Although it is only the page listening right now, I still feel compelled to explain why I haven't written in over a year. The shorthand is that I was preoccupied in the present with two small children, a big belly (for much of the time) and then (for the rest of the time) a newborn. The most wonderful part of this past year was raising my kids and taking things a day at a time. That was also the hardest part. Writing is comparable to life in general in that, while there are bursts of inspiration and flowing creativity, the majority of it is a discipline, requiring time and brain space---commodities which are in high demand these days.
Also, I am becoming very respectful of the seasons of life. There will be a day when I have much more time to write, but I will not have sweet babies to dress, feed, play with, help sleep. These are long days but short years, they say. Louisa was born over six months ago, but I swear it was six weeks. Swear it. I spent the first month staring at her newborn face before making the mistake of looking up and around for a second too long. I looked back down and she was a person.
Thankfully, Louisa is still round, pink, gummy and baldy. If she had a full head of hair I might just burst into tears. I remember waiting with baited breath for signs of maturity in Eleanor. Flash forward and I'm trying to squish six-month old Louisa into three-month footies because she can't possibly be growing up.
...
Logic says that a third labor in three years will likely be better understood, anticipated and planned for. Truth is, I still felt like a rookie for much of the experience. This time I had a bit of pre-labor a full 24 hours before going to the hospital. From 4pm-8pm on June 30th, my due date, I had some strong, steady contractions that were 5-10 minutes a part and 30-60 seconds long. Then I laid down and they just stopped. The same thing happened, at the same time, on July 1st. My labor started for real at 5am on July 2nd. Shawn and I began shuffling around the house in the early morning darkness, placing our bags by the door and stopping to time contractions.
A pattern that has repeated itself each time I've been in labor is my inability to admit that I really do need to go to the hospital. An irrational trepidation that I have is that I will get to the hospital too early and be turned away. And snickered at for being a pansy. As Shawn was stealthily guiding me toward the front door, I would pause along the way, breathe through a contraction and then say something like, "That wasn't too bad. Should we really go now?" Thank God for rational husbands who remind us that the worst that could happen is that we get turned away and have to come back home. "No one will think you're a pansy." Oh really?
We left sleeping Eleanor and Charles in the care of my parents just before 7:45am and drove 10 minutes to St. Vincent's. One of our midwives, Paula, met us at the door and sat and chatted with me while Shawn parked the car. While we were shooting the breeze in the foyer, I had a contraction. Paula said, "Oh, is that a contraction? Take a minute." and I thought about how odd it felt to have a minute to take. No babies or toddlers to watch. No need to rush right upstairs and deliver a baby. No other pressing matters. Just me and my midwife, waiting for my baby.
Shawn and I settled into one of the birthing rooms and just stared at each other. What do we do now? Oh! A contraction. Shawn timed. I breathed. We talked. Contraction, time, breathe, talk from 8am to 2pm. Sometimes the contractions were 4 minutes apart and sometimes they were 12 minutes apart. That was the weird thing about this labor. The contractions were productive, I was dilating, but at one point during active labor I had a full 15 minutes between contractions. Paula had switched out with Sarah, the midwife who delivered Eleanor and Charles, at 10am or so and popped her head into the room now and again to check on us. I kept asking if this was normal, to have such sporadic contractions. She shrugged and said that third babies do their own thing. "So...normal?" I asked. "Sure," Sarah responded.
Contraction, time, breathe, talk. Shawn and I settled into what felt like an alternate universe. Usually we are busy with Eleanor and Charles, consumed with their needs and their small yet big personalities. Our daily conversation hovers around the day-to-day, drifting into deeper, weightier things only moments before we both realize how tired we are and fall asleep. It's a season of life where frivolity of any kind takes a back seat. In contrast, the conversation that took place during Louisa's labor was light-hearted. We covered topics that couples typically talk about in the early days of dating like favorite foods, travel experiences and peripheral discussions about family members. I remember at one point staring at Shawn as if I'd never spent more than an hour in his presence. Who was this person? He's pretty neat. I mean great and, really, he's very good looking. Husband material for sure. Oh! Contraction.
By 2pm I was ready to meet this baby. Our third. A little person that I had not considered nearly as much as the first and second. Baby's kicks would often catch me by surprise during the day as would the simultaneous thought that another person was within me. Now, he or she was all I was thinking about. Come on, Baby. Come on. After checking, Sarah said that I was eight centimeters dilated and nonchalantly added that she could break my water any time and the baby would be born in 10 minutes. A decision lay before me: go on with this pokey labor indefinitely or have my water broken and meet my baby now. I went through one more teeth-gritting contraction that made me want to cry and decided, yes, break my water, please.
I laid down in the bed and Sarah broke my water. As soon as she did, fear ran straight to my heart. I am told that during a natural childbirth mothers fall into two camps: those who hate labor but don't mind pushing and those who don't mind labor but hate pushing. I am firmly in the latter camp. I can ride the wave of a contraction because I know the shape of it---I can see it in my minds' eye, starting slow, rising, building speed and intensity, cresting and quickly dissolving. I can breath and moan my way through it. Matching it, meeting it, beating it and reaping the reward of blissful relief when it fizzles out. Pushing, on the other hand, is a relatively short but constant pain that I just cannot manage. It's a bully pain that doesn't budge and stands firmly in the way of me meeting my baby. When the first pushing contraction began I flashed Shawn a look of desperation before I started yelling. I had to get this done. Several body-splitting pushes and out came our baby, a girl, Louisa. Exactly 13 minutes after Sarah broke my water. I sobbed with relief as I brought her close to me, all the while thanking Shawn again and again for being there the whole time. We both rambled breathlessly about how cute she was and how happy we were. I continued to thank Shawn and he whispered to me that her middle name could be Wren, as I had so desperately wanted. I held Louisa Wren, my birdy girl, close, breathed her in, praising God for her life.
Shawn is the reason I am able to labor naturally at all. He holds my hand, lets me pound on his chest, stands beside me, does whatever I ask him to do, tells me that I am doing such a good job, that he loves me, and kisses my sweaty forehead. It is a privilege to bring babies into the world with this man.
Having a summer baby meant getting a little extra help from Mother Nature in those first weeks. Eleanor was born two days before Hurricane Sandy took our power for a week. When we left the hospital after Charles was born it was 8 degrees outside. Getting to take Louisa outside without bundling her up was a treat.
Louisa is nearly seven months old now and has folded seamlessly into the social dynamic of our family. Her sister and brother keep tabs on her--is she napping? nursing? crying?--and cozy up to her whenever they stop moving for a second. The physical nature of raising three small children knocked me on my behind for a while, but, by God's grace, we're getting there. Plus Louisa slept through the night a few times this week! So, I'll either start training for a marathon in those spare wee hours...or I'll sleep.