I tried to walk her out of me during the days leading up to our scheduled induction, still hopeful that after miraculously making it to full-term, I'd be able to experience a natural childbirth. The frosting on the cake I thought. Let my water break on its own. let me wake up in the middle of the night, hold my swollen tummy, and wake Nick with the infamous words: "Honey, it's time."
But 6:00 A.M. Friday December 18th arrived without any downward movement, so Nick and I checked into the maternity ward at Providence to start the Pitocin drip. My OB told me she'd give me the day to labor but if I hadn't progressed by late afternoon we'd have to do another c-section.
"It will be different this time," she said. I'd be awake. Nick would be by my side. It wouldn't be an emergency situation at 24 weeks like with Elias. And after some tears to grieve the loss of an image of childbirth I'd rekindled after burying it years earlier, I resolved to approach the day open to all possibilities.
I remembered the words of a fellow teacher spoken to me during Elias's first year: Focusing all your hopes and dreams on the birth experience is like putting everything into the wedding and forgetting about the marriage.
"Here we go," Nick said, as he held my hand when the nurse started the Pitocin. The monitor attached to my right uterus had registered a few contractions prior to the drug entering my body, but they weren't coming at regular intervals, nor were they measuring very strong on the graph. Within minutes of the Pitocin flowing through the I.V. I felt contractions in my lower back. They came every two minutes and though painful were not unbearable. Every half an hour the nurse came in to turn up the dose of Pitocin. My OB broke my water and checked my cervix. Little to no progress had been made.
As the half hours passed, the contractions grew more powerful and started to overtake me every thirty seconds. I closed my eyes and gripped the side of the bed, traveling inward to a place where I could bury the pain, or make sense of it, or just ride it until my all-too-brief reprieve.
During one of these tiny breaks I opened my eyes, looked at Nick with a faint glimmer of a smile and said, "I wanted this?"
He stroked my head and said, "You're doing great." He gave me kisses. He wondered what else he could do to help, wishing he could bear some of the pain for me.
After six hours, my cervix had made little progress, and Olive's heart rate started to drop during the too frequent contractions. I had refused pain medication and yet I felt myself near the brink of my threshold. The nurse turned down the Pitocin because the contractions were coming too quickly, yet on the graph they weren't measuring strong enough to move us forward.
They feel bloody strong, I thought. And of course THEY were. Both of them. My left and right uteri both responded to the drug and both contracted, but the monitor only kept track of the movements of my right uteri.
During one of my cervical checks, my OB discovered that my cervix had turned to the side: "Like a hockey stick" she said. This meant even if it did open, Olive would have to do an S-curve to come out.
As I bore down through the on-slought of contractions, I knew pain medication would only slow the process, a process that didn't seem to be leading to a vaginal birth anyways. Before my doctor came back in to check on me I decided we needed to do a c-section. I just wanted Olivia out safely. Period.
I'd experienced a form of labor. I was ready to meet my baby.
To hear her cry.
We waited months to hear Elias cry. Dependent on a respirator for his first seven weeks of life, we longed to listen to the vibrations of his small voice.
At least I heard her cry, I'd hear other mothers say in the pump room as they told the birth stories of their "feeder growers", their thirty-plus-weekers. Sometimes I silenced the room with Elias's Apgar score: 0, 0, 3. Still no heart rate or breath five minutes after birth. Other times I listened in silence, swallowing my story to give room to theirs.
When my OB returned to the room and explained why she though it was time to move to a c-section, I agreed without questions. I knew it was the only viable option.
"Are you sure this is what you want?" Nick asked.
"Yes," I said without hesitation.
And I didn't feel slighted or disappointed or angry at the goddesses of Labor, instead I felt like I was making an empowered choice for my child. It may not be the entrance I envisioned, but it was the only way to welcome her to the world-- and that matters more than the sawdust of false expectations.
As we prepared for surgery, I remember thinking how handsome Nick looked in scrubs. I remember the relief when the spinal erased the pain of my two contracting uteri. The anesthesiologist explaining the process and thinking, I know I know...
I remember seeing her lifted above the screen, silent for a second, an eternity, until she let out a robust scream.
And in that moment, years of fears lifted from my body, leaving me weightless on the table, with only the sweet sound of the words: She's alive, she's alive, she's alive.
For even as I passed milestone after milestone in this pregnancy, I still held a dark ball of doom in my womb, right next to my growing baby, preparing me for the worst-- because I know, from my own history and the stories of other women I've met here, that the worst is always possible.
But she's alive, she's alive, she's alive...
The night before Olive's birth, as I lay awake coughing, unable to shake a persistent cold, I said to Nick, "I'm worried about going through labor or major surgery feeling so sick."
"I know," he said, "Your cough doesn't sound good."
In the moment I heard Olive's cry, and lay entwined with relief, I found myself choking on my own mucus, unable to clear my throat with a productive cough due to the anesthesia that numbed my chest.
My daughter could breathe but I couldn't.
I tried to follow the medical staff as they rushed Olive from the dark warmth of my womb to the cold fluorescent glare of the operating room. I knew Nick was cutting her cord and they were checking her vitals and I don't remember feeling too scared that I couldn't breathe, even as more medical staff rushed around my bedside, their attention turning to me, the flailing mother on the table, who, despite gasping for air, still felt a sense of euphoria from hearing my newborn daughter cry.
And then I must have passed out because my next memory is of the recovery room and the worried look of the nurse as she removed blood soaked bed pads and towels.
My OB was by my side, "Do you remember if this happened last time?" she asked. "Did you bleed from your other uterus?"
I tried to answer her questions, as I drifted in and out of consciousness, until finally, hours after the surgery, Nick was allowed in the room with Olive. He lifted her from her bassinet and lay her in the crook of my arm and even in my delirium--"What am I suppose to do with this bundle? " I thought at first-- I could see that she was breathing, beautiful, perfect.
We lay together for hours and on our first opportunity to nurse, she latched on as if she were home.
And now, over two weeks later, when Olive screams for no apparent reason for hours at a time--she cried her way from 2009 to 2010 with me sobbing right along with her--I'm reminded that I wanted this.
I wanted to hear her cry.
I wanted a little girl with powerful lungs. And I'm reminded that nothing is easy. In the middle of the night, a healthy screaming full-term baby can seem more challenging than a former micro-preemie with Cerebral Palsy who rarely cried.
Olivia Everett Jordan will not be the easy one despite entering the world without medical complications or the need for equipment to revive her and keep her alive. There is no such thing as an "easy" child, they are all difficult, in their own way; and like all worthwhile pursuits, it is the hardships that lead to the joys.
Olive will bring her own imprints, her own challenges, and yes, her own triumphs.
She is beautiful. She is perfect.
Just like every child.
Everywhere.
And you all were right, love doesn't divide, it only multiplies.
I can breathe now.