Friday, July 17, 2015

Cast Iron

Love alloyed your heart to mine,
and since we yearned to stay that way
were poured in that prosaic mold
to have and hold.

Now that ten years have filled and emptied, 
heated, cooled us, 
menaced us with dust and rust,
still we will see the sheen awake
in seasoned iron by the flame 
of daily use,
and that cleaving elemental bond,
no longer new,
still keeps us true in rest and trust. 

From whatever comes our way,
as the days we dwell unfold,
let us make new feasts always,
and have and hold. 

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Birth Story

The day before you were born, your dad and I went out to Mother Earth Garden Center and purchased potted plants: Peace Lily, African Violet, Coleus. We didn't know that you'd be born the very next morning, but we knew it would be soon: you were six days past your due date.  I'd been having painless contractions for months, but I did notice that day that they were seizing me more often, lasting longer.  Jonathan, aware of this, teased me about going into labor, and I smilingly brushed the idea off.  "I can still talk through them, " I'd explain.  "Besides, I don't think I've really dropped--do you?  And I haven't lost my plug yet. I definitely haven't had my water break. At this rate, it'll probably be another week!"

Even so, my eyes must have mirrored the sparkle in his as we drove home.

Hours later, Jonathan greeted the news of my first unmistakable harbinger of imminent labor with a droll British accent: "Aha! The bloody show!"  I was so excited, I sent cheery texts to my doula, Andrea, and your grandma: Early labor!  Yay!  

That initial gaiety, unsurprisingly, did not persist.  Around 10:30 pm I began to understand everything I'd read about the uniquely excruciating sensation of true labor: waves of it robbing me of my power of coherent speech--although not, as Jonathan and no doubt every neighbor within a block of our house would attest, my powers of incoherent vocalization.

Your dad was a champion.  He brought me water and pillows.  He called the midwife, Diane, to inform her that labor had begun.  He ran my bath and massaged my back and turned on an episode of "Brooklyn 99", all while timing my contractions.  He cracked jokes to make me feel better.

At several points during the night he noted that my contractions, although still a bit unpredictable, were frequently meeting the standard that meant we should start making for the hospital.

"Abby, I really think we should call the hospital.  We should at least have Andrea drive here."  He was anxious, but I reminded him that first labors typically lasted a whole lot longer. The idea of arriving at the hospital with hours and hours of labor ahead of me so bothered me that I kept putting him off.  "Not yet.  I'm sure we have hours to go.  I just want to be home as long as I possibly can."  So I stuck it out,  on my side in the dark tepid bathwater, moaning loudly through the increasingly powerful contractions.  I didn't admit to myself that half my hesitation was simply because I dreaded the whole process of transitioning to the hospital in my current state.

Turns out, I was IN transition.  When Jonathan finally overruled me and called Andrea, she, hearing my wails in the background, ordered us to call the hospital and get ready to leave.  She was on her way.  Diane was alerted that we were coming.

I suddenly allowed myself to realize that I was well into labor.  Every time I moved position--from the tub to the toilet, pulling my clothes onto my shivering body, stumbling to the living room-- fresh contractions would debilitate me.  When Andrea arrived, she gave me a rushed breath-coaching session that quieted me down significantly, and she and Jonathan supported my failing legs to the car.

It was just after 5 am when Jonathan pulled into the vacant hospital entrance.  I relied on him and Andrea to support me through two more contractions on the walk inside, where a security guard fetched me a wheelchair and directed us to the labor and delivery ward.

I don't think the nurses there believed I was very far along at first.  They showed us into the delivery room and helped me onto the bed.  Jonathan mentioned my desire for a water birth as Andrea continued coaching me through the quickening contractions, and the staff started to set up the pool.  Moments later, Diane and her midwife-in-training Christy entered the room, smiling hugely despite their sleepy faces.

They did my first cervical check, and Diane announced, "She's a 9."  That news accelerated the pace of the room considerably, and filled me with a wash of relief.  Almost there!

I labored on the birthing ball awhile, and then was assisted to the wonderful warm tub with the jets, where my water broke at last.  Christy's face loomed over mine, and she calmly mentioned that it appeared there was meconium in the water.  The birthing pool was going to be off limits.  I didn't even care at that point: another contraction was seizing me.  Your dad's jokes had abated but he stayed nearby, and I found his presence incredibly reassuring.  He and Andrea took turns holding my hands, while the midwives reminded me to breathe, relax, breathe, relax.

At this point all my energy was focused on surviving each contraction.  Between them, I felt my body go limp and could sometimes muster a smile or a nod in reaction to comments or directives.  Then I would feel another starting up, and would summon my reserves to meet it (one at a time, Abby, one at a time) even as part of me shrank, willing it to just please please stop.

By and by it was time for another check.  Back to the bed to suffer the examination, which revealed that it was time to push. I got into position on the birthing stool.  Jonathan sat behind me, supporting me as I strained through each contraction.  They were so much closer together now, relentless, with a new sensation of burning as the pressure increased.  The midwives were smiling and telling me they could see your head.  I could touch it.  I found the strength each time to push harder and harder.  In the next few days I would realize how much this phase had required of me by the soreness in my biceps, but in the moment all my focus and feeling were concentrated on the excruciating work of birthing you.  Labor, indeed.

Fifteen eternal minutes of that, and then you crowned.  The little head I had touched moments before finally pushed out, and the rest of you slid after it, and you were a bright-eyed slippery perfect baby girl out in the world at last.

From the start you were alert and strong, holding your head up and latching immediately to my breast so I didn't even have room in my psyche to worry about the ugly aftermath of delivery, because of the shocking all-encompassing joy that filled every cell in my body.  As all my physicality moments before had been focused on birthing you, now it was completely awash in the experience of holding you, leaving no space for pain or weariness.

This is when the photo documentation can take up my story far more vividly than I can tell it, and I hope you see everything I struggle to say: our joy, love, exhaustion...and your fragile beauty. 7 lb, 4 oz, and 21 inches of sweet sweet human life.

It is six and a half weeks later.  I have healed, and we are a family at home, developing a rhythm around your tiny life that already feels natural.  I reclaim that crushing love and happiness each morning, waking beside your bright-eyed fragrant infant body.

Welcome, Florence Abigail.  You are so worth every bit of it.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

February 24, 2015

Tonight is band practice. Exploratory guitar strains and vocal commentary drift through the dim downstairs rooms from the attic above, and I wonder to myself if the stirrings and kicks that pulse just beneath my swelling belly are my child's response to the strange chords and voices.

This final week of February marks the first week of my third trimester.   It has been a long and difficult month, but interspersed with a handful of happinesses.  Mimosas and Mexican baked eggs by candlelight the morning of Valentine's Day, before I left for work.  Jonathan in his Mr. Burger trucker hat and blue flannel shirt, improvising a goofy song on his bass guitar for the baby after dinner.  The installation of tile and a toilet in our gutted bathroom at long, long last.  The first house show for Flowerstalks, and the first time our home has been fit to host since last September.  Yellow tulips somehow making the dining room come to life.  Today's wonderful stroll with Jeremy through the frozen marshes bordering the Rice Creek trail, cattail rushes tossing the sunshine just ahead of us and rattling brightly in the breeze: the only time of year when one can safely trudge through swampland.

And each day the thrilling pulses and flutters of new inscrutable human life lifting me out of myself, into wonderment and joy.

To Mom

Who would have thought, when years had passed,  and you had left this world for good, I'd find such comfort remembering the way it felt ...