Sweet Adeline

I am 21 days into motherhood.

The experience hit me like a train and a rollercoaster all at once.

In its intensity, its speed, its ups and downs. The wild loop-dee-loops of emotions, the high highs and lowest lows, the feeling of splitting in half and breaking open in ways profound, beautiful, and excruciating.

Giving birth has split me open.

The experience itself was not what I had planned.

I had a detailed birth plan that I brought with me to the hospital.

I had done my research. I informed my husband and doulas of what I wanted. I advocated with the hospital staff, letting them know what I was and was not consenting to.

I had spent so much time on this, making the truest decisions I could for my child, ensuring that she got the best start at life possible with all the factors I (thought I) could control.

I had been thinking about this for months. I noticed every once in a while how deeply emotional it was for me, how rigid I felt about these rules and values I was carrying, how I felt so strongly about how I must do everything “right.”

I have always wanted to do better for my child than what was done for me. In my mind, somehow this translated into everything must be perfect.

I had given myself no grace, no air, no room to mess up, to be human, to ride the waves of the experience as they rose and fell and carried me with them into parenthood.

As my labor progressed differently than I’d hoped, all these heavy expectations came crashing down on me. I didn’t realize how attached I was to specific outcomes until I didn’t get what I had been planning for.

It was a marathon and a sprint all at once — simultaneously long and drawn out but moving so quickly I couldn’t mentally catch up.

It wasn’t just the birth, but the days leading up to it.

My husband and I got the flu the week before my due date. I started feeling sick on my birthday — 4 days before baby was due to arrive.

We were sick for days together, my husband writhing in pain on the floor (something I had never witnessed from him before), me suffering with chills and a fever and no meds because I was determined to ride things out and get well before the baby came.

My water broke the day after my fever.

As this was my first baby, most people around me were convinced she would be late. Mentally I had prepared for the same thing, but I had a feeling that I couldn’t shake — she would be on time. Maybe even early.

When we got sick, I leaned into the wish that everyone else was right. I hoped for a few more days to rest, to recover, and to feel as prepared as I could be for my little girl to come into the world.

The date that circled in my mind was 2/21. Baby was due on 2/22, and I had an unshakeable feeling that something big was happening the day before.

Turns out I was right.

On 2/21 in the early morning, 18 hours after my water had broken, I had my first contraction.

Labor started out incredibly painful. It didn’t start slowly and build the way I was expecting it to. It began with a vengeance and continued down the same track until my pain tolerance was exhausted and my body ran ragged.

By the time I checked into the hospital more than 12 hours later, my contractions were one minute apart, but not following the usual progression I had learned about.

The pain was unpredictable. There were no breaks that I could count on. Contractions started coming back to back with no rhyme or reason to them. They weren’t building in length, but in frequency.

When the baby moved, contraction. When I moved, contraction. When I did nothing, contraction.

So many hospital staff came in and out of the room asking countless questions, getting me to sign paperwork, pelting me with medical rhetoric and demands while I was just trying to get through one moment after another.

I can’t count the number of times that they had to pause in asking their endless string of questions because another contraction had begun.

I couldn’t catch my breath. At my doula’s direction, I tried leaning into the pain, I tried surrendering to it, I tried to stop resisting. At some point, all I could do was cry. The pain felt like a punishment. While I knew somewhere in my logical mind that I wasn’t being punished, that was all I could think of in the moment. I wanted my mom. I felt like a child.

I was exhausted. I hadn’t slept well in days, or really weeks due to the pregnancy and then the flu.

As a last attempt to hang on to my motivation through the pain, the doctor checked how far I was dilated.

When I arrived at the hospital, I was dilated 2.5 cm. 4-6 hours of labor later, I was at 4 cm. At this critical moment, an excruciating 4 hours later, I was still at 4 cm. No tangible progress.

I did not want an epidural but with this news, I couldn’t take it anymore. My plans changed.

With relief from the constant pain, I was able to find the pieces of myself again. I also experienced the cascade of interventions I have heard so many women talk about with hospital births. One step begets another, and another, and another until things feel completely out of your control.

With the epidural came Pitocin, trying to speed up my progress in labor. My blood pressure rose, and I was given magnesium. When that didn’t help, they immediately pushed another blood pressure medication. Hours passed by.

Baby fell asleep in the womb with the high dose of magnesium and was not being very responsive. She was head down, but not in the exact right position for birth. We tried many things to move her both before and after the epidural, but at this point there wasn’t much happening.

The doctor reached inside me twice to stimulate the top of her head with his hand. No response. Progress had stalled.

I had been in labor for 40 hours. My water had broken 59 hours before. My labor still wasn’t progressing. They stopped the Pitocin because baby wasn’t responding well to it.

The doctors were getting concerned about baby’s lack of responsiveness and the risk for infection, since my water had broken more than 48 hours before. We started talking about options.

The main one? C-section.

Oh how I didn’t want a C-section. I had refused to list it on my birth plan altogether because I wasn’t even letting myself go down that road.

And at that point, it became the best option. Above all the planning and rigid thinking and desires for a specific kind of birth, I wanted my baby girl with me. I was ready for her to be Earthside, happy and safe and healthy.

We moved forward with the C-section. And at 8:34 pm on 2/22, I met my sweet Adeline.

Born 4 days after my own birthday, 3 minutes before my own birth time, my baby girl came into this world at 7 lbs, 1.2 oz with bright red hair.

Beauty girl, sweet Littles... oh, what this love feels like.

Not even a minute old, you fundamentally changed me. Humbled me. Showed me my blind spots, my fears, my coping mechanisms, judgments, and expectations, all sewn together with I-won't-go-back-theres and good intent.

In a single instant, you showed me my wounds, my grief, everything I have been holding onto.

You chose me, and made me a Mother.

Already my muse and my teacher, wise, old soul that you are.