Twas Brillig

Four years and a little bit ago, I was massively pregnant.

At my 36 week check-up (four weeks before my due date), I was already dilated to a 4. This baby was coming any second now, or so I was told.

He was going to be born at home, in a birthing pool, with the world’s most amazing midwife. She sent the birthing tub home with us for Hubby to set up, because I was about to have that baby.

At the time, we were living in my Grandma’s basement. Perhaps it should be noted here that my grandma was evil. Okay, perhaps “evil” is a bit strong, but she was really really awful to me. But she had a fully finished basement and the rent was free (though if I’d had a credit card for blood, sweat, and tears, I’d have been maxed out). Grandma insisted that my baby would be born on her birthday–April 30. She would be 100 years old that day. It was the middle of March when I was told that I’d have the baby any second now, so I knew that Grandma would have to be wrong, and I was not the least bit interested in having my baby that day–not just because it was too far away, but also because I wanted my baby to have his own birthday and not have to share it with my psychotic evil Grandma.

But labor eluded me. Not even the twingiest twinge of a contraction.

And so we waited for weeks, keeping the birthing tub all set up, ready to be filled with water at a moment’s notice, and constantly fighting with our then 16-month-old Fluffy–a very curious toddler with the need to explore anything and everything–trying to keep her out of the birthing tub.

Hubby would be graduating from college on April 25. I was certain we’d never make it.

But make it we did. I was 5 days past my due date at Hubby’s graduation. For some reason, I donned a massive white maternity blouse that day and there are a million photos of me looking like a great white whale. So lovely. I looked ALMOST as horrendously uncomfortable as I was.

I was beginning to feel desperate. I was so pregnant, so dilated, so READY to have a baby, but NOTHING WAS HAPPENING!!

On April 29, (9 days beyond my due date) I went in for a prenatal exam. When my midwife checked me, she was utterly astonished that I hadn’t gone into labor yet. The baby was SO LOW and I was SO DILATED. She looked at me and said, “You don’t even have to go into labor. This baby is already practically crowning. If you sat on a birthing stool, you could give birth to him within half an hour, without ever going into labor.” I considered it for a moment, but decided that there’s more to having a baby than just pushing the baby out. There were other things (I’m trying VERY hard not to be too graphic here) that needed to come out too, and they required a contracting uterus. I already had a history (with Fluffy) of placental retention and severe hemorrhage, so it was best to do these things the way nature intended.

The next day would be Grandma’s birthday. I think we all knew that the baby was going to be born that day, so I came to terms with it. I even decided that it was actually pretty dang cool that my son would be born on her 100th birthday, right there in her home.

And sure enough. On April 30, 2003, after going to bed at midnight, I woke up an hour later with one giant contraction. 2 minutes later, there was another one. There was no gearing up, no practice labor, just one giant contraction and I was in full-blown “call the midwife, fill the birthing tub” labor.

Hubby called the midwife and then got to work on the tub. I called my mom, who came racing down to be with us. This was the first (and to this date the only) one of her 16 grandchildren whose birth she was around for. Having her there was amazing. As she held my hand and witnessed the birth of her baby’s baby, so many of our own issues were healed.

Exactly four hours after that first contraction, my tiny little Bubba was born–with the bag of waters surrounding him still in tact. Ancient civilizations consider an in-tact bag of waters to be a sign that the baby would be an extremely noble person–a great warrior, a King, a Prophet.

Once he was born, I was told to get out of the tub immediately. I was bleeding to death. I lay on the plastic-draped floor as midwives and back-up midwives poked and pushed and prodded and injected me with this and that. Hubby was terrified I wouldn’t make it. He handed the baby off to my mother in order to give me his full attention, and as I lay on the floor I watched her, singing and cooing at her newest link in the posterity chain.

Obviously, I pulled through, though the first few days of his little life were spent with me battling anemia and infections, including placental retention and mastitis.

A local news station heard the story of this baby born on his great-grandma’s 100th birthday and came over a few days later to film a special Mother’s Day segment about us. There we sat, on my grandma’s couch–My Grandma, my Father (her son), me, and my baby. It was an amazing moment, those four generations, united finally by love and miracles, holding each other, laughing and weeping with each other, feeling like the world was a lot bigger than us and that families really are eternal. Bubba had performed his first outstanding feats–he’d united people who never thought they had any hope for unity.

And today my sweet little boy is four years old.

Tonight we will ring it in in true four-year-old fashion–chocolate birthday cake with Cars decorations, a new Thomas the Tank Train Table, and a pile of Hotwheels. Various grandparents and cousins will bring him clothes and books and silly things to entertain him endlessly. He’s just as normal as can be.

But I, his adoring mother, see so much more: I see him changing the world. After all, he’s already managed to change us.

Happy Birthday, my darling boy.