Birthing Babies

What is it about women and birthing? A pregnant belly invites all mothers to marshal forth the most intimate of details. A few days ago, when discussing the impending birth of my grandson James Whitney, an eighty-year-old acquaintance immediately began describing her epidural. I paused. It seemed so incongruous, thinking of this woman who hobbles with a cane as young enough to be in the throes of labor. (I remind myself of the young children in Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine who refuse to believe that the seventy-two-year-old Mrs. Bentley was the child in the photograph.) Then I wondered.  I too am no longer a spring chicken. How often have others looked askance as I have regaled them with my labor and delivery stories?

And yet I do not censor myself in this post. What follows is the birthing experience of my first child, Chrissy. Perhaps I get a pass because I wrote this twenty-six years ago, when I was still young, only a few months before I got pregnant with James' father Nathan. Can I mention it this one last time?

As I reread this short essay, I am intrigued by how some things have changed and yet others are still the same. The bookstore Printers Inc. is no more. Gone the way of most independent bookstores in the Internet age. And as nostalgic as I am, I too search the Internet, not bookstores nor libraries for information. If I were birthing today, I would undoubtedly have been surfing the net for information until labor became unbearable. 

Yet some things never change--our personalities and our universal experiences. I am still me. I still approach life's challenges by endlessly seeking out information. And the experience of birthing a baby, despite well-appointed birthing rooms and modern technology, is still very much the same--an intimate, emotional, once-in-a-lifetime experience, never to be forgotten and far too often to be shared.

By the Book
(1988)

As a freshman in college who had never cooked a meal in my entire life, I quickly learned an enduring truth from my best friend Stephpanie: "If you can read, you can cook." Because I shared not only an apartment, but also cooking responsibiliteis with five other roommates, I quickly learned how to read a recipe. Stephanie and I also decided to major in English. If all else failed, we figured we coud get jobs as cooks after we graduated from college.

By the time I graduated, even I could make a lemon meringue pie my mother envied. I had also learned how critical Stephanie's adage was. I could learn to do anything simply by reading. Never mind that the method had failed me in the conversational German class I took as a junior and the racquet ball class I took as a senior. A survey of the "how-to" titles in any public library proved hundreds of publishers concurred. If I could read, I could dress for success, program my computer and travel Europe on $10 a day. How well I had spend my parents' pennies by studying English.

It was only natural that when I got pregnant years later, I reasoned that if I could read, I too could survive pregnancy. I placed my confidence in the well-stocked childbirth and pregnancy section at Printers Inc, the eclectic bookstore a few blocks from my apartment. Its consumer guides to pregnancy shattered the mystique of finding an obstetrician by stepping me through researching, interviewing, and choosing one. (After looking at the Bay area yellow pages, however, I chose Dr. Wedell, whose only recommendation was that his elder sister had taught Latin at my Utah high school.) Nutrition books counted caloric and calcium intakes for the two of us, fashion guides dictated the correct fashion statements for my burgeoning body and a pencil-thin Jane Fonda demonstrated pelvic rocks and wall pushups. (In disbelief, I stared at a sea of leotard-bursting bellies engulfing Fonda and swore that I would never get that fat.) Every few weeks, I went from morning sickness to delivery in a few hours and a few hundred pages as I skimmed the latest "complete" book of pregnancy.

By my ninth month of pregnancy, I had read not only every outdated issue of People and Time magazines in Dr. Wedell's magazine rack, but all the posters and newspaper clippings papering his walls as well. Committed to memory were the free nutrition and hemorrhoid pamphlets that I had shyly stuffed into my purse along with complimentary copies of Baby Talk and American Baby. I doubt there were few books in print connected to pregnancy that I had not read. Nonetheless, two days after my husband and I had finished a rather disappointing Lamaze class (alas, no handouts), when a sudden low backache made me feel Chrissy was on her way, I headed straight for the bookstore to double check a few facts one last time.

Picking out the first complete book of pregnancy that I saw, I checked my symptoms once more. Backache. Cramps. Increased Braxton-Hicks contractions. Nesting instinct. Even I had the nesting instinct. This must be it, I thought. Hurriedly, I turned once more to the three stages of delivery. I grimaced. Will my body really do that, I wondered. Maybe I don't want a baby after all. A chastising contraction gripped my abdomen. Too late, I thought. I remembered the woman screaming during my tour of the maternity wing of the hospital. Take a cleansing breath. Breath slowly. In through your nose. Out through your mouth, I coached myself. Stay calm. Relax. Reality loomed: I'm going to be that screaming woman soon, I thought.

After eunduring natural, medicated, forceps and cesarean deliveries as well as a few serious contractions, I reshelved the books and I returned home. I waited out the rest of the afternoon, napping and nibbling on toast and juice. I avoided the kitchen and the wafting aroma of stew simmering in the crockpot. No heavy foods, the books had advised. Pain and contrctions I could not control, but my appetite I could. But at 5:30, I threw the book out the window. My will power lost for a mess of pottage. I devoured a piping hot bowl of the rich stew.

When my husband returned home from work an hour later, so did my calm. Scott was not well-versed in childbirth. He had never attended a baby shower. His naive amazement at our Lamaze instructor's description of birth had embarrassed me. It was hard not to feel knowledgeable and controlled around Scott. I suggested we go to the bookstore just one last time. After whiling away an afternoon with only my morning's reading to think about, I just had to check out a few more things one more time.

At the bookstore, I picked up a new Lamaze book that had somehow escaped my attention. I began reading all sorts of things I had never heard of. I madly set about scribbling notes and new lists as we timed my contractions.

"Scott," I whispered in amazement. "This book says you should use cold oranges to ..."

I lowered my voice. "Start your watch," I whispered as I began to breath slowly in through my nose.

Scott's wristwatch beeped as he fumbled to set its timer. I could hear him breathing heavily. In and out. In and out. He's breathing too rapidly, too loudly, I thought. Does anyone else hear him, I wondered.

"Stop," I whispered.

He stopped inhaling mid-breath and clicked the button on his wristwatch. Then he gasped and whispered emphatically, "Eight minutes, Marcia. Eight minutes. The last three contractions have been only eight minutes apart. Don't you think we should do something?"

"Shhh," I whispered back. I looked around quickly. "I don't want anyone to know."

To stave off embarrassment and appease my husband, we bought a book and went home. There I repacked my suitcase, rearranging the two-month-old creases in my new nursing gown, and we went to bed for a rather restless night. Like clockwork, my husband dutifully recorded every contraction and rolled cold oranges in the small of my back to ease the pressure. And when we had checked off all the criteria for active labor and then waited an extra half hour to compensate for our being overly anxious first-time parents, we called Dr. Curtis. (Unfortunately, none of the consumer guides had suggested I ask Dr. Wedell about his vacation plans. He was in Australia.)

We drove to the hospital, where four hours later in a fashion something like the books described, I pushed, Dr. Curtis pulled, and Chrissy emerged, totally unaware of the world around her. She looked something like the books had described. She had an enormous, misshapen head, eyes nearly swollen shut, and bluish-pink, wrinkly skin. That gorgeous child with soft, dark hair was finally in my arms. I suppose she would have come and looked exactly the same even had I not read a single book.

I have since given up Lamaze books. Labor and delivery have cured me of that obsession. I still go to bookstores, but Chrissy does not like lingering while I peruse the stacks and skim the books. Instead I must buy all those child rearing books and read and reread them while she naps. It only seems right.

A child birthed with the benefit of all the latest Yuppie guides to pregnancy deserves more than just Dr. Spock, don't you think?

Mother's Day

Anyone who knows me knows that I revel in being a mother to my three “practically perfect” children. I cannot stop talking or writing about them. Being a cheerleader for me children has opened me to some many worlds I would have never known. (Go Maroon and White Marching Colonials!)

But, when it comes to Mother’s Day, I have a love/hate relationship. I love that once a year I can make capricious demands of my children. (There is some glee in knowing their rooms will be clean once a year.)  But I hate the pomposity of Mother’s Day. (I do not like it here or there! I do not like it anywhere!) But perhaps it is our American iteration that I despise with all its pedestals of perfection and paragons of virtue. I confess I much prefer celebrating Argentine Mother’s Day in October—no grand expectations, just a simple call from my loving son.

Consequently, I have written a short, derivative poem about Mother’s Day. I read it to Daniel yesterday.

He got it.

After I finished, he looked at me quizzically. “Where’s the rest?”

“The rest? “ I replied. “There is no more. That’s it.”

“Really?” he said, oh-so-cautiously. He knows when to avoid a minefield.

I know what he was expecting—my usual positive spin. Sorry, Daniel. There is none.

I have a friend who wears black on Mother’s Day. Me? I write cynical poems.

Reflection upon Waking on Mother’s Day

In the chapel Saints will come and go

Talking of Mothers beatified.

And indeed now is the time

To wonder, “Do I dare? “Oh, do I dare?”

Time to imagine the lonely pew

With my padded hips and heavy heart—

(They will say: “Behold our mothers’ prim perfections)

My frumpled frock, which reaches to my double chin,

My earrings, broken yet dear, dangling past memories

(I will say: How thin is my maternal shadow!”)
Do I dare

Disturb this universe of piety?

Shall I stay? Shall I go?

All my decisions and revisions, which I constantly reverse.

And I wonder

Do I dare? Oh, do I dare?

Tent the covers o’er my head

To securely eat a peach?

Do I dare? Oh, do I dare

Stay safely cocooned

This Mother’s Day?

Surprised by Joy

On my daughter’s twenty-eighth birthday, I share a reflection on joy I wrote to my children several months ago.

Thanks to Liza Dawson’s Relief Society lesson, I have been thinking of the theme of joy the past few days, especially in relation to my children.  And when I think of Chrissy, I think of the phrase “Surprised by Joy.” 

It is both the title of a C.S. Lewis book, describing his journey to Christianity as well as a Wordsworth’s poem, “Surprised by Joy—Impatient as the Wind.” I think most often of C.S. Lewis when the phrase comes to mind.  His allusion to the Wordsworth poem shares only the serendipitous nature of joy. Lewis is surprised by the joys of a world created by a god he has embraced. Joy catches Wordsworth off guard. In fact, he is so surprised by some unnamed joy that he turns to share it with his daughter, before guiltily taking a step back in grief, remembering that he cannot share with his beloved daughter Catherine, who is deceased. But I don’t wonder that he is perhaps also surprised that in the midst of he grief that he can still feel joy. It is one of those after the fact reflections one has in grief. One is so consumed in one's grief that one is surprised to discover that it is still possible to experience joy.

I, too, was surprised by joy. My moment came not out of grief or searching, but came courtesy of Chrissy twenty-eight years ago.

First, some explanation of my attitudes toward motherhood before Chrissy was born. 

I came of age during the women's movement of the 1970s. Women burned their bras and demanded equal pay (which in many cases, we still don't completely have). When I came home from my internship in Washington, D.C., I proudly wore a t-shirt I had purchased from a vendor on the Mall. It was emblazoned with a common mantra of the era: "A Woman's Place is in the House . . . and in the Senate." I was and am a feminist (a term that is so continually redefined that it has little meaning), a fact that disconcerted my mother, who was, in fact, also a bit of a trailblazer in her own right. (She had served a mission at 19, completed her master's degree at the University of Chicago, and worked for a world-renowned psychologist in an era when fewer women even began college.)

Needless to say, I was one who felt women deserved every right. (Title IX was issued the year before I began high school and I was on the first women's swimming at Ogden High School, which, incidentally did much better than the men's team.) I remember a discussion I had with a young man during my first few weeks at BYU.  Education, not marriage, I told him, was my agenda at BYU, and being the self-righteous returned missionary that he was, he told me my eternal salvation was in jeopardy. (Like a fool, I made the mistake of bad-mouthing this fine fellow at great length in my apartment that night and in the weeks that followed. It was made a bit uncomfortable when my roommate  began dating him.) So my mother breathed a sigh of relief when I married your father. She knew the value of family life.

Your father and I were at BYU for eight months after we married until we went to Stanford. As I wandered across the BYU campus, I frequently saw pregnant women, who I pitied. In my mind each and every one of them had no goals or ambition. Each had sold out. I remember scowling at a young mother who was reading books to her child in my usual study spot on the fifth floor of the Harold B. Lee Library. It was a university library after all. What place did children have there? I did not recognize the broad disconnect in my life: I adored and worshiped my own mother, but I found motherhood among my peers distasteful.

Thus, it was a true leap of faith, nearly two and a half years into our marriage, when I became pregnant. I did not especially want to be a mother. But I felt a nagging obligation. And the in-utero Chrissy did not help matters much. The morning sickness she induced was constant. I was miserable. And I could only think about how miserable I was. My neighbor from Taiwan informed me that in Mandarin morning sickness was translated as "Happy sick." I was not at all happy.

We were still poor students, so when I went home during the summer break, my mother and I went shopping for maternity clothes. (Thank you Mom.) As I tried on dresses, I was complaining, as usual. Fed up, me mother looked at me and sternly said, "I honestly don't know why you bothered getting pregnant. You have nothing good to say about it." And that was the truth.

In my second trimester, the grumblings about pregnancy subsided with my morning sickness. However, I only shifted the source of my complaints. I began complaining about my impending motherhood. I did not know how in the world I would birth this baby. (It was a real shock to take a tour of the maternity ward a week before I had Chrissy. I saw a door fly open, a nurse run out, urgently calling "She's dilated to 10," and a woman screaming, "Get this baby out of me." I really wondered what in the world I had gotten myself into.) I did not know how I would ever survive all the sleepless nights. I made fatalistic jokes about it all, but I really wondered about how this shift to motherhood was going to happen to someone whose raging hormones had failed to engage the maternal instinct.

And then it happened. It happened so naturally that I did not even notice that it had happened. I had a smooth, natural childbirth with Chrissy. She was a delightful, even-tempered baby. And we became a happy, happy little family.

Only a few months after her birth did I recognize that I had been surprised by joy. During pregnancy, I had gone to a prenatal fitness class. We exercised two to three times a week in a gym and then hit a swimming pool on Saturdays. (I want you to know that I swam 20 laps a few days before Chrissy was born.) A few months after Chrissy's birth, I rejoined the group in the swimming pool. It was fun to be with my friends and actually be the "experienced" one, telling everyone else just what it was like. After our session in the pool, I was in the shower with someone, giving my oh-so-experienced advice.

"Was there anything that surprised you?" my friend asked.

And that was my moment, the moment when I first recognized my joy.

"No one prepared me for the joy,” I replied. “I had heard about ineffective epidurals, painful episiotomies, cracked nipples, sleepless nights, and ceaseless crying. But I had never heard about the joy."

No one prepared me for the joy. Or rather, I, the cynical feminist, had never listened. I was truly and endearingly surprised by joy.

Those first few weeks and months were truly halcyon. Waking up every day to a delightful baby. Watching her every move. It was joyful. What I would have missed had I not taken that leap of faith into motherhood.

And as it is my daughter’s birthday, I have a message to her two brothers. You should be very, very thankful to your sister Chrissy. Be thankful that she surprised me by joy. For, as I have often said, if Nathan had been my first child, he would have been an only child. Let's just say, those first few months with Nathan were a bit of adjustment. Praise be to my sweet daughter Chrissy.