Labor is a tricky thing - unless you've scheduled a c-section, you have no idea how long it's going to take. Jordan took forever and a day, the only thing that kept Sawyer longer than two hours was the tricky positioning he switched to midway through. So I had no idea how long I had to get to Seattle. My heart was already there from the moment she called. Luckily labor wasn't rolling but excitement was keeping her awake and she hit the internet to find me a flight - miracle of miracles the cheapest and fastest was just down the road, leaving from the Eureka Airport in two hours. Only, the Eureka Airport isn't in Eureka, travelers: be warned. Although the ticket and the website say Eureka, the airport you want is the one you passed twenty minutes earlier in Arcata, not down here on this desolate strip of bare earth that sports one dirt landing strip on a desolate military base. And there are no online reservations if it's less than six hours 'til your plane leaves.
Finally arriving at the airport with pajama clad children and a trailer and smelling of campfire, I leapt from the truck and found disappointment - the flight to Oakland was available, but nothing was available any longer from Oakland to Seattle. Oh, and getting just to Oakland was $600 instead of to Seattle for $170. Luckily, the airport had a good internet connection. This being spring break, you could literally watch seats on flights disappear off internet reservation sites, so I booked a Sac to Seattle flight leaving in seven hours. The Trinity alps and I5 ahead of us, it was going to be tight: a turtle carrying it's shell moves slowly, and carrying our little home away from home slowed us down as well.
Thanks to a portable DVD player, wonderful children, a fantastic driver of a husband, free coffee at the gas station an hour into the mountains, and pb&j's made on my lap, we made it exactly an hour before departure. I ran the kids up and down the escalators five times each way and they headed for home. It was so hard to say goodbye having already robbed them of their last day of the road trip, but since TOm makes every day a vacation for them, I didn't feel too bad.
My mother had arrived before me and my brother Matt in Seattle was acting as birthing partner for Allison. Her doula Lindsay was there. Matt's partner Scott picked me up at the airport and we headed straight for the hospital. Allison looked like a million bucks - her contractions began in earnest a few hours after her acupuncture appointment at 12. She was her usual, graceful, calm, smiling self, giving herself totally to the contractions and laughing between them. Things started to pick up and the doctor checked her after a half an hour of particularly strong ones. "Five", she said and although Allison looked somewhat disappointed, five to me sounded right on. Things were happening. She laid on the bed and gave in to the contractions and some rest while one person massaged each of her hands and feet. After a while she got up to go to the bathroom. And then things really happened. I'm pretty sure it was right around then that the little one decided on a major position shift and all of a sudden Allison had tunnel vision. Ah, back labor. Not recognized by the doctor until she was an hour into pushing, the entire experience had shifted.
My mother hadn't particularly enjoyed watching me give birth (nor had she planned on it - the long labor lasting through the eighteen hour drive and full night's sleep somewhere on the AZ/CA border), and here she was again. And thirty nine years to the day after giving birth to both of us in the hospital. And this time I understood, having a daughter I didn't like to see in pain and witnessing my sister in so much pain as well. But there we all were. Midnight as the day slipped into our birthday, that amazingly thin veil between life and death that can only ever be felt at a birth.
It's completely wrong to have to go through labor, two hours of pushing AND a c-section. Honestly, one or the other should suffice, thank you very much. But no, Allison got the double whammy. And knocked out totally to boot thanks to the one in 20,000 insufficient spinal. But at 2:41 I was an aunt to one of my own siblings' children - finally! The nurses brought him out and there he was, evidence of his failed attempt at a sideways entrance into the world evidenced by the jaunty angle of his typical newborn's conehead.
Being knocked out, my mom took Allison duty while my brother left for a shower and change of clothes, and I got to hold my perfect little nephew for two hours while she woke up. Thank goodness we're identical twins - he looked straight up into a face identical to his mom's, and full of love. Those two hours were incredibly special and I sang to him, told him about his journey, his dad, all the amazing things that had finally brought him here to this place. At a quarter to five they wheeled a groggy Allison into the room and she got to hold and nurse her son. I have no idea how she made it on the hour of sleep we got between 6 and 7, but that was the hour that the first nurse came happily charging into the room to inspect and measure and test and poke and prod. It's a bit vague, what happened over the next 24 hours although I know I got to hold the little one when Allison was sleeping and I left for a shower and a change of clothes, shocked at how powerfully I still smelled of campfire smoke as it rolled off of me in waves of soap and water. And I know we looked a bit like zombies, my mother and I, as we ate a delicious dinner that night.
A C-section really is just a brutal experience, especially when for the next few weeks you have to sit up every couple of hours to nurse. It was easy for me to get up to help the next two nights in the hospital, to prop pillows and fill water glasses and to sleep with my nephew when I got the chance. So sweet to sleep next to him in the huge bed he shared with his mama and smell his sweet milky breath and lift his small body into his mama's arms. And it felt cruel of me to leave, except that I left them with the lady that had managed to get us to adulthood. I am amazed by the entire journey Allison took in getting Hayes Ryan Brooks into this world. From the years of putting off conception in order to care for her husband and her final leap into doing it instead of waiting, to losing her husband just when the tiniest bit of a bump was beginning to show at ten weeks, to going through all the mourning, the therapy, the months of working and working and working while growing this being inside of her.
And she amazed me with the birth, how perfectly she progressed, how strong she was through all of it, and how she clearly processed and made peace with the c-section and the struggle with it all in the days afterward. She is so truly the embodiment of grace, and her joy in her son is so radiant and apparent.
Welcome little miracle. Your aunt loves you.
No comments:
Post a Comment