sometimes, a slant

Today I accused myself of taking the same pictures over and over again, unintentionally. It does not help that my baby girl, at six months, looks very much like her older sister once looked at six months. Often these days I take a picture and then realize it is, in a sense, the same picture I took of Esme two and a half years ago. I search the archives and find that, indeed, they are so similar! Perhaps Elsa's cheeks are a little less chubby; her skin tone more pink.

Perhaps I am engineering a pattern because I do love patterns, connectivity. Maybe so, but not consciously.

There is a view from our second story bedroom window which I have felt compelled to frame with my camera several times, but in instances so spaced out that I am not conscious of having done it before. Seeing it in deep snow once two winters ago, at the last slanting light of the day, I stood atop our bed and took a photograph. Seeing it again a few days ago, I must have felt that same compulsion, but not being consciously mindful of the time before.

This window does not typically offer any radiant event but rather dull yellow sameness in mid-summer haze, or a gray sameness the rest of the year. I might glance out while standing at the foot of the bed, folding laundry. A moment of slanting light tenders a visual event and I can't help but take notice. Then the clicking sound of a camera becomes a way to add weight to the appearance of what must disappear, a way to say thank you.

This week I've been hemmed in by the confines of our apartment because it began with a cold on Sunday which kept me at home with my nursing baby while Jeff and Esme stayed out all day at church, followed by a church picnic and kickball game and then a hike with friends. Though her source of sustenance, I was certainly boring company for Elsa all day Sunday, stirring ascorbic acid (which is Vitamin C) into multiple glasses of water, heating chicken broth, sitting her down on the floor with a toy with the unspoken entreaty to please be content with the toy and the emptiness of the apartment and the inanimate mother. And waiting for her next short nap so that I too could drop into restorative, never-enough sleep.

I determinedly stamped out my cold with my stubborn application of home remedies, then proceeded to wake up to a feverish three year-old the next day. Esme had the flu-- that thing that has been around all my thirty-two years of life on Earth, but which this season is being billed as a harbinger of death. My home remedies seemed very feeble but I wielded them nonetheless, disguising olive leaf extract in some applesauce with honey, spiking her diluted juice with vitamin C powder, and of course feeding her chicken broth the one time she willingly ate. The Pedialyte freezer pops went over relatively well also. But perhaps the bodies of generally healthy children are resilient: she licked the flu in two days and two nights, waking up symptom-free today, Wednesday. But still not strong enough for pre-school, I mostly let her lie on the futon, watching Dora, Kipper, and Max & Ruby.

Elsa, for inscrutable reasons, except perhaps that breastmilk contains antibodies and perhaps because, unlike most other people, is privileged to sleep whenever her little body needs to, has shown no sign of any sickness during all this time. I'm thankful for that boon.

In any case, it has been a long week so far, and flu season, or sick season--or just plain winter--has only just begun. Family life with small children is so often just raggedy, around-the-clock work, which affords few phenomenal contours. Reading a book of sayings from modernday Greek elders from a reclining position on the sofa, Jeff read one aloud to me the other day, prefaced by a hey-listen-to-this. It is by a certain Elder Epiphanios:

"When someone is free, he has rights and responsibilities. When he marries, he has few rights and very many responsibilities. When, however, he has children, he doesn't have any rights at all, but only responsibilities."

Well, that's what I'm talkin' about, Elder Epiphanios.

But I am not complaining. Nor do I think that life has to be so hemmed in to be valid-- a denial of worldly possibilities and opportunities. I think what I am saying is that when life's responsibilities take us to that place of limitation, another capacity is heightened in direct proportion. Then, as compensation for giving yourself over to responsibility, as a gift, there develops a capacity. It's the capacity to latch onto the beautiful moments of family life within the nexus of struggle. It is why I take pictures of my girls' beautiful faces even on the days when they've driven me mad and back numerous times. Or it is the capacity to regard the spectacle of slanting light on a leaf-or-snow-carpeted patch of mundane, even when that same window view has at other times depressed me. I really think that the flicker of beauty isn't a foreign substance, a break from the mundane, but a flaring up of the same stuff.

wendy's drive-through as entrenched infrastructure and the inevitable disparagement of the ideal

Last winter I went to hear a lecture by Joel Salatin, an advocate for sustainable agriculture. He is not exactly famous, but not exactly unknown either. (He was featured in the book The Omnivore's Dilemma, which by now seems to be one of those books that everyone and their brother has read.) I know this is a trendy topic now so I apologize in advance for bringing it up. I can't help it if I am profile-able.

The talk was in one of those old theaters of yesteryear that many small towns have in their downtown, which now tend only to be utilized for things decidedly not in vogue, like non-denominational church services. The fold down auditorium chairs at this theater were nicked from years of use and the carved ornamentation on the ceiling was lackluster. All of the wood--stage, ceiling, seats-- seemed as dry as a matchstick, petrified from the decades. This theater, in quaint downtown Goshen, Indiana, was packed with bearded and unadorned men and women, all farming families, all clearly Mennonite. I believe it was the Mennonite community in Goshen who had arranged for Joel Salatin to come at no small price. An unapologetic believer in capitalism, he is not an inexpensive speaker, per his website. There were also a few bemused, scruffy-looking college students in the balcony, probably there for the extra credit they would receive in one of their liberal arts classes. I went with a small group of other Notre Dame friends and also sat up in the balcony, above the sea of Mennonite uniformity below. The experience was rather cozy and surreal.

Joel Salatin, with his sweater vest, bow tie, Buddy Holly glasses, and slick talking manner, conjured up an image of an old timey, all-American snake oil salesman. On a surface level he contrasted somewhat sharply with the audience who had arranged his visit. Nevertheless, soft chuckling and murmurs of approval floated up into my ears from the first floor as his talk and his slide show progressed, illuminating the philosophy and methodology behind his sustainable farming practice of fifty some years. So mesmerizing and dynamic was he, I could almost see the phantom outline of a covered wagon behind him, from which he was going to pull out his wares when the talk was done. Either that or give a call for us all to come forward for prayer, healing, and eternal salvation. And people were going to kneel and pray, or plunk their money down, or just try to shake the man's hand afterward--that was certain.

I myself, never having been a skeptic by nature, plunked some money down for one of his books after the talk. My friends and I exited the theater onto a snowy sidewalk and crunched back to the car. None of us had eaten dinner beforehand and so, as if to mock us in our idealism, trap us in our hypocricy, reveal the entrenched nature of our food culture, or tickle our highly developed sense of irony, or all of the above, the Wendy's drive-through presented itself as the only viable choice under the circumstances. After this inspiring talk about taking the high-road of life on the margins of the industrial food industry, it appeared to be the only convenient place open in Goshen at that time of night. We were starving, had a forty-five minute drive home, and our respective spouses--potentially grouchy from solo parenting--were waiting for us. The collective pull of your home responsibilities tells you to be moving on; the stomach tells you it needs immediate filling.

On the drive home I contributed to our zesty conversation about the ideals presented in the talk we had just heard, whilst taking pulls of diet coke from the unwieldy, sloshing, large and ridiculous drink cup that came with my Wendy's value meal. I really love diet coke.

I'm not saying that it is wrong to get fast food. Don't be shocked but occasionally I go to Wal-Mart too. Or maybe I am saying it's wrong. Or maybe I would just like to say that in a deep down way I believe it's wrong but I'm not standing up here saying it's wrong. I'm just pointing out the irony of the entire situation-- an irony that for me stubbornly pervades all my thoughts and hopes about living according to an ideal. It pervades them before they are even born into the real world of action.

Nevertheless, us chickens have made a few significant lifestyle changes in the last few years, punctuated by many delightful lapses, like frozen pizzas and salad greens in the middle of winter, which show no signs of tapering off. The struggle proceeds too slowly to ever feel very good about any of it, but, I suppose, it at least proceeds. I'm not sure if I really believe that living perfectly in any area, according to any particular ideal, will actually change anything about the world and its workings. And for that matter, there is such a variety of ideals espoused by people of all stripes, some quite at odds, that they probably cancel each other out anyway. For example, I heartily disagree with people who think that veganism is The Way to go, but there are plenty of people who do.

I'm thinking: as long as a passion for the outskirts of the industrial food industry grid hangs within me with a pure, intensely personal brightness, I'll probably keep inching toward those outskirts for the rest of my life, fighting my own slovenly ways, and generally not giving up altogether. Sometimes, though, I do wonder if this passion, unasked for and unexplainable inside of me, was simply planted inside me as a tricky way to mimic and assist the real struggle of life, which is the struggle to pray and be completely convinced that prayer is the most important thing. It is difficult to be genuinely convinced of that, just like it's difficult to be genuinely convinced that I can't eat a bowl of coco puffs from time to time as a before-bed snack. Both struggles require resisting the overwhelming power of mainstream sensibilities, resisting the pull of what is considered sensible and normal for everyone, like the perfect normalcy of a grocery store. Resistance and progress in either area proceeds at about the same unimpressive pace, with lots of humanly understandable and justifiable lapses. The world is just that fallen.

(I took the photo above at the nearby farm where we and a handful of other student families here get meat and dairy. The farmer was showing us the fake grit given to chickens raised on industrial farms.)

there's a story i've been meaning to tell

"And all that we have, and all that we see / I tie and I knot, and I lay at your feet / and I have not forgot / how the silence crept over me" Joanna Newsom

I took this photo at on July 10, 2004. I think it was among my first attempts at anything artistic with a camera in my adult life. It was taken at a consignment store-- a rack of vintage clothing in front of a framed picture for sale.

There is a story I've been meaning to tell about that time in my life. It has taken me so long to really know myself, and I knew myself even less at that time. I was working full time at the seminary where Jeff was a full-time graduate student. The cost of living was high-- it was "Westchester County," and I'll say no more. Also, at that time, we were just not very frugal and perhaps a little irresponsible with money. For example, all trips to Barnes and Noble, which were frequent, meant a new book, which I now believe to be absolute absurdity. And there were many other such absurdities and unnecessary bills. The point is that I felt at the time as if we needed more money than I was making, which I now know was a delusional belief. But I was very convinced of this at the time.

A friend--actually the mother of a friend, or both really--told me about this pyramid business she and her husband did from their home. I knew her and her husband to be incredibly nice people, and apparently prosperous, so I took an interest. To be fair, she told me that it was not technically a pyramid scheme, and I still believe her on this point, but since I'm not naming any names, I'm just going to call it a pyramid scheme here for brevity, because everyone knows what that is: it's a business that sells things but doesn't use advertising. Instead it uses person to person marketing and inspirational sales meetings and so on, and people who are new sign up underneath someone else and the person above gets some of their sales commission and the more people you sign up and sales everyone makes the higher you go, blah blah blah. To my limited understanding, that's what it was.

Now, I really have no idea what I was thinking when I decided that I was interested in doing this on top of my full-time job, which had a perfectly decent salary. It seems as absurd to me now as our spending habits were at the time. Nevertheless, I told myself that it would be a great way to bring in some extra money.

I don't think I really understood what it all entailed, because a large part of my attraction to this was the fact that I sincerely liked the person who introduced me to it. I think I always tend to be blinded by the relational aspect of everything. Anyway, she gave me a time and location of a meeting which I could attend where I could learn more about it. It was near enough to our apartment. It was at a hotel, in a conference room. I remember driving there and parking outside. I didn't want to turn off the car because I was in the middle of listening to Joanna Newsom's "Sadie," a very long, serpentine, wild, layered, complex, creative song. Sitting there with the car running I just started weeping, partly moved by the song, and partly by something I couldn't name. Finally I crept over the plush carpet of the hotel lobby and found the double doors where the meeting was taking place. A table set up outside the door was being manned by polished young business women. I wanted to sneak in and be a fly on the wall but they somehow wanted my name or something-- I don't remember the details, but only feeling embarrassed and out of place. The meeting was large--very large--and was not really even a meeting, in the strict sense. To my mind it was more like a big tent revival. There was an audience listening to an onstage speaker, who was clearly of the dynamic persuasion. I remember feeling circumspect and bewildered and never entering further than the outermost periphery of this large conference room, never taking a seat. I stayed for a discrete amount of time, then fled in anonymity. I went home and told Jeff this thing was not "me," but I could not even articulate why.

I can't remember the precise ending to this story. Stupidly, I did end up going one step further into this venture and signed up, substantial fee and all, talking myself into it, lord knows why. It fizzled out shortly thereafter. It was money down the drain. It was a loss of face too. I marvel at how shallow my sense of self was then-- that I could so miscalculate my ability to stomach certain things or enact a role so unlike myself.

I am not sure why I need to tell this story now, except that, although I do not generally have a very good memory, or a very visual one, I do vividly remember and even see myself sitting behind the steering wheel, listening to the words of that song and being so moved by it, and realizing that the spirit of that meeting clashed terribly with such a song, and that the two were at enmity, and that the energy which rolled in the heavens of each was of a different nature. In the hotel conference room, it was generated in words such as "marketing," and "branding," and "networking." I knew that I hated those words; I wanted to go away from those words. But I also feared that the hating of them might perhaps be a lesser happiness, an alienation, or a handicap of sorts.

I am still this way, but now more consciously and firmly so, more happily so. I will forever skirt around the periphery of that conference room, never giving my name.

I want to go where the walls of the words I write down are white.

frazzled

I decided to quit my Ideal Job yesterday. The decision was spontaneous, provoked by a mounting agitation. It was not unlike a scenario in which a normally softspoken, deferential person is provoked to the point of screaming, uncharacteristically, in a noisy room in order to shock everyone into silence. Once the silence is established, however, the quiet person feels a little shocked at having screamed, and wonders what happened.

What happened is that I, unexpectedly to myself, entered my boss's office and told her that I probably could not do it anymore. The twelve hours a week--three afternoons-- which to the ear sounds like really very little, have been too much coming and going from home--enough to make me feel constantly frenzied. Leaving expressed milk for Elsa three afternoons a week has been a nagging problem daily, requiring equipment--clean equipment which is constantly being used and needing subsequent hot soapy baths. Intuitively it would seem that breastfeeding mothers should be exempt from entanglement with feeding apparatuses. In the checks and balance system of the universe, it would seem that being apparatus-free is one of the inherent rewards of breastfeeding, and that being saddled with both at the same time is a rather unjust yoke of sorts.

I know that many working women breastfeed successfully, and I now appreciate the sweat and tears it requires to not simply give in to formula, which would end the madness of pumping. But I who was truly determined was only able to do it just shy of four months. In the end (actually, it's not quite over yet because I still have the requisite two weeks), it was not a choice between breastfeeding and formula, but between breastfeeding and the job itself. Formula never really entered the equation for me. I am just wired that way. And I feel pretty determined to give Elsa the same thing I gave Esme-- it seems only right.

Anyway, this is not really a tale of breastfeeding, which can be an alienating, unpopular topic. That was just one layer. The other thick cellophane suffocating (and, oh, unpopular) layer was that Jeff is in his exam year. For those who do not know what "exam year" means (which would have included me until only recently), it is the year in an American PhD program in which the PhD candidate spends about six months studying detailed, nuanced "answers" to "questions." But the questions are more like research paper topics and the answers are more like research papers. And there are ten of them, and the student must know these ten "answers" by heart and in great detail. The student must take six two-hour written exams over the course of three days and then an oral exam before a committee the following week. These exams are in March and are either passed or failed. Everyone around here-- both students and spouses of students-- say it's the most stressful year of the PhD. Here we go.

Jeff was more than generous in the beginning to offer to stay home with Elsa, to save my job, and actually, I was surprised that he had even offered. It seemed that all the pieces were falling into place. Esme had finally gotten into the Notre Dame pre-school this fall, and Elsa could stay with her dad. The distance between the office where I worked and the pre-school is about a block and a half-- so convenient. My boss was totally flexible, never breathing down my neck about my arrival or departure time, and asking no questions if I needed to switch my schedule around. It was all a veritable advertisement for a mom-friendly workplace.

But after Jeff turned in his exam questions and began preparing in earnest, it became more and more clear that it was too much time away from reading-- that wonderful euphemism academics use for what they do. His stress level, if charted with a red marker, would certainly show itself spiking up into jagged mountain peaks. I don't think our small apartment has room for all those red lines ricocheting off the walls, ceiling, and stainless steel sink, where he stands clattering the dishes clean after dinner on a typical evening, emanating bodily tension.

It's the "this and so much more" details of madness that cannot all be conveyed--like getting Esme buckled into her car seat (after the struggle with her tangled hair, potty, shoes, and getting her past the bike rack without a few rings of the bell on her tricycle), then realizing that I'd forgotten to bring the little breastmilk storage bags and freezer packs, then running back up to our third floor apartment to gather them together. Rewind further to the preceding night to a restless infant putting on a growth spurt, waking just a few more times than usual. All of this brought me to the metaphoric screaming point.

But its literal manifestation was more like a pathetic squeak. I felt very small sitting in the office of my boss, whose walls are choked with satirical clippings and cartoons. She is probably the most likable, charming, approachable, funny, no-nonsense boss I will ever have, and yet I had to chuck it all over the lifeboat of forced sacrafice.

She did not seem the least bit surprised, which should not have surprised me, since it is always true that others can see you better than you see yourself. She said that I'd seemed "very tired, and frazzled, especially lately." I had the impression that she had seen the writing on the wall long before I did. It was all very unflattering and awkward. It was a huge relief, even though being described as frazzled is to me most hateful and insulting, even when people don't mean it that way.

I am not sure how things will be this winter. I spent my usual Tuesday today at home with both girls and was reminded of how eternal and toilsome a day at home can feel with a small child. Now there are two. Esme will stay in pre-school three afternoons a week, thankfully, so perhaps I'll find those afternoons to be very luxurious with only Elsa, and Esme will do well to have the outlet for play and recreation during those long winter months. But I feel as if I've already burrowed back into the small kingdom of domestic struggle, forsaking the structured, sanitized, well-lit place of distraction and relief, otherwise known as a part-time job.

Nevertheless, this evening has been very balmy one after a rain, and fog settled in, and the sky was pink and purple. I went out with my camera and took some pictures, wanting to be creative in a way that I have not been for a long time. Now I'm writing here on my blog. I think something switched over inside me once I realized I could once again go back into a world more of my own making-- the world of home. I will get to keep Elsa closer to me and she will be happier for it and will think that this arrangement is much more to her liking (she never seemed totally happy with her daddy afternoons-- I think the preference for dads is a later development). I'll write more and take more photos of less literal things. I'll have tea with friends more often, and hunt for used things at thrift stores instead of new things at online stores. I'll reduce the potential number of occasions in which others can rightfully describe me as frazzled. It really will not be that bad.

the end of an ideal, and also a beginning

I've been trying to write down the story of Elsa's birth now for several weeks (it was exactly three weeks yesterday), and keep getting interrupted. This makes sense considering that I rarely finish an entire cup of coffee in the morning, much less secure a lengthy block of time to sit at the computer, think, and write.

I'd like to believe that I'm already moving beyond all preoccupations about childbirth now and that the need to talk about it and tell my story is fading. But a few nights ago I had a dream that I was about to get a haircut at a really nice salon and the beautician gave me an epidural before she began cutting. So, I must still be stewing. Moreover, at the very moment I write this paragraph, I can hear Esme in the bathroom giving her My Little Ponies a sink bath and explaining to the baby pony that the mama has "gone to the hospital." Clearly the collective subconscious of our little family is still processing this major event.

I'm not sure what others might interpret in the above photo--maybe something in the range of poignant. For my own part, when I saw this photo just after Elsa's birth, something more like a comic strip popped into my mind involuntarily. It had the caption: "Thus ends my career as granola mom." Because there is something really funny about this picture of mom and baby both sleeping through the big birth event. This allowed me to laugh at what otherwise might have made me cry. And of course, I did cry many tears in the days, and finally the minutes leading up to Elsa's birth. I'm sure the tears were partially due to the pregnancy hormones at work as I approached, then passed, my due date. But they were also brought on by the swelling realization that my hopes, efforts, and will were not very powerful variables in the complex equation that was quickly filling up a chalkboard where doctors stood in professorial authority over my big belly.

And it's no secret that my will was to have a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean). Every mother on the playground of our apartment complex knew this, as did all of my close relatives and friends, and probably a few far-flung acquaintances who couldn't care less. I suppose I am what you'd call transparent, and fecklessly wore my heart for a VBAC on the sleeves of my maternity shirts. But as per indicated by the surgical cap on my head, I ultimately did not get it. Elsa was born by repeat cesarean, despite my nine months of white-knuckled steering away from that destination.

Also plainly evident in this picture: mom wasn't even conscious during daughter's entrance into the world, but, rather, passed out from a paradoxical but potent cocktail of exhaustion, disappointment, excitement, denial, resignation, happiness, sadness, and relief.

I was relieved, in the end, to receive the powerful spinal block that sent warmth down my legs and ended the pain of contractions. I was relieved to know that I didn't have to struggle a minute longer to bring my baby into the world-- she was going to be brought out immediately and safely by a team of capable people. Jeff was standing by, ready to greet her. My doula, standing near my head, was watching the surgery, taking pictures, and, in a sense, keeping vigil, as she had been all night during my labor. Frank Sinatra, oddly, was playing from a small stereo in the surgery room.

Under such circumstances, I had the luxury of letting go, caving into my now painless exhaustion, and drifting into oblivion. And while I wouldn't have consciously chosen to sleep through my baby's debut, it was apparently beyond my power to resist. I didn't even realize I had fallen asleep. When Jeff woke me up and presented me with a swaddled bundle, I was genuinely surprised that so much had transpired without my being aware. This was definitely the end of an ideal. The wrinkly red crying newborn was not brought naked up to my chest in her first moment of life to be warmed and to nurse. I didn't even hear her first cries or the announcement of her weight. And so it was that I became what all the natural childbirth advocates preach against: a passive participant in my own child's birth.

But not really. In the earliest weeks of my pregnancy I actively sought out a group of obstetricians in town who were willing to perform VBACs-- in fact, the only practice in my town. I had a consultation with one of the doctors to ask him questions, like what was the rate of VBAC success among their patients. It was a respectable 70% and I was determined to be among that 70%. I tried to have the healthiest pregnancy I could have. I did prenatal yoga like my life depended on it. When it looked, toward the end, like I might once again have a breech baby (automatic disqualification from a trial of labor), I did more yoga, and everything else I could think of to get the baby to turn, and she finally did. I was poised to go into labor, and clinging to this fact, I waited. I wanted this child to arrive in her own time, in her own way. For reasons I still can't necessarily explain, trying for a VBAC was deeply important to me. Simultaneously, I knew that there was a very good chance that it would not happen, and was ready to flip the switch and emotionally jump ship should the battle go ill.

The more exposure I had to the doctors in this particular practice through weekly appointments in my final months, the more I felt that it would be a miracle if I avoided a repeat cesarean. I apprehended a subtle attitude of defeatism that did not nourish my hopes. I sensed a certain nervousness and lack of trust in the birthing process in general, and my ability to give birth in particular, even though there was nothing about me to indicate that I would not succeed. There were assurances such as, "You know at any point if you're having a difficult labor that you can throw in the towel." There were attempts to assess the weight of my baby just in case she was "overly large," because I might "feel differently about trying to VBAC if I knew I was carrying a ten pound baby." (It turned out she was not even seven pounds at birth.) And there were casual, impersonal questions such as, "Have you scheduled your c-section yet?," even though it clearly stated in my file that I wanted to try for a VBAC. Was anyone paying attention?

Looking back, I see now that although my earliest conversation with the doctor from this practice was not negative or discouraging, neither was it positive or encouraging. His tone was professional, neutral, promising nothing. He spoke in terms of statistics, percentages of risk. He said that I was currently a "good candidate" for a VBAC. Should that change at any point as the pregnancy went along, we would then "have another conversation," about my options. Although I was hopeful in the beginning, I think I realized intuitively, even then, that within this model, within this system, I was going to have to have the perfect pregnancy and the perfect birth. Even though the risk itself (of uterine rupture) is miniscule, and even though I was a healthy person having a healthy pregnancy, I was going to be categorically treated as "high risk." And at any point, I could lose my status as a good candidate. Should anything not go according to the book, I would be disqualified, and no one would lose a wink of sleep over it but myself. I crossed my fingers, and just hoped that the pieces would fall into place. It should not have surprised me when, in my forty-first week of pregnancy, a doctor looked at me with irritation, spoke of hospital policy and said, "This is just the nuts and bolts of how it works."

I was treated according to the rules and regulations of the high risk category, which felt terribly impersonal and unfair. Moreover, metallic hardware metaphors are not what you want to hear from your caregiver in the last few hours leading up to what you know will among the most memorable and vulnerable events of your life. According to Ina May Gaskin, who is considered the authority on midwifery par excellence, and runs a famous birthing center in Tennessee called "The Farm," childbirth works according to what she calls "the sphincter law." She explains it herself in this short video. To put it succinctly and crudely: in the same way that people can't relax and go to the bathroom in a place if they do not feel safe or comfortable, a woman can't relax and give birth if she does not feel safe or comfortable. Likewise, if an animal such as a deer detects a nearby predator, her instincts are wired in such a way as to automatically shut labor down until she finds a safe place to have her baby. According to Ina May, some caregivers are so tense, they can have the same effect on a laboring woman's brain as a predator by merely walking into a room, and cause the birth to stop progressing. Clearly, there is a strong and intense psychological component to childbirth which must be handled with care and understanding.

But looking back to the first conversation I had with a doctor from this practice is telling. I asked him what he thought of VBAC home births. I knew what his answer would be, but wanted to hear it just out of curiosity. He said that anyone who practiced them was irresponsible. Such a midwife was basing her practice on the premise that things turn out alright most of the time. And, he conceded, most of the time they do. But when they don't, they go badly wrong.

I myself would not have been comfortable with a VBAC homebirth either, but in retrospect I wish I could have secured an experience for myself that would not have been so radically opposite from the personalized attention of a midwife who is able to invest a bit more heart and soul into the birth experience. I learned the hard way that the psychological (dare I say spiritual?) component to childbirth is simply ignored by the medical model of care, which thinks itself so advanced and air tight, a bastion of expertise.

In any case, I had a perfectly healthy, uneventful pregnancy, just as I did with Esme. But it seems to be my particular experience with pregnancy that it begins like a wide, safe, leisurely, tree-lined boulevard, with no traffic. And of course, I am grateful for this. It goes along like this for blocks and blocks and blocks. But then, in the final weeks, without warning, that boulevard quickly bottlenecks into a narrow, rude, traffic-filled street in a congested, overpopulated part of town. The intersection of the birth is just ahead. It turns out, unluckily, that road work is happening and the way I'd like to turn is blocked by a detour sign. To make matters worse, the traffic light is broken and blinking, and cars are backed up in all directions. In such a situation, no one gets special treatment. A grumpy, impatient policeman is directing traffic, in no mood to be reasoned with. I'm trapped behind the wheel, inching forward in a locked line of cars, and suddenly feel very naive for having trusted the generic and conventional advice of mapquest. I wish I had mapped out an alternative route on my own.

I can never entirely explain to myself how or why, at the approach of a due date, things go from emotionally ordinary to feeling nearly apocalyptic. Again, I realize that much of this is probably hormonal, and perhaps a common experience of all women as they approach childbirth, whether they can expect things to be routine or not. Maybe childbirth, though certainly common, is never just a routine, everyday affair. It quivers with too much potential for comedy, tragedy.

In seminary we discussed the meaning of the Old Testament laws about what made a person ceremonially "unclean." A person was considered unclean if they had come into contact with either birth or death, and was required to pass through a period of cleansing in order to re-enter ordinary life. We were told as students that this uncleanliness was not something bad or sinful, but rather holy and divine-- extraordinary. Birth and death are human affairs which touch the divine, and therefore they are fearful, sacred, holy, and stand apart from the ordinary. They must be treated as such.

As a baby's due date approaches, it becomes, at least in my experience, impossible to continue pretending that something merely ordinary is about to happen. My due date with Elsa was on Monday, April 13. Until it was actually upon me, I failed to really consider the implications of the fact that this was not just any Monday in 2009, but Holy Monday on the calendar of the Orthodox Church.

Holy Monday is the first day of Holy Week, which is arguably the most beautiful but also the most spiritually intense and demanding time of year. It is well-known that emotions and passions are like taut guitar strings during Holy Week. People at church can be grumpy and short. Communities and families may bicker over nothing. With forty days of fasting behind you and the anticipation of the Feast of Feasts ahead of you, and the most beautiful and serious poetry, Scripture, hymns and prayers surrounding you in church daily, it's no wonder. For me, even though I was too pregnant to fully participate in all the services, I did make it to many. And seemingly independent of my own participation, the aura of Holy Week seeped into our home on its own accord, as it does every year. There is a certain glow.

Time feels as if it is being compressed and events are set in motion. Christ is betrayed and will stand before Pontius Pilate. A pamphlet arrived in the mail from our seminary, a short reflection on Holy Thursday, by Alexander Schmemann. In it he talks about the mystery of this unique day in which "light and darkness, joy and sorrow are so strangely mixed." It seemed only natural to me to find a certain synchronicity in the full-term baby pressing me at all sides from within and the liturgical drama which was leading up to the Cross and finally Easter.

On Holy Thursday, I had a doctor's appointment that I knew would be pivotal, and which I was somewhat dreading. It was the first time I went to the doctor since passing my due date. Both Jeff, my doula, and Esme came along--quite a crowd. This was the appointment of the "nuts and bolts" comment. This particular doctor breezed into the office with my file and brusquely asked when my last ultrasound had been because "as far as she was seeing, the last ultrasound was showing that the baby was still breech." This was not correct. The baby was not breech and there had been a more recent ultrasound showing this. But the word "breech," with all its emotional baggage for me felt like a brick being hurled at my head. I sat there at the edge of the examination table dumbfounded and knew right away that I was not in the proper frame of mind to deal with the forceful personality of this woman. I also could tell that she was not really interested in listening to me either.

I can't explain what happened next, except that something snapped in Jeff and whatever rhetorical skills have carried him through far too many tedious years of graduate school were suddenly marshaled and employed on my behalf in the face of this doctor. In short, he was heroic.

Up to this point, he and I had been preparing for the birth as if in two different spheres. He had been working hard at the library, trying to get as much of his course work out of the way so that he could take some time off when the baby arrived. I had been working at home, trying organize our small space and figure out how things were going to fit and flow with two children instead of just one.

As for my feelings, hopes, and fears about the birth, I felt that they were in a chamber that I alone visited throughout my pregnancy. Jeff always sympathized and supported my desires to have a particular kind of birth, but was not personally invested in them himself. I have always been mystified by couples who promote the Bradley Method, or "husband coached" childbirth, because I could only snicker at the thought of my husband being a self-taught expert on cervical dilation, or telling me how to breathe during a contraction. And while he spends his days at school pouring over the most dry academic books, I suspect he'd be bored to tears before making it through one paragraph of Ina May's Guide to Childbirth. And honestly, this has never bothered me at all.

But this is why I was surprised when, at this appointment, he suddenly rose up and became my voice when I faltered before the pushy doctor. She seemed furious that I had somehow slipped beneath the radar and gone past my due date (merely four days) without anyone from their practice having intervened. (I suspect now that she was irritated with her colleagues and I was just caught in the crossfire.) She wanted me to go home immediately, pack my things, and head to the hospital for a c-section that afternoon. I won't go into all the tedious details of the conversation we had with her, except to say that she interrupted me at least three times. She accused Jeff of being sarcastic when he was actually asking a sincere question at one point. We told her that I'd been having pre-labor contractions for two days and suspected that I'd go into labor naturally very soon, and that it seemed reasonable at this point just to wait at least through the weekend to see if perhaps the c-section could still be avoided. There was nothing to show that my baby was in imminent peril if she stayed in the womb for a little while longer. She barked at me and said something about ignoring the advice of three doctors (she supposedly had quickly consulted two of her colleagues without our being present), implying by her tone and body language that I was being a stubborn moron. Finally Jeff, realizing that things had reached an impass, had the presence of mind to ask if we could speak to another doctor. She said yes and left the small room, letting the door bang shut behind her.

I felt manhandled and shaken by this encounter, in which I'd barely gotten a word in edgewise. In the end we did speak to another doctor who was much more flexible, amiable, and reasonable. He had no problem with letting us wait the weekend to see what might happen. By the time we left the office after this lengthy, stressful appointment, I felt like I was suffocating and could not wait to exit into the parking lot where there would be air and sunshine. My doula told us to go eat our favorite foods, do something outdoors, and spend the rest of the day emotionally recovering. I knew, with every fiber of my being, that I had done the right thing. It would not have been right to succumb to the established protocol and go in for a c-section that very day. I knew that my baby was fine and that I was not putting her in danger by giving her a little more time. But despite this, a poisonous seed of doubt and insecurity had been planted and my strength was sapped. It would be difficult to regain a totally untainted, positive attitude about this birth.

Jeff and I stopped and got Thai food, then went home, put Esme down for a nap, and debriefed. I am not categorically anti-medical. But I realize now that the real issue for me in Elsa's birth transcended any rivalry of VBAC versus c-section, medical versus natural. It became an issue of personal versus impersonal. I didn't want my birth--a sacred thing-- to bear the impersonal latex glove prints of science. I know science gives us many good things but I am wary of its one-size-fits-all, systematic approach, and I do not trust it implicitly. I thought that having a doula at my birth would be enough to counteract the hospital system in which, as Jeff put it in a moment of realization, "birth and death are treated like taxes." But truly, although having a doula was a wonderful comfort amidst the whole experience, it wasn't enough to change the ultimate outcome. In the days leading up to the birth, we realized, too late, just how powerful the system is, and how small we were within it.

As I had suspected, I did go into true labor on Friday night. I labored for a little while at home but after my contractions became close together, intense, and regular, we went to the hospital. And that's where the story simply gets onto the fast track of inevitability. I was hooked up to an IV and a fetal heart rate monitor which I could not unhook. What's more, it took the nurse three tries to find a vein in my arm, which I had to hold out obediently and keep still for a long time while having contraction after contraction.

All of this ensured my discomfort and kept me bound to the small area beside the hospital bed. The baby's head was descended fairly far and, we found out later, she was also posterior, or sunny side up, which makes for a longer, more painful labor. The position of her head made it too painful for me to sit down while contracting so I had no choice but to stand and hold onto the side of the bed. I would get chilly, then hot. I recall that was shivering quite a bit and my legs eventually started shaking from fatigue.

Somehow, though hours passed, I never settled into the hospital room and had the delirious impression that we had perpetually just arrived. And of course, nothing I had read about natural childbirth really prepared me for how hard it would be. I struggled to relax and breathe during each contraction, and "get on top of it," as my doula put it. The key is to try to relax and work with the force of each contraction, but everything about the hospital environment was working against my being able to truly relax. Standing there in a thin hospital gown with a needle poking me near my wrist and two itchy elastic bands around my abdomen, it was inevitable that, as the night wore on, I too wore down physically and emotionally, and felt incredibly discouraged. Knowing that my cervix was not progressing very fast, it became clear to me that I needed relief in some form if I was going to continue at that rate until the end. It would have been helpful to get into a warm bath or something like that, but with the monitor and IV connected, that was not an option. It would have also been helpful if the team of people caring for me were determined to do everything in their power to make me comfortable and make a natural birth possible. But obviously that was not going to happen either.

In the early hours of the morning I opted for a half dose of intravenous pain control, which seemed like the most benign choice. It didn't totally blot out the pain, but it allowed me to lie down on my right side and rest for a bit. But in retrospect, I don't think this was a very good choice. In such a position, feeling slightly dopey, my blood circulation was not optimal, and the baby, who was also tired from all the contractions, started showing heart rate dips on the monitor. After that it was just chaos, and I can barely say what happened. The doctor and several nurses came in, I was turned on my left side and given an oxygen mask. I was terribly uncomfortable on my left side. I had not dilated very far by this time-- only four inches. It was clear that if I was going to finish the labor naturally, it was going to take a long time. Every woman's labor is different, and I know plenty of women who have gone through long labors. One friend I know labored for three days with her first baby under the care of a midwife. It would have been possible, I believe, but only in a radically different environment, where I was allowed to move freely, find a comfortable position, and, most of all, get into water. In the context of the hospital room, where everything was working against my comfort and encouragement, it was simply not possible. And while I can't be sure why the baby's heart rate dropped, I do still believe that it was situational and a direct consequence of me lying down on my side, which was a direct consequence of taking the only form of relief I felt was an option, which was a consequence of having no other options for relief, which was a consequence of being bound to a small area by machines.

As soon as I stood back up, her heart rate bounced right back to normal. But how many more hours could I just stand there on the cold tile floor and continue in back labor? Why didn't I just get an epidural? I would have, as a last resort, but my doula said that because it causes the mother's blood pressure to drop, it would likely also cause the baby's heart rate to drop as well and would result in an automatic c-section. If I was going to have a c-section, I didn't want it to be an emergency due to another heart-rate drop.

As we tried to process what was happening, Jeff and I looked at each other and realized that it was scary and pointless to go on. As Jeff said, it all felt so complex and tangled at that point, there was no right choice. I could have tried to labor longer and see how it went, but truthfully, it seemed futile. Jeff said it was as if someone had told me to run a race and then put weights on my ankles. In the circumstances set up by the hospital, choosing to go ahead with the c-section sooner rather than delay the inevitable made the most sense. In radically different circumstances, perhaps at a birthing center, under the care of of midwife who trusted in the birthing process and was devoted to making me comfortable, in a place where I could truly relax and feel cared for, there is a good chance that things would have gone differently for me. Of course, there is no way to know such a thing for sure.

So this is my birth story. Elsa was born at 11:30 a.m. on Holy Saturday, the day before Orthodox Easter. We named her Elsa after Jeff's grandmother, but I wanted her middle name to reflect something of Holy Week, which was so closely bound up in my anticipation of her arrival, so I chose the name Joanna. Saint Joanna was among the women who went to the tomb of Christ to anoint his body with spices. They are called the myrrh-bearing women in the Orthodox Church.

I do not know why things turned out as they did. I am thankful for the c-section that brought Elsa out safely and surely, even while I can never be sure if, under different circumstances, it would not have been necessary. Now it doesn't really matter. In some ways, I wish I had never cared so much, because it would have simplified the whole matter. I am healing well and have had amazing support from dear friends and neighbors. I have two healthy daughters, and I am deeply thankful. I am also glad that I at least had the opportunity to go into labor this time and try for a VBAC, and that Elsa got to arrive in her own timing, on Holy Saturday.

In childbirth, as in all things that matter, there are ideals, and those ideals are certainly good. But I learned through Elsa's birth that human ideals, no matter how wholesome and legitimately desirable, are not the content of my belief. There are ways that one hopes life will unfold but in a fallen world they only happen sometimes, for some-- not all the time, for all-- and usually without explanation. We are only asked, like the myrrh-bearing women, to be faithful should we ever be asked to live through a very dark day, to forgive seven times seventy, to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.


Addendum:

I wanted to add a slight correction to this birth story and am just now getting around to it (oh, a mere five and a half months later). I stated above that I was having back labor, but when I later spoke with my doula, she said that I wasn't having back labor, because in her experience, women with back labor really need someone to maintain pressure on the lower part of their back or else they experience excruciating pain. I on the other hand didn't want anyone to touch my back while I labored. However, during the c-section, the doctor performing it distinctly said that Elsa was in a posterior position, which is what causes a woman to have back labor. That was what made me conclude later that what I was experiencing was back labor. All I knew was that it hurt, and had no standard to measure what such a category is supposed to feel like. In any case, it all just confirms for me the nature of the whole thing in retrospect: a question mark. How is it that I wasn't having back labor if Elsa was indeed posterior? I don't know. Or maybe I was at the very end, the final stretch of walking to the operating room, which was admittedly the worst part of the entire labor. Still, I wanted to set the record straight since my telling of the story above was not entirely correct.

lo, the winter is past

Last year our March, according to the average temperature, was actually the coldest month of winter. This year it has come back in an unrecognizable form, as if it decided to switch its allegiance to spring and be forward-thinking. We have had some beautiful days lately-- sparkling, unbelievable for March in South Bend. Yesterday, St. Patrick's Day, was the best so far. We went walking in short sleeves; we stayed outside for hours. We didn't have to put our sweaters and jackets back on until the sun began its final descent.

For me the day simply oozed with traditional connotations of St. Patrick's Day, which is to say, it felt charmed, lucky, merry, blessed, lighthearted, persisting in green upon green, then ending in hues of gold.

I've never experienced a St. Patrick's Days which so predictably conformed to leprechaun-friendly, four-leaf clover stereotypes. Instead, my experience of St. Patrick's Day is that of a late-winter pseudo-holiday which, like its lame February cousin Valentine's Day, takes a stab at an unpopular calendar month, trying to puncture the dreariness and thus provide some distraction during the long interval between the first-rate festivities of Christmas and Easter. School rooms, beauty shops, and dry cleaners pin up some dreary pre-cut paper decals of hearts and clovers in an effort splash a bit color at an unflinching facade of gray. Couples try really hard to enact romance; bar patrons try really hard to re-construct some iconic ideal of Irish pub merriment. The terrestrial remains terrestrial and accentuates human powerlessness against winter's longevity. All the candy hearts, thematic cupcakes, green beer, and green rivers of our towns and cities are not muscular enough to float the weight of a single human soul upward.

Well, I exaggerate. But my point is that my personal experience has conditioned me to temper expectations and distrust the approach of these holidays. I do not make plans for them, nor do I expect them to be remotely inspiring. Instead it has become habitual in me to ignore them and treat them as supra-ordinary. Jeff and I totally forgot about Valentine's Day this year until the day was almost over, at which point we barely so much as tipped our hat to it. That was my idea of a very successful Valentine's Day.

So, my doctor's appointment yesterday was naturally dominating my thoughts more than any official notation in my date book that it was St. Patrick's Day. As far as I was concerned, this appointment could not get here quickly enough. This is because, in the few days preceding, I really felt as if this baby had turned head down, and I was on edge hoping that an ultrasound would confirm that this was so. My morning was spent at home watching Esme and her best friend Lukas--both of them about twenty times more rambunctious than usual. Or it may have been that I felt twenty times less comfortable than usual, a large, unwieldy, short-tempered pregnant woman, uncomfortably full-bladdered, red-faced on the windy playground, unable to read even a paragraph of my novel due to snack and sippy cup requests. It took all my resources to herd the two of them out to the playground, then back in, up and down the stairs, later cleaning up Esme's potty training playground mishap (the worst kind), and finally wiping copious amounts of lunch off their hands and faces, nevermind the sploshes of yogurt on the floor. The moment when I would break away to go to this appointment lay just beyond the moment when Lukas would go home and Esme would go down for her nap. The promise of this moment did not make the morning seem shorter. Jeff would come home to take over and I would mercifully make my exit and drive away in a bubble of Personal Space.

When the appointment finally came, it happened almost too quickly after all the waiting. Without any ostensible delays, (although I almost was delayed by Esme deciding to resist her nap and throw a hysterical fit at my departure) I found out about the baby. It was head down. It suddenly was, so simply, true. The very fact of it sent me home in a cloud-car. All the anxiety, emotion, and fatalistic musings of last week came to weigh less than a cloud. This baby had turned, and would not likely turn back, and that was the simple truth. There were no other solutions required or decisions to be made about an external cephalic version. The pending notion of a scheduled c-section was promptly removed from the table by my busy doctor before he moved on to his next thing. I left the office with only the sparkling afternoon of an unexpectedly beautiful St. Patrick's Day before me. I was surprised to find myself subscribing to the feeling that, in fact, it was a holiday.

In the end, my friend and I decided to walk to Notre Dame, corral our husbands respectively, then eat outdoors at one of our favorite spots on campus. These were not very illustrious plans involving live Celtic music, imported beer, or corned beef, but I didn't care. The day was so beautiful. Esme's hair was a wild, tangled yellow mane, blowing in all directions like a royal flag as she ran around in squirrel patterns in the sunshine. I didn't care if all we were doing at one point was sitting outside the library on a stone wall amidst air that was remarkable for its freshness and civility toward the range of human temperature tolerance. I was in sandals, short sleeves, and carrying an almost full-term baby who was (and still is) properly situated for her birth-- all utterly remarkable and unanticipated realities whose very realities were sufficiently marvelous to hold me in a state of composed passion for this day and my existence within it. Undergrad students, exiting their classes and streaming by in clusters here and there, were invariably in bright kelly green, some with died green hair, green mardi gras beads, green top hats, tights, or clover-patterned bobby socks. St. Patrick's Day outlandishness probably may only happen in such a degree at a university whose mascot is the fighting Irishman, and part of me always rolls my eyes at this, but yesterday it only served to increase my sense that I was swimming in a particular kind of day, in which earthly hopes and pleasures were allowable, indulged, even freely granted.

I suppose I believe in the possibility of such a day (this feeling tends to come each year in some form at Pascha, for example), but I never actually expect it, and certainly not on St. Patrick's Day because it is St. Patrick's Day. I suppose I also believe that things can come to us that are shaped in the precise shape of our fears, and thus designed to displace them absolutely. But I never genuinely expect that either. I certainly would not expect all of the above on March 17, any given year.

Last week, in my situation, I knew I needed to pray. I thought about praying that the baby would turn downward, but that didn't seem right. Instead, one night in my sleepless worry, I did pray that God would simply be with us in the birth of this child, whatever "kind" of birth it turned out to be. I burrowed into my heart and found the capacity to be stubborn with God. I would stubbornly insist on believing that, even if the birth were the kind most seemingly managed, scheduled, and acted upon by human will and planning (a scheduled c-section), I would stubbornly believe that the date and time were chosen by God, and that his action would be at work in, with, and through this event of our little human family. I have always felt a certain disappointment and horror at the idea that my child's birthday could be pre-selected according to the convenience of a doctor's schedule. But I decided, in praying, that I would refuse to see things that way. It would be a stubborn, hard-headed, impossible interpretation of events, that others would find kooky, I think, but it appealed to me as correct, and, feeling my way in the dark, I think that it was the only possible prayer to pray. It was the only possible faith.

I remember my grandmother, who struggled for years with a chronic headache which would never fully lift, told me that one day, at my sister's birthday party at a pizza restaurant, her headache suddenly lifted without explanation, and she felt for the first time in years what it was like to not have a headache and simply enjoy a moment of life free of that burden. It came back eventually, but she interpreted the moment as a sign to herself of what it would be like to one day have all of our burdens lifted, so easily and completely after they have harassed us for years with their unbreakable yoke. She said is was a silly and humble moment for it to happen-- at a child's pizza party-- but from the way she talked about it I could tell that she regarded the moment as an instance of God's action in her life, and she held onto it as such.

I know at this point in my pregnancy that anything still could happen, and having the baby turn downward is no guarantee of anything. Pregnancy and childbirth are, in themselves, inherently fragile and crazy endeavors. But I do believe that God is acting among us, in us, behind us, and with us (something like what it says in the Shield of St. Patrick) and that this particular winter is pretty much over.

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away." Song of Solomon 2:11-13

alive to the mysterious nature of tummies

I haven't really blogged much through this pregnancy, and now, as I enter into the narrow tunnel of its finality, in which All Things Childbirth comes into sharp focus, high relief, and dramatic potency, it is difficult to tidy my thoughts.

Because I'm not just thinking of myself and the birth of this mysterious new baby who likes to push so strongly against the walls of her in utero apartment. I am waxing philosophical about humanity at large. And humanity in particular. Some friends of ours who are our age and have two daughters-- a girl close to Esme's age, and an infant under the age of one-- have been in the hospital for several weeks now with their youngest girl. I learned that something was going on when I caught a cursory glance of one of their newly uploaded photos on flickr and saw the unmistakable pink and blue stripes of a standard hospital baby blanket-- the kind you always see on photos of newborns before they go home. I thought irrationally: why are they just now uploading birth photos? Then I looked closer and saw tubes and wires hooked up to their baby girl, clearly lying on a hospital bed, and my heart leaped. Next I investigated facebook and learned the news that something mysterious was going on with her intestines that required emergency surgery. That was a few weeks ago. Since then they haven't been able to leave the hospital as doctors are still trying to figure out what exactly is wrong. As of yesterday J, the father, updated his status to say he was "still worried-- [my daughter's] tummy is still a mystery."

There are successful television dramas built around the tantalizing potential of a difficult diagnosis-- when the human body doesn't do what it's supposed to do and an entire staff of brilliant, over-achieving doctors must solve the puzzle. These cases get tidied up in one hour on TV. But how agonizing to be a parent, sitting by your child's side for weeks in the hospital, while her continued well-being may or may not skitter just beyond the fingertips of the best human effort, intelligence, care, and control. How frustrating and confounding when a seemingly automatic component of nature, whose functionality should not require even the slightest effort of conscious human will-- the bowels-- suddenly decides to malfunction in one small, new person, for no apparent reason. A tummy that doesn't work is indeed a mystery, when tummies almost always, in all cases, work just fine without our ever telling them to do so.

A few weeks ago I was trying to leave the house for a routine pre-natal appointment in the afternoon. I had been busy at home all day with Esme, doing housework, keeping her entertained and her two-year-old energy reigned in. In my bustle and distraction I had forgotten to eat properly, and then, on a whim, made myself a really strong cup of hot chocolate. A neighbor had agreed to watch Esme while I was at my appointment, so after the hot chocolate I started rushing to get her in her coat, shoes, gather her sippy cup and other items into a bag. Then I started feeling strange and my eyesight seemed spotted. But I didn't think anything was really wrong until I started to write a note for Jeff and the words came out scrambled and dyslexic. I couldn't believe the nonsensical words and random letters that were coming from the tip of my pen. I knew what message I wanted to communicate, but it would not transfer from my brain to the paper. I crumpled up four different notes before giving up and thinking: whatever is wrong, it is probably a good thing that I'm headed to see the doctor at this very moment.

My mind seemed to clear by the time they called me from the waiting room, but of course I wasted no time in describing to my doctor what was clearly an alarming incident. I was disappointed in his lackadaisical reaction. I wanted to shake him and say: Can't you understand??? My verbal ability just abandoned me!!! Ironically, it was this appointment at which I was to learn the result of my gestational diabetes test, which came back clear. I thought for sure I would be told that I had tested positive for gestational diabetes, with my blood sugar levels performing such crazy tricks. Instead I was told that everything looked fine. The doctor said I had probably had a hypoglycemic episode, and I just needed to be sure to eat protein snacks regularly and not let my blood sugar drop. It appears that an hour or two of total mental murkiness is, according to all standardized modern medical care, within the range of normal. Interesting.

Bizarre as this incident seemed to me, I decided to let it go. Then, a few weeks later, it happened again, this time a little more dramatically, on Forgiveness Sunday, which is the day before Lent in the Orthodox Church and thus the last chance to eat dairy. Ice cream being (need I even state this?) the pinnacle of all possible dairy foods, we went out with a group of friends for ice cream at Bonnie Doon, our local retro ice cream parlor. Pregnant women do not fast for Lent, but I was still happy to indulge in the spirit of the excursion. I won't go into the tedious details of what I'd had to eat that day, but it had been a strange eating day for various reasons that were somewhat out of my control, and I could tell that, once again, something was amiss, when I started seeing blackish spots in front of people's faces. I knew better than to order anything sweet so instead I opted for the cheesy, deep-fried genre of 1950s diner indulgence. After about a half-hour of sitting there, chatting with friends, I noticed that my words were not coming out correctly. In fact, I was speaking gibberish. Again, like before, I knew what I wanted to say, but the words were morphing and distorting themselves upon exiting. Alarmed, I managed to say to Jeff pointedly: I need to go home.

We did, and I was fine within a few hours, but still really alarmed and confused about what had happened. I later spoke with a diabetic friend who said that it was clearly a case of low blood sugar-- hypoglycemia. Another woman I told said that something similar happened to her after the birth of one of her children. She was speaking nonsense and the hospital staff thought she had had a stroke. It turned out to be a migraine headache that was putting pressure on the speech center or her brain. Well, I had had a headache too while this was happening, so perhaps somewhere between blood sugar and headache something somewhere was "putting pressure" on the speech center of my brain. I like that term: speech center. It is good to know that my brain has a speech center, and that most of the time it works just fine, but that it is not always guaranteed to do so, as I would have naively presumed. Twice now, in fact, it has roundly betrayed me, in a way that I was helpless to control. This experience-- though harmless in the long run-- has now become a part of my own history. It has left me with a distinct impression-- an impression of human beings, starting with myself, as strangely plastic, changeable, mysterious things.

If there is anything that pregnancy twice over has also taught me, it's this mystery. Obviously, it is very mysterious to have an autonomous being, separate and distinct from myself, grow from seemingly nothing and then poke its elbows at you from the inside. Of course. But there is also the mystery of an unwritten drama as I approach the birth of this baby. I guess I should mention that at my 35 week appointment I found out, as I had suspected, that this baby is breech. The vast majority of babies turn head down just before birth, but some do not, for various reasons. Esme never did, and my doctor didn't catch it until 39 weeks, which made it far too late to do anything about it, so they scheduled a c-section, and I was knocked off my feet by the disappointment of having a "normal" birth taken away from me.

I thought that perhaps if I wanted a VBAC badly enough in my second pregnancy (which I do), and also sought out better, more attentive pre-natal care (which I did), that I just might achieve it. Now it is not looking very sure. Now it is looking like I may very well be headed for another surgical birth and the long recovery that follows. If the baby cannot flip on its own, and/or will not be flipped by the doctor's hand, this is what will happen. I will not know what it is like to wait for the exciting surprise of spontaneous labor. I won't know what it's like to have a single contraction. I will not experience the gratification of pushing a baby out. I won't have a story about the full moon breaking my bag of waters, and so on and so forth.

Please don't tell me. I know too well: in the spectrum of human griefs, losses, and disappointments, this is really quite banal and insignificant, and reifying this into something next-door to tragedy is not entirely valid. In fact, it is arguable that my disappointment in not being able to have a natural birth is quite irrational, given how difficult and painful natural birth can be. I cannot think of very many solid arguments for why it should necessarily be important (although, in the circles I move in, it certainly seems to be, without question).

I think of friends who have trouble conceiving, and who pine and pine for pregnancy. I think of friends who have been pregnant, and miscarried. All is mystery, mystery, mystery. Nothing bears comparison or questioning. Some tummies digest food while others do not. Some tummies grow babies while others refuse. Some tummies specialize in breech babies. One tummy, if it is not irreverent to call it that, was the expansive dwelling place of God. Tummies are mysterious indeed.

At my last doctor's visit, after a quick ultrasound confirmed that the head was up, the doctor actually said, "Crap, there's the head." (This wasn't my regular doctor, by the way.) Then he proceeded to explain that sometimes the shape of a woman's pelvis can prevent the baby from getting comfortable with its head down, and showed me with his hands what a "normal white woman's" pelvis is shaped like, and other--narrower--possible shapes. My own pelvis is now a mystery to me. Perhaps it is not "normal." But I can't see it to confirm this, so perhaps it is. Perhaps I'll have another c-section. Perhaps things will still right themselves, and I'll have the birth of my heart's desire. Right now, I have to live within that ambiguity and accept it.

But is it not totally absurd that I could go away from that appointment envying the pelvises of other women (of all things), even while some women, unknown to me, might be envying my pregnant abdomen, even while these friends of mine in the hospital might be envying their own lives before they were suddenly turned upside down by the problem of a mysterious little tummy?

I have a mounted reproduction of the above icon on the wall in our bedroom. It is the Theotokos of the Sign. The night after finding out about the baby's breech position, I took it off the wall and put it near me, so I could face it and think about it. The baby had an unusually active night of churning, kicking, stretching, pushing. I was on high alert for whether or not turning might be included in all of this activity. I did not really think my baby would turn downward, but the very hope kept me wakeful. It would be natural. It would be supernatural. I wonder how often hopes of various kinds like this keep people awake at night, fully alert and alive within the reality of the ambiguity we all appear to inhabit.