The Other Side of the World

because it’s always a good time for mama milk

from Sue’s fridge circa June 2007

Dear Noemi,
The day you were born really began the day before - as befits you, one day would not encompass your arrival. I was woken up by the phone ringing. It was probably some decent hour, but we’d been up late the night before watching Taxi, cooking hotdogs in the woodstove and being cozy (clearly a direct result of post-dates waiting induced insanity, because they were really quite terrible hot dogs). The phone went to the message and it was the midwives’s office calling to let us know we were scheduled for a post-dates assessment at the hospital in two days time. You, my un-tested, un-prodded, trustingly gestated baby were 41 weeks and 2 days which was uncomfortable for me, but also nibbling dangerously at the borders of protocol in our community (bloody protocol). I sent you a silent message to help us avoid the whole ‘system’ and went back to sleep, warm beside your daddy.

An hour later I woke up with nice gentle contractions and wondered if they were going to amount to anything (this had been happening all week). I got up, enjoying the quiet morning to be alone and sat on the birth ball in the front room bouncing meditatively, doing the crossword and peering at the clock every once in awhile – as I’m sure you know, I’m terrible with time, so it was an easy-going sort of timing. An hour later, our home-birthing friend Kate called and I told her I was wondering what these contractions were up to, so she sat through a few with me and declared they sounded regular and real. I let the idea of labouring loll around in my mind and wandered back to the bedroom to wake up your dad. Despite his obsessive “is it baby-time yet?” questioning all week, he was pretty sleepy and un-enthused. There was a bit of mucous and bloody show which I proffered up as encouraging signs and he eventually got up and (rather giddily, I think) went out to get coffee. In the meantime, my mother arrived back and clomped around in her red high heels moving boxes in preparation until I decided I needed a quiet nest for labouring and evicted her ruthlessly from her own house! Joanna arrived a bit later with a bag of labouring supplies and gave me a loving massage just as she had done so many times before. It was a lovely and familiar rhythm to sink into as the contractions carried on and Joanna prayed over me. I had a blueberry smoothie and wandered around the house, calling your dad over periodically to do acupressure on my back. He was so effective at this task that I demanded he carry it on for the next 20 hours (which he did without complaint – I am in awe of his powerful thumbs to this day!). Around 2pm I called our midwife, Mico to let her know I was in labour and she came over to check how things were going. I had never had a VE before (despite having given them to others) and was surprised and relieved that our midwife was so gentle and they felt just fine. I was 3cm and almost fully effaced and she left again until we needed her as I was only having contractions about every 8 minutes.. The birth pool was full and warm so I jumped in just to try it out. It was relaxing, but made my contractions space out so I hopped back out. As night fell, the contractions were getting stronger and our attempts to watch Arrested Development DVDs were thwarted by the increasing concentration they took. Around 8 we called Mico back, but there had been little progress, other than you wriggling your way nicely into a lateral position. I had had a feeling that you were going to take a long time get into the right place, and I was determined to patiently wait it out. I was getting tired though, so Mico left her TENS machine (of which I had unbounded skepticism) and suggested Tylenol and Gravol in order to get some sleep. After she left, Kien called to see if anyone wanted Sarah to bring by some coffee when she got off work (she was working at a café at the time). I’m sure your dad could have used some coffee, but I couldn’t think of a more ridiculous idea and threw the phone across the room (where we found it some days later). I was lying across the bed on my left side, and quite miserable, so we decided to try the TENS machine – and surprisingly enough, it did make things much more bearable. Joanna and your dad were quietly around me in the darkened room as I rode the peaks of each contraction and hoped fervently that they were doing their work. Joanna went home to get some sleep and finally around 1am I was beginning to be distraught with the pain and told your dad to call Mico back.

When she arrived she surmised that you had turned posterior – helpfully deciding to take the long way around to be born. My contractions were still a bit sporadic, though very strong and she tried some homeopathic remedies for irregular contractions to no avail. Finally I asked her to give me Pulsatilla which I thought would be good for positioning. Since I had still not dilated past 4cm I took some Tylenol and Gravol and tried to drift off between contractions. Later I got into the bath and your daddy poured warm water over my back and side with each contraction. I was so enveloped by the pain of contraction I thought that it would overtake me and eradicate me completely from the face of the earth. I wasn’t overly afraid of this happening, but I felt the need to point it out to the other people, but found it difficult to express from my place of deep concentration. What resulted was me pointedly explaining to your daddy over and over again that I was dying. I don’t think it was really effective communication or eased his worry, but he remained steadfast and reassuring.
Finally, Mico decided to check things again and I was at 8cm and your were in a wonderfully anterior position. I cried with relief! My body was working!
Then the contractions became even fiercer, eliciting roars from deep within me with each surge. They were so deep and powerful I was in their thrall, and yet I was their thrall. It was magnificent and terrible and completely dark. I was all alone with the pain of bringing you down, into the world, away from your ethereal, watery world of warm love. The end was uncertain, but I felt sure if I curled up and let myself be buffeted and torn, shredded and pounded, there would be an ending.
The pressure in my pelvis was enourmous and I squatted and groaned and pleaded with you to come down lower, lower. . . oh baby, oh baby. I didn’t know you, but I was enduring everything for you.
Hours rolled past - strange and murky in the most desperately dark part of the night. And finally the crack of pale blue hit the sky and Mico decided to call the second midwife, Heather.
She wanted to break my water (your water too, I suppose) in the hopes that you would descend onto the cervix and cause it to finish opening up. I knew she was tired, and that I was too tired and in pain to think straight, so I was glad Heather was coming to offer her opinion, her wise counsel, her fresh thoughts.
Heather arrived and agreed, yes, waters breaking would help. Then the student arrived and after her Joanna - silent apparitions at the back door. By now I was angry and stomping around the kitchen, looking for an escape. No way but through it though. I remember thinking that “this is just pain, and it is just now”. Not forever, just until it was enough.
Waters were broken, a clear warm cascade, and down your head plopped.
Everything sped up - there was a lip of cervix left - a couple of contractions later it was gone too, replaced by a massive roaring wave of throwing down that made every contraction before seem like a zephyr to a tsunami. On the couch, clutching at your daddy, and then at someone’s suggestion - on the birth stool. Screaming into the cool, bright October morning. Throwing down everything, into the wide, splitting chasm. I couldn’t believe it was you, that the warm wet of your head as someone told me to reach up inside me - that solid, real head - was you. You, and you were coming, thrusting your way closer to the brilliance of the day.
And then, with the most excruciating moment of all you came - and I grabbed you up, up, out of me, past the midwife unwrapping the cord from your chest, right up into my chest. Unbelieveably shell pink (just as your father requested - blue babies scare him he said) with breath and sound. Sweet, sodden and solid with the damp hair at the top of your head to press my face into forever.
After all catching all those other babies who were then swept up into amazed mothers arms - finally there you were, for my arms, for my heart - for my joy- forever.
“It’s a baby, and I had it at home!”
Oh what perfect delirium.
For you,
a thousand times over
and over
again

all my love,
mama

It seems the last couple of weeks I’ve been out in the wide world - first a week in the hospital gynaecology clinic and then a week in Wellington (photos to follow when I get some) for my last block of class of the year. And while both these events were necessary and allowed me to acquire knowledge I wouldn’t otherwise be privy too - it wasn’t the midwifery sort of feeling that I covet and feel best in. In other words - it just wasn’t home.

But I’m back now, and despite a couple of pesky exams looming in the corners (and yes, they still loom despite my ever-maturing attitude of refusing to be intimidated) I’m most looking forward to welcoming the fourth baby from one of my favourite homebirth families - in fact the very first homebirth family to honour me with a place at their birth last year.

That and postponed Thanksgiving dinner with the expatriate Canadians and lots of snuggling with the thing-which-is-unbelieveably-almost-not-a-baby (sporting multiple teeth now!) and hanging out with good (and ridiculous) conversation and company. I’m blissfully aware of my wonderful, amazing lot in life.

And, perhaps most wonderful of all - I finally made a lemon meringue pie. And - O - it is a thing of beauty. And yes, I must be the one perverse person in the world to bake a rectangular pie. Hopefully it’s also edible - we will eat in as soon as I am finished studying cervical screening theory. . . which is what I am clearly doing now. . . as you can see. . .

. . . just  back me up on this one, ok? Surely I deserve a break to inform you of the sweetness of my home.

sweet, sweet, sweet home that it is.

Lately we’ve found ourselves awash in sweet, thin-skinned Meyer lemons we were forced to rescue from the neighbour’s after they moved out leaving their burgeoning tree practically yelling happy yellow lemon invitations over the fence. A most distressing prospect (clearly)

The baby-thing was so sensorily saturated by her lemon-filled environs she began to assign lemon status to anything yellow and rounded

Removing and sorting was a thrice daily event.

Lest we overwhelm our delicate blossom of a child with these Sisiphyean tasks, lacto-fermented Moroccan lemon pickling seemed in order.

Sea salt is sprinkled in a clean jar and lemons pseudo-quartered

and rubbed with chunky salt as well

then squished lovingly into a jar. Love is always the most important part, no?

and topped off with more fresh lemon juice - and exclaimed over!

Now to leave in a cool dark place for a couple weeks.

Lemons lacto-fermenting. Baby placated.
Saturday satisfaction.

As we all know cabbage leaves are a proven soother of sore, engorged, swollen breasts. Possibly not aware? Clearly you are either in the camp of people whose chests have at one point (or several) exuded slow-boiled cabbage odour, or you are not.
In any case, we visited a baby the other day who was piggy-backing  mama’s hormones and had a resultant swollen, red ‘breast’ of miniature proportions (perhaps wrong to find cute, but there it was, quite). Could she apply a piece of cabbage leaf to it? We thought that was an excellent idea, until I had an even more excellent idea. A stupdendously marvellous idea whose occurence put to rest all sorts of childhood musings I had about the miniature existence of some vegetables -

clearly, this occasion called for a brussel sprout

(and in other news - wavy haired and sublime boy baby inserted his hand into his mouth and sailed peacefully over his brand-new mother’s perfectly intact perineum into the sweet spring day. I usually don’t have nice things to say about textbooks, but this birth deserved the title, and moreso the title just delightful)

gratuitous shot for the grandmothers

Why yes, as astute observer Andie pointed out, that is a collection tube lying on the kitchen floor in my previous post. How did such a thing transpire? Are we simply reckless in our sample-taking and prone to flinging the vials around whilst blood sprays in countless directions and clients swoon in a faint? Perhaps we occasionally indulge in a mockery of ten-pin bowling by skimming them across the shiny dark hardwood in a competitive frenzy?

no.

These, dear readers, are the sorry excuses for childhood treasures the resident baby-thing has to endure.

Luckily, she is very accomodating.

In a serious sort of way.

and never fear, sometimes we let her play with these as well.

and furthermore, also never fear our perverse use of perfectly good blood-sucking vaccuum tubes - these ones expired, as they do.

Midwifery mothers. . . . seriously!

Some clients gifted us from their fragrant garden - coriander, lime leaf, lemon grass and tumeric.

We added reams of garlic

A small fingered inquisition

Stones for grinding

And some earthy pounding love

perhaps we will arrive at our next birth steaming with curry

A feast of a day.
My friend and classmate often refers to home visits as “all day drinking tea with your jacket on” - New Zealanders are not famous for heating their homes. It was a yellow, spring-hope day though and we hopped from coffee, biscuits and eager soon-mamas to the outdoor clothesline burgeoning with lots of family-lives-here-and-more-will-soon sage-mamas. Ante-natal appointments conducted over small wet clothes, for those of us who could reach.

Moving inside, we are Bench-seated around the thick wooden table in the cool, quiet kitchen; our easy open conversation spreads and pools with olive oil over cheese and fresh bread, tomato and twists of salad leaves.
We share with women; heartbeats, laughter, measures of folic acid, knowledge plucked from our inner tree and profferred like armfuls of an endless supply of leaves (should you want any). They return with fragrant rushes of lemongrass, coriander and fresh tumeric for our cupboards. With curries spiced with far-from-home and seedlings for our garden and glass tumblers of juice offered with shy, curled hands. And so, something begins to weave itself intricately before us. Some of the designs are new and tender and uncertain, others are complex, well-tested and shaped with shared joy and loss and beginning again.

Trust and connections make good midwifery work.
In one house, my midwife points out all the rooms she has caught babies in.
I read the woman’s labour notes - she has written them herself.
Separate entries for each baby -
labour: a good time.

Seriously, seriously - how am I supposed to not eat this delicious child?

More pictures up at the lovely daddy for the voracious among you.

And thanks to Claire for the ridiculously cute hood!

Self Portrait: breastfeeding in bed

we are the mother-baby; dishevelled, glamourous, lulling time into ecstacy - at the fountain of mouth-upon-breast.