I had let my body ripen, soften, open, advance properly. I was slick and swollen, blood-filled, and I stretched just as my body is made to do - not like the first time I gave birth when I didn't know anything at all and held in, held on, held tight, and Ambrose's hand was up by his ear and those things together tore me up and down. I think I had even remembered Ina May's "horse lips" to loosen me while I was pushing, but I can't be sure of that. There were nice things about the hospital. They had cool ice packs and disposable undies and witch hazel pads and the squeeze bottle to rinse myself off. I bled and bled.
I held my second born close, pressing his squashy newborn face into my flesh and hearing the tiny breath through his nostrils. Brian filled out paperwork, and we wrote his name for the first time. Ephraim Asher Thompson Dunn. I whispered it to him while he slept, exhausted from his trip. We rested together, complete in one another.
When Ambrose arrived with the neighbors, he was shy. I wanted to help him see that I was the same person as before. He seemed a bit afraid of me, nervous of Ephraim, rambling around the room, his emotions under the cover of silliness. He played with the buttons on the hospital bed and coped.
May family arrived, and I basked in their presence. I was sorry they had missed the action but at the same time relieved, for it's not easy to be at a birth and not everyone can do it. A friend brought cupcakes. Other friends came with their kiddo and brought a care package. We posted pictures on facebook. The day waxed and gently warmed outside the window. Eventually I had a very short nap while everyone gave me a break and Brian ran errands and Ephraim slept in his slanted plastic-sided box.
The nurses bothered us often with vitals, questions, tests, a bath for Ephraim. Rules. A hospital has many i's to dot. It was nice in some ways and not as nice as the birth center in others. If there is a next time, I will likely deliver in my house.
Ephraim wanted only to sleep, not seeming interested in breastfeeding for the next several hours. Once the nurses started to get pushy about it I tried more frequently to get him to eat, but he seemed both too sleepy and too full of post-birth mucus to want more milk. One nurse kept smooshing his mouth onto my breast unhelpfully. They said to put him back on my skin. I rubbed his tiny back to encourage him to clear the mucus out. He seemed to be so gunked up, and I thought it might be making his tummy feel full or yucky. After 4 hours they wanted to do a heel stick to test his blood sugar (it was well above their desired minimum). They said if he didn't eat in another hour, they might have to take him to the nursery to do another test or try some formula. That sounded like the worst thing I could think of.
Then my sister, Christie, the NICU nurse: "Have you tried pushing down on his chin?" in answer to my lamenting. No . . . I tried. He latched. I just looked at her with my own mouth open while she smiled down. We had no more problems after that.
His was a matter-of-fact birth. I had done it before, so I was concerned with the tempo, the sequence of events, having things "right." But then there was this bundle. This swaddled perfect bean with fur on his shoulderblades. From the start, you compare this baby with your first baby, because now you have a measuring stick for babies. But from the start I also saw him, individual and distinct and new. So new. He seemed so confused by the world, but so eager to learn - to learn and learn until he couldn't take it anymore and had to shut it out with his wails, or with feeding. He is who he is - radiant, perfect, full of innocent ferocity. I waited so long, and he was a fulfillment. Ephraim. Eh-FRAY-im. Double blessing.
