Chapter 5: Birth of Hope

Chapter 5: Birth of Hope
Around mid-afternoon on March 25th, my amniotic fluid starting leaking, which I didn’t know at the time. I arrived home from work and told myself that tonight was the night. It wasn’t an affirmation or wish or even demand- it was just true. I had the word “flush” in my mind- a complete downward emptying. Unromantically, I had the image of my hand pushing a toilet handle down, water swirling down the toilet, moving uninterruptedly around the white ceramic- flush. I told myself that labor would begin as soon as I walked through the threshold to our house- something I also told myself during Ari’s birth. I opened the door, read our plaque on the wall: “make this threshold wide enough”. And with that I am certain, the slow widening began. I said hi to Brian and told him tonight the baby will be born.
At first there was nothing, then a dull cramp, then a peaking cramp. Anna and I talked on the phone a few times over the next couple hours, eventually she decided she should make the trip through the night to be with us. Just as I hung up the phone, light contractions starting waning and waxing, drifting in and out. Brian began the water to the birthing tub, hobbling around on crutches. I walked around the house, pausing through contractions to bow my head and rock my hips. I paused less out of need and more out of honor. Because I knew labor would be short, I wanted to savor the opening and coming- cherish the precious moments of Hope’s birth. I indulged in the rolling rounded over pain- this was the feeling of a mother delivering her child home. I was a birthing mother.
Brian went outside for a smoke break. Later he would tell me that he saw a flaming shooting star- a meteor streaming half the reach of the sky, a bluish streak highlighted with white light. After the birth, Anna also told us she saw the same celestial streak.
As Anna arrived around 11pm, we checked in with each other, but soon headed to bed to sleep off as much of the night as possible. I cuddled with Brian, sleeping lightly, nested with my dreamy contractions. This bed- I had spent so many restless hours in wait. It was my shoddy raft to ride through the storm, mounting the dark endless waves. The raft was both our haven- a space to read fun-loving books, watch movies, play sudoku- and the exposed frontlines- a time to feel our hearts becoming more raw.
But now, finally in this land of labor, this bed was just its sheets and winter warm blankets. I woke myself out of this sleepy space with the sound of my increasing breath. Anna checked on me and continued preparing the birthing tub. The contractions now called for my breath to moan through them. They called on me to get off my side and sit up in a low-seated crouch, shins firm on the bed, arms long at my sides, slowly rocking up and down. This was the position I knew I would labor in- I had visualized it exactly as this. Brian turned on the music I knew I would birth with- a particular soulful artist played with the base turned up. I cried thinking of all the times I had listened to the music, fantasying the birth of my healthy baby. Brian cried knowing this is what we had been waiting for these 6 weeks- waiting and waiting- but still only to greet a child without youth. My limbs were getting ever so slightly shaky, little hints of nausea- I knew birth was soon. I wanted the water.
I felt surprisingly buoyant in the birthing tub- supported in the warm water, not having to hold my own weight. The sensations changed in the water, in the dimly lit living room, feeling less defined contractions. The baby crowned. I asked Brian to light candles and burn sage. In between now- the gentle balance of being in between- holding our baby at the threshold between coming and going, holding our journey at the balance of waiting and arriving. With tears down my cheeks, Brian at my side, I gave the final easy push to release both this baby and ourselves.
She floated up- 2:22am. Anna caught her. I cradled her small wet body. I could hardly see her through my tears, through the candlelight. We wrapped her in a green and white checkered blanket. We looked at her tiny hands and feet- so still, rigid from the weeks. She was almost exactly the size of the little teddy bear my nieces had given me. Brian held her as I got out of the tub. Anna wrapped me in a blue towel and Brian wrapped the baby in a matching one. Moving to the couch, I sat, held her and we cried- grief, freedom, and…Hope. We feel asleep. Waking up, I opened my eyes, looked around the room- finally, I made it.