Your Birth Story
A letter to my daughter, Caroline.
I didn’t know the cord was wrapped around your neck until the doctor made eye contact with me over the tops of my knee caps. “You need to get this baby out in the next push.”
I had been laboring and breathing through contractions with your Dad’s help for hours until I had an overwhelming sensation to push. The medical world calls this a transition. I called it relief. The nurse, Holly, who had been with us for hours stood on my right, calmly and confidently coaching me through how to connect my contractions with my push. Your dad was on my left. His hands sweaty but strong in my shaking palm.
Your due date was November 11, 2020. I loved that for you. Thinking of all the times you’d write this beautiful sequence of similar numbers on applications, tests, airline reservations: 11/11/20.
The year is memorable, Caroline. It was 2020, the fall of the Coronavirus pandemic. I found out I was pregnant with you one week before the world shut down. I went to nearly all of my appointments alone because of restrictions at hospitals. I filled journals with worries and hopes for you to enter a healthy world.
My pregnancy with you was predictable. Each appointment came and went with good reports, until a routine check at 36 weeks had the doctor call for an extra ultrasound. “Nothing to worry about yet,” the doctor remarked, “just to be safe.”
The ultrasound tech was a young audible woman. She kept murmuring, ‘hums’ at varying lengths to herself. I asked her to interpret, “Do you see anything we should be concerned about?”
In between chomps of pink gum, “Well, the baby’s, just, like, measuring small, and like, when I see this, the doctors usually induce the mother - typically within a week. I think.”
Excuse me. A week? You were coming on November 11th, remember. I didn’t have everything ready yet. I was going to take a day off before you came and read a book, or watch a movie, or go on a final date with your Dad. I had a plan!
The tech finished up, and after consulting with our doctor we learned there was an ‘Intrauterine growth restriction’ (IGUR), which means you were measuring smaller than you should have been, and something was causing your growth to stall. It was safer to get you out sooner than wait for you to come on your own terms.
I don’t remember what happened between then and the day before your birth when we loaded up the car to drive across town to the hospital for my 5:00 a.m. check-in. With our masks on I rolled my suitcase through the sliding doors like I was checking into a flight, except this time my life altering words to the woman on the other side of the counter, “I’m here to have a baby.”
We were escorted to room 406. A large, low intervention ‘suite’ the hospital had available, with a full wall of windows. “This will do,” I joked to your Dad, trying to lessen my nerves as I pointed to the view of the parking lot.
Within minutes of arriving in a cold room I was stripped down into a thin, reused hospital gown that exposed me to everyone, but I managed to keep my socks on. The nurses buzzed around the room, getting their machines set up, cords situated, IV bags stocked.
Just another day at work.
When we told the nurses that we were waiting to find out your gender they clapped and bounced up and down on their squishy sneakers. The word ‘SURPRISE” was jotted in black Sharpie on the white board in our room.
It was a slow process. They had to do all sorts of things to get my body in a state it naturally would be if I went into spontaneous labor. They attached stretchy monitor bands on my belly to keep tabs on you.
I laid in bed watching flipping between free movies the hospital had while your Dad flipped between books, and took detailed time stamps of the entire process. Each time a nurse came in to check on us, he’d pull out his small Field Notes notebook and jot down in all CAPS the time and a brief description:
5:30 AM: ARRIVE AT HOSPITAL.
6:00 AM: NURSE HOLLY GOT US SET UP, BEGAN PENICILLIN.
7:00 AM: NURSE SHIFT. HOLLY OUT. ANNE MARIE IN.
12:30 PM: STARTED TO FEEL SMALL CONTRACTIONS.
Nursing shifts came and went and so did a full day.
7:00 PM: HOLLY BACK FOR SECOND SHIFT.
I was so hungry and the pain was intense. They didn’t let me eat anything, but our favorite nurse snuck me saltines with a stroke of peanut butter on top. I needed penicillin through an IV which felt like fire burning through my veins, and the Pitocin, which starts contractions, felt like a knife violently stabbing my insides.
Every few minutes the nurses had me shifting positions; standing, laying on my back, rocking on my hands and knees as they held the heart-rate monitors on my belly trying to get a good reading.
7:45 PM: 3 DIPS IN BABY’S HEART RATE. HOLLY IN TO EXPLAIN. ALL OKAY SO FAR.
Needing a new distraction, I popped in my headphones and teed up a Chris Burkhart photography podcast I had been saving for this moment based on the description:
Today Chris shares his story. It's a conversation about being present in the moment, making art out of suffering, taking big risks, and what's behind his love affair with Iceland.
It didn’t help in the way I had planned, turns out photography and childbirth don’t have a ton in common. I couldn’t listen long anyway because each time a contraction spiked, your heart-rate dropped causing a marathon of activity. The nurses did extra monitoring and remained steady and calm. “The baby will be okay if we keep progressing, we’re going to break your water.”
11:00 PM: WATER BROKE (MANUALLY). INTENSE CONTRACTIONS.
For the next five hours everyone seemed to be watching my progress under a magnifying glass. I maintained a steady rhythm of breathing through the contractions, totally focused, oddly calm. Your Dad watched the monitor display to instruct me each time a contraction was reaching its peak, “almost to the top, we’re at the top, and done.” Our manifesto for hours.
The nurses commented on how well I was able to manage the pain. I felt proud and equally surprised by my body’s own ability to handle the intense feelings, ‘my mom’s really tough, maybe that’s where I get it from,’ I managed to mumble.
I could no longer maintain the manifesto. “I think I need to push.”
4:04 AM: BEGIN PUSHING WITH CONTRACTIONS
The word ‘push’ triggered what felt like the intro at an NBA All-Star game. The lights dimmed, faces emerged around the bed, things rolled in from all sides of the room, the crowd went wild. Well not exactly, but damn, at a University Hospital, there were a lot of people in the room making sure you entered the world; medical students, residents, supervisors, nurses.
If your Dad didn’t write it down, I wouldn’t have remembered the main doctor rushing in asking me, “How do you want to deliver?”
“In whatever way gets this baby out of me!” I screamed.
The doctor made it clear I needed to get you out quickly and swiftly. As the final contractions picked up, the stress on you was amplified, causing your heart rate to dip lower than they were previously comfortable with. On the next contraction, with a count of ten I pushed. I could feel the pressure break and the energy of the room shift.
4:26 AM: DELIVERY!
Your dad got to see you first. “Well Dad, tell us what you have.’ Stunned and eyes filled with tears, “IT’S-A-GIRL.”
A rainy, cold, Thursday morning, all 5lbs 13oz of you entered the world. You immediately warmed the room.
I was shaking with excitement, nerves, adrenaline, joy… you, my sweet little nugget, were a beautiful, healthy baby g-i-r-l.
The doctors did their thing, wiping you down, weighing you, measuring you, telling us how perfect you were- but we already knew.
5:30AM: Lactation attempt, weighing and measuring.
I’ve never felt more empowered, more powerful, more capable than that day in October when I gave birth to you. I hope you can experience this feeling at some point in your life through any endeavor. It’s an amazing feeling to know you were meant to do something, and I, Caroline, was meant to be your mother.
I love you.
-Mom
Thank you to
and for your support. Thank you to for allowing me to proud, and to for pushing me (pun intended) to ask what I really wanted this to say, and restructure to be more interesting. Appreciate ALL of the time and edits.
What a fabulous ride you took me on. I started to wonder how you were going to end it and you STUCK the landing:
‘It’s an amazing feeling to know you were meant to do something, and I, Caroline, was meant to be your mother.”
I’m also reminded of the question, “Why don’t men give birth to the children? Because they couldn’t handle it.”
PS: LOVED the picture of Clayton.
Yes, YOU HAD A PLAN!! Haha love so much how this turned out. It was so intense. The hook was killer and the detailed time stamps throughout was brilliant.