about babies and healthcare

Objections to health care cover the spectrum of life-and-death concerns: that is to say, death panels to mandated abortions. Now that the death panel crap is being debunked by all sorts of information agencies, expressions of fears that health care reform will kill Grandma are being replaced by fears that health care reform will kill babies.

Well, if I were the one in charge of the secret lethal army of Metal Ones, I certainly would send them out for the babies and the old people first. That would leave all the angry able-bodied people around for a nice Terminator-style fight for the earth. It's good strategery.

All right, so I know that the sarcasm isn't really being very nice. There's a reason my sister gave me the secret super-hero name of "Sarcastro." I try to delete all such commentary when engaging in real dialogue with people who disagree--it's hard, and sometimes I miss my aim, but I do try. But this is my blog, which I began, after all, as a venue for saying whatever the hell I wanted in a desperate experimental attempt to really find my voice. Which, as it turns out, is really sarcastic. Who would've thunk.

Anyhow, I was reminded again today that US health care stats include a shamefully high infant mortality rate.

And I can't help but think of the awful, awful irony of people so completely convinced that it's reforming this health care system that's going to kill babies.

Get it straight. I love babies. I want to have more of them myself. I want to have more babies in the same serene, beautiful way that I gave birth to my first ridiculously healthy little girl. I want every woman who has a baby to be able to give birth in that same empowering way I did--that is to say, with her agency intact, with say-so over her environment and her body, celebrating the advent of life into the world. I want this for every woman regardless of the circumstances of conception. I want this for every woman regardless of whether or not she can pay for it or has insurance for it. I want every pregnancy and every birth to be the beautiful, spiritual, bodily experience it should be. I want every pregnancy to culminate in that. Every single one.

That's not how it is.

And, of course, that's not how it will be, no matter what kind of reform finally gets enacted, because that's my ideal. But I think we could be a helluva lot closer to that ideal than we currently are.

And the first step to moving closer to the ideal is simply recognizing how far we currently are from it, recognizing that having the highest mortality rate of any developed country means that babies are dying. And maybe that, in some undesired, unintended way, if we do nothing about it, if we refuse to recognize that, then we are all baby-killers.

part 5: birth and rebirth

And then, I became a mom.

My doula told me beforehand that I would find it spiritually empowering. I thought that was just goofy talk, so I nodded politely as she described how that sense of empowerment would spill over into all other dimensions of personal and professional life. I couldn't see how giving birth would make me a better theologian.

That was beforeI gave birth.

Many people have written and remarked on the role of their children or grandchildren in bringing them to a realization of the arbitrary limitations of gender within our churches. But that's not what I want to write about. Giving birth didn't teach me the absurdity of gender injustice within the kingdom of God--I was already aware. Giving birth taught me how to love being a woman, a lesson I didn't yet know I hadn't actually learned.

It's not that I ever wanted to be a man. It's just that, till then, being a woman was somehow always framed in the negative. And it was so normal that I didn't even realize it. I--still--didn't think of myself primarily as a woman, except for those instances when I was forced to, in recognition of the limitations of my gender. I still on some level thought of myself as a person, or a student, something generic--"man" in that grammatical universal sense supposedly divorced from actual gender. Female embodiment was sort of accidental, a historical and genetic contingency, and sort of irrelevant. I did, after all, spend a lot of time living in my head.

Pregnancy rewrote my concepts of woman and embodiment. Being a woman was suddenly revelatory, life-giving, positive, superlative, something other but also more than generic "man." I loved my body in a way I never had before; I bought tubs and tubs of cocoa butter not so much out of fear of stretch marks but for the sheer joy of rubbing my growing belly. I reveled in the compliments, which seemed to grow in proportion to my midsection. I had never before felt so beautiful, so at home in my own skin.

Birth rewrote my concepts of spirituality and materiality: who could have known that the most holy moment of my life would occur amid water and blood and shit? Or rather, how could I have missed that messy, bodily, out-of-bounds birthing is at the very center of Christian faith? That birth and rebirth are a privileged metaphor of the spiritual life within Christianity?

Maria was right: it has made me a better theologian.

I don't want to claim that this experience is necessary for a "true" understanding of Christian faith. Not everyone gets to have this experience of birthing: obviously, men do not, but neither do all women. But this is my story. This was my road to wholeness: the birth of my daughter, which rebirthed me, not as the false generic "man," but as a woman. Finally.

Theotokos

Someday, I'm going to have to write this book. A book on theology and childbirth. A chapter on Christmas and Advent and the important but often ignored fact of birth in the Christian narrative. A point in there somewhere about women's experience and why it's still discounted as theological resource. I'm going to have to look into Mariology and see what that's all about. I'm going to give a shot at figuring out why the hell anyone would write "women will be saved through childbirth."



Any other suggestions? What have I missed in my musing? Or has someone already written this book, and I should just go check it out and read it?

What were you doing Wednesday at 9:30 a.m.?

I was watching the whole world change, right before my eyes. None of the rest of you knew it was happening, but I was there, so I got to see it. Every single one of us lives in a totally different world now than the one we all lived in at 9:29. Because at 9:30, Annalise Justine Miranda-Borrero joined us out here in the big bad world, and the world became bigger and less bad and totally new as a result.

Sure, babies get born every day. And it changes the world every time.

It's a sacrament, even if it happens in a hospital (or birthing center or home or heck, taxi cab for the unlucky ones) and not a church, with a doctor (or midwife or taxi cab driver) and not a priest. It's a sacrament because it's a moment where the distracting details of human existence as we've constructed it get swept away as the divine rushes in, that moment where a brand-new life becomes a part of human existence as it really is, underneath and behind and all through the distracting details. That first cry reminds us what our voices are really for. That first glance reminds us who we really are. That first grasp of the fingers makes the rest of our lives make sense in a way they never did before.

So...announcing the arrival of a whole new world, for all of you who weren't there to see it.

one year ago today

We got tired of waiting.

And Clare was born.

There should be some voice other than the passive for this.

In celebration, here is Clare's birth story as I wrote it a few weeks after her birth:

On Wednesday morning we woke up early (though we decided to aim for the 7:00 end of the 6:00-7:00 timeframe Brynne recommended for checking in). Maria had arrived Tuesday night late, and we all went to fortify ourselves with a good breakfast at the Princetonian Diner, a.k.a. Clare’s diner, where Brent and I would eat after almost every prenatal appointment. I had whole wheat pancakes and since I didn’t want to order coffee, even decaf, I decided on grapefruit juice, completely forgetting that Maria had once advised against citrus juice before labor. That issue came back up later.

So from there we went to the University Medical Center and checked in. I was now 15 days postdate, and the plan was that we would break my water and see what happened. For two weeks I had been 3-4 cm dilated, and had been having irregular, very light contractions after stripping my membranes on my last few visits to the midwives. So we were pretty confident that this was all it would take to push me into real labor.

And so it was! Brynne did the amniotomy at 8:30 and by 10:00ish I was in labor. Maria and I took a couple turns around the hallways, chatting while the contractions got stronger.

After that, I stayed in the room (room 436) for the rest of the time and labor really got underway. At some point I threw up that wretched grapefruit juice (which left me with really nasty breath and that bothered me every so often later, but Maria did this great aromatherapy thing with the pillow that really helped). For a while, and from this point I have no time reference other than that, I sat on the birthing ball while the contractions got stronger. I really felt like leaning forward and resting my head on my forearms—that seemed to make it, not less painful, but easier to negotiate. But the monitor kept slipping down off my belly—like all my maternity pants had been doing for the last 2 weeks—and the nurse had to keep patiently readjusting it. I’m sure that was annoying to the nurses, and it certainly was a little bothersome for me, especially when I would have a contraction in the middle of being fiddled with. So on Maria’s suggestion instead of leaning forward, Brent sat behind me for support and I leaned back into him. It was very hypnotic at this point for me—I just kept trying to relax, more and more, breathing really deeply and just diving inward and experiencing what my body was now doing. It was in its own way very very peaceful. Eventually Brent got a little fatigued, and Mom took his place and I leaned back into her. It was wonderful for me and later Maria told me that Mom said to her all she could think of was holding me and nursing me as a baby.

Eventually my back began to ache steadily, even between contractions, so I moved to the shower. The Jacuzzi might’ve been nice, but I didn’t want to wait or to have an exam before getting into it, and the shower was right there. So I moved to the bathroom once the shower got going. I remember hearing Maria comment, “look how well she’s walking!” and wondering in a sort of detached way how other women would be walking. I got on all fours in the shower, with my back to the water, and Brent and Maria and Mom took turns with the shower nozzle, moving the stream of water up and down on my back. That felt really good. I stayed in the shower a long time. While I had been mostly silent while leaning back into Mom and Brent on the birth ball, I made a lot of noise in the shower. I would moan as each contraction built up and released and gradually just got louder and louder. I didn’t expect to feel so uninhibited about making noise. I didn’t anticipate being a screamer—I’m just not—but I didn’t think I would be making all that much noise at all. And at first I didn’t, but making noise was something to concentrate on that gave a bit of release as things kept building and building in intensity. There came a point where I thought, this has got to be about as bad as it gets, because I wasn’t sure I could take any more intensity in what I was feeling. I think at that point I asked where I was—luckily no one took that as a sign of dementia but understood that I was asking where I was in the process. I was in transition.

During the whole time there was a chorus of voices near me, encouraging me and helping me negotiate the increasing pain of the contractions. I could hear everyone very clearly and the voices were a connection to the present moment, keeping me from just floating away into inner space but not interfering with my concentration, either. I never replied to anything anyone said, but it became very important to hear praise and encouragement as things went on. The voices never stopped even though I never acknowledged hearing them.

Finally, I was out of transition. I don’t know how that was decided or who noticed, but there was a definite point where I became more aware of the present and felt like I could get out of the shower. I had a bit of a rest between this point and beginning to push. I actually felt no real urge to push right away at all, and even when I did start the pushing, it was more that I felt like I should start because that’s just what was supposed to happen next. I also wasn’t quite sure how to go about it and I didn’t feel like I was getting any helpful cues from my own body, so I told Brynne I felt like I needed some direction. I pushed awhile in the bed, sort of sitting upright, and tried some different things, different places to brace my feet, and different things to hold on to with my hands as I pushed. After awhile I tried the birthing stool, which I really liked, and I think I remember Brynne saying later that she thought I had made some good progress in that position. I remember it feeling pretty comfortable and powerful to sit on it and push down. At some point I moved back to the bed, I think because everyone thought I was about ready to be done soon. After moving back to the bed things like the baby warming unit were wheeled in—signs that people were anticipating the end. But I still felt like even though I had been pushing for a while, that I wasn’t really making any progress. I couldn’t feel any progression, unlike with the contractions earlier where there was a definite sense of increase and intensity and moving forward. Pushing was more like stasis—it just felt the same every time I did it, and I just had to trust that something was happening even if I couldn’t tell. It felt like I pushed for a very long time. Eventually, Brynne set up the mirror and I was able to see some of what was happening and a tiny glimpse of a head. For a long time it seemed like I would push and the head just stayed right where it was. I could hear Mom (and others, but Mom especially) get excited when I pushed because they could see the head getting bigger. But by the time I was done pushing and could look in the mirror, it would be right back where it was before the push. This was discouraging, even though I could still look into the mirror and see that there really was a head and the baby really was slowly but surely coming down. This lasted a long time. At one point I felt really tired, and felt the need to say to someone, “I am really tired.” I didn’t feel like saying, “this hurts a lot,” or “I feel some stinging,” or anything like that, because I knew that was just part of what happens and there was no sense complaining about it. But I was really tired, and it worried me to feel fatigued because I already felt like I wasn’t making much progress. But I knew, too, that there was nothing to do but break on through to the other side no matter how tired I felt, because it wasn’t like I could just pause and take a break and resume when I decided I felt more like it. So I kept pushing anyway. And eventually there was more of a head visible, and then I could touch it. That was pretty cool, and encouraging. But again, I seemed kindof stuck there, and so it was a little less encouraging than I thought it would be.

I made a lot of noise! But it wasn’t screaming, it was just that the force with which I would have to expel air from my lungs was so great when I pushed that it had to come out as this enormous grunting sound. This was way different than the moaning I did through transition, which was way more hypnotic and focusing. This new sound was simply the audible evidence of hard, hard work. Like a weightlifter grunting through lifting some enormous weight or something.

And then, suddenly, it was time to push again and I began, just like all the other pushes, but this time, I heard Brynne say, this is it!, and, “Brent, you’d better get down here if you want to catch this baby,” and although my eyes were again squeezed shut I could feel the difference in what was happening, so I didn’t need to see anything. It took me by surprise—I thought, my God (and this was prayerful), this is it, she’s really coming out!—and I felt this enormous burst and release of pressure, and then felt my baby sort of slide right out—and then she was just there, right there on my chest, really really there. I felt like crying (I want to cry now as a matter of fact) but I was too busy being dumbfounded and fascinated and stunned to bother. I just wanted to look at her forever.

I didn’t pay attention to anything else after that.