The Important Thing

I wrote this piece two years ago in response to a solicitation for birth stories for a collection. While it looks as though the collection may be published, I ended up withdrawing my story this spring because I didn't feel comfortable with the edits that were being made. (Among other things, the stories were being changed from first to third person, and the contributors were not going to be acknolwedged as authors--not the sort of thing I'd had in mind!) Now, two days away from Ben's fourth birthday, I've been thinking about his birth story and want to share it here.

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My birth story begins in college, ten years before I got pregnant. While taking a fiction writing class, I wrote a story about a woman who had had several miscarriages. The professor frowned at my vague details and suggested I do more research on the topic.

I was captivated. I disturbed my friends by pouring over the pages of The Atlas of Fetal Pathology, looking at the grotesque pictures of fetuses with only one eye, or holes in their heads. I read feminist writings about pregnancy and childbirth, and quizzed friends’ mothers about their episiotomies. I surprised the doctor at the student health center by asking her about midwives—not because I was pregnant, but because I was fascinated by the idea of childbirth as an empowering experience. In my early twenties, pregnancy and motherhood were themes that reoccurred in my fiction, even though I had experienced neither.

When I became pregnant at twenty-eight, I knew where I wanted to give birth: The Birth Center, in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. It was a homelike place located across the street from a hospital, and it had everything I wanted: caring midwives, a holistic model of care, and backup doctors just in case. I didn’t like the idea that birth was a medical emergency, and I wanted to see how my body would handle the extreme conditions of childbirth.

At thirty-six weeks, we went in for our weekly appointment. As Tom held my hand, the midwife listened to the familiar whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the heartbeat on the Doppler. When she felt my stomach, though, she frowned. “I can’t tell whether the baby is upside-down or right-side up,” she said as she felt a bulge down low. “I’m going to recommend an ultrasound just to make sure. You’re also measuring a bit small, so I’ll ask them to check the baby’s growth too.”

The ultrasound was an annoyance—I would have to miss more work—but I took it in stride. We went in a few days later and got to see the blurry pictures of our son once more. “Yup, he’s breech,” the technician said. She sent us off to the hospital cafeteria while we waited for the doctor to become available. We ate soggy pizza, and I grumbled about how inconvenient a version would be.

But when we met with the doctor, he told us that my amniotic fluid was low, so trying to turn the baby was not an option. “I’m going to recommend a C-section by the end of the week at the latest,” he said.

“But I still have things to finish up at work,” I said, not understanding the gravity of the situation at all.

I don’t remember much of what the doctor said after that. I remember that he had a wedding ring, and dark hair on his arms. I remember that he talked about studies, and how breech births used to be allowed, but that virtually no doctors performed them any more. When he finished, I stumbled through the hospital hallway and tried to internalize the fact that instead of getting the natural birth I had wanted for ten years, I would be having surgery.

The hospital scheduled us for surgery at 11:00 AM the next day. I spent the night shakily packing a bag and talking to friends and family on the phone. On the way to the hospital, hungry from my fast, I talked about food incessantly. I was scared out of my mind. Tom took a brief video of me in my hospital gown as we waited for the operating room to be ready. I looked tired, my skin grayish in the florescent light of the hospital.

Instead of the natural birth I wanted, doctors numbed me, strapped me down, cut me open. I didn’t feel a single contraction.

I know it was the best possible C-section I could have had. My midwife stayed with me in the operating room, and so did Tom. I remember Tom holding a bundle out to me, and then I kissed the unbelievable softness of Ben’s cheek. After I had been wheeled into the recovery room, Tom and the midwife helped me breastfeed.

But it still breaks my heart that I couldn’t hold my baby right after his birth and nuzzle him. I’m sad that Tom couldn’t cut the cord as we had planned. I hate to picture how the nurses let Ben cry in the nursery in his plastic bassinet, while I lay in bed on another floor of the hospital, still woozy from medication. I’m sad that I had to spend three nights in an impersonal hospital, instead of going home sooner to start our life together as a family.

People said to me later, “At least the baby’s healthy. That’s the important thing.” And I wonder: Why can’t there be more than one important thing? Of course I wanted my baby to be safe. That’s why I consented to a medical procedure I had done my best to avoid. But having a healthy baby doesn’t take away from the mourning I did for the birth I couldn’t have.

Now my son is two years old. I have told and re-told the story of his birth so many times that the sadness isn’t as forceful any more. The day of his birth was just one of many days in our time together. But it was his very first day in the world, and I had wanted to welcome him as best I could.

I have learned that there is more than one important thing about being a mother. Motherhood requires sacrifice—and not necessarily the sacrifices we had planned on making. It requires honoring the sadness of lost dreams, and fully living the reality that takes their place.