Postpartum: They Say

Our son, a few hours after birth

On my bed are clean baby clothes that I had to wash from yesterday's diaper blowout. Beside me is a bassinet, and inside of it is my son. My beautiful son, who's sleeping peacefully. For now. He'll be two weeks old on Saturday.

There are so many things about becoming a mother that I'd like to write about, that I'm still processing. What I probably won't do is write a chronological account of the birth from the moment my water broke (and they say it doesn't necessarily gush out like in the movies, but let's just say I had a Hollywood experience) to when I first held him in my arms. What I think I'd rather do is just write a series of vignettes or reflections. So, the next few posts will be a series called Postpartum. 

Nothing will do it justice. Nothing will capture it all. Nothing will explain why I cried on the way home from the hospital. I can try: It wasn't because I was sad to go home or feeling unprepared to bring the baby home. I was ready to go home. It was that I had this singular, ineffable experience at the hospital and leaving was leaving a piece of that experience behind. Leaving was a realization that there are some things you can't take with you.

I still can't believe what took place. I pushed a tiny human being out of my body with no medication and no interventions. To say that I'm pleased I did that or proud I did that would be an oversimplification. Giving birth is giving birth. If a baby came out of you, you gave birth, regardless of whether medication was involved or not, whether it was a C-section or the "natural" way. I don't think of myself as a more righteous person for having done it the way I did. Rather, I just see myself as having a goal and meeting that goal. 

I don't even know where to start. 

The peak: When they laid him in my arms, my husband standing beside me, and I said, "Honey, this is our son! This is our son!"

I was shivering afterward. Was it the IV? I asked the nurse about it. "Oh, you've just got the baby shakes." The baby shakes. Euphoria combined with exhaustion?

They say that recovery is faster with unmedicated births. About half an hour afterward, I was sitting up eating a cheeseburger and fries.

They say it happens when you least expect it. Hasn't that cliche proven true in my life time and time again? 39 weeks to the day. Which is technically 100% full term, but I thought I had at least another week. They say first time moms usually go past their due dates.  I swear I was in bed literally reading about the difference between Braxton-Hicks and labor contractions on my phone because I thought I was possibly feeling...but it couldn't be. Not yet. But then, wait...am I peeing on myself? I must be because there is no freaking way it's...not yet. And when I got out of bed to confirm it wasn't what I thought it wasn't, it was. All over the hardwood floor.

When the contractions got real, during each one, I squeezed my husband's hand to death.

When our son first cried, it sounded like, A-haaaaaa, a-haaaaa, a-haaaaa with vibrato.

Pregnancy Cries

1. The entire first half of Moana, especially the part where the ocean "chooses" her when she's a little toddler and the song the villagers sing, "Where You Are" while Moana grows up.

2. In the shower, imagining my son getting bullied when he goes to school.

3. Waking up one morning with the overwhelming feeling of "not having anything ready for the baby."

4. The end of the video for the song "Glosoli" by Sigur Ros where these little Icelandic children jump off of a cliff and start to fly over the ocean.

5. The end of the movie Coco where the little boy sings "Remember Me" with his great-grandma.

6. Visiting my parents and my mom asking whether we wanted to watch Planet of the Apes or La La Land. (The actual reasons for the crying were more complex, but that is what set me off.)

7. The idea of someone at school telling my friend's little daughter that she's darker-skinned than her twin sister as if it were something to be ashamed of.

(Dis)comfort

37 weeks and 5 days. Less than 3 weeks to go. Supposedly. Only 5 percent of babies are delivered on their actual due dates. So I might have more time. Or less. At this point, who knows?

How are you feeling? Um, fine. I guess I'm getting to that uncomfortable stage, you know, trying to find a comfortable position to get to sleep at night, but otherwise I'm fine. I have sporadic heartburn and my feet are consistently swollen (they look like little loaves of bread), but really, I'm fine.

Oh, honey, you're gonna get to the point where you're so over it, you're just gonna want it to be out. Okay, but I guess I haven't gotten to that point yet, and I don't know if I ever will. I could see if I were uber pregnant at the height of summer all sweaty and hot and bothered, but it's in the dead of winter, and I'm in no rush. Like, hold the cervical checks. For real. I mean, I'm excited to meet our little guy, but I'm not like OMGeeeee, I want to go into labor already. It's still sort of surreal to me. I'm saying, I know the baby is going to come out at some point, but I have no frame of reference for what is about to happen to me.

So, I hired a doula. My ideal is a low-intervention, non-medicated birth, and a doula will help me meet that goal. The idea is that everyone else will be focused on the baby, but the doula will be focused on me. She'll be helping me draw up a "birth plan" beforehand, helping me with pain management while I'm in labor, incorporating P into the process as well (so he's not a helpless guy not knowing what to do), providing breastfeeding support. I'm really glad we made the choice to hire her, especially for a first-time birthing experience. To be clear, I'm not wedded to having a natural non-medicated birth. It's what I want, but sometimes things don't go as planned. And I'm okay with that possibility.

My best friend expressed being annoyed with the fact that the pain women experience (in a medical situation) is often described as "discomfort." Okay, you may feel a bit of discomfort here...Bruh, it's going to hurt.

I don't know how I'm going to react to the pain of childbirth. But I'm going to try to allow my body to do what it was designed to do. And our son is going to come when he's ready to come.

Babaseyi

is a Yoruba name which means "God has done this." It is a name given to my son by a Nigerian family I grew up in church with. There is a Nigerian tradition of naming ceremonies where people give a child a special name that they will personally call him/her. I feel so honored that our family friends would care so much about our son to give him a special name. I don't know where my ancestors came from, but it's likely they were from West Africa, which includes Nigeria. Who knows? I can't help but feel like his Yoruba name is a part of reconnecting with something special and sacred.

For the past week and a half, I've been in my hometown with my husband and my parents chilling hard. I have been a complete bum and have enjoyed every minute of it. Being lazy has been interspersed with meeting up with family and friends, enjoying lots of holiday food and each others' company.

Before arriving to spend time with my family, my husband and I had what I guess you'd call a "babymoon." We spent a couple of days at a bed and breakfast en route to our final destination, got massages, ate some good food, went to a live show, and just generally vegged out. It was probably the last time for a while that we'd get to do something nice together, just the two of us, before the baby comes.

I am currently 36 weeks. As in, literally 4 weeks to go before I reach my due date. I truly can't believe it. It feels like there's still so much to do before I'll feel "ready" for the baby. I don't know if I'll ever feel ready. One of the things I'm looking into is hiring a doula, particularly since my ideal is to have a non-medicated birth. There's furniture yet to arrive—chest of drawers, bookshelf, glider. There are clothes to be washed, child care options to be explored, books to be read. It doesn't seem real.

We head back to home base tomorrow morning. This will be the last time I visit my parents' home before I become a mother. I'm not ready to leave. I've never been good at saying goodbye, even for a little while.

This new year will bring its challenges, for sure. But it will also bring one of the most exciting experiences of my life—bringing our son into the world. May I never forget that God has done this.