margaret edith

One January 14th, at 7:58 in the morning, I birthed a second baby. Another girl.

That was months ago now and I never managed to write down the story of that birth. But it was just Winnie’s second birthday a few days ago and I found myself wanting to recount the details and realized how precious it was to have the story.

So even though the details are now very fuzzy, I wanted to attempt to just get the gist down.

No major issues through the pregnancy, although I had colds a lot. Some nausea, compared to almost none the first time. I had a bout of continuous throwing up for 6 hours one morning, so I had to go in and get an IV. But the big thing was that the baby was breech and wasn’t turning. I went to an acupuncturist for a moxibustion treatment, which involves holding burning sticks very close to your baby toes, every day for 10 days. (It was burn-y.)
She didn’t turn, so I got scheduled for a c-section. Which seemed terrible at first, and then seemed great as I thought about not having to go through labor. It was set for the afternoon of January 4, the date that my mom was going to arrive to be with Winnie when we went to the hospital.

And then right around 38 weeks, I went in for the antepartum testing (that I was doing 3x a week just to monitor fluids and fetal activity as a high risk patient (because OLD)) and lo, she had turned! So the c-section was off. Waiting and seeing was back! No more surgery. But labor!

January 4 came and went. And then my mom’s arrival came and went, without her on it because it was winter and they have weather in New Jersey and the flight got canceled. She got rescheduled for the 8th, which was the baby’s due date. We got some friends on back up, just in case I went into labor and mom wasn’t here yet.

But my mom got in and no baby. Aunt Nora and Gordon also came. No baby. No baby no baby no baby.

I got scheduled to come in for an induction.

But then…

It started happening. According to text messages I sent to people, in retrospect, I was having some feelings on Friday night. And even though people said “when it starts, you’ll know,” I didn’t know. I was suspicious all day Saturday. I told David that he should just go to bed on Saturday night around 10 pm. I couldn’t fall asleep. My first entry into the contraction tracker was at 11:50 pm. I woke up David and he called the doctor’s office. My OB had actually just gone home, but she said she would go back to the hospital. My mom woke up and fretted and wanted to know what she could do. But there’s nothing. It’s just a hellish kind of awful to endure. Until it’s time to go to the hospital and if you can just get through all of the things, then there’s the epidural and you are saved.

My last entry into the timer was at 3:08 am, so we must have been checked into the hospital then. Just like with Winnie, I was not very dilated. I think 3 centimeters. But they let me stay and I got into the gown and I walked to the room and got ready for the epidural. The first nurse who tried to start an IV into the back of my hand couldn’t do it after two excruciating tries. A new nurse came and got it in on my other hand. I got the epidural. It started to kick in. But then I started to complain that I wasn’t feeling nothing, the way I had with the epidural with Winnie. And then that it wasn’t just an absence of nothing, but I was pretty uncomfortable. I got a dose of the IV drug that helped for a second. The anesthesiologist came to do a new spot for the epidural. He hit a nerve that made me jerk upright in shock and kick out a leg. So that spot was out. He tried another spot. And that dose had even less of an effect. If I thought really hard, maybe I could convince myself that it made a tiny difference. He came back and pushed some more of the medicine. Nothing. They wanted to know if I wanted to try another spot. I don’t know? Do I? You tell me? But also, this is just getting really bad. What can we do? I can’t even think straight because these terrible waves of profound and intense horrific keep happening.

I think the first epidural attempt was around 4 am. And that baby was born just after 8 am. So while I can’t remember the timing and sequence of what happened in those 4 hours, I can say that it was generally not good. I tried to curl up into a ball on my side as much as I could, but because of the non-epidural, I was hooked up to tubes and needles in my hand and back and a blood pressure cuff. I said “no no no no no.” I begged for a c-section. I pleaded to just “please help me.” I moaned and screamed. Like in the movies. In a way that I thought I would never do because I am tough. I insisted that I could not do it. I was vaguely aware that there were a million people in the room suddenly. I told a student nurse to stop touching me with her insistent light patting. They wanted to check and see how dilated I was and I wouldn’t move back onto my back. At some point, I think I was secretly pushing and just not telling anyone. By the time they got me into position and wanted to check things out, the baby’s head was pretty much there. My OB was about to have to break the sac when it just broke and then they were all about the pushing, which I was entirely willing to do. There was a part when she said “tiny pushes tiny pushes or you’re going to tear!” And oh, holy hell… tiny pushes? What does that even mean? According to whomever was timing such things, in the end, it was just 7 minutes of pushing.

They put the baby on my chest, but I was so focused on myself and how awful it all was and astonished that it had happened so fast and so awful and my god that’s a baby. And I was crying, bawling maybe and said “that’s the worst thing I ever did.” Which made the nurses laugh.

And that’s it. Cordelia Faye. Born Sunday morning, June 14 and 7:57. 7 pounds, 9 ounces and 19 inches long.

Today a vet came to our house and euthanized Mutton.

We loved him a lot and in so many ways, he was a great dog. Which made the decision to end his life so impossibly hard. Hard enough that we’d avoided acting on the decision for over a year.

But there was a new baby and people wanting to stop by to drop off food and my first thought was “people can’t come over. I can’t manage Mutton and the two babies.”

When we first got Mutton, a dog we were just fostering and then couldn’t give up, he was leash reactive. Meaning he lunged and barked aggressively at other dogs and people when he was out on leash. Over time, he started exhibiting aggressive behaviors more and more in our home, too. Whenever someone came in, he’d bark at them continuously. And unfortunately, his bark was high-pitched and glass shattering. He’d lunge and on two separate occasions, he bit someone. He’s small and was behaving like a herding dog (hey you, go this way) rather than as an attack, so it didn’t break the skin. But still. A bite is a bite.

We took a training class specifically for leash reactive dogs. Then, we had two months of daily visits from a trainer specializing in aggressive dogs. And we even had a second trainer who came to take Mutton on special training walks to help him stop lunging at people on the street. And things did get better. There’d been no more biting instances after all the training. But it was still not good. People had to text us to say they were at the front door. We’d start prepping the dogs, then have you come in and sit down while we worked with Mutton, getting him calm and reassured. And me insisting, while Mutton is screaming, David is throwing dog treats, the other two dogs in the mix, Winnie wanting to be picked up by daddy, “but please sit down. I need you to sit down,” while you stand in the entryway trying to engage the humans in normal social niceties. What I don’t say, but a.m. desperately thinking is “I can’t say hello to you right now. This is really a thing. I know it’s a hassle to go through this routine, but seriously my dog will bite you. I will talk to you in five minutes, but first I have to take care of my dog. Please just sit down. Sit the fuck down!” And then dying when a few minutes later they got up, without announcing it first, to walk across the room to the bathroom or into the kitchen. Which was a cue for Mutton to freak out.

I resented the people. Which is crazy. But I loved my dog.

Meanwhile, we have to figure out child care, which probably means a nanny share. A nanny couldn’t come into our house on her own without someone to handle Mutton.

We couldn’t have someone over to clean the house unless we were also home.

Mutton was my first thought whenever we discussed a delivery, a baby sitter, home repairs, or consultation.

We could have dumped him at a shelter. And he would have been adopted; he’s exceptionally cute. But he would still have crazy on the inside and once he felt ownership over the place and the people, the same problems would come up. There could have been legal ramifications if he bit someone badly. Chances are good he’d just be abandoned again (we were already his third owners). And it’s hard not to imagine that he might be treated badly for his bad behaviors.

So our conclusion was that he really wasn’t an adoptable dog and it was our responsibility to conclude his life with as much dignity and comfort as we could.

But he was still our pet. He was the biggest cuddler. He was the most playful. He was great buddies with our other two dogs. He loved running with David. He curled up to sleep on a pillow by our heads every night.

And he damn well made sure that the mail man didn’t come into the house and murder us all every day.

The day after Winnie was born, in the hospital

It’s been two months since Winnie was born. Two weird, surreal, exhausting, and educational months.

The first few weeks, especially, were rife with cryinging and overwhelmedness. Shell shocked. Weeping that ranged from a chronic seeping to violent, wracking sobs alone in the car, coming home from Whole Foods, where I had attempted to find a salve that would fix broken nipples.

David took the first 2 weeks of his 12-week paternity leave off at the start, which meant that he was there at the hospital and then home with us for another week and a half. He was crazy in love with the baby right from the start, eager to hold and care for her, to carry her around and show her the light coming in a window. I was jealous that he was getting this great love when I felt nothing.

He was also dedicated to supporting and taking care of me and doing anything he could to make me feel better. He made meals and changed diapers and did the bottle feedings. Anything I wanted that might make me feel like my life was still reasonable and in control, he’d do it. Things like trimming the bougainvillea or cleaning the baseboards. He made coffee.

We had to go into the pediatrician in the early days to get her weighed and they had me fill out a questionnaire, probing for postpartum depression. My answers resulted in more probing, face to face. Nothing like someone asking “are you ok?” when you’re not ok to get the tears flowing. Which resulted in follow-up conversations and calls from other doctors. But no further action, just feeling sheepish and sorry for myself as I had to explain that I didn’t have a strong local support system, but that I was trying to get out of the house, to see people, and connect with other new moms.

Breastfeeding, or lack thereof, was a big source of the sadness. I was so cavalier about breastfeeding before the baby was born. I won’t be crazy about it. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Shrug.
And then, when it didn’t work, I actually felt terrible. Like a failure. All of my doubts about momming, already coming to fruition. So I kept going to a lactation consultant, which would both give me hope that I could somehow make it happen, while simultaneously leaving me despondent as I faced the reality of what I’d have to do to even have a chance of making it work. (Evidently, there’s a name for it: “triple feeding.” It’s when you breast feed the baby, use a breast pump to collect breast milk, and feed the baby with a bottle. Three different things to do, as opposed to the one that you might do if you were just breastfeeding.)

And then David was going back to work and I was home alone. We were trying to figure out how to manage the nights. Me wanting, in theory, to take care of all of the night stuff so that David could function at work, since it didn’t matter how I felt during the day. But I could only really manage to be grossly sleep deprived for one day and then the next night, I couldn’t do it.

So David would get up in the nights, or early in the morning, and I would feel guilty. And David sang songs and made rhymes and wiggled limbs, while I was just waiting for the next time that the baby would fall asleep. And I felt guilty.

At the same time, I felt incredibly lucky and grateful for how much help David was.

Still, it was rough going. No family nearby and no friends who could just come and make it be ok.

Around 3 or 4 weeks in, my mental state started to even out and I didn’t feel quite so irrationally miserable. We developed a bit of a routine. The nights started getting better. Last night, she fell asleep around 9:30 and was down for the count until about 6:30 am. Some nights, she makes enough grunty wake-y noises, that David gets up, usually around 2 or 3 and feeds her while she’s still not quite awake. She falls back asleep and he gets back into bed. It’s rare these days that anyone actually has to get up out of bed with the baby in the night.

She makes a lot more eye contact and even if the expression on her face says that she’s plotting my ultimate demise, it’s helped a lot that we can look at each other. She’s started to smile and sometimes if I try very hard, I can actually coax one out of her. Most days, I manage to accomplish some tasks… loading all of the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, moving laundry into the dryer, vacuuming up the dog hair. I eat lunch and change out of my pajamas. Brush my teeth. Not always in that order.

I don’t cry anymore. Or if I do, it’s just a little tiny bit and only because my little lump of a daughter is just looking at me so sweetly.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And that David is not without flaw: he has no interest in taking pictures, so I’ve got selfies.

Seems like the kind of thing one might want to just let fade away into the great forgetting. But in the case that I want to remember or that anyone wants to know these details, here’s the story of how we went from baby on the inside to baby on the outside…

At 37 weeks pregnant, my obstetrician said that I was 1 centimeter dilated and 50% effaced at my weekly appointment. She also said that she guessed that the baby would come early. But then my 38 week appointment came with no change. Nothing at the 39 week. I never made it to the 40 week appointment.

Monday, May 30 — 39 weeks — Memorial Day I started maternity leave this week.

Monday, June 6 — 40 weeks — Due Date
David went to work. I stayed at home and did whatever it was I was doing in the time of pre-baby.
In bed on Monday night, I started feeling paranoid that I hadn’t felt the baby move in a while. So after David had fallen asleep, I drank some more water and lay awake waiting and seeing. She did eventually show some signs of life and I also started to feel some feelings that I thought might be a contraction, but without knowing what that felt like, didn’t really know for sure. It was late then, after 1 am, and I went to sleep. But each time I got up to go to the bathroom, I had another feeling that felt like it might be a contraction.

Tuesday, June 7 — 40 weeks, 1 day
I told David in the morning that I thought I might be having contractions, but I wasn’t really sure. He didn’t go into San Francisco to his office, but decided to work from home, instead. Around midday, I asked him if he could take a break to put up some framed artwork in the baby’s room, because I had a very urgent desire to get that room into a state of finished. 2 pm
We had a visit with our dog trainer, during which I had a few of the feelings that I was getting more and more sure were probably contractions. But they were minor enough that I could hold up a conversation about dog behavior.
4:43 pm
The feelings were getting more and more feely. Somewhen around this time, I’d guess things changed from “early labor” to “active labor.” 4:43 pm is when I recorded a contraction in a contraction-tracking-app for the first time.
5 pm
I tell David that I think this is definitely a thing and it’s time to take the dogs over to their walker’s house, where they’ll be staying for the birthing times.
6:30 pm
Contractions are regularly around a 45 seconds long. Sometimes more, sometimes less. They definitely don’t feel good. I feel a little nauseated during contractions, so I don’t eat any dinner when David does. But I am drinking lots of water.
8:30 pm
Contractions are happening more frequently and regularly. Averaging 5 or 6 minutes apart. The pain is getting pretty good. I do the breathing things that they taught us. Breathing is rubbish. I try some different positions. Some make it much worse. Sitting and leaning forward seems to be the position of least suck. Jiggling my knees up and down helps a little to just get through it.
We watch The Bachelorette. Chad is pretty great.
I keep asking David if he thinks it might be time to go to the hospital and he keeps saying that we should wait. They drilled it into us in our birthing class that we needed to wait until contractions were consistently a minute long and four minutes apart, for at least an hour. If we wait until then, then the cervix should be 6 centimeters dilated and we’d be admitted to the hospital. Less than that and they’d send us home.
It seems impossible to imagine that it could continue in this way. In fact, that it would still continue to get worse.
I’m running essential oils in the diffuser. We’re watching tv and I’m timing contractions. I don’t want David to do anything or say anything, but I sure am glad that he’s there.
11:30 pm
We finally decide to leave to head to the hospital. As we’re parking, I tell David that I’m pretty sure I can’t make it without drugs and that I’m already feeling like a failure for giving in.
Midnight
We get checked into the hospital. Sitting there in the hallway, while David was talking to the admin lady, having contractions.
Going into a triage room. Getting checking out by a nurse there. Only 3 centimeters. But she leaves and talks to the doctor on call and they decide to admit me anyway. More contractions. During a bad one, I throw up several times in a trash can in the triage room. The nurse comes back and I put on a hospital gown. In fact, I think it may have been two hospital gowns—one open in the back and a second open in the front. My clothes are soaking wet from sweat and they get stuffed into a bag that I hand to David, who is managing all of the details of stuff. I shuffle off to a delivery room. I meet our nurse, Courtney, who asks me what my plans are for pain medication. I ask her to tell me about the options again and she gives me the details on the IV opiate and an epidural.
I tell her I’d like to get the IV med. Meanwhile, I’m getting hooked up to some stuff… who knows? A thing on a finger? A blood pressure cuff?
I get the IV and the opiate and it helps a lot. For about 10 minutes. And then I’m calling Courtney back in to say that I want the epidural.
Meanwhile, I’ve started shivering like crazy, uncontrollably, even though I’m actually hot.
I have to get a bag of IV fluid before I can get the epidural, so they get that together. Once it’s finished, the anesthesiologist comes in. He’s tall and sporty and he talks to David about mountain climbing, because David’s wearing a hat from a hiking company that he took a trip with.
I throw up some more while he’s in the room. Into several of the plastic baggy things that  nurse informed David was there specifically for vomiting.
I keep having contractions and I worry about trying to hold still while he’s stabbing my spine. He comments “she’s just not getting a break, is she?” Because they seem to be happening non-stop.
Wednesday, June 8 — 40 weeks, 2 days
3 am
The epidural has been administered. It wasn’t so terrible. The little numbing shot was pretty unpleasant. But otherwise not so bad. And it doesn’t take long before I can wiggle my feet around, but I can’t lift my legs. And the contractions pretty much go away. I’m attached to tubes and cuffs and measuring devices all over and I am basically paralyzed, so I’m definitely bed bound. Everyone leaves. David passes out on the little couch.
I doze off, but wake up every 15 minutes when the blood pressure cuff that I have to wear kicks into gear and squeezes the ever loving shit out of my arm.
4 am
I feel a burst, like a pricked balloon and a release, like I just peed a tremendous volume. I assume that my water’s broke and call David. But he’s really passed out and doesn’t wake up. So I call Courtney the nurse and she comes back in to confirm that yes, my water’s broke and she checks and my cervix is now 8 centimeters dilated. They change my sheets and maybe my gown, too, and I can’t move, so she does this by heaving me around while I try to hold myself off to one side or another with my arms clutching onto the railings of the bed.
And then there’s a bunch of drama because the baby’s heart beat has dropped dramatically and 4 or 5 new people come in and do a lot of bustling about and they put an oxygen mask on me and I can’t really hear over that except for a nurse who is saying something like “breathe in that oxygen for your baby.”
I’m sure that this means I’ll be hustled off for an emergency c-section.
But whatever the alarm is goes away. And then they just want me to get all the way to 10 centimeters. I get turned over on to one side, which I can’t do myself because I can’t move. And then a little bit later, I get turned over on to the other side.
I ask about getting another dose of the epidural, which I can do myself just by pressing a button. She says that I can do it and wants to know if I’m having pain. I’m not, but I’m pretty terrified that the pain might come back, so I press it and take another hit.
They decide that I’m fully dilated at some point and the doctor comes in. I ask about trying to sit up and move into a more upright position. We learned in the birthing class that the beds can be arranged so they’re a bit like a chair, so you can birth in a sitting position, even with an epidural. But no one seems to think this is a good idea and they leave me lying down, just like on TV.
Then with no fanfare, they just decide that on the next contraction, I’ll start pushing.
6:40 am
With Courtney holding up my left knee and David on my right, I start pushing. I take a deep breath, lift up my head and push, like pushing out a poop. Then I stop, take a deep breath and do it again. Maybe a third time, all within that first contraction. It makes me out of breath, maybe because I’m holding it or because it’s exerting. But it doesn’t hurt.
I keep doing it when they tell me to. After a few times, I recognize that there is a deep down feeling that coincides with when they say that I’m having a contraction.
Everyone seems very cheerful and says that I’m doing a great job. I don’t really understand what’s great about what I’m doing, but it seems encouraging.
A few more pushes and they can see the top of a hairy head. I can see David looking. I tell him that he shouldn’t, that it’s gross. But he keeps looking anyway. I don’t really understand how much baby is out. But in between contractions, everything just stops and there’s idle chit chat. I have a strange awareness of lying there, with a baby hanging out of my vagina, in a room full of people, just casually hanging around. I crack some kind of joke.
7:04 am
After 24 minutes, it’s over. The baby comes out. I can feel the sensation of it, but no pain. They put her on my chest and David and I both start crying. Ugly crying, I think.
There are a million people in the room doing stuff. There’s a nurse who attempts to stick the baby on a boob, but I don’t think she really does any nursing.
I can feel the placenta come out.
There’s been a little tearing. 2nd degree laceration, she says. The doctor’s down there doing things, putting in some stitches and that kind of stings.
They take the baby at some point and wipe her off a bit and clean her hair. There’s a lot of hair. They weigh her. 8 pounds 4 ounces. They give her back to me. Her eyes are puffy and tightly shut. She sleeps.
We wait for the epidural to wear off and I’m escorted to the bathroom, where I manage to leave a horror scene of blood and gore after peeing.
And then we get wheeled away to another room for our two-night stay in the post-partem wing. Which isn’t a particularly interesting part of the story (if any of it was at all). We are stunned and sleepy, all of us.

After all of that. Hours and hours. Months and months. Years and years, even. Here she is. Our daughter, Winifred Mary Pickavance, joined our family at 7:04 am on Wednesday morning, June 8, 2016.