(Mid)Wives Tales

Okay. I'm really, really ashamed. It's been (gulp) 11 months since I blogged. Honestly, I was just going to take a break for a month or so, but life happened.
I moved (twice) lost and got a couple of jobs - s'ok, thinks are cool now!!! I have a new little muse-friend who shall remain unnamed. She wants to be my editor for some book she's sure I should write....on grieving, of all things. Okay - maybe she's onto something? Maybe this could be a chapter?

Outside the rain begins and it may never end
So cry no more, on the shore a dream
Will take us out to the sea
Forever more, forever more
Close your eyes and dream, and you can be with me
'Neath the waves through the caves of ours
Long forgotten now
We're all alone, we're all alone
Close the window, calm the light
And it will be all right
No need to bother now
Let it out. let it all begin
Learn how to pretend
Once a story's told it can't help but grow old
Roses do, lovers too, so cast your seasons to the wind
And hold me dear, oh hold me dear

-Boz Scaggs

So this is how it starts. I drank an entire bottle of castor oil 3 days before she was born. At that moment in time, she was a boy. Her name would be Steven. "He" was too big to deliver, they told me. A tiny little thing like me couldn't birth a baby exceeding 11 lbs. If he were any later, grew any bigger, I would rip from stem to stern, like a wayward boat tossed upon the rocks, somewhere. Maybe my boat was attracted to a nameless, faceless siren singing an other-worldy song to purposefully lure hapless sailors into the netherworld. Perhaps my siren is a mermaid, I now think. Hold onto this thought. You will need to call upon it later on.

They don't tell you the horrible things an entire bottle of castor oil will do to a body. They don't tell you about the disgusting indegestion. Or about the stomach cramps that are almost as bad as the actual labor. Or that you won't be able to look at orange juice the same way, ever again. Still, I did it. Labor ensued. Midwives gathered around me. Both moms arrived. My then husband did the thing he had done on the other two occasions I had labored to bring a child into the world. He cleaned. He organized. With baby #2, it had been our closet. Suddenly, the most important thing in the universe was that all my clothes be on my side, and that all his clothes be opposite. This time, his obssession is the refrigerator. Silently, I am thankful that he's at least becoming more useful with each labor. Maybe another baby is not a bad idea - he could get the carpets next go-round. He scrubbed. He scoured. He made pancakes. I walked. I panted. I worried - the thing I do best. Instantly, a crack formed between the two of us, him with his cleaning and me with my panting. Hold onto this thought. You will need it in about a decade or so.

I am in my bed. An annoying woman I thought I liked until now sternly reprimanded me to hyperflex my legs. Not understanding this olympian athletic verbiage, I continue to bare down. "Hyperflex your legs, honey!" There she goes again. Exasperated, tired, fat beyond belief, and definitely visualizing my fist connecting with her top lip, I finally give in and scream back, "What in the hell do you mean???" As she explains that my knees should be rougly parallel with my ears, I must have looked at her as if she was asking me to speak to her in perfect Swahili. I do not get it - and finally, she does - get it, that is. "Grab her other leg," she yells to her counterpart, a horrified as yet to deliver a baby on her own lay person midwife wannabe. Together they manage to manipulate my legs into an inhuman pretzel-like position. I distinctly remember, even though that was well over 19 years ago, seeing my own foot very near my eyelashes. Thankfully I'd managed a quasi-successful self pedicure within the last few days. I don't know why that matters, but it does. Seconds later (or was it hours?) someone told me not to push. Would they step in the path of an F5 tornado and tell it not to descend, I wondered? I tried to stop. Actually, that might or might not be a lie. I wanted to stop. That much is definitely true. I am a rules girl. I try to do the right thing, do what I'm told. I try. But, all is fair in love and war. Childbirth is both.

I see Steven. I am keenly aware that this was too easy. My last baby weighed well over 10 lbs. How much over is a million dollar question, since that other midwife, at that other house, in that other state, didn't think to bring a scale that would weigh a baby in excess of 10 lbs. We only knew that 18 hours later, in a disapproving anti-home birth pediatrician's office in Herdon, VA, he still weighed 10 lbs. But, back to the matter at hand. Steven popped out with much less pomp, circumstance, and pain...so I knew something was amiss. Time passed. How much is unclear. There were other matters to attend to. Like the blueness. Everyone spoke simultaneously. I have no idea what they were saying, I was only looking at this blueness. My baby had a blue face. Not sky blue, like the Heavens little chubby cherabs fly through when God sends them to steal the heart of the boy you like in the 5th grade. Not a turquoise blue, like the water in the ocean from a distance - funny how it's not the same color when you're knee deep in it and still can't see your feet. It was a dark, forboding blue. A midnight blue. A blue so dark and opaque that it enveloped everything in it's midst. A blue that was impenitrable. The kind of dark blue that theives in the night wait for all year. Pea soup blue. Can't see you hand in front of your face, dark blue. The whole room turned that evil blue.

Suddenlly I was crying, Suddenly I was pleading. Though I can't remember the specifics, I feel sure that I bargained every good thing that would ever happened to anyone I ever knew in exchange for the removal of this horror. Please. Please make my baby pink. Please take away the blue. Poor, poor little Steven. Please erase this memory.

They took the baby, the two midwives. Suction. Clap the baby on the back. Suction. Clap some more. Suction.....moments later, the blue turned gray, then lavender, then, finally, the blessed pink color I had been waiting to see. "Are you sure?" I said. "Is he okay?" I cried. "She's fine", a chorus of angels answered. This is the first time I learned about prayers. They are always answered, you see, just not always in the way you hoped. My baby was going to be fine. And, Steven, so it seems, isn't Steven after all. But, Mommy and baby girl are tired. Too tired to argue. Too tired, even, to smile. So we snuggle and sleep, this nameless little feminine creature and I.

I remember things. The Grandmas are in and out. Flowers are delivered. Baby girl and I can't be bothered with all of this nonsense, though. In our world, there is only us. Big brothers both filed in with one of the Grandmas, wide-eyed and incredulous. I hear my mother telling them both that mommy is so tired. She asks them if they see their baby sister. Do they love her? Do they want to kiss her? Do they see her thick, jet black hair? Do they see her brilliantly pink cheeks? Don't they think she looks just like a China Doll? Later on that same day, upon being asked if he had a new baby sister, my oldest son, my little man, looks up with enormous blue eyes and states, very matter-of-factly, "Nope. I have a China Doll." Welcome to the world, Chynna. Become my world, Chynna. Take over my world, Chynna. I will never say a cross word, never become quick to anger, never go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink, never say another curse word......for this is the bargain I have made. The bargain I made to banish the blueness. My prayer was answered. Permanently, I assume. That's the thing about a covenent, though. There are always strings attached, strings like loose hems on cheaply made garments. Don't pull too hard. Something might come unwound.