Archive for the 'birth' Category

3 Sculptures

Published
by
jess
on June 1, 2010
in birth
. 0 Comments

 

 

by Sandy Frank

Sandy Frank talks about the process behind creating these sculptures at She Writes: http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/writing-as-prelude-to

Snake Woman

 

NEST

 

REBIRTH

 

Sandy Frank is a California artist with exhibitions around the Bay Area and permanent exhibits as far reaching as Puerto Rico and Grenada, Wisconsin. She was educated through numerous workshops in places as far ranging as the Scottsdale Artists’ School in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the Marin Art School in Nicaso, California. In addition to sculpture, she also produces art through collage, painting, and drawing. She lives in Sebastopol, California.

Birth Day

Published
by
jess
on April 12, 2010
in abortion, birth, birth control, family, fatherhood, motherhood, parenting and pregnancy
. 0 Comments

by Stephanie Tames

I

On the Epiphany my father went fishing. It was the day I was born, January 6, the day the Maji reached the Christ child in Bethlehem laden with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. He drove to the Chesapeake Bay to an area he favored with a rock jetty, carefully picked his way along the sharp-edged rocks until he found one flat enough on one side to make a comfortable seat, and settled his gear and canvas bag into various crevices nearby. It was a bright and windy day, neither too gusty nor too cold, a perfect day for winter fishing for striped bass. The surf pounded against the rocks but it was still low tide when my father arrived so the spray from the plumes of cold salt water did not reach him. He kept a careful watch on the tide and the sea’s slow progress as it covered the rock jetty. He had come close many times to being stranded on the jetty as the tide rose and it was too cold that January day to risk getting soaked by the winter sea.

The story has become a family favorite. Everyone thinks it’s funny: as soon as he was told my birth meant another girl - the third in a row - my father gathered up his fishing gear and took off for the two hour drive to the bay. I guess he thought that since family and friends were watching his two older daughters and son he could take advantage of the time. He loved fishing.

I don’t think my mother thought the story was funny. Whenever it was repeated she would set her jaw tight and her lips would thin into what for my mother was neither smile nor frown but the expression she assumed often and which I imagined meant she was somewhere deep inside her head. She would stare at my father who would be telling this story, acting like he was George Burns on stage before an adoring audience.

I can imagine other families with this story: the father, like mine, guffawing, puffing out his chest as he told how it was just another kid, no big deal, the mother interrupting, telling her side like she was Gracie Allen, how she was screaming with labor pains and told him to get the hell away from her and he took her literally; how he’ll pay for that trip for the rest of his life (audience laughs), how he was really only gone a half-day and was back by evening visiting time to take all the children to see their mother and lovely baby sister with long dark hair.

II

My mother says that she and my father agreed on two children: a boy and a girl. And it happened. My brother came first, then a few years later, my oldest sister. My mother was happy. But just three months after my sister was born, my mother found herself pregnant again. She was depressed. Her health suffered. So when the baby came she asked but was denied a simple operation to tie her fallopian tubes, to wrap the tubes with thread pulled tight like a present so sperm swimming with speed and purpose can not reach the waiting egg. For my mother, it was the only thing she ever wanted.

She knew then she couldn’t take any chances. And she didn’t. But the diaphragm failed her and so did counting the days when an egg floated inside her and she was pregnant again. My father liked the idea of a big family; it was proof of his virility although he would have preferred that his virility made baby boys instead of girls.

After I was born my mother asked again, she said she begged, but the doctor refused to tie her tubes and two years later my brother was born. Whether it was her pleading that softened her doctor’s heart or my brother’s congenital heart defect, my mother finally left the hospital happy: three gifts, a boy and a knot around each of her tiny tubes.

III

We wanted to be Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon. It was the late ‘60s and early ‘70s and we talked endlessly in a fog of pot about giving up our pampered city lives to live in communes, bake bread, reject the values that made our parents complacent and uninformed. We went to protest rallies, experimented with drugs, and took many lovers to beds on old mattresses thrown on bare wooden floors. We didn’t think about birth control. At least at first. But one friend, then another, got pregnant and we realized we didn’t want to be Ladies of the Canyon just then.

They must have sensed my mother as a kindred spirit, these young women, friends of mine but mostly of my older sisters, who always ended up at our house where my mother would help them not have babies. You had to know how to work the system and you had to have money. My mother had both. All it took was a psychiatrist who would certify that a pregnancy would be detrimental to the mental health of the mother and a doctor willing to perform the procedure. In the city it was easy to find both. It took time, however, and once it was too late. It was my cousin and she had come to live with us the year before. She hadn’t been getting along with her mother, my mother’s sister, but she fit perfectly in our big house and big, loud family, until she got pregnant. The other girls came to our house in their flowing long skirts and layers of beaded necklaces, sat at the kitchen table, and gave my mother all the details. But my cousin waited, withdrew. She didn’t want to tell her story. I don’t know why. Her mother came to take her back to South Carolina where she stayed indoors so the neighhbors wouldn’t know what she had done. There’s an old proverb: “a small town is a vast hell.” The next time we saw her she said she never looked at the baby, that it was wrapped up tight in a white blanket and given to someone waiting nearby, that the nurses gave her pills to dry the milk in her full breasts and sent her home. She didn’t come back to live with us.

My mother and I didn’t talk about whether or not I was having sex, or whether she approved. All she wanted was to make sure I wouldn’t get pregnant. I guess she didn’t trust birth control pills or trust that I would take them. She talked to her doctor and together they decided I should go to the hospital for a procedure and while there the doctor would place a tiny piece of metal shaped like a “t” in my uterus. There was no need for remembering. Pregnancy would never be an issue.

That night, still groggy from the hospital, I had a dream where I opened the front case of the big grandfather clock in the hall of my parents’ house and out tumbled hundreds of chubby naked babies smothering me under their weight.

IV

It’s barely a twinkle in his father’s eye, that’s what the doctor said to me from his seat between my legs. All I could see were eyes: his head was hidden under a white cap pulled low over his forehead. I could see his mouth forming words behind a mask that came up well over the bridge of his nose and tied high on the back of his head. He was old. It was his eyes, the only thing I could see, that told me how long he had lived.

The waiting area was crowded. There weren’t enough seats, people stood, leaning against walls. Some were so young, others looked old and worn out. Boyfriends and husbands and maybe some brothers looked uncomfortable, out of place. They kept pushing their sweaty palms down the front of their pants like they were trying to wipe away this place and glancing at the clock on the wall, counting down the hours until they’d be out in the pure light of the day away from the oppressive room, outside where they could finally breathe deeply and fill their lungs full to bursting, relieved that for them it was over.

The week before I had come in my Joan & David heels and Evan Picone suit and carried a small jar of pee in my purse. My purse was the same color as my shoes. You had to have a test before they’d put you on the schedule. I walked from the subway station but couldn’t find the office. Now I was late for work and my feet hurt. I was afraid my pee had gone bad but I had to give it to them, hand my little jar to the young woman at the counter and ask please if they would confirm what I already knew. When I walked in everyone shifted, looked up from the magazines they weren’t really reading or stopped their whispered conversations. I felt their furtive gazes. We all knew why we were there. The next week as I sat in the room in those same seats waiting my turn, I looked at every new face that came through the door and watched as unsteady hands held out jars of pee as bright as the sun.

You don’t have to take off all your clothes. Just from the waist down, that’s what they say, but leave your socks on because your feet will get cold. Lay down on the table and put your feet in the stirrups. You’re draped in white. I looked down my sheet-covered body between my legs and could see the doctor’s head, his mouth moving under his mask but I couldn’t hear anything he was saying. I looked at the nurse, she took my hand, said it was alright.  That night I dreamed again of the grandfather clock and babies, all plump arms and legs like tootsie rolls, tumbling out and spreading across the floor.

V

When we got married, my husband and I didn’t talk about if we would have children, or when. There were a lot of things about our lives together we didn’t discuss. I had long since given up the tiny “t” in my uterus, been on and off various brands of birth control pills, used condoms and diaphragms, not used anything. Didn’t really think about it. I dressed in my suits, high heels and matching bag, went to work every day happy with my job, the paycheck, the way I felt. When it happened, I knew immediately and I knew it wasn’t right. Like my mother I did not want it, did not want it in the deepest part of my being.

I don’t remember how we made the decision. I don’t remember what my husband thought, if he needed convincing, if I threatened to leave, if I screamed and cried.  I know he didn’t make the decision. It was me. Just me. I knew that it wasn’t a twinkle in my eye. I don’t know if it was in his.

VI

In Japan women visit Buddhist temples to pray to mizuko jizo, tiny statuettes that represent the babies they aborted.  It’s not that they brood over whether they made the proper decision to have an abortion but to help the spirit safely cross the river that separates the worlds of life and death. Sometimes women dress the mizuko figurines like newborns and pour water over them to quench their thirst.

My mother was afraid of the water but she went with my father to the bay to fish and after some time she came to love fishing, too, although she never lost her fear, a fear of drowning of one sort or the other.

When I was young I liked to stand at the edge of the surf and feel the pull of the water and the sinking sand under my feet and dream that the earth wanted me and to prove it with each wave I sank deeper as the earth drew me to its core. I wasn’t afraid of filling my lungs with sand and salty water. But before I slipped beneath the surface I pulled myself from the earth’s sucking hold and dove into the waves and played in the surf as my father stood fishing nearby.  Later, he taught me to fish and I too came to love standing by the water and casting my line as far as I could, from one world to the next.

Stephanie Tames is a writer, longleaf pine needle artist, and yoga instructor living in southeastern Georgia. Her publications include Self, Parenting, the Washington Post, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. She has essays forthcoming in the Nature Conservancy Magazine. She is also a regular commentator on Georgia Public Radio.)

In the Dark, About Waves, and First: Waiting

Published
by
jess
on April 5, 2010
in birth, breastfeeding, family, motherhood and parenting
. 0 Comments

by Suzanne Swanson

In the Dark

You’re up there nursing, up in the tiny windowed room tacked onto the back of the house, the flash of sunlight a solid memory, the neighbor’s yardlight etching a shadowy wallpaper of black walnut branches.  When you’re sitting there rocking, the two of you shading into each other’s skin, camouflaging each other, and he slides into sleep, his palm flat against your breast, you could stay there forever, listening to the noise a floor below, not caring that you’ve been doing this for over a year, you’ve missed every event in the world that began at his bedtime.

 You think about forgiveness.  It bubbles in you, like fish breathing, naturally.  You are so generous.  Fed by the great mother, you feed.  Your good will sparkles and hums in the tiny space and sneaks out the uncaulked cracks between the windows and lights on anyone you choose.

You’re up there putting him to bed, and you know he’s tired, he’s been rubbing his eyes for an hour and shouting at you in indecipherable syllables.  And he grabs at your shirt to get at you, but after a few gulps, arches and tries to make an escape on slippery stockings.  Or, he does quiet and finally, after a long wide gaze at your breast, finally his eyes flutter shut and you breathe deeply, deliberately, to answer your impatience and only after counting to, say, 200, do you rise and sniff his fine hair and turn him so delicately into the crib and as soon as he touches the lambskin you bought just for him he stiffens his arms and bends his knees to all-fours and begins to wail betrayal.

Whether you heave him up to start over or turn and let him cry—whatever you’ve decided, whatever you do—your spit sours in your mouth, your teeth clamp down hard on the growl in the back of your throat.  You try to think about forgiveness, for your teeth, for his size.  Let this child know I am just weary, let him know I am only one.  Let him settle here, please, in the arms of the witch, the one who loves him.

 

About Waves

Ranae wants me with her when she has her baby.  I say yes—yes unless it’s that weekend I’m at the North Shore.  It has been too long since I saw Lake Superior.  Of course, she says, I know that, I know.  Besides, she’s been in premature labor, and no one imagines she will make it til then.

She calls me the morning of her due date, calls me in Duluth where I am tearing up my sister’s carpet to reveal scarred maple.  We are waiting for afternoon warmth to drive up the shore.  Ranae says her water broke.  She feels ready.  She wants to stay home as long as possible.  We talk again at lunchtime.  Nothing new.  We are mildly shocked at the distance between us.

The waves at Gooseberry wash over us as soon as we leave the car.  Breakers shush in at an angle, curl like pages slowly turned.  They boom like the ocean.  My daughter says, the thing about waves is, they never die.  It is impossible not to think of Ranae, think of how we all came through water.

I have never liked the idea of riding the wave, staying on top of whitecap, contractions, changing cosmos.    The wind is not benevolent; it simply wants the waves to exist.  The woman lost at sea is half-fish, a mermaid who breathes in water and in air.  She swims close to the rocks, she delivers her infant to safe harbor.

We hike to the falls and back, leave the waves and return.  Some of us see a beaver.  It is an autumn day beyond the perfection of blazing leaves.  The fire dies in rustling ashes on the forest floor.  We drive in quiet back to the city.  There is no answer at Ranae’s.

I am sleeping.  The phone rings with the odd trill of someone else’s house.  Ranae is on the other end.  She has a daughter, 8 pounds, 3 ounces, so beautiful, already nursing well.  She was complete when they got to the hospital.  She could immerse herself in push-rest-push.   Now she is worn, she is floating.  A gray mist falls on the lake, drawn like a curtain over the lapping water. 

 First:  Waiting

Once, barely morning,

I had to go beyond

the windows, left you

in our bed, pulled on

my everyday uniform, loose

over the drum-taut

belly-baby, called

the dog I barely tolerate

for company.  Walked

the alleys, watching

for the line between

dark and light. 

SUZANNE SWANSON is a mother of three and a St. Paul MN psychologist specializing in pregnancy, birth, postpartum and mothering.  Her book, House of Music, was published by Laurel Poetry Collective (www.laurelpoetry.com). She is also the author of a chapbook: What Other Worlds:  Postpartum Poems and has been published in many literary journals, most recently Water~Stone.

Stitches

Published
by
jess
on March 22, 2010
in adoption and birth
. 0 Comments

by Catherine Zickgraf

I’m sure I took a nap when I got home.
I don’t remember the nap, just
the strained stair-climb to my bedroom,
me holding my mother’s wrist, my hand
with IV holes bandaged over.

Stitched at the birth canal,
the cut had relieved such pressure,
but I heard the scalpel
sink in its five-o’clock position.

Nothing hurt like that cut, and blood
was still dripping from the stitches.
The nurse had stocked the room
with smelling-salt pellets
for the next time I passed out
on her bathroom tile.

At the time I believed
the old tale that infant males
don’t feel their circumcisions.
Lies can dull pain, but anesthesia
is better.  So much suffering
caused by doctors and scalpels.

The nurse swished through the door
and reached for him.
It’s time for the circumcision.

We know that’s what the adopting couple
would want.  A fourteen-year-old, of course,
has no right to be a mother.

  

Catherine Zickgraf quit law school to be a writer.  Let’s hope it pans out.  You can find her blog at http://myspace.com/czickgraf.

Her writing has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pank, and Bartleby-Snopes.  She also has work forthcoming in GUD Magazine and A cappella Zoo.

Bonding

Published
by
jess
on February 22, 2010
in birth, motherhood and post-partum depression
. 0 Comments

by Amanda Skjeveland

The doctor has sewed my wound
and you lie beside me in a plastic crib.
Your father is asleep, exhausted
from being up all night
watching your birth.
I can’t see you in the dark but
your sudden wails
make my nipples ache.
The nurse comes in and asks
me if I want to hold you.
I say yes but I mean no.

My arms still shake from exertion.
I clutch you awkwardly as you cry,
knowing that if I drift into sleep
you will fall from the bed
and become damaged.
Months earlier, in your baby book
I wrote a letter to you:
I will love your Kool-aid stained lips
and dirty summer feet.
Your eyes are unfocused and flat
like those of a fish struggling out of water.
You are not the one I wrote the letter to.
I cradle you at my breast but you turn away.

I am broken, torn and still bleeding,
dazed, fatigued, and terrified.
I am primed for epiphany.
The dark hospital room echoes
with your wails
and I wait in vain.

At home I cry straight through days and nights;
your refusal to recognize the difference
invalidates my clock.
Your father goes back to work early because
construction sites are less dangerous.
When my epiphany finally comes it is not
sweet and languid like a blossom unfolding
on a summer day.  Nor does it come once
during a heated climax and transform me.

I wallow, changing diapers, feminine pads
and nursing pads.  For days we lie filthy
on the sofa in a warm puddle
of breast milk and tears.
I imagine hot steaming showers but
I am afraid you will die out here alone
while I am enjoying the water.
One day we both stop crying at the same time.
I no longer know where I end and you begin.

Amanda Skjeveland teaches English at a community college in Maryland and is the faculty adviser for the college literary magazine, the Hedge Apple. Recent poetry publications include Literary Mama, Flutter Poetry Journal, Eclipse, Melusine, Frostwriting, and the Tonopah Review.

Review of Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict

Published
by
jess
on December 21, 2009
in abortion, birth, pregnancy and sex
. 0 Comments

Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict

by Irene Vilar (www.irenevilar.com)

Other Press, 2009, $15.95

 

Review by Jessica Powers

 

Irene Vilar’s second memoir explores a part of her life that she left out of her first memoir entirely—the fifteen abortions she had over the course of fifteen years.

 

Twelve of those abortions were pregnancies with the same man, a former professor, a man more than thirty years older, who became her lover when she was still a teenager. Ultimately, he became her husband and, as she refers to him, her “master.” She wanted a baby every time she conceived—an average of every 8 months, with the exception of a year and a half when she was working on her first memoir and remembered to take birth control pills—but knew that she had to choose between her life and her love. “Pregnant, my life felt less-sub-human,” she writes. Yet from the beginning, her husband had told her how “women’s desires for children killed each one of his love stories” (p. 51). Vilar knew that if she ever decided not to terminate one of her pregnancies, she would be terminating the relationship instead. “If you are grown up enough to have a child, you are just as fit to be a single mother,” he told her. “But I will not be a victim of your displacement” (83).

 

She saw each pregnancy as a “death sentence” for the relationship but also “a chance to rise above it, and above him” (79). Yet each time, she chose to end the pregnancy instead of the relationship. Vilar suggests she was addicted to abortion, but I would argue she was addicted to this particular man, a cruel master who cared more for his own comfort than for the woman he spent so many years “loving.” On the other hand, if she was addicted to the man, she never would have jeopardized the relationship so often by becoming pregnant, so perhaps she is on target when she admits that the cycle of pregnancy-and-abortion fed some destructive need. She felt validated, even “aroused,” by each pregnancy, panicked by the possible demise of her relationship, and simultaneously relieved and empty whenever she had an abortion.

 

Throughout the story, Vilar explores the ways her mother’s suicide when she was 8 left her feeling abandoned and homeless, linking that incident to her own struggles as an adult. She talks about her family’s propensity to addiction—her mother’s addiction to Valium, her father’s addiction to gambling and alcohol, her brothers’ addictions to heroin, and her own to abortion. She explores the damage done to her psyche at a young age but she fails to link her feelings of abandonment to her willingness to submit herself—body, mind, and soul—to a man in his fifties when she was only 17. She fails to acknowledge the betrayal of the feminist movement, which has fought (and continues to fight) for women’s right to an “out” when they find themselves with an untenable pregnancy but which has never provided a sufficient structure for dealing with the psychological and physiological damage of abortion, particularly repeat abortions. And what of the many doctors, family members, and friends who sat back and watched as Vilar tried to destroy her own body? Vilar lets them off the hook without much protest.

 

Vilar’s story is not one for the faint-hearted, nor is it for adamant pro-life or pro-choice advocates. The questions surrounding Vilar’s multiple pregnancies, her legal right to choose, her recognition of and desire for the many lives conceived within her womb but whose voices were silenced before they were even heard are necessarily messy questions.  Vilar’s life is a chaotic, disordered one and she doesn’t shy away from showing just how confused she was for most of her adult life. One of the truths her story demonstrates is that by insisting on the right to “sex on demand” with whomever and whenever we want, protected from all physical consequences like pregnancy, we have forgotten that sex carries with it incredible power, a power which can be abused and a power which can be destructive. Vilar’s husband was guilty of abusing that power. Whether Vilar was ever conscious of abusing that power is hard to say; it’s certainly possible to question whether a 17-year-old girl, suffering from scars related to her mother’s suicide, separated from her surviving parent by thousands of miles, and involved in relationship with a man old enough to be her father, can exercise a completely conscious right to choose.

 

Ultimately, the line separating Vilar’s belief in her right to choose and her recognition of the life within is very, very thin—almost non-existent. When she is pregnant for the sixteenth time, a pregnancy she carries to term, she describes the ultrasound of her daughter taken eighteen weeks before she was born. “The ultrasound images show clearly a miniature head tilted back, an arm raised up, with the hand pointing back toward the face. It would have been possible and permissible to end her life at this point” (208).

 

Thus Vilar ends the final chapter of her book, completely blurring the line between pro-life and pro-choice politics as she recognizes her daughter’s existence and acknowledges the many times she had, in the past, exercised her right to choose.

Chosen

Published
by
jess
on November 2, 2009
in adoption, birth, motherhood and pregnancy
. 0 Comments

by Ann Whitfield Powers

After the fertility drugs fail, I spend hours lying with acupuncture needles crisscrossing my abdomen. I drink stinky tea, take BB shaped pills, and stand on my head after sex.   Nothing works.

As Patrick turns five, Tom and I decide to adopt a baby.  In interviews with the adoption agency staff we reveal more about ourselves and our relationship than we’ve told our best friends; we put together a family photo collage Norman Rockwell would envy; we craft a one page Dear Birthparent letter; and we write a hefty check.  Finally, we are “in the pool,” ready to be considered by birth parents who are looking for the right adoptive family for their birth child — this, the new trend in domestic adoption.  The birth parent(s) pick the adoptive family, not the other way around. Now, all we have to do is wait.  

Seven months later, we’re still waiting.  We have not received a single call, not even a “screening call” to see if we might be interested in a special needs child.

Each month the agency newsletter announces that three or four families have adopted, and five or six new families have been added to the waiting pool.  There are now over sixty waiting families.  My early confidence is badly bruised, and sorry thoughts start to hound me.  

 

*

 

Late one Friday afternoon, I come home from teaching and force myself to hang up my coat and slip off my shoes before I head to the answering machine.  No messages.  Then I see a note scrawled on an envelope: “Adrienne from the adoption agency called.  Please call back to set up a screening. Not urgent.”  The not urgent is underlined. 

Out the kitchen window I see Patrick and his nanny, Nisey, playing in the backyard.   I slip back into the living room and dial the phone number, my heart racing. Please let Adrienne be there.  It’s 4:45 on a Friday afternoon. I can’t stand the idea of waiting through the weekend to get the details.

She’s there! Her voice is warm and upbeat. “I want to know if you and Tom would like to be presented as potential adoptive parents to a birth mother named Laura.*”

Yes, we would,” I say quickly. 

Adrienne laughs.  “Well, there are a few complications you should hear about before you decide, but the good news is that the baby is already born, and the father is out of the picture — well, deceased, actually.” 

“Oh, that’s sad,” I say hesitantly.  Our adoption agency is all about keeping kids in touch with their birth parents, but because tracking down birth fathers and getting them to sign over paternity rights is often a sticking point in arranging adoptions, a dead birth father could be seen as good news. 

I walk back into the kitchen to check on Patrick and Nisey.  They’re crouched in front of a flowerpot, intently poking something with sticks.

“And you should know that Laura does have a history of struggling with addiction. She has been honest about using a bit during her pregnancy.”

I take a deep breath. “Okay,” I say.  I return to the dining room table, sit down and take up a pen. “Tell me.”

“Laura drank two to three beers a night, not every night certainly, but more often than not, and smoked pot for the first six months of pregnancy. She also says she did meth and heroine four times.”

I scribble: 2-3 beers; meth/heroine 4x.  Adrienne talks on as I try to decide how bad those numbers are.  In the adoption world, an occasional drink — unthinkable when I was pregnant with Patrick– is no big deal.   Of course, Laura drank more than that, but it doesn’t sound like she was a raging drunk.  The drugs worry me too, but the use is low.   I’m not ready to quit yet.     

“After that she went through a treatment plan and was definitely clean and sober at the end of her pregnancy, because she was incarcerated.”   

“Incarcerated?”  

Adrienne doesn’t completely understand the story behind the incarceration, but it has to do with a series of fights between Laura and her boyfriend — not the baby’s father, but the boyfriend after the baby’s father died — that ended up with assault charges and both Laura and her now “ex” boyfriend in jail.

A stillness opens in my chest.  My sister had an abusive boyfriend once. An image of her trashed apartment — broken glass, fallen computer, bloody floor — flashes for a second.  She took years to get out. Briefly I volunteered in a domestic violence shelter where most of the women I met were trapped in that cycle and didn’t show any signs of being able to break free.  Do I want to start a relationship with a woman who is stuck in a DV dynamic?  I can’t focus on this question now. 

“Tell me about the baby.”

“Laura went into labor three weeks early and had a c-section. The baby had to be resuscitated, but was fine within minutes — with her Apgar Scores all nines. After three days in the hospital recovering with the baby, Laura went back to jail and the baby went to foster care.” Adrienne’s voice lowers: this is an unfortunate event, the separation of baby from mother. Then she picks up again.  “But the baby is doing well. She is five weeks old now.”

I smile. A girl.  “No signs of fetal alcohol syndrome?”

“No, nothing.  She looks good.”

Adrienne assures me that Laura has been diligent in pursuing the open adoption.  If the state agrees to this adoption — which they may or may not do — they will most likely restrict our contact with Laura, probably to letters and phone calls, or an occasional meeting in a public place. Laura understands this and still wants to go ahead.

“Adrienne, I think we will want to be presented. Let me check with Tom and get back to you.”

I hang up the phone, look out the window, catch Nisey’s eye and hold up a finger — one minute.  She nods.  I dial Tom’s number.

“We got a screening call,” I announce without saying hello.

“Oh really?”  He sounds curious but cautious.

I summarize the situation: a five-week-old baby girl, two to three beers, four meth/heroine incidents, incarcerated, clean at the end.   There is a long silence at the other end of the phone as Tom absorbs this information.

Finally he says, “Well, it’s a little iffy, but nothing you said makes me feel like slamming the door shut.  If she picks us, we can find out more, before we commit, right?”

I smile. “Right.”

“Okay, then,” he says. “Let’s do it.”

I call Adrienne back, but the office is now closed.  Yes, I say to the answering machine. Yes, we want to be presented.

I skip out to the backyard where Patrick and Nisey are now digging in the dirt.  I squat down, pick up a stick and join in.  “Are we going to get a baby, Mama?”  Patrick asks.  I smile.  He doesn’t miss a beat. “Maybe,” I say, tousling his hair.  “Maybe we are.”

*

 Dear Ann, Tom & Patrick,

I’m Laura, Destiny Jo’s  mother, and I hope you will be her mother soon too (and father and big brother)! Destiny was born on 02/03/04 (Kind of a cool birthday) three weeks early by C-section and weighed 5lbs 7oz. and she is beautiful, and I’m not just saying that because I’m prejudiced. She really is beautiful. 

We have been chosen. Adrienne tells me Laura looked at six families and picked us.  I am giddy, smiling, swaying to a bebop tune in my head. Adrienne provides the details on where we go from here.

There is a hearing in a week where the state Department of Human Services (DHS) will tell a judge what they plan to do with the now six-week-old baby.  DHS has in the past agreed to arrange private adoptions through our agency but these particular staff people have been noncommittal, verging on evasive.  Adrienne has sent a letter to the judge requested time to speak at the hearing.  Meanwhile Laura is sending us a letter, telling us her side of the story.  If the hearing goes well, we’ll go meet Laura and — if we like each other — finalize the deal.

I was the youngest of seven children . . .my brother Jack, the only one of us to graduate from high school, nicknamed me the wild child and I guess I have been pretty wild.  Mainly due to the fact that my parents were alcoholics I didn’t get a lot of real parenting.  But my mother gave us all a lot of love and my dad is responsible for the abundance of quick wit and humor than runs in our family.  And believe me we’re a funny bunch.

A week later Adrienne calls with good news: Laura’s attorney just told Adrienne she doesn’t need to come down to the hearing. He talked with DHS and they say they’re willing to facilitate this adoption!  Adrienne wants to hear it from the DHS staff person herself, but at this point it seems that if we want this baby, she’s ours.  We could go meet Laura next week and get the baby a few days later.  DHS may require us to jump through some hoops, but Adrienne is hopeful that we can move quickly.

We could have a baby in two weeks.  Oh my god. I’m in the middle of a semester of teaching two college classes.  I couldn’t quit at this point.  My mother has always said she’d come for a month to help, but right now she’s out of reach on a two-week kayaking trip.  Do we even own an infant carseat anymore? Our son is five, and what baby gear we haven’t given away is buried deep in the basement.

I talk to the chairman of the English department and tell him we might be getting a baby soon, but promise I won’t quit.  We brainstorm possible approaches — cutting an assignment, reducing days of teaching, making the final optional. It turns out he and his brother were both adopted. He turned out well enough, he says with typical modesty. But his brother has had problems. He looks at his schedule and offers to take my Wednesday classes.

My father died when I was fourteen and his death was really hard for me.  I rebelled at the whole world when he died and found solace in drugs and alcohol and sex . . . which of course led to me having my first child at the age of 15.  I quit smoking the day Derek was born and nursed him for 13 months. When he was three and a half I signed over custody to his dad’s mother, since we weren’t getting our lives together very well and couldn’t give Derek the stability a kid needs.  Anyway, I grew up fast and hard and went to jail when I was 18 and made a career of that kind for several years off and on.

On Saturday, instead of grading papers, I dig out baby gear from the basement.  I wash the dusty covers of the bassinet, the bouncy chair, and the swing.  I wipe down the railings and set it all out in the backyard to dry in the sun.  Where is our old infant car seat? Oh damn, I loaned it to my stepbrother and his wife in Montana.  Should I call them and ask them to send it back? Are we really getting this baby?

Patrick helps me assemble the bassinet. We set it up in a corner of the dining room and lay a gauzy green cloth over the top. That afternoon he plays big brother and tucks his Curious George monkey in the bassinet.  Now, each time I walk by the bassinet and look through the green gauze, I see the faint outline of a little figure inside.

Adrienne gave me the names of parents who have adopted kids with drug and alcohol exposure, and she suggested we call our pediatrician. The first parent I call is empathetic and reassuring: her child is turning out fine.  The pediatrician is another story.

“Oh, Ann, that’s a lot of exposure,” the pediatrician says immediately.  “And you know she’s underreporting. Believe me, I know. They always underreport.”

I sit down on a dining room chair.  Her voice is hard, jaded.  She seems to be implying she has extensive experience with lying drug addicts.  The adoption agency has warned us that many people are quick to vilify birth mothers.

“Yeah, maybe,” I agree reluctantly. I rest my elbow on the table, head propped in my hand.

“The baby may be fine now, but problems often don’t crop up until kids get into school. With all that exposure you will see problems. At the very least she won’t be the brightest bulb in the bunch.” 

I frown. How crass. And is it really inevitable?

“But you should expect to see ADD, learning delays, hyperactivity.  You could be spending your days taking her to special ed classes, psychiatrists, neurologists. I mean, some people are ready to take that on.  But don’t adopt this baby unless you’re willing to deal with a lot of challenges. Are you ready for that?”

I see. She’s on a mission, bringing hard truths to a naïve mom.  Telling it straight, hitting home.  Silently, I resist. Yes, some of this might come true.  But all of it?

“No,” I admit. “That’s not what we want.”

There is an awkward pause, and then she starts in again. “What is the mom in prison for?”

What can I say?  “Assault.”

“Assault? Oh, there you go. Oppositional defiance disorder. Maybe drugs in the house as she gets older.   And think of your son: what will it do to him to have this problem child in your house?”

My back goes rigid.  I stand up to hang up the phone.  “Well, that’s a lot to think about.  Thanks so much for your input,” I say trying to keep the acidity out of my voice.

“Thanks for thinking of consulting me,” she responds in a kinder tone.  “If you do get that baby, I’ll do my best to take care of her.”

I am shaking as I hang up the phone.  I hate her. I hate what she said.  It’ll be a cold day in hell before I take another child to see her.  She was horrid, jumping to conclusions, generalizing.  And then I am sobbing, because she might be right.  Worst-case scenario, I have to face it, she might be right.  And she understood my question better than I did:  I was really asking her to tell me the baby would be fine. I lean my forehead on the cool wood of the dining room table and cry.

Ten minutes later, I pull myself up, find the adoption file, and pull out the fact sheets on drug and alcohol exposure. Moderate drinking, defined as a drinking less than two drinks a night, creates a teratogenic risk of “none to minimal.” Laura reports drinking  more than that — two to three beers most nights — but not close to the six drinks a night required to get into the moderate to high risk category. There seems to be plenty of gray area here. I’m not sure what teratogenic means, or if there are other kinds of risks, but I’m not going to accept this pediatrician’s blanket statements of doom.

My American Heritage dictionary doesn’t list the word teratogenic. The Encarta Encyclopedia tells me that a teratogen is a “substance or agent in the external environment that can induce deformities in a fetus.” Teratogen is from the Greek teratos, which means monster; and genes, which means born.  So, to put it crudely, we’re looking at the chances that the child will be born a monster. But she’s already born and looks fine. Do teratogenic risks include developmental problems that crop up later? I will have to do more research.

That night, I call two more families who have adopted kids exposed to drugs, both say they adopted knowing they could face some special challenges, but so far, their children are fine.  A friend calls to say she checked with her pediatrician who insists the post-birth environment makes a huge difference in an exposed child’s development.

My mother died in July, then Destiny’s father died in August when I was two months pregnant with her.  Then I met Joe who is a woman beater.  But I saw the pony tail and thought well there has to be a pony in there somewhere under all that shit, so I started shoveling.  Well, I got my shovel broke and my heart broke too and still no pony. 

Anyway I did stab him in the neck, which only goes to show everyone has a breaking point. Even though the doctor’s report says it was a superficial wound I guess I came within an inch of killing him.  So initially I was charged with attempted murder and assault II.  I plea-bargained down to assault and am now paying my debt to society: 16 months. It would never have happened except for all the abuse I’d enjoyed and me being pregnant and all hormonal. I usually always control myself better.

Usually always?  What does that mean?  On the rare occasion she does act violent? Great.  Then again, if I had an abusive lover, I might just stab him in the neck too.

Anyway I feel a lot worse about the drugs I did while I was pregnant than I do about the assault. I did meth about four times and heroin twice and drank beer and smoked marijuana about half a dozen times. But I was totally clean the last month of pregnancy.  I’m so thankful Destiny was born clean and is not affected by the drugs.

These aren’t exactly the numbers Laura reported to the adoption agency, and the adoption agency via Adrienne, reported to us. Laura shrunk the amount she drank quite a bit. At first it was two to three beers most nights, now it’s half a dozen beers the whole pregnancy.  And I thought she was clean and sober for the last three months, not just the last month. Still, normal enough, to underreport when you know what’s at stake.  And the baby is healthy. 

Please don’t let my past or my current situation intimidate you because I’m really not a big, mean, dumb, stupid head! I’ve just had a constant battle with addiction and I’ve made some poor relationship choices.

“This too shall pass.”  Peace Out!  Love Life and Laughter,

Laura

I call Adrienne. “We got Laura’s letter,” I say.  “I like her.  But I notice there was a discrepancy between what she told me and what she told you about her drinking.”

“Well, actually the discrepancy is getting bigger,” Adrienne says.  “I just got the reports from the rehab center, and the first time she went in for an evaluation, in August, when she was two months pregnant, she self-reported she was doing meth every day, 1-2 grams, and had done heroin 3x the previous week.  She didn’t sign up for the rehab program at that point.  Four months later, in December, she did check herself in, and those records describe her as a self-admitted alcoholic.  So, I don’t know. It looks like there may be more exposure than we originally thought.”

I wash dishes, vacuum, water plants, numb from the weight of the news.  Up until now I thought there was a chance, a reasonable chance, the baby would be normal. How can I hold on to that hope now? 

And I worry about Tom’s reaction. He’s never felt the need for a second child, not in the gut-level yearning, no-rational-arguments-are- relevant way that I do. He’s hung in through this long process as a supportive husband, a willing participant.  He’s been interested and curious, but not fundamentally in need.  He feels the price of parenting more keenly than I do: the loss of free time to go mountain climbing, money to travel, or the simple pleasure of sleeping through the night un-interrupted by a crying baby.  He is going through this for me, but he has his limits. And this news will push him way over those limits. Even if I decided I was willing to take on the risks these numbers seem to suggest, I don’t know if I can ask him to do it.

When I give him the news, Tom says simply, “That’s not good.” 

“No,” I agree, “it’s not.” 

We look at each other silently.  Slowly I realize neither of us wants to be the one to pull the plug. 

“This isn’t what I envisioned,” I venture.

Tom gives me a wry smile and shrugs in agreement.  

After another long silence, Tom asks, “What exactly does it mean, to have that much exposure?” 

A weight lifts off my chest.  He’s willing to consider it.  Together we look at the literature on drugs and alcohol the adoption agency gave us, detailed in terms of teratogenic impacts but silent on issues like learning disabilities. We definitely need to learn more about what it might be like to have a child affected by in-utero exposure to drugs and alcohol.

We both surf the web and bring home printouts of news releases from an alphabet soup of agencies and journals: National Institute on Drug Abuse, Journal of American Medical Association, American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse.  Through my college’s interlibrary loan system, I request books on fetal alcohol and drug exposure, adoption of at-risk infants, and studies of children who were exposed to drugs in utero. 

The next few days are a blur of obsessive reading, long phone calls with friends, family, people I know who have adopted, and pediatricians who specialize in developmental rehab; debates with Tom, and side conversations as I pick up and drop off Patrick from pre-school.  The things people say:

“It’s like you’ve been told you have a Down syndrome baby, but you can walk away from this one.”

“What will it do to Patrick?”

“Maybe you were meant to raise this child. You have the resources, the skills.”

“I was adopted. I turned out fine.”

It’s the meth you need to worry about. Meth makes holes in your brain like Swiss cheese.”

 ”Alcohol is the biggest concern.”

“My husband’s adopted.”

“Destiny? Like Destiny’s Child, the band?”

“You know you will get picked again.  You can walk away without feeling like you’ll never get a baby.”

“You should talk to the Handle Institute, they can really re-wire your brain.”

“I have a patient who is adopted from Russia and he’s a fruitcake.”

“If she does end up having problems, she’ll be lucky to have parents like you.”

 

When I had thought I might still have my own biological child, I had picked the name Sophia Grace as a girl’s name, symbolizing wisdom and grace, two things I would like to give my child.  But it seems cruel to give a baby who, as our pediatrician says so charmingly, won’t be the brightest bulb in the bunch, a name that means wisdom.  But we need a name other than Destiny. Laura knows we might rename her, Adrienne assures me.  At the grocery store I buy a booklet, What Shall We Name the Baby?  Only after I buy the book do I realize I’m planning on moving forward with this adoption.

Finally the library books come in.  Adoption and Prenatal Alcohol and Drug Exposure: Research, Policy and Practice, published in 2000, is exactly what I’ve been looking for. Each chapter is by an expert in the field; it’s heavy with in-text citations, endnotes, and reference lists.  In her introduction, Madelyn Freundlich of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute says:

Research on the effects of prenatal alcohol and drug exposure has occurred in two distinct phases.  The first phase of research began in the 1970s and continued through the early 1990s.  Findings during this phase were by and large pessimistic, with an emphasis on early neurological damage among the children prenatally exposed to drugs or alcohol and predictions that these children would be unable to function normally intellectually or socially.  Beginning around 1993, the tone of the research shifted, as longer-term studies showed dramatic variation in the outcomes for children prenatally exposed to substances.  It became clear that there were many cases in which children, despite histories of prenatal substance exposure, demonstrated normal long-term development. (2)

 

Doctor Richard Barth of the University of North Carolina conducted an eight-year longitudinal study of 233 adopted children, 121 of whom had been exposed to drugs in utero.  In his chapter he outlines his study methodology and results in great detail — reminding me of my forgotten work as research assistant for a sociology professor, whose project was rife with uncertainties and imperfections.  Barth’s study also isn’t air tight, but his results are specific and telling.

 At the study’s eight-year mark, 78% of the drug-exposed children had no physical or mental disability, 70% had no developmental disability, 54% had no learning disability, 58% had no emotional/behavioral problems and 69% were in overall good health. But in the next chart, at the same eight-year mark, 86% of the children were medicated for ADHD and 56% were learning disabled. 

Finally, only 19% of parents said their child had been difficult or quite difficult to raise.  I can’t help but smile. Maybe the other 81%, those who say raising their child was not difficult, are the parents of the 86% who are medicated. 

No matter the discrepancies and contradictions, the bottom line for us is clear: we should only accept this baby if we’re willing to deal with some learning disorders, hyperactivity, and ADD.  I know I am still largely ignorant about the day-to-day reality of the challenges involved, but I think I can do it.  I know I can.  Is this a naive little-engine-that-could optimism?  A blind desperation for a baby, any baby?   I could do it, probably, but at what cost?  And what about the impact on Tom and Patrick? Could I be pushing our family into conflict and angst?  I waffle and agonize, one day set to go for it, the next resigned to giving up.

Then Adrienne calls with bad news.  It turns out the state is not willing to facilitate a private adoption.  When they said they would work with the adoption agency, they meant they’d allow the agency to present a family as one of several families they would consider, but they’re doing the picking, not Laura. And they won’t even set up the committee that decides who gets the baby for another six to eight weeks.

“Six to eight weeks?”  I sit down, the breath knocked out of me. No baby in two weeks.  No rush to reorganize the end of my semester, no phone call to Mom for help. As Adrienne talks, I gaze at the bassinet in the corner of the dining room.

They have an internal process they have to go through, to, among other things getting a DNA confirmation of paternity. And I suspect, terminate Laura’s parental rights.

“Six to eight weeks?” I say again.

Adrienne is incensed that the birth mother’s wishes are of no interest to DHS.  I’m incensed that although there is family who would adopt the baby now, when she is seven weeks old, the state is insisting on a long, drawn out, and probably expensive process which will result in the baby not being placed for at least two more months. Crucial developmental milestones are being passed; opportunities to bond are being lost. 

“Wait a minute,” I say, turning away from the bassinet.  “Who told you DHS was willing to facilitate an open adoption?”  Laura’s lawyer.  “And when exactly did he tell you this?”  The day before the hearing.

Of course. How could I have missed it? Oh, I knew Adrienne should have gone to that hearing, but I didn’t want to be pushy.  When did I get so cautious, so wimpy, so stupid? 

“We were misled, Adrienne — purposefully misled — all of us, that lawyer, you, me. I’ll bet money that DHS never had any intention of facilitating an open adoption for Laura.  When they heard you had requested time to testify; they kicked into gear. They called Laura’s lawyer and said that it wasn’t necessary, they’d be happy to cooperate with you.  It was a ploy to stop you from speaking to the judge and making a pitch for something they didn’t want to do.” 

“Yes,” says Adrienne. “My supervisor and I have spent some time discussing whether I should have gone to that hearing anyway.”

Yes, I think to myself, I’ll bet you did. 

Adrienne says we can continue to stay in the process and be the family the agency nominates for consideration by DHS, in six to eight weeks, but she would understand if we decided to call it quits.  If we did stay in, we’d also stay in the general adoption pool, still be seen as a candidate by all the other birth mothers out there. 

I say we’ll stay in. What’s to lose?  We’ll have to fish or cut bait later, but later we’ll know more, and we’ll know more about the baby, too. 

“Oh,” Adrienne adds, “DHS also told me that recently the baby has developed tremors.”   

“Tremors or seizures?” Tom asks. As a lawyer, Tom represents parents of kids poisoned by thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that used to be included in multi-dose vaccines.  He’s read reams of medical reports on children’s regression into non-verbal, seizure-intensive lives.  He’s spent hours listening to clients overwhelmed by the heartbreak of watching a child regress, and parents struggling to find answers, a cure, or at least some way of coping. He’s watched at least one marriage fall apart in the process.

“Tremors can be part of withdrawal, a process that is short-lived,” says Dr Saj Budden, a pediatrician at Legacy Emmanuel Hospital’s Child Development Rehabilitation Center. Dr Budden has been a saint, returning my many phone calls, talking freely for half an hour at a time. Even now, two months after birth, even if the baby showed no sign of heroin or meth in her blood at birth, tremors could be withdrawal.  Drugs move out of the blood much more quickly than out of fat tissue, as in the brain. She recommends we request an MRI and more information on the baby’s head’s growth rate.  She confirms that as the child grows older, we could easily see learning disabilities and hyperactivity, but she stresses that many, even most, of the children she sees function quite well in society, once they get extra help. 

After Patrick is in bed, Tom and I talk it over.  I’m relieved to hear him articulate a position pretty close to my own: he’s willing to take on some developmental delays and learning disabilities, but scared of antisocial behavior and violence. 

Dr. Budden says the biggest physical reactions are hyperactivity, short attention span, and poor impulse control.  But because the children can’t process information well, have trouble extrapolating; sometimes they can’t read the social clues. So, they can sometimes become social misfits, sometimes withdrawn, sometimes angry and violent.  “I can’t promise you that won’t happen,” she says.

Tom and I talk. And talk and talk.  Tom is done talking long before I am, but, trying to be a good husband, he sits and listens as I process.  What’s the down side of staying in? For one thing, I’m a wreck. I’m tense, worried, neglecting my responsibilities.  The English department chairman has a saying on his door that catches my eye each time I walk by: “It’s not the getting and the spending; it’s the toll that hope takes.”   

And what about Laura?  What if she thinks we’re with her for the next two months only to find out right before the committee meets that we’ve dumped her?  She would feel terrible, betrayed.  What if there is another family, Laura’s second choice, who would maybe feel fine about the risks this baby poses?  Are we unfairly cutting them out?

I call Adrienne and tell her we’re thinking of pulling out.  We’re pushed over the edge of our comfort zone on the alcohol, the drugs, Laura’s own background, and the uncertainty of DHS’s process. And we want to minimize the disappointment and hurt Laura feels at this rejection. Doesn’t it seem better to do it now than later?  Yes, says Adrienne. She’s appreciated our attitude and our willingness to go along with the process, but it really has dragged out and been uncertain and increasingly difficult, and if we want to pull out it would be better to do it now and let Laura get on with the next step.

So. I hadn’t really intended to finalize an ending, just to talk it over, but there doesn’t seem to be anything left to ponder.  “Okay,” I say. “I guess that’s what we should do.”  Then there is an awkward moment as I realize I may never speak to Adrienne again. “Well, goodbye,” I say.  “Nice to get to know you, if only over the phone.”  It’s odd not know how it will all turn out.  Adrienne says to feel free to call if we want to check in and do that kind of processing.

After I hang up the phone, I wonder what will happen to little Destiny.  Will she be all right? I hope her foster family will adopt her and she will be just fine, or, if not fine, at least mainly happy.  Maybe I should have had more courage or more strength or been more willing to take risks.  I wonder what her destiny is. I will always be a little sad that she wasn’t part of mine.

*

Two days later, I call Adrienne.  I can’t stop thinking about little Destiny.  Has she told Laura that we’re pulling out?  If not, could we wait a bit?  She hasn’t told Laura and is willing to wait.  I say please then let us stay in a while longer, even though it probably won’t work out.  Probably not, Adrienne agrees, but we can stay in as long as we like. I hang up and feel better; at least Laura won’t feel abandoned by us, just screwed by the system.  I suppose it’s easier for me too. It’s easier to let the system screw up our chance at adopting this baby than to face the fact that we said no to a baby.  Am I avoiding honest self-assessment? Am I cheating? Maybe so.  And yet, in all honesty I feel back in the game. If by some miracle it does work out that we can adopt this baby, I will want to adopt her.  Despite my belief in informed decision making, quality research, and clear thinking, I’ll want to adopt her not because of certain facts or statistics or available resources, but because of faith in the mystical side of life, the belief that some things are meant to be. In short because of her name, a name I don’t even like.     

* Note: The birthmother’s name has been changed.

Ann Whitfield Powers is currently working on a book about coming late to motherhood titled “Isn’t Forty Kind of Old for That?”  Her fiction and creative non-fiction have been published in Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers; Literary Mama; Oregon Literary Review; and other literary journals. She lives with her husband and two sons in Portland, Oregon.

Bossy Midwives

Published
by
jess
on October 9, 2009
in birth, family, fatherhood, midwives and pregnancy
. 10 Comments

by Erik Lee

How many bossy midwives does it take to change a lightbulb?

“Bossy midwives.”  I found that phrase in a London Times story on British hospitals (sadly unavailable online now).  The phrase has stuck with me for years.  I remember telling a friend about it and hearing that some women get so disgusted with “bossy midwives” they forego all medical assistance and give birth on their own at home.  Astounding.  I remember sitting back in sheer admiration at the audacity of the unassisted childbirth movement.

When we had our first child, my wife and I decided to work with Certified Nurse Midwives.  For years I didn’t think of it as an encounter with “bossy” midwives, but “seriously whiny” midwives.  Our first midwife rushed down hospital hallways between two clients, one of whom was screaming a lung through the ceiling during birth.  By contrast, my wife must have seemed as calm as a piece of furniture.  I certainly felt like some kind of fixture, and at times I felt our midwife treated my wife like a fixture too.  After hours of urging the fixture in a strained and whiny voice to push out our little lightbulb, she gave up.  The OB came on the scene and decided a suction cup might work.  Our little lightbulb twisted right out, but we vowed we’d never go back to that situation.  We were quite lucky our bulb didn’t get surgically extracted.  I didn’t think of the whiny behavior as “bossy” until years later when a doula mentioned the “manipulative” practices of Certified Nurse Midwives at her local hospital.  Manipulative, bossy - okay, those seem like branches on the same vine.

I can understand how a Certified Nurse Midwife could become “bossy”:  CNMs work in hospitals, which have to be among the most “directive” places on earth, as one birth care provider put it to me.  It takes serious bossiness to get anybody to take off all their clothes, put on that flimsy gown that never quite closes in the back, and then make them walk down the hallway on cold tile floors to a room where the real business begins.  Hospitals are bossy places; the attitude is bound to wear off on anyone who works there. 

Not all midwives have “CNM” after their names, however.

Dottie, a midwife-doula in Colorado Springs, told me, “We specify up front that whatever we do will only be by the client’s consent.”  She told me at times she felt she had to say “I need you to do this…” when legally required, but didn’t think midwives normally did anything that could be considered “bossy.”

I called Laura Shanley, the founder of unassistedchildbirth.com, to hear what she had to say about bossy midwives.  I expected an unassisted childbirth advocate to say something like, well, they’re midwives, of course they’re bossy, that’s just the way they are.  Instead, she expressed a positive attitude toward midwives and strong support of their work.  “I think the main reason midwives might seem bossy is the fear of losing their license,” she said.  She listed a number of ludicrous laws hampering midwives:  in our State of Colorado, midwives are required to transfer care to the hospital if labor hasn’t significantly progressed twelve hours after the water breaks (in Oregon, the law allows seventy-two hours);  the placenta has to be delivered within one hour of the baby.  Midwives in every state work under ridiculous legal limits, and jail time can be a very real consequence for using their own professional judgment.

According to Colorado law, our second child developed in an almost-anemic uterus.  My wife’s iron levels were hovering right above the legal limit for a homebirth, and fortunately never dipped below it.  Our homebirth midwife got a bit bossy about food, urging my wife to eat more and take supplements to bring her iron levels up.  That birth went far more quickly - the midwife arrived ten minutes too late.  She got to show the placenta and cord blood stem cell kit who was in control, but that was her only outlet for whatever bossiness she might have felt.  Lightbulb #2 floated serenely in our bathtub at home after a far safer, far faster, far better birth experience than Lightbulb # 1’s birth had been.

An anesthesiologist, an OB, and a midwife walked into a bar.  The anesthesiologist ordered a pitcher of stout and a double burger; the OB ordered a Reuben and a bottle of red wine; the midwife ordered their biggest plate of steak and fries with a margarita.  They all sat in a booth and shared war stories.

A long time passed, and the three realized something had gone wrong with their order.  They decided to find out what the problem was.  They found the busboy just behind the swinging double doors to the kitchen.  He was struggling to get their overloaded cart from the tiled kitchen to the carpeted dining area.  The wheels kept catching on the bump.

The anesthesiologist kneeled down and examined the tires.  “You just need to inject something here in the back,” he announced.  “Then everything will go better.”

The OB leaned down to look at the carpet.  “This part of the carpet is blocking the cart,” he announced.  “Give me a knife and I’ll just give it a little cut to help it along.”

The midwife leaned over to the busboy and whispered loudly in his ear, “You can do this!  Just PUSH!”

A male midwife in Colorado, Bill Dwelley, wasn’t happy to hear my question.  “Midwives get dumped on a lot as it is.  We provide more direct care, have better statistics… and now we’re going to get labeled as ‘bossy.’ Hmmm, I don’t know…” He was on his way out the door but gave me contact information for his colleague Rebecca Pugh. 

“Part of the skill of a really good midwife is the ability to differentiate when it’s time to give direction and when it’s time to sit on their hands,” she told me.  She didn’t think there was any connection between unassisted childbirth and a bossy midwife encounter.  “A very deep, unwavering faith in the birth process is what would allow unattended birth, not really disliking midwives.”

I almost missed our third little lightbulb’s birth.  The first two had each seen the light ten days after the medically predicted due date (that’s Method #23 for How To Make Your Midwife Legally Nervous in Colorado, as the law doesn’t allow for babies that go beyond two weeks).  We had planned for the same on this occasion.  Instead, ten days before the medically magic day, my wife felt contractions.  We brought them under control with an Epsom salts bath, and felt it would be at least several days.  Just in case, however, I took the two older girls shopping for foodstuffs.  We had allowed our supplies to run low to get ready for the mother of all birth preparation shopping trips.  When we arrived back home with a car bursting at the rivets, I spotted an extra vehicle in the driveway. 

Oh, the doula must have arrived, I thought, so things must be-. Wait, there’s TWO extra cars in the driveway!  Both doulas must have arr-. Wait, there’s THREE extra cars!  The midwife is here too!  We might be late!

 I left the two girls with the childcare doula and got to the bathtub in time for the last twenty minutes of the birth.  Again, the birth was far smoother and far safer than our hospital experience.  Thanks to helpful doulas being on the ball, the older girls watched their new baby sister being born during the last few minutes.  During the pregnancy, my wife had eaten one tablespoon of raw liver every day (not the midwife’s suggestion, by the way) and her iron levels were sky-high.  No need for bossiness there.  The midwife didn’t seem to feel she had missed out in any way.

“I grew up around doctors,” Laura Shanley had told me, “and just as there are doctors who have big egos, there are midwives who have big egos.  Some just like being the authority figure.”  

Rebecca Pugh had partially agreed.  “Some are more goal-oriented, which necessitates more bossy attitudes.”  Sometimes that varies with a midwife’s recent experiences as well.  “Midwives will be more urgent, more goal-oriented if there’s recently been a difficult situation.  A good midwife will set aside a previous traumatic birth and renew their faith in natural, normal birth,” Rebecca added.

As I sit here, typing away with Lightbulb #3 on my lap, I wonder if there’s any clever way to answer my initial question.  As with all people, midwives are complex; there may not be a trend strong enough to stereotype with a hoary old joke.

Ah - however, Lightbulb #3 has just made a sound that any parent recognizes.  As babies sometimes do, she has provided an answer to my long-pondered question.  Midwives don’t change lightbulbs, they only help you get the bulb out of the box without a 30% chance of having to use a scalpel. 

It’s the parents who change the lightbulb, and now I must be off to give my own a change.

Erik Lee is a writer, scientist, and father of three. He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado with his family.

From What I Understand About Quilting

Published
by
jess
on September 21, 2009
in Uncategorized, birth, miscarriage, pregnancy and sex
. 0 Comments

by Nicelle Davis

I had an Ectopic pregnancy,             Ectopic means misplaced, I know this from
is what she calls to tell me.           the time I drove a girl from the homeless youth
It has been two years since          shelter to the university hospital. I’d recognized
we graduated from college           her from a random conversation we had together
and I remember liking her,          about Mayo Angelo. I didn’t wait with her in
but can not recall specifics            the emergency room. Instead I asked for a pair
other than we both love Virginia    of gloves to help remove the purple mess of blood
Wolfe. But I recognize her            from my 1979 beater. I remember how shocked
voice, cadence at odds                 I was by the variety of density that came out of her
with the diction, a painful              half afraid that a clot was really some small half
effort to act her age adding girl     formed arm. I prayed before throwing the thing
to the end of sentences                in the bin, not because I was especially close to God
a reminder that she                     but because I was young, scared, and sexually
is twenty-not-forty-something.       active. When I called the next day, a nurse told
I’ve heard you been busy, girl           me the girl had a tubal miscarriage, nothing
referring to my getting knock-       like a person could have been accidentally dumped
up and shotgun hitched.               in the trash. I never found out what happened
                                                   to the girl. At the time, I didn’t think to ask.
People with children speak a secret language-say the same words as people with out kids, but it all means something different. That’s why, when a parent tells their child iloveyou and the child says I know with an annoyance that only repetition can acquire, parents must insist, no you don’t understand iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou until the whole thing feels like spit on a cowlick. Maybe there is a better way to phrase this, though I think it would have to be inappropriately graphic like, for you I would let razor teeth clowns eat my face and suck my brain from a straw jammed up my nose. Maybe it was this feeling that prompted me to offer to bring her soup when I heard she lost the baby.
She’s been working on a      quilt     for the rape recovery
center, where she works with the  mentally  dysfunctional.
She’s collected words from survivors on          poly   ester
rectangles,  measured meticulously. The whole slowly be-
coming the   same shape   as the pieces that comprise it.
Spread      across the floor,         blanket               reads
live/faith/esperanza.                 Utterances of subjectivity,
abstract,   debatably meaningless.      She recently cut her
hair in a maternal fashion.   Is uneasy about how it makes
her look like her mother, when she never               wanted
to be her mother, but always    thought she’d be a mother.
It’s not that she doesn’t like        her mother. It’s just that,
well, she wanted to be her own.                   Have her own.
 
She’s taking a logical approach to the situation. Technically           After I had J.J. my ultra
the child wasn’t lost. Just the opposite. Her body held                   concretive aunt was
tight too soon, fetus catching in the narrow hallway                       kind to tell me sexual
of the fallopian. There was never a heartbeat. Only a clump          relations become again
of cells. She feels fine, so long as she keeps talking.                   possible. I believed her
She admits to having conversations with her pussy, it’s lips           because it was the first 
swollen first to the size of baby cheeks. The incisions made         time I ever heard her
at panty-line, will be covered when her pubic hair fills in.              say the word sex.
After we sit for an hour at her kitchen table, not eating soup, she asks if she could get a lift to the salon down the street. Her mom will be by to pick her up after. She says I rather not walk if I can avoid it, to avoid saying it hurts and I hurt and it doesn’t stop hurting and I want take it out of me this hurt, stitch by stitch until the incision reopens and I can stick my hand up into myself, taking it out and out and out. I say not a problem, meaning itwillbeok knowing that itisnotok, meaning I would like to give you comfort, instead I repeat like a novena after I dropping her off, soup soup soup soup soup soup.

Nicelle Davis lives in Lancaster, California with her husband James and their son J.J. She received her MFA from the University of California, Riverside. She teaches at Antelope Valley College. Her poems are forthcoming in A cappella Zoo, Caesura, Moulin, Pedestal Magazine, Redcations, Transcurrents and Verdad.

 

 

 

 

 

Every Silver Lining

Published
by
jess
on July 27, 2009
in adoption, birth, family, motherhood and pregnancy
. 0 Comments
by Cherri Randall

There is a new girl sitting in the circle, and Marcy takes some kind of perverse delight in seeing if she can scare them off or get them to cry on the first day.  The counselor never arrives earlier than fifteen minutes late, which means Marcy has ten minutes.  She could almost run off the veterans, so a rookie hardly stands a chance.  Marcy takes one glance at the new chick, which means she sees everything it would take a normal person several moments to absorb.  The new chick is some kind of walking advertisement for Gucci and Armani and smells like real Giorgio, not that imitation stuff in the yellow bottles from Wal-Mart.  The thing that will set Marcy off will be the new chick’s nails.  They are perfectly manicured and they’re real.  They aren’t thick enough to be acrylic.  Marcy is a nail biter.  Sometimes when everyone else is bawling or screaming the counselor will get this look on her face like she wants to tear her hair out.  Marcy is never part of the fray.  But once in a while she will be biting her nails, and sometimes it will be so bad she can’t get them to stop bleeding.

”Did you guys hear about the kid in South Carolina?”

One thing the group knows about Marcy is that resistance is futile.  They will be assimilated.  Nora looks at Marcy.  “What happened?”

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