So one of the things that I love about Orthodoxy is its approach to the Lenten period--that time in which we prepare ourselves to receive our Resurrected Lord. Even in the midst of our speedy, "jump-right-in" culture, the Church, in her wisdom, has us prepare to prepare. In this, she seems particularly attuned to the psychology of celebration, recognizing that before we can make ready for the Feast, we must make ready to make ready--the spiritual equivalent of scrubbing and prepping the vegetables, perhaps!
And we do so, with those Sundays leading up to Lent, the ones which may elicit an inward groan from those of us who have become familiar with the Liturgical rhythm: "What? Zacchaeus Sunday already," we whine, "But we just had the Nativity Fast!" And Lent does seem to come all too soon after Nativity, announcing itself five Sundays before its actual beginning with the Gospel reading about the little man who wanted to see Jesus so desperately that he was willing to humble himself to the point of climbing a tree like a little child. Next, we have the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, that parable warning us against being "convinced of [our] own righteousness," and thereby "despising all others" (Luke 18:9). Then comes the well-known Prodigal Son, which we might do well to think of also as the Sunday of the Loving Father. And now, the Sunday of the Last Judgment which, of course, can only be understood within the context of the three previous Sunday readings, as well as the Paschal Mystery to which our Lenten journey points. That is to say, it is not so much an answer to the question "What's going to happen when I die?" as it is an injunction to love the "least of these"--the little people, the despised, even those who reject our love--with the same love that Christ shows for the Church. As such, it paves the way well for the next and final Sunday of pre-Lenten preparation, that of Forgiveness Sunday, in which each member of the entire body of believers asks forgiveness of every other member.
This year, I have a renewed appreciation for all of this preparation. Rather than dreading the self-deprivation it announces, or rolling my eyes at its predictability, I am relishing the chance to get ready to get ready. Perhaps becoming a mother taught me something. (Here, I am thinking particularly of the folic acid I began taking just before my wedding night, in lieu of birth control, to pacify what I considered an excessively anxious doctor. Little did I know that essential nutrient would go to work the very next month, to build the healthy person we have come to know and love as Katherine!) Maybe being a mother has taught me something, with its endless preparatory tasks: preparing meals, packing snacks and extra underpants, packing for trips, dressing children for church, cleaning for parties, cleaning for houseguests... and the list goes on.
This year especially, the importance of preparation hits me with particular poignancy, as I begin to take stock of what we have in store for the upcoming birth of our baby: birth pool (check), hose (too short), bulb syringe (check--I think... should check that drawer), extra sheets (check), rubber sheet (check--though likely unnecessary as my water doesn't usually break till the end anyhow), oxytocin (must ask doctor for a script!), birth ball (check), holy water (check), incense (check)... and again the list goes on. And how does one begin to prepare for that taste of death that we encounter with the birth of a child. (If you have the answer to this one, please tell me: I'm literally dying to know!)
The moment that stands out to me from Naomi's birth is none other than that last second when I was convinced we were both dead, as my midwife's anxious voice, "DON'T PUSH: We've got a cord!!!" broke through what had up till that point been a fairly peaceful labour. In that second, I vividly remember calling out to Jesus "SAVE ME!" with the kind of fervour that only true desperation (or perhaps a few months on Mount Athos) can summon. And He did. And she cried. And I laughed. And all was well, and all manner of thing was well.
In these last five weeks of pregnancy, and the upcoming six weeks of Lent, I have no choice but to allow myself to become consumed with preparation for what is to come. There's the icon festival at our church, the first Saturday and Sunday of Lent (and I still have two icons to complete for it, God willing!) There are Lenten altar cloths to be sewn for a priest friend (eight down, four to go--that church must have a ton of liturgical-type tables!) There's the inevitable nesting that should kick in any day now (though I'm determined to limit the floor-washing to once a week!) And again, the list goes on.
And my prayer is that, in the midst of all this preparation, Pascha itself is not entirely lost...
So, growing a baby is hard work, folks. I wish I could say it wasn't, but I've found myself a little tapped-out energy-wise, lately. I keep having ideas for posts (rants, mostly, so you should be happy to be spared!), but the execution is a little trickier. By the time the day is over, I mostly just want to collapse. Although, yesterday evening, rather than collapsing, I participated in a maternity photo shoot, which was incredibly rewarding. (Because what 8-months-pregnant gal doesn't need an ego boost as far as body image is concerned?!)
Now that I'm pregnant again, and nearing the end of the first trimester, I find myself thinking back to both my birth experiences, as well as to the 11 week miscarriage I had in February. And reading other birth stories and other blogs about breastfeeding and motherhood. At some point, I'd like to get around to posting detailed, individual accounts of both births, and perhaps even of the miscarriage, which was sickeningly, horrifyingly labour-like, but as I lie here on the couch with debilitating nausea and a suspected UTI (from dehydration, most likely), I realize that tonight is not that night. I would be up well past my (9:30pm) bedtime, and that would spell disaster for tomorrow. Nevertheless, I want to paint a picture of my relationship with procreation in broad strokes.
Katherine Eva (soon to be 4) was born after 42 hours of excruciating labour (I'm counting from the first contraction, but the bulk of those hours were active labour.) We had planned to birth at home with the help of a direct-entry midwife, but decided to transfer to the hospital at hour 36. I was exhausted and scared. So was my husband. My midwife was weary and concerned. The hospital experience was what it was. I was positioned in a C-Curve, had a fetal monitor strapped to my belly, and had an IV put in my arm. I accepted narcotics, which seemed useless in that I still felt a whole lot of pain, but I progressed from 5 to 8 under their influence, so maybe they helped to relax me. (My midwife swears I was already almost fully dilated at home, which leads me to believe that being in the hospital was stressful enough to cause my labour to regress. I know there's debate in the medical community about whether or not this is possible. I'm convinced it is: our minds are powerful, powerful things.) I remember desperately needing to pee and not being permitted to use a bathroom. I was offered a catheter (uh, no thanks?) and a bedpan (in a room full of people--yeah, right), but under no circumstances was I allowed to use the bathroom to relieve myself, despite completely normal readings from the fetal monitor, which was horribly painful against my contracting, exhausted uterus. I initially accepted an epidural, though when the anesthesiologist got there I was told my husband would have to leave the room. At that point, I was so frustrated I told that doctor exactly where he could go shove that needle. (Hint: it wasn't in my spine.) So, no epidural. Pushing was two hours of hell. Hospital staff insisted on having the cord cut as soon as she came out--before breathing was established, the idiots, let alone before the cord stopped pulsing--so she was whisked off my chest before I could hold her so that they could give her oxygen. She weighed in at 8lbs13ounces, which they thought was a lot, so they wanted me to bring her to them for a heel stick before every feeding. I finally refused (what? I can say "no"?) but only after letting them stab my precious baby in the heel 4 times. I was exhausted and needed to go home and sleep, but they wouldn't discharge Katherine for 48hours because they were concerned about my lack of a hospital file and wanted to run a host of bloodtests, many of which I'd already had! All in all, there are only four good things that I can take from that labour experience, and three are negatives.
1) No Cesarean. Thank God I did not choose a hospital birth initially. I am almost certain that given the length of my labour, I would have gone under the knife.
2) No epidural. This gave me the confidence I needed for my second birth experience. Also, my blood pressure tends to be on the low side, and epidurals can cause drops in blood pressure.
3) No episiotomy (and no tears). Thank God for a doctor who'd done her research. I vividly remember leaning forward as Katie was crowning and begging her "Please, please, don't cut me!" And she said, with some pride, the most reassuring words I heard from any of the medical staff that day: "I've never done an episiotomy."
4) A healthy, beautiful baby. Yes, the hospital experience was thoroughly traumatizing (as the loss of autonomy and physical integrity is wont to be), but I cannot be utterly ungrateful to the people who, misguided though they were, assisted in the birth of my first daughter.
That was the condensed version, I swear! I tried to stick to the raw facts and leave out most of what was going on for me on an emotional, psychological and spiritual level during that birth. But the next birth story will be shorter, mostly because it was more peaceful.
Naomi Johanna (now 2 and a bit) was much more civilized, taking under twelve hours to emerge, God bless her. (Okay, my seasoned cervix might have had something to do with it too!) A few hours on the birth ball, a few hours in the birth pool (a new addition from the previous homebirth attempt: I knew I'd need to pull out all the pain management stops), and I was all set. We were able to treat the event with the sanctity owed to all birth. We prayed, we lit incense, we put Holy Water in the birthing pool. My doula (also Naomi's godmother), was an extraordinarily calming presence. The pushing was intense, but manageable. I was only afraid at one point, when my midwife said "We've got cord! Don't push yet! Wait, wait!" and my body was pushing Naomi out with or without my consent! I never got a chance to feel the "urge to push" with Katie, rushed as I was in the hospital, with a team of nurses cheering "Push! Push! You're at 10! Push!" So this experience was miraculous to me, my body doing the work for me! She came up out of the water, took her first breath and wailed, but was quickly soothed in my arms and at my breast. Papa cut the cord a while later, at my request, because the afterbirth was quite painful, and I needed him to take the baby. All in all, I couldn't have asked for a better birth experience.
Warning: the following describes a miscarriage. It is not especially graphic, but I am describing a miscarriage and I don't mince words. If you want to skip this account, by all means do so. But please no comments that suggest you were not warned. Yes, it is a revolting, horrible and appalling thing, as death tends to be, but it was a revolting, horrible and appalling thing that happened to me, and there was a certain sanctity hovering around the experience, just as with my birth experiences.
The miscarriage. The miscarriage was hard. Once a sonogram confirmed what the slow bleeding suggested--no heartbeat, a 9-week-old fetus when I was 11 weeks pregnant--I went home and waited for nature to take its course. We cried. I got some herbal recommendations from my midwife to speed things along. I saw my family doctor for advice about how to manage the miscarriage. And I waited. And waited. When it finally began, it began with a vengeance. I felt like I was in full-blown labour, but with no doula, no midwife, no birth pool and no baby. That last one was what made it all so hard, the pain so futile. At 11pm, I told my husband that I wanted to go to a hospital if the worst wasn't over by midnight. At 11:15, I said: "Get me to a hospital!" Our children were sleeping, but fortunately our downstairs neighbours are close friends (Naomi's doula and family), so we knocked on their door with a baby monitor on our way out and asked them to watch the kids. (My dear friend ended sleeping upstairs, just to be sure she could hear the children.)
Now I hate hospitals. Hate them. But I can thoroughly relate to the experience a friend of mine had when serious medical concerns forced her to birth in the hospital: I was relieved to be there. Before we'd left home, I'd been soaking quite a bit more than the "safe" one pad an hour, but I'd been told by friends who'd miscarried at home to expect a lot of blood, that this was normal, that it would stop once you passed the baby. By the time I got to the hospital, I was bleeding so profusely, there wasn't any point in changing my pads! If I had begun to hemorrhage like this at home, I would have been terrified. Being in a place where they could monitor my vitals, give me extra fluid and enough pain meds to take the edge off was just what I needed. I don't think that miscarriage at home is always dangerous, but in my case it would have been. There was something pathological about that miscarriage. My uterus was trying to flush out the dead child by wringing itself out like a sponge, but for some reason my body wouldn't release the dead one within it. Once the placenta finally detached and came out, the relief was instantaneous. I was still weak and sore, but the contractions--for that is what they were, not "cramps"--ceased.
Now my primary reason for wanting to miscarry at home rather than the hospital has to do with my belief in the sanctity of the human body, even human remains. Human remains are holy and as such deserve a proper burial. I was told that if I went to the hospital, my baby's remains would be sent to pathology and then destroyed. I couldn't live with that. But I knew what I was up against when I went in, so I made sure that I was alone in the bathroom when the right time came. As grotesque as this might sound if you don't get my sanctity-of-the-body logic, I carried my baby's remains out of that hospital in a plastic cup safely tucked away in my bag and buried them two days later in a monastery cemetery, after a small service performed by the sisters of that monastery. I named that child Julian Ariel. (It seemed a good name for a baby whose gender remains a mystery to me.)
Back to the present. I carry within my body a fourth child. God willing, I will carry this child to term and have a healthy, peaceful pregnancy and homewaterbirth. Nothing is certain, and yet I hope, I trust.
