The other side

Thanks so much for the book recommendations. I am heading to the library with this list in hand- it will definitely help pass the time.

I had a very good friend through childhood and high school, and we pretty much lost touch when we went to separate universities. I would run into her mother in our hometown, and she would give me vague updates on where E was living, etc. With the progresses in the internet we became acquainted again via face.book a couple of years ago, and it was nice to see that she was happy, had met the love of her life, was pregnant, and living across the pond in Ireland.

She had her first baby girl shortly after I found out I was pregnant with Charlotte. She sent me a beautiful, heartfelt email after Charlotte died. She came home to visit last summer, and E and her significant other came to visit (sans baby, which was so thoughtful), and there was no baby chat- we caught up on old times and laughed and it was like no time had passed since high school.

Around Christmas, she announced on face.book that they were expecting a second baby. She writes a really hilarious mommy blog so I read along throughout the uneventful pregnancy. She decided on a homebirth, which from what I know is much more common in Ireland than here, and even though she had a picture perfect first delivery and 2 perfect pregnancies, it made me uneasy. Like a lot of us, all I could imagine were imminent emergencies where every second counted, and I felt a little nausea every time I thought about it.

Anyway, yesterday was the day.

She was a few days overdue, not too concerned, busy chasing after her toddler and updating her blog and her face.book status every couple of hours. E is baking cookies. E is going for a walk. No non-stress tests, bp profiles, no doctors appointments. No chaos.

Yesterday, early in the morning, she updated her fb status. E is in labour and is quite enjoying it.

Oh God. All I could picture were dead babies and ambulances flying to the hospital and everything that could possibly go wrong.

She updated regularly throughout the day. Then there were a few hours that were quiet. I was convinced, totally convinced, that there had been some emergency and the baby was dead.

I was wrong.

About 11pm last night, pictures appeared. The baby girl was here, all 8 1/2 lbs of chubbiness. There were pictures of a beaming E. with a pudgy baby at her breast, still covered in baby goo. No hospital bracelets or IVs in her hand and in her own bed. She looked tired, but purely, surely happy in the most wholesome way. I finally started to breathe again.

When I was pregnant with Charlotte and still in the world where pregnancy past 12w = baby, I never once had a desire for anything resembling natural childbirth, let alone a homebirth. In fact, I would have skipped labor altogether if given the choice. It seemed ironic when I actually did get that choice by a row of doctors in my L&D room: You can have a c-section which will give the baby the best chances, especially if she's bigger than we estimate, but it's a classical c-section so you'll always have to have a c-section. You can be induced but the baby this size probably won't tolerate contractions and will likely be stillborn. Induction will probably take a couple of days.

I looked at the row of doctors standing by the end of my bed on April 4th last year. To me there was no decision to make. C-section it was. She was born a couple of hours later. The recovery from the surgery was torturous.

It will be another c-section this time, no matter what the outcome of this pregnancy. I don't really mind- I know what to expect, I can imagine the room and the timeline and what it will look like and feel like. That said, lately I've found myself grieving, just a little bit, the fact that I will never ever really get to give birth to this or any other baby. It will always be clinical and planned. I'll likely never ever feel a contraction.

In the end I don't really give a shit- as long as the baby comes home they can haul it out through my nose if they like. But, days like yesterday are just reminders that I, like so many of you, lost oh so much more than the dead baby.