Daybreak

Friday, just before dawn, I heard Elsie wake up.  I looked at my midwife and, for one of very few lucid moments of engagement and awareness that morning, said, surprised "Elsie's awake."  She nodded as my next contraction came on and told me that I could blow through it or push, whatever felt right.

This is why I wanted a homebirth in the first place.  I wanted my labor support to tell me, "Listen to your body.  Trust your body.  You know what you are doing."

I blew and I blew and I blew until it was too strong to resist and my body was pushing regardless.

It all happened so fast.  One midwife went upstairs to relieve Hub of his Elsie duties.  The kitchen door swung open and my mom walked in, right on cue.  She ran upstairs to her granddaughter, awake a few minutes earlier than expected.  I hadn't accounted for the effects of my increasing noise on Elsie's wake time.  Another contraction took over.  I blew and I blew and I blew and I heard my daughter behind me.

"Mommy!" 

"I'm working really hard right now, Elsie."  I managed that one final moment of coherence for her sake.

Then under again.

Child whisked off.  Kitchen door closed.  Car pulled away.  The words Ring Of Fire rang in my ears -- surfacing from some useless childbirth preparedness class I attended many years ago.  It hurt so much.  So, so much.  I welcomed it.  That kind of pain meant I was almost done.

"She was smiling."  My midwife assured me of Elsie, lest I worry about the reaction I could not turn around to take in myself.  "Beaming."  

And the head was delivered.  A strange, scrunched up face grimacing up from my backside through the water.  "Weird." Hub told me later.  I can only imagine.

Then, my midwives gave me my only direct order of the entire ordeal.  "On the next contraction, you need to push hard into your bottom.  Whether or not the urge is strong."   The command hung in the air as my body rested several eternal seconds.  Then on came the contraction.

I pushed hard, and she was out. 

I fell back, totally relieved.  Somebody lifted the baby out and placed her on my chest.  I saw her, dark hair, dark eyes, wet and warm and alive and vibrant.  She gave a tiny squeak, then lifted her head right off my chest, looked me square in the face, and pushed her chest off of mine -- a push-up, as though she was going to crawl right up to my face.  She turned her head to the opposite side and settled down again, then finally gave the cry we had been waiting for.

"I have never seen a baby do that."  Said my midwife.  My midwife of decades experience and almost 4000 births.  "That is one strong baby."

Robust.  My baby is robust.  Robust and alive and healthy. 

And so am I.


***


We named our newest daughter Lucia, pronounced LOO-sha, like the island and a beloved great aunt.  A name, the name-book says, that used to be given to babies born as daylight was breaking.  Fitting for our baby, born at dawn.  Our light after darkness.