I’m sitting here, knowing that I’m supposed to be writing something entertaining from my childhood and I’m struggling. I know that entertaining doesn’t mean funny. Entertaining means riveting, gripping, something that makes you want to read and read and keep reading. The trouble is, I don’t have clear memories from my childhood that I feel passionate about; at least, passionate enough to turn into something entertaining. Besides, my life starts with a birth. Oh, not my birth; the birth of my daughter. It’s the moment that makes me feel alive, that defines me, that gives me form and substance. It’s my first Memory.
Birthday
Tuesday, January 8, 5:00 AM. Josh and I wake, still only partially moved into his mother's house. Unpacked boxes stand sentry by the door. The alarm hasn't gone off yet, but I'm awake and anxious. Today's the day I get to see my baby face to face. Today, I get to hold her in my arms. Today, I become a Mommy.
Minutes pass in oppressive silence, so I poke Josh awake, "If you want to shower, now's a good time. Don't rush. It's still very early." He rolls over, smiles at me, and snuggles closer, holding me in his arms until the alarm rings a half hour later.
He puts a gentle hand on my forehead, "I'll be right back, sweetheart. You get some more rest. You and Lori have a big day today." I couldn't help but smile, nodding in reply. Such gentle motions from so big and powerful a man leave me breathless and without words. I listen to him get out of bed and into the shower, laying on my side, and try to ready myself. Anxiety comes to me – an unpleasant sensation – when suddenly afraid of the unknown. But no sooner had I started to feel that, than the sense of another presence comes; someone else is in the room with me.
The sense of Him is warm and comforting. He’s a soldier, sent for one purpose alone: to stand guard on me and protect me from Fear, Worry, Doubt, and Pain. It feels as if He curls up behind me, as Josh had done a mere hour before. There is no heartbeat. Instead, I feel the warmth of a perfect summer’s day, when the wind is light and cool and the sunlight is gentle and warm. Relaxation flows through me, down to my very bones. In my mind's eye, I can see this Faceless One, a being made of gentle sunlight, of perfect white clouds. He takes off his breastplate. It is silver-white metal, lighter than air, thin as silk but stronger than steel. Attached are his wings; white dove-feathers radiating with the warm glow, of a night-light. He drapes it on me, and it seems to settle on my shoulders, around my ribs, and against my back. I smile, relax, and nestle down into a light sleep a touch on my shoulder wakes me. I’m refreshed, renewed, and ready for the day. Excitement and Joy are once again mine.
We dress, and finish the packing.
“How many days will we be in the hosiptal?...Bring snacks and water and a magazine for yourelf…No, you won’t be ignoring me. I know you hate waiting…I’m just saying that we don’t know how long it will take and that it could get boring and…Okay, okay!”
We step outside of the rooms we have and into the main part of the house, where I catch a glimpse of the clock: 6:00 AM. All of that, and only an hour has past.
"It's a bit early, babe. My appointment isn't until seven," I say with my eyes on the clock. There’s the faintest of blushes, a light sheepish grin.
"Well, we'll just sit down and wait a little bit," he says in an awkward tone, while he shifts his weight from foot to foot. He's anxious now too.
"We could leave now, get there early, and start the check in, if you want," is my offer. I’m trying to hide the smile as I see his eyes light up.
"Yeah, let's go," he moves for the door instantly.
"Should we wake your mother and let her know we're heading out now?" He’s working at the doorknob and doesn't answer right away.
A little 'hmph' of annoyance escapes him as he turns from the door, "Looks like we'll have to. The door is locked and I don't have the key."
On cue, out walks his mom, somewhat bleary-eyed, asking, "Key to what? You're not leaving until we pray." Her plan: successful.
Perhaps Josh was hoping to avoid this: his faith is something personal, and his mother's way is too forward, but we sit, listening to her prayers over us. I say my own – silently - thanking the Divine for the angel's armor, for the strength I'll need and the calmness I feel. Josh prays too, in his own way. His eyes close, his hand tightens on mine and his breath still for a few heartbeats while he sends his wishes and thoughts Above. At a half past six, we leave for the hospital.
I’m making a few calls to family letting them know that we're on our way, and to call Josh's number or mine - I'll be giving him my phone - for progress checks throughout the day. Arlene calls right as we are arriving to the hospital. Of course she calls. Best friends, near sisters, don’t forget the important things. I’m still getting out of the car.
We walk in, register, give the clerk all my medical orders, and then sit and wait. And wait. And wait. Kathy, Josh's mom, joins us before going into work. The clerks change their shift. Lights come on, and phones start to ring. Kathy leaves, and still we wait. I feel my first mild contraction.
"Ma'am, I'm sorry to bother, I know we're waiting on a room, but if you could let them know that I think I'm having some mild contractions right now, I'd really appreciate it," I state to the clerk that's trying desperately to secure me a labor and delivery room. Twenty minutes later, she gets me into triage. Any bed is better than no bed, and there they can at least begin the monitoring and blood work, though they refused to infuse me with the induction chemical, not wanting me to go into full labor and have my baby in the ER – I guess that makes sense.
In we go. I get into the little gown and socks, pee in the cup, and get into bed. Fetal monitor gets hooked up, and they're just about to open the blood work baggie when a delivery nurse arrives with a wheelchair.
"I'm ready for Ms. Carranza now," she says, and with some doing I'm transferred to a wonderful, dimly lit, comfortably large delivery suite. My mom and Josh's Aunt Linda arrive and we begin the next phase of waiting. I glance at the clock. It's 9am.
The doctor visits me. I'm having contractions and am 2cm dilated already. Time for the booster, aka the labor inducing drug: oxytocin. They shoot me up at 10am, and for two hours nothing is really happening. The contractions are mild, and I'm pretty much talking through them, laughing with Aunts Debbie & Linda and my mom, and not really doing much of anything. Josh takes a break while Arlene joins us for her lunch break.
Arlene, this baby is your fault, and completely your fault. Not five minutes after her arrival, long enough for one Arlene-joke, the first active labor pain hits me. Labor; it's not as bad as everyone make it out to be. I recall the horror stories, that labor was the single most painful thing ever. In actuality, while I've never truly felt anything quite like labor pains, I have had menstrual cramps that hurt worse than labor pains. (When cramps land you in the ER getting pumped with pain meds, you know they're bad.) I don't think...no, I know, for a fact, that I’m handling the pain the way I am only with Josh's constant support.
First time mom here. Why couldn’t I find and enroll in a Lamaze class? I’m laying here, in labor, clueless. Thank God for my delivery nurse. A three-time mom herself, Gina is awesome at describing what I'm going to feel and how to handle it. I start off by asking Josh to talk to me. Now, I know that sounds a bit bizarre, but when he uses a certain type of voice, soft and deep and slow, all my tension just melts away. That is the voice I was asking for, and I don't much care what he says as long as it was in that Voice. But the things he starts telling me were making Aunt Linda laugh - stories about his grandfather, and fishing in Louisiana.
There is this alligator that stole one of Grampa Grant's fishing lures - his favorite lure. It gets stuck around the gator's tail, and Grampa has to cut it loose. Several months later, Grampa's out fishing on that same strip of lake, when he sees his fishing lure, sitting out on the water, in plain sight. With delight, Grampa moves his boat over and reaches out to scoop up his lure. No sooner does he close his hand around the lure, than the line - still attached to the lure - goes taunt and the very same gator Grampa had cut loose months before, comes snapping out at him from the water. Grampa’s been hooked by a gator; the very gator he'd hooked himself and the gator using his own lure against him! See, the gator, having gotten the lure stuck to his tail, must have noticed that he'd caught a fish with it. When he ate the fish off the lure, lo and behold - another fish came, and another, and so on. Grampa’s lure had given this gator the tool he needed to fish for himself. I guess that old adage about giving a man a fish over teaching a man to fish can be applied to gators too. I’m giggling too, right along with Josh’s Aunt Linda.
By 1:00 PM, I'm in full active labor, and people other than Josh are really starting to distract me from staying calm and not tensing up at each contraction.
“Okay, everyone out. Time for Momma to get to work,” Gina says softly.
It’s quiet and peaceful and I’m settling down into a steady rhythm when my mother comes back in; I can hear her talking. Tension floods into me – another contraction. I can't focus on Josh's voice with her voice there. They’re just competing for attention, and I’m the one losing the battle.
I start chanting, forgetting to breathe, "Bye, Mom. Bye. Bye. Bye, Mom. Bye. Bye. Bye!"
There is no greater sense of relief than that of Gina very calmly and very gently taking my mother by the hand and leading her toward the door.
"I'm sorry," she says; voice naught but a whisper, giving Josh the space to reclaim my focus, "Sounds like she doesn't want any more visitors right now."
But focus and control, once lost, is hard to regain. I ‘m whimpering, "I can't do this anymore. I'm tired. I can't breathe. I can't. I can't. Make it stop, just for a moment. Just so I can think. Just so I can catch my breath. I need ten minutes. Ten minutes to rest, and think. Please? Please?"
Josh's voice is full of worry, worry I can hear and feel past the brave front that had been cracking with each successive contraction, "Do you want an epidural?"
Epidural? Morphine? It’s like a smack to the back of the head – like, “duh!”
"Anything to let me catch my breath, to let me think a moment. Anything. I don't care!" I’m breathless and glad I signed the consent form.
Gina’s acknowledgement is a cool sip of water on a hot summer day, "He'll be here very soon, Claudia. In the meantime, try to stay focused on your breathing, like we'd talked about; each pain opening your hips up to make room for Baby."
Open. That's what I had to focus on, and so I ask Josh to help me focus.
"Breathe." It’s my cue; a slow, relaxed, inhale through my nose and an unhurried filling of my lungs.
"Open." It’s a slow exhale through my lips, as if I am holding a messoforte on my oboe, an unhurried opening of my mind, heart, and body in joyful and unrushed anticipation of my child. At each Open, I’m picturing a ring, the ring of my hips, stretching open into infinity.
I’m not counting. With my eyes closed, I have no concept of time. Time is sitting in the waiting room outside, nervously holding his breath along with the rest of my family, wondering when there will be news from the delivery suite that a beautiful baby girl has been born. The only thing I know is the inhale, the exhale, the calm, the inhale, the exhale, the calm, the inhale, the exhale, the calm, then a sharp metal click. It’s almost amusing, how as a door opens Josh closes, his voice growing tighter, more reserved and distant. It’s the sound of Josh hiding his emotions and warmth from the world because someone else is in the room; someone he doesn't want seeing it. The lack of it is a sharp let down, like falling from a soft cloud.
I’m losing control of the pain again, shaking and crying, "Go away. Kathy, get out. I love you, but go away. I can't. Go away! Go away!"
Where’s Gina? The nurse, where is she? Kathy has walked to my bedside and is trying to calm me down, but she’s all I can hear and not what I want to hear. But worse, I can’t feel him anymore; he's withdrawn emotionally, body and heart falling silent. I’m tensing, unable to find purchase. Where’s Gina?
“Get out. Get out. Get the fuck…Go away.” My head is thrashing side to side, my hands shoving
g at Kathy’s. She’s clawing at me, ripping at my hair and my sanity. And then she’s gone, Gina having returned to escort her out. But the damage is done. I want to push, I want to do something, I want to find my calm again, but the forever opening ring just isn’t powerful enough. I’m losing myself, and crying out. Behind my closed eyelids, in the low warm yellow-glow of the dimly lit room, the next contraction brings a soft white light. White, like the protective angel that visited me that morning, like the wings he'd given me to shelter me. As the memory radiates into my mind, I can see the breastplate on me; the wings fluttering behind me like a silken mantle.
"Open," says he, and I feel the wings open; a bird taking to wing.
The pain is gone, replaced with a stillness of calm like no other. Each cycle of what had been pain comes now as a gentle white light in my eyes. I’m flying through the Clouds of Heaven on borrowed wings, soaring ever upwards without fear or tension. All there is, holding me aloft, is my Wind, Josh's gentle voice.
Five centimeters open, Lori’s not getting into position, so Dr. Montalvo breaks my water to help coax her down. It’s not a terrible thing. I can’t even see what the doctor’s doing down there, what with Lori in the way, but it feels like I’m peeing without needing to pee. I can’t help myself, I’m laughing at it, the humor keeping me aloft even as my Wind takes a few minutes break since the Doctor is In. I last three and a half more hours, flying about the clouds with my borrowed wings, when Steve, the anesthesiologist, comes in give me my epidural. I’m no longer in pain, as I had been, but now the urge to push is so intense that I’m starting to have trouble staying aloft in my white clouds. (Josh's chant has gone from "Breathe. Open. Good girl." to "Breathe. Open. Don't push. Good girl.") I’m getting tired. Josh is getting tired. Lori, however, is fine. (Thank God!)
They sit me up so that I’m hunched over while Steve gives me the obligatory here-are-the-risks-of-this-procedure-are-you-really-sure-you-want-us-to-do-this-even-though-it’s-clear-that-you’re-not-in-your-right-mind-right-now-and-we-really-shouldn’t-try-to-get-you-to-think-clearly-about-anything-important-right-now risk speech. It’s all Greek to me, so even if I was in a right state of mind, which I’m not, I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t be able to understand it anyway. And then I have to muse, laughing through another bit of pain, that I’m not level headed enough to consent to my own health, but I’m rational enough to realize that I’m not understanding what he’s saying to me. At the moment, I frankly don't care. I just want some measure of control back, something like my own mind, because I’m losing sanity and fast.
I’m being told what they are doing, what I'm feeling. They are washing my back, taping something down. There’s a pinch then something cold.
"How do you feel," he asks me after a moment.
"I don't know," I reply. How should I know? To date, the closest thing I’ve come to anesthesia is Tylenol Codeine 3 for a broken pinky; it still aches when it’s cold or I’ve been practicing my viola too long at a sitting.
Steve stays with me as Josh helps me lay back into the pillows. It’s like being lain down on a cloud, the tension falling away from me like rain drops, leaving me light, fluffy, and lined with silver. I sigh.
"How do you feel, Ms. Carranza? Any better," Steve asks. He has to, I suppose. I’m not sure he needs to though. I’m so relaxed that I can’t even feel myself smile dreamily.
"Ah, yes," I finally get out, eyes opening for the first time in hours. "Thank you, Steve. Now, go. I waited for you. I don't want to be the reason another is waiting longer than she can take. Thank you, very much. I'm myself again. Thank you."
He’s smiling, doing a few other things that I'm not sure what they are. Has anyone ever shooed him away? Gina’s murmuring something about thoughtful, while Josh is getting my attention.
"Do you feel better?" He looks as tired as I feel, although tense where I am limp as ragweed. I nod - a smile.
"Yes, yes I’m fine," just as the doctor returns to check up on me.
She’s happy to see how far I'm progressing and how much calmer I am now with the epidural, but still worry abounds. The baby, low as she may be, is not engaging my pelvis. Lori is stuck.
"We're going to have to a c-section to get her out. She's just too big to get down the way she needs to be. Are you okay with that?" Well, there goes the birthing plan. No plan survives contact with the enemy. Is my baby the enemy? Hells to the no; labor is.
"Yes, Doctor; whatever needs to be done to have her safe and healthy." I am no longer afraid.
"There's a wait on the OR, Doctor," I hear Steve remark. I didn’t realize he’d come back in the room, but I’m glad he’s here. He’s a really nice guy. Maybe I’ll get his name and send him a Christmas card. Now, there’s an idea. "There are four other deliveries needing c-section ahead of Ms. Carranza."
There’s a frown on my doctor’s face and a complaint on her lips before she turns to me, "Can you wait for maybe an hour then? We can see if Baby engages by then. If she does, you'll have it natural. If she does not, then we'll go into surgery, okay?"
"Sure thing - I'm better now, in control, so I can wait as long as you need me to. Make sure the other babies are safe. Lori and I are okay right now."
As the medical staff move out to get things ready, Josh again turns to me, "Will you be okay here, if I go? I need a break."
"Yes, yes of course! Go. Thank you for staying with me," said all while I’m pushing Josh's hand away. "But will you send the Moms in? I think I was really rude and I need to apologize."
Josh just smiles, kissing my forehead. "They won't think any less of you for it, darling. You were in labor. I'm sure they remember, and from what I hear, my mother was psychotic during labor. You were the perfect Calm," he assures me before heading out.
A few minutes later, Kathy and Mom come in, and I’m apologizing profusely, "I'm so sorry if I was rude. I hope you aren't mad or offended. I just couldn't focus with anyone but Josh in the room, and I really needed to focus."
Kathy just smiles, "It's okay, darlin'. You were wonderful!"
While my mother quips, pretending to fight a proud smile, "I'm so offended!"
Laughing, I lean back on my pillows, a sigh of contentment drifting from me, a zephyr of relief: "Still - I'm sorry that I was rude. I could have asked nicely for you both to go.”
Alright, so even I know that’s a load of bullshit. I don't believe anyone could have politely asked to be left alone while in the middle of active labor. Clearly, the moms think that it’s bullshit too, for they just laugh while I being to doze off, resting after a long day. My family takes turns, even when anxious, and it’s my brother’s turn now to come in and see me. I giggle when I see him walk in. Mom had told me, right before she left, that he was here and wanting to see me. He walks in, steps as delicate as eggshells, hands slightly white from gripping themselves, and lips pale with worry. I’m his baby, and I’m having my baby. My smile is one of support. He needs it more than I do – I’m on the happy drugs after all. We start chatting, filling him in on the triage, the Arlene-joke, the oh-my-god-get-the-fuck-out moment, when the nurse steps into the room, her tone brisk.
"The OR is ready: C-section in ten minutes." I think Camilo and I go pale at just about the same time.
"Can you get Josh?" If he nods or murmurs a worried reply, I’m not hearing it or seeing it. My ears are filled with the nurse’s words: “c-section, ten minutes”. My eyes are blind, staring up at the ceiling, hoping to find… something.
I’m wheeled into surgery, prepped, and starting to grow frantic. “Where’s Josh? Where’s Josh? You can’t start without Josh. He can’t miss this. Where’s Josh? Can’t we wait, just a few minutes? Can I have my phone? I can call him. It’ll take just a minute. Or maybe, you can dial for me? My arms feel a bit heavy and I can’t really sit up… Why’s that?... Oh, that’s not important! Where’s…“
In he walks; my poor gentle giant. It’s three gowns, or is it four; one for his front, one for his back, another with the arms tied at a shoulder to try to cover his sides. The booties don’t fit either. I can see medical tape at his ankles, holding the how-many-did-they-use booties to his shoes. The mask is a tiny splotch of cyan at the tight of his nose, barely hiding his mouth. A second one covers his beard. He’s got a cap on too; two of them: One for the top of his head, the other for the back of it. The room seemed big at first, when I was rolling in alone, but now it’s so small that Josh seems as if he is forced to curl himself into a bundle to sit at my head. Much shuffling has me giggling again, over which I can hear the doctor telling me what they are doing.
“Okay, we’re making the incision. Here we go. You’re going to feel some tugging. I’m going to push on your stomach.”
Josh goes pale, eyes going wise, and I can see fear. I squeeze his hand, wanting to assure him that I’m not feeling anything, but nothing comes out of my mouth. My brain is in a bit of a fog and things aren’t clear until…
"Wuh. Wuh. Wuh. Waaah. Wuh, waah. Wuh, wuh, wuh." It’s a rhythmic, grunting, sort of cry, coming from a fat little face, red and upset. I reach out to touch her (red, upset, and smelling sweeter than a new car) then fall back closing my eyes, hearing a bit of a song drift across my mind, just this part, repeating over and over:
Till the day I was blessed with you…”
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