Some Reminiscing

December 31, 2003, Austin, TX
B and I are at his sister’s house for New Year’s and I’m late. I’m never late, so we do the pee test and oh yes, this will be a boring New Year’s Eve for the Kimster.

There’s a party, but I’m totally sober and am starting to realize that no one is as funny as they think they are, so I say, “Who wants to learn a cheerleader dance?”

There’s an outpouring of affection something akin to Beatle mania as I turn on “How Do I Know?” from Whitney Houston’s best album ever (as far as I’m concerned). Five, Six, Seven, Eight … these girls are really bad at learning this cheerleader dance that was choreographed for an ACDC song but is also great with Whitney Houston.

Most of the time I was pregnant we were jobless and homeless, floating around amongst relatives who all had to endure my crying spells, incessant nesting, and heartburn. Between May and July of 2004 we moved from Flagstaff, AZ to Austin, TX, then to Milwaukee, WI, and then to St. Croix Falls, WI. But despite our instability, Great Grandma Ellie (after whom JEB would've been named had he been a girl) kept saying to us, "Your luck will change as soon as the baby's born ... you'll see."

Indeed, we had been sent other signs that we had a lucky baby. For our first pre-natal visit, we walked to the doctor’s office, and on the way there, a crow pooped from a tree branch. The poop hit a lower branch, ricocheted, and splatted all over Husband and me. We went to the doctor covered in poop. Later that day, I went to class and told my friends that I was pregnant and about the bird poop. My friend Lindsey, who had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Namibia for two years, said, “OMG! In Africa that is the best sign of luck EVER.”

But then I graduated and didn’t want to get a full-time job with a baby on the way, and no jobs had turned up for B. So we started the moving party, and although we weren't jobless and homeless when he finally arrived, we didn't have a permanent home or job and were waiting to hear about the position that Husband has now. At the time, we were living on the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota where Husband was a National Park Ranger at the St. Croix Scenic Riverway (and I was a regular at the public library and the Holiday Inn swimming pool). Husband had an interview scheduled for the Tennessee permanent job—a job he had waited on for MONTHS—on the very day that Goose was born, and so he had to reschedule it. Then, when Goose was less than 24 hours old, Husband left the hospital to go home and shower, and in the middle of his shower, he got the phone interview call ... so he interviewed for this job standing in the middle of our dining room with a towel around his waist, dripping water everywhere and soaking the floor. But he got the job! And then he started saying that The Goose’s Indian name was going to be "Little No Worries." Great Grandma and the crow were right.

The details of The Goose’s birth follow, so if you’re squeamish, be forewarned:

September 15, 2004, St. Croix Falls, WI

9 .

So The Goose is 9 days late and I am going out of my mind. I'm desperate. I've OD'ed on prune juice, had lots of sex, and have been walking several miles a day when it suddenly occurs to me that we should just begin talking directly to the uterus. So B gets us a translator, called 2 ounces of castor oil mixed with OJ (supposedly it's a "mid-wife's cocktail" which, as it causes the bowel to contract, also causes the uterus to do the same) and about one hour later I am on the toilet (and didn't get up for 3 hours). We went to bed (thinking the castor oil didn't work), and I woke up at 5 a.m. in a pool of amniotic fluid.


We went straight to the hospital and got a fabulous room with two bay windows. There I was hooked up to the monitor and a bag of antibiotics to ward off my strep infection (harmless to me but serious for babies passing through canals). I have not felt any contractions yet, although according to the monitor, I am having them and the nurses are going, "Don't you feel that?"

At about 10 a.m., my labor had not progressed and the doctor suggested I begin nipple stimulation, which causes the release of oxytocin -- the hormone which causes the uterus to contract. So I sat in the bed rubbing my nipples (while nurses came in and out -- quite embarrassing) to no avail. Finally at noon the doctor said she wanted to start giving me pitocin, the synthetic oxytocin which DEFINITELY starts labor. I cried a little (I was afraid that my contractions would be unbearable and that it would cause me to have to have some pain medicine and thus didn't want to go this route) and then finally gave in when she told me that otherwise I might be in labor all night. So I took a nap and at 2 p.m. they started the drug.

My contractions picked up almost immediately but they still had to double the level of the hormone three times before I really got going. It felt like bad menstrual cramps for several hours and about 5 p.m. I got in the Jacuzzi tub. The nurse was coming in periodically to ask if my contractions were getting longer or louder and it was at this point that I was really starting to feel them in waves of strong pain throughout my pelvis. She stuck her head in the bathroom and asked how I was doing and I replied, "They're getting badder. I said 'badder'. Don't tell anyone I said that, I'm an English teacher." To which she replied, "I'll call the doctor and tell her they're getting worser."

I stayed in the tub until I couldn't stand it anymore and got out and got on a birthing ball (looks like those exercise balls but larger and you straddle it and hold on to something in front of you). B made sure I got a red ball to match my red toenails, which were being touted as the best in the unit. At this point I am really starting to use the breathing, visualizations, etc., and B is coaching me like mad. The nurses were so impressed with him that they were asking my mother-in-law (who was waiting outside) if we had taken some special class. Nevermind the laboring mother, it's the husband they're impressed with. Figures.

So it's about 6 p.m. and I feel like I'm going to die and am begging for drugs. And B keeps saying, "Just make it through one more ... I know you can just get through one more and then the doctor will be here and you can ask her for drugs." I totally fell for this crap even though it was a while before the doctor came back in, checked me, and said, "During the next contraction I want you to push." For some reason, I really thought that the pushing was practice for when I was really ready. So I said, "How long until I can really push?" She said, "You're fully dilated now -- PUSH!" It was about 7 p.m. And the whole time I really thought she was lying and that the nurses had all been lying the ENTIRE time they were telling me about my dilatory progress. I was convinced they were all liars ... even B, but I was so out of it that he was having to hold my face toward his and almost yell at me to keep breathing. He was a total star.

So I pushed for 45 minutes, which I consider to be the worst part of the whole thing, even though most women find it to be a relief after all of the hard contractions. Finally the doctor said, "There's the head ... do you want to feel it?" My eyes were rolling back into my head ... feeling the head was the last thing I ever wanted to do. The doctor said, "The next thing you're going to feel is stinging pain ... like burning." I didn't know what this meant, but apparently that was her way of warning me that I was about to split open. Which I did. Then, she and B switched places (she by my side and Brian at the foot of the bed) and The Goose popped out into his arms and emitted only one cry. B said it was almost as if he were thinking, "They're expecting me to cry, so here it is." And then he got very calm.


It felt exactly like you would think it would feel to push out a baby: slimy and squirmy and the biggest relief. Then I grabbed him and yanked him toward me and nearly cut off his oxygen because the cord wasn't very long. The nurse is yelling, "Stop pulling! His cord's not very long!" and B is saying, "Look at his balls ... they're as big as mine!" (boy babies are born with swollen testicles due to high hormone levels.) And I'm saying, "He has hair! He's not bald! Look at his hair!"

Then B cuts the cord so that I can hold him closer and after just a few minutes, the doctor says it's time to push out the placenta. So Brian and the nurse take John over to the incubator to be weighed and measured (it's in our room ... he never left the room) while I push out the placenta ... easy as pie.



By then I'm totally a mess ... I'm soaked in sweat and blood and amniotic fluid and have now gotten so cold that I'm shaking violently. The doctor is injecting my "area" with numbing medication so that she can repair the tears and I feel like I'm going to die of shock. They kept trying to put the baby back on my tummy but I just couldn't even deal with holding him because I was shaking so badly and felt like road kill. The doctor was assuring me that that is normal.

B is holding the baby and standing beside me trying to calm me down and I'm having a total guilt trip because I'm not nursing him immediately like all the books said to do. It took the doctor almost an hour to sew me up and that was not fun. Then I had to pee, which was scary, and no one told me how much blood comes out of you post-partum. While I'm trying to pee (a huge effort), they changed the sheets and cleaned up the room and then I was back in bed with the baby trying to nurse him ... toe-curling pain there (until your nipples harden up -- which takes several weeks even though they say it's not supposed to hurt) ... and B is flying high.


I kept saying, "I did it ... I pushed him out." And I'm still saying that to myself every time I look at him. It is such an amazing, unique experience and yet it happens millions of times every day. The most striking part about it was just that: the contrast of how globally common and at the same time individually uncommon and life-changing it all is. And you think that you will be filled with this gentle, loving feeling toward the child but really what I felt was anything but sweet. I was overwhelmed by an almost vicious feeling of being his protector and thinking that I would never let anyone hurt him.

And then there were months of absolutely NO SLEEP, numerous breakdowns, two bouts of mastitis, cracked nipples, and a cross-country move. But finally ... just as we were thinking that we couldn't deal with the little alien anymore, he started sleeping longer and smiling. And I know those two things are survival tactics because it's just in the nick of time that they both happen to almost every baby.

The fastest year of my life just went by, and baby, look at us now!