Hortus Deliciarum

I was up only a few minutes before I heard the familiar pad-pad-pad of little feet coming down our hallway. It’s carpeted, so the sounds are muffled, but then the door swung open. I pretended to be asleep; I’m alone in our bed at the moment, since Graham is still recovering from his knee surgery and prefers NOT to risk having my (semi-clumsy) self inadvertently kick him, so I fully expected my little room invader to head back out the door and go to “Auntie Susie’s Room” to find Daddy (Note: While my sister currently lives in Portland, her room is still “Auntie Susie’s Room” and I dread the day when he’ll boldly announce to someone that “Daddy sleeps in Auntie Susie’s room!!”)

Anyway.

Somewhat to my surprise, I heard the scuffle of little hands trying to get a foothold on my bed and then a little shape scrambled up onto the mattress and patted me gently on the back and head. “Mummy?”

It was sweet, sweet bliss to realize that this morning, of all mornings, he’d chosen me. Three years ago to the hour, I was finally pushing. I’d forgotten how tired I was and how long I’d been laboring (42 hours, if you want to know), and was absorbed entirely in one task: getting that baby out as fast as I possibly could. In what I was later told was an impressive effort for a first-time mum, I got him out in thirty minutes flat.

It was a scary delivery. Indeed, it was only today, when she told me as much on Facebook, did I realize that it had scared my doula too. The cord was wrapped a couple of times around his neck as he came out but that wasn’t the real problem; he was dark purple and covered in thick, dark meconium. He was not breathing.

In our birthing classes at the hospital, they’d done a tour of one of the delivery rooms and shown us the alarm. “If this gets pushed, you’ll see a LOT of people crowding in here in a hurry,” we were told confidently by a midwife. I never thought that mine would be a delivery where the alarm was needed. In my birth plan I had the very hippie-ish stipulation that the umbilical cord be allowed to stop pulsating before it was cut. My wonderful midwife, with complete aplomb although some haste, told me as he emerged that, although she knew I’d written it in my birth plan, she needed to cut the cord right away. A little high on nitrous oxide but understanding that something was wrong, I told her to go ahead. She cut the cord and told me that it was a little boy. I saw my son lying limply in her arms and knew only that he was not crying.

She hit that alarm and the midwife who’d taught our birthing classes wasn’t wrong. Suddenly my large room was packed full of people, all working over my son as they held him under the warm lights of the resuscitation/warming unit. I don’t remember what I said. I think I begged my doula to tell me what was happening and, completely calmly, she told me that everything was quite all right but that they just needed to give him some suction and oxygen. Because she was calm, I was calm. It must have been longer than my memory recalls it but it feels like it was only seconds until they put him in my arms. I’d asked for skin-to-skin contact as soon after birth as possible and I don’t honestly remember now whether or not he was naked or in a blanket. It doesn’t matter.

I had thought I’d be disappointed to have a boy instead of a girl. I had thought I wouldn’t know what to do with a newborn. I wasn’t and, at least in that moment, I did.

I can’t say I’ve never had twinges of regret that I didn’t have a little girl, especially in those early days of PPD/PND and horrendous sleep deprivation (I envied people who got five hours of broken sleep in a night at six weeks). PPD/PND is a terrible, terrible thing that in many ways ruined my memories of those first newborn days, weeks, and months. What I know with utter certainty is that nothing in this world could induce me to exchange my son for any other child. He is mine.

Even as he struggles to break free of me and takes those inevitable steps toward the not-so-far-as-I-might-think future day when he will no longer live under my roof, I look at him and think in wonder that I made this. His sturdy legs (bruised shins and all), that soft golden hair, and those little hands that struggle for the dexterity to hold up three fingers instead of two. That piping little voice that can be sweet with happiness or shrill with stubborn denial. My body held him, nourished him, and then released him out into the world to grow and flourish.

And this morning, of all mornings for him to choose to be with me instead of Daddy, I cuddled him again, skin to skin, and was glad to be his mother.

Incidentally, I was also thrilled to not be in the process of birthing a baby. Giggling with my little boy was vastly to be preferred to contractions and pushing, even with the Godsend that is nitrous oxide.

A very happy birthday to my beautiful son…and as he likes to carol merrily in a vaguely minor key at the end, “And many MOOOOOORE!”

Tags: birthday