misplaced mama

I promised myself before this new one comes, Sula deserved a birth story written down.  Two and half years after the day I’ve been feeling kinda bad.  I was only 20 weeks pregnant with Sula when I finally finished Mia’s, so I am a bit behind here.  Better late than never.  It was so hard to capture her story.  It was birth; just a perfect, soft, waterbirth, nothing eventful. I’ve tried to explain what it meant to me, what it gifted me.  It is my offering to her today, the last days she is my ‘baby’ and every day she really is such a joy.  I am lucky beyond words to have been picked by her to be Mama.

I’m not one to capture it into real time.  But labor was 6.5 hours from start to finish.

Please excuse tense changes and errors.  This late in pregnancy my mind works in it’s own way. Editing will come later.

 ***

l

The Birth Of Sula Pearl.  July 26. 2005.

Remember this can be gentle.

I stopped pushing. The bearing down was far from feeling gentle. Instead,  I imagined my tissues opening.  I slowly, gently breathed downward, using the quiet yet vital energy to open the contracting fibers of my flesh and being. I could see the ruby redness of my insides accepting the air, spreading apart, savoring the breath and allowing it to free it from mere matter, losing its solidity and welcoming a new fluid spirit, without any rips or tears, I became liquid silk.  Then I felt a small head emerge. The head led the way for shoulders, almost instantly.

Reach down, MaryBeth.  Go on; bring your baby up to you.

The words were whispered but still heard over my Darth Vader-ish sounding.

I…can’t…reach…

Immediately the hold that was under my arms, the hold that previously had held me up, relieving gravity and allowing me to hang, the hold that invaluable supported for me as my baby traveled down, was loosened.  My arms were freed to reach a few inches longer so I could get to my baby.  I felt her head and then felt B’s hands already there, his fingers spread across her crown.  I unconsciously pushed his hands  away, held on to her like I have never held anything before in my life, hooked my fingers under her armpits like it was the first thing and only thing I had ever learn to do in all of existence and I lifted her up through the water, right to my chest.  My arms lengthened and surrounded her slippery self completely.  The only sounds were the buzz of the air conditioner, the swishing of the birth tub water and my voice whispering, perfect, perfect, baby, you are so perfect, perfect, perfect.

I looked at her.  Bruised nosed, pushed down flat from a posterior exit, little slits for eyes with noticeably long eye lashes that seemed to be fluttering, waiting for the perfect moment to reveal what was underneath.  Creamy and unusually thick vernix covered her, but still I could see she was as brownish pink as a berry.  She came out with a tropical tan.  And she was small.  So tiny compared to the size I was while she lived in me.  So tiny compared to her sister on her birth day.  Could I have made someone this small?

And there I was.  Mother of two.  Within moments, I was nursing my second child, unable to take my eyes away from her. There I was, moments after the birth, standing up, cord hanging out of me, still attached to her, stepping out of the tub, ignoring the help of others and landing right on the rocker, laughing, smiling, gushing with sweetest sugary unhindered love I think I have ever felt. 

M, you okay?  Do you need help? A bathrobe was draped around me.  More dry towels suddenly appeared around the baby.

Help?  Hell no.  I felt better than I think I ever felt my whole life.  I just ran a marathon and I was ready to run another.  Exhilarated.  Energized. Empowered.  Ready to do it all again.

I remember settling in the rocker, totally alive and aware and renewed and B whispering to me, you are totally amazing.  She is totally amazing. Wow, that was unbelievable.  Thank you….thank you….

We looked down to make sure, although we knew in our hearts she was a girl.  B and I caught each other’s eyes again for the millionth time that morning.  We knew what her name would be.  Sula.  She was absolutely Sula.  Sula Pearl.

I guess I should start more toward the beginning of her birth story.  But the end is what sticks with me.  It is the gift that keeps on giving as each year passes.  Those final moments of labor breathing her down, the warm water soothing me, the arms of support around me, the sensation of catching my own baby;  it’s all glory and grace.  But there is more to it, just as important.  It took some work to get there.  It took some work in patience.  I guess her birth story started about 4 days before she was actually born. 

I was angry.  Impatient.  Hot. Grumpy. I was also approaching 42 weeks which is the time limit in the state of Arizona for a midwife to legally attend a birth at home.  Although my midwife assured me she would be there for me regardless, she also knew how badly I wanted this baby out of me.  She gave me a few home remedies that if I wanted to, I could give a try.  They won’t work if the baby isn’t ready, I heard her say.

I was hesitant to even consider any kind of induction.  Attending births and being a listener to all birth stories, I had heard horrors about the intensity of inductions: labor like pains and the only thing born is hours  of diarrhea, or stepping on that path of interference can only led to more interference.. But somehow the need and want to go into labor over-rode any of my usual personal beliefs of just let it all be.

I remember talking to J on the phone, staring at the little amber colored bottles of tincture in front of me on my kitchen counter. I held them, felt the coolness of their bottles, tried to take in their energy to my palm.  As I was getting ready to embark on an experiment of herbal induction, she asked me to question why I wanted to take the herbs.  I wish I could remember how she said it, it’s been over two years now, so my memory has faded in blurred spots, but she wanted me to question why I thought my body wasn’t going into labor on my own and she expressed it in her very doula-mode way. Do you really want to do this? She asked.

Fucking hell yes, motherfucking yes, Bitch, was probably my response.  I was carrying around about 60 extra pounds, the temperatures were between middle hell and the deepest realms of hell and my not quite two year old was cranky and clingy because when it’s 118 degrees who isn’t?  She was nursing non-stop on top of my huge belly and sucking on my sore-ass nipples.  Hell yes.  I wanted to go into labor.  Right. That. Minute.

So the cocktail of herbs began.  Thirteen drops of Blue Cohosh.  Thirteen drops of Black Cohosh.  In a little cup, mixed with a very little bit of water, I’d shoot it down like it was Sugarcane rum and I was ready to party on the Jamaican sands.  I did this little ritual three times that day, each time reminding baby what the herbs were trying to do. I did the ritual three times the next day.  On both evenings I pulled out the castor oil and had B give me the deepest massage on the belly I could handle.  Then for a few hours I wore a robeezo around my gut dancing like a lunatic around the house, trying to jiggle the baby out.  Then it came time to get “romantic”.  I’d open about 10 Evening Primrose Oil capsules and slathered the oil that was inside all over the tip of B’s penis and had the most uncomfortable, sticky sex of my life.  We did that two times each night.

The second night after marathon sex, we crashed on the living room floor.  Me with a glass of red wine.  Him with green tea.  I cried with my face in his lap.  What the fuck is wrong?  What’s wrong with me?  Why won’t I go into labor? I am two weeks late!  I sobbed and sobbed as he smoothed my hair and rubbed my shoulders and tried to whisper words of peace and assurance to me.  Suddenly, I jumped up. Did you hear that? B just stared at me. Uh-uh.

I listened.  I heard it again, the voice of my heart and my hara together made the most beautiful sound to my ears, Stop.  Mama, just stop.  I’ll come when I am ready.  It was her.  My baby.

And so I did.

It was an interesting lesson.  It made me cry and cry that I hadn’t learned it earlier.  I was rushing something that could not be rushed.  I was forcing something that couldn’t be forced.  My baby wasn’t ready to be born.  I wasn’t ready to give birth.  Something was still undone and I was ignoring the greater push and pull of birth.  Birth happens.  Nothing indicated that my body wasn’t making the proper hormones.  Nothing indicated that my baby was in danger of being in my womb until she was ready.  There is something to be said about allowing the subtle interaction between Mother, Child and Cosmos picking the birth date of a person.  I mean, I may have forced a moody Cancer to be born when the world really needed another spitfire Leo. 

I have never been a particularly patient person.  I want things when I want them and I have admitted that I tend to rush the process.  I have always tended to keep my eyes on the target, wanting that finality, never really comprehending that to receive what I needed was to just notice the moments on the journey; allowing the journey to happen.  Those steps are the most profound, the most exiting and rewarding.  I know that now, sort of.  But I don’t think until then did I really see this part of me, this person who needed to just sit back and wait and understand there is plenty of time. I’ve rushed jobs and moves and lovers and all sorts of things.  I always wanted to be powerful than time.  That is dangerous.  I think I spent most of my life running from one thing to the next, in desire and haste.  It took my unborn child to shake me up a bit, to speak to me: Stop.

On exactly 42 weeks and 1 day, just over 24 hours after my baby told me to relax and to wait for her, I sat straight up in bed.  B was snoring softly and next to him Mia was drooling on her pillow.  Her small body curled up around her blankie and one hand draped over her daddy’s side.  This would be the last night she was the only baby in our bed.  I knew it was happening. The cramping came again, tight and sharp around my lower back and hips.  And then slowly vanished, without a trace, like a wave receding from the shore, I was pulled back down on my pillow.  I closed my eyes and drifted.  Twenty minutes later it happened again.

B? B…wake up.  I’m in labor.  I pushed on his arm gently a couple times. I’m in labor.

He snored a bit.  Cleared his throat and opened one eye. Huh?

I’m in labor. But it’s early.  I’m going to try to go back to sleep.

Okay, wifey.  That’s great. Let me know what to do…..And immediately the snores continued.  I wondered if he had any idea what I just said.  He can and has slept through earthquakes.  Big ones.

I went back to sleep, waking up on and off, gently breathing through the tight sensations that grabbed hold of my lower back.  But I was given a break as soon as they were done.  This was very different from Mia, where the contractions started and continued, one on top of the other with no more that 5-10 seconds in between.  I felt good about this.  I was able to rest, dream, drift off to a place where I was refueled.   I was hoping I’d wake up really far along.  I curled against B, reaching my hand across him to hold on to my Mia. I just enjoyed this sleepy time, waking and breathing, and feeling so grateful it was finally happening.

Until about 6:30am.  I woke up with a jolt.  B snored loudly next to me, his lips parted and his body relaxed. I got out of bed in pain.  It was heavy. I paced the side of my bed.  I went to the bathroom.  Put my check on the cold concrete floor.  I moaned.  I groaned.  I went back to the bedroom.

WAKE UP! I climbed in bed and shoved his body. WAKE. UP. I startled him and he opened his eyes, Huh? Wha? Wazgoinon?

I was surprised at the sudden shift to urgency and annoyance, seeing his comfortable sleeping body.  Why does he get to be so comfortable? I’ll change that, I thought.  That is when knew this was real, the baby was coming.

Are you gonna get up or are you gonna sleep through the birth of your baby?

Huh?  Holy shit.  Sorry.  He jumped out of bed. He looked confused but immediately jumped into his role.  He turned the heater on the birth tub.  I heard him banging around the kitchen, taking the soups out of the freezer to defrost, the spoon clanking against the side of a glass, stirring Emergenc-E in water.   Lighting incense.  Running back and forth into the bedroom where I was, checking in on me, making sure I was ok, preparing snacks, gathering towels and blankets, getting the camera out.

Mia woke up and together we got out of bed I climbed in the tub and put on a Sesame Street DVD.  She thought taking a morning bath in the living room, watching Big Bird while eating toast with melty butter that dada made was a load of fun.  We floated around together and I was amazed at how the buoyancy and weightlessness the water offered such ease for those tight sensations in my lower back. The pain left and it just became energy, tight energy.  Then Mia decided she wanted to nurse. I really wanted in my deepest of hearts for her to remain present for the labor and birth.  But as soon as she began whining, crying and begging to nurse, grabbing at my bare chest, pinching at my Nigh-Nighs (her word for them) I knew I couldn’t handle it.  I let her latch on because I really wanted to keep her there and I thought even a sip would calm her down.  Instead everything intensified.  My primal urges were to push her away, far away.  I had work to do, hard work and unless she was there to help me, she had to go.  Breastfeeding during a big contraction was close to hell.  My body wouldn’t let me near that kind of fire and discomfort. My body rejected her even though my heart longed for her.

By 7:30am our friend K came over to take my firstborn girl away.  To this day, I wish it could have been different, but I knew that my choice not to wean before this birth was not going to be compatible with labor.

The world started to spin after Mia left and I wondered if I was being taken away with it.  I couldn’t get enough of the tub, my body freely floated and I easily  switched positions.  Its obvious baby was posterior; no surge had been frontal, instead  my back bones felt like they were being reorganized and shifted and, well, crushed.  But the water soothed and relieved.  I wondered aloud if I should get out, could I be stalling labor by being so relaxed in the water.  B said if it feels good, why get out? He turned on some mellow and gooey dub music right around the first time I vomited over the edge of the tub and on to the pile of clean towels.  He ran over with our puke bowl a moment too late.  When I was done heaving up nothing,  I noticed there was a summer storm pending outside, the light coming in from my French doors dimmed to a hue of gray,  but the system hung somewhere south, and the sun won over.  I wondered what it would be like to give birth under full sunlight.  It seemed odd, different from my last experience, like babies wanted to come under a moonlit sky or the fresh dawn, but what kind of child wants to come mid-day, in the middle of a constipated heat wave?

Morning was beginning to turn into afternoon and I hadn’t gotten out of the tub once.  I had to pee.  I didn’t want to pee in the tub.  I climbed out finally and gravity was my enemy.  I cried out loud; the fierceness of surges on dry land was out of control.  Why would anyone ever labor out of water, I wondered?  I got on all fours and crawled to the bathroom.  My belly hung low and my back bones felt flattened as baby made her way. I climbed up on the toilet and relieved myself.  Next time, I told myself, I’ll pee in the tub.

As I was crawling back, B asked me if I wanted to go into the backyard.  The July heat had broken for a moment, the sun shone, but there was dampness in the air, the sky wanted to pour down, but the sun still held the thrown.  He draped a robe on me and we swayed together in our backyard.  Just the night before we had made love out on that grass sans the primose oil and the desire to jumpstart labor.  We made love, just because we were in love. While I leaned all my weight against him and moved his hips, spiraling, helping me to do the same, the storm came down in my body instead of the sky.  My mind whipped like the wind to places where thoughts don’t live and sounds are created and then emerge from the belly and travel up from throat to mouth

Maaaaaaaaaaaaa Maaaaaaaaaaaaa Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa*

And my birthsong was born right then.  This is the sound that got me through the next three or four hours.  I climbed back in the tub, began submerging my whole head under the water, blowing bubbles until I needed a breath and then would left my head out and up, MaaaaaaaMaaaaaaMaaaaaaa. On hands and knees I’d dunk myself again, spiraling my hips, rolling them, rocking.  Maaaaaaaaaaa.

B knew it was time to call our midwife.  I spoke to her briefly, and expressed I couldn’t be too far along, that I felt like I had just begun. This was my way of not expecting anything,  although I hoped, if I claimed I was still early, then all the faster I would be done.  She was in the neighborhood running errands, so she said she’d just stop by.

She entered and all things got even softer as her presence is like a velvet pillow.  After some talk, she checked me for the first time in 9 months. 

Am I at least half way?

Just about.

Then in a hushed manner she called her assistants to come over with her kit. I got the feeling I was farther along than I’d imagined.  And even if I wasn’t, that thought passing through me made things go even deeper, much more intense, like lightening I was bolting down, blowing bubbles and sounding.   Time becomes warped and moments move like shapes and sounds instead of lines and graphs.  I traveled up and down and around and back and forth.  My birth team surrounded me.  I heard the baby’s heart tones thump from somewhere.  I felt my lover step in the tub and encircle me with his strength.  I held him, wrapped my legs around him, and stared into his eyes.  As blue as the water, they offered me everything he had.  They mirrored me, this baby’s journey, our trip together.  This was it.  This was all there was.  We kissed gently and I buried my head in his neck, swirling around the tub. There were moments when all I could do was hold on to him and stare into those blue eyes as he emanated the most compassionate and awe-filled love to me.  To this day, there is no better doula for me than my husband.  Although my Birth Shaman was dwelling above my head, opening my seventh chakra, creating a pathway for this deep, deep work of bringing a baby from spirit to flesh, my husband had his own Birth Shaman dwelling around him. Together we shared some ancient, unspoken secrets, and together we were birthing this baby.  And I can honestly say, that in those moments, I was conscious of it.  I knew we had it going on.

And then there were other moments when I had to push him away.  I wanted nothing to do with him.  And as he scooped up poo from the water with his little net, I held my face under, blew those bubbles, keeping my lips vibrating and opening my yoni wider and softer each time, and the releasing and MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

And somewhere between feeling the magic and vocalizing and blowing bubbles, during I allowed my head to go somewhere I never expected.  As Sula was traveling down the canal, I saw flashed of red lights, heard sirens, and saw myself getting taken away to a hospital.  That is when I let myself vocalize, is the baby stuck?  Am I stuck?

And immediately I heard a chorus, to this day I don’t know if it was my actual physical Birth Circle or my Birth Shaman speaking through me, but the chorus was a reassuring: No.  Nothing is stuck.  You are not stuck.  Baby is not stuck.  I let go of those thoughts.  But they popped in, like an unwelcome stranger, bring doubt and erasing the trust that was this birth’s foundation. I could see that if I wasn’t in the place I was, with the love around me, I could have gotten ‘stuck’.

But I didn’t.  Instead someone from my circle lifted my mop of wet wavy hair on top of my head and cinched it with a rubber band.  Someone offered me more water from my bendy straw.  My husband rubbed my back and held my hand.  I sat up and looked around.  I was home.  In my house.  I sunk back in and blew more bubbles.  And I was told, You are totally becoming a mermaid, a sea goddess in that water.  I can see it.  I will never forget her words.  Another person came walking into the room with my lit candle of Mary, Virgin of Guadalupe, the Mother Goddess of my birth fate now flickered hope on the table next to me, sharing space with Quan Yin and Gaia.  And the force coming from the top of my head and trying to connect with the spot below my yoni was so great, so much bigger than me, yet all me, that I knew it was time.  A baby was going to be born.

I sat up. Arms linked under my own to hold me so I could hang.  My body was telling me to get ready, to stay calm.  Baby’s coming.  It’s time.  Baby’s coming, it’s time.  I chanted out loud.  I think I sounded frantic, but afterward B assured me my voice was just powerful and vibrating with depth.  And I started to push.  This baby was ready now.  And so was I.  I pushed some more.  This was what I was supposed to do right?  I felt a head inside me and I needed to push it out? I had to work hard, right?  I pushed some more….and then I heard those words,

Remember, this can be gentle. 

And then I remembered, somewhere in my bones, to be patience.  My body and baby could work this out without force.  It could be gentle, if I just let go, let time and softness slide her out with my breath.

And I did.  And it was.

It was one of the gentlest moments of my life.  And my Sula Pearl, a gentle soul who walks this earth, carries a lighted torch  from her heart center.  Perhaps she was just the tool to offer me such gifts.  Or maybe it was the work I did while pregnant with her and that worked paid off; an easy, mellow, giving soul from her first moments. Regardless, I think I know a bit more about patience, and with it all good things do come.

________

*Interestingly enough, I looked up the word "MA", my ‘came from outta nowhere’ birthsong in a copy of The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myth’s and Secrets (everyone should have a copy of this book, btw).  Here are some meanings:

Basic mother-syllable of Indo-European languages, worshipped in itself as the fundamental name of the goddess. 

It’s sacred letter “MA” in pictorial form as the Spark of Life (bindu or vindhu) was said to be “in the Great Yoni”.

In Indo-European root languages, it was as intelligence, the maternal force that bound elements together to create forms at the beginning of the world.

In Hebrew the same sacred letters of MA made the Mem-Aleph. Combining ideographs of “fluid” and “birth” .  The holy sign was credited with great protective power and was written on Jewish amulets during the late 9^th Century B.C.

MA-MA means mother’s breasts in nearly all languages around the world from Russia to Samoa.