Zora Jean Marguerite's Birth Story

     It's been a year since I've pushed my gorgeous, strong, smart, passionate girl out of my body. It's felt like two seconds and five years all at the same time, but that is having children, it's all to fast yet too slow, on some days, at the same time. Her birth was such a beautiful event that felt healing and brought pregnancy, birthing and finding myself in full circle. I've been wanting to share it, write it all down, but also felt very intimidated by that. Trying to capture it all. I wrote it all in my journal a few days after she was born, but attempting to story it, encompassing the entirety of what it meant to me feels daunting. Mainly because some of it keeps falling into place while other parts now feel foggy with time. As with everything in life I'm learning, give it time and you see clearer, understand more, there will always be more to capture and understand about an event while also giving it a distanced haze.  But, beyond all that, I need to get the story out because I know it will feel good and I want her to have it like the boys have theirs.

     So it all started on December 27th, 2020, my 35th birthday. Kellen planned a fun, long date night for us and we still had to text the sitter a few times and ask for another hour, another thirty minutes.  It was glorious. We went to a tea shop and sat around for two hours tasting and sipping copious amounts of white tea while learning the history of tea - all the good and bad and colonizing of it, as are most things in life - and for us it was the height of luxury. Sitting, drinking tea, learning, talking, going so slow and taking time. Until I started to sweat and realized I'd probably drank more caffeinated tea than a pregnant woman should in one sitting at 4pm. So we moved onto dinner. The biggest, most elaborate meal we'd had in a very long time at 1618 Asian Fusion. So much food, wine, complete with a birthday cake on fire. Conversation full of dreams of the very close future as well as the far off future. Give me dreams and amazing food or give me death, ha. Going home I felt so full. So happy. So in love with my life, with Kellen, with this new baby that was about to change our lives. Once the boys were in bed I did some yoga and journaled about the past year, what I'd learned, what I'm hoping for in my 35th year of life, all the things. Took a hot shower and sat down on the couch to read for a bit before bed.

    *Side note: With my pervious two babies I'd been 2-3 weeks early. Zora was due January 2nd and I'd said sometime around October I didn't want her to come on or close to Christmas and definitely not on my birthday. I kept repeating that until December 20th when I was sure she was ready and I was so over being pregnant. Then I started saying come on baby girl just come out. But she knew what I'd been saying for months.*

    So as I sat there reading my book at 10pm, feeling ridiculously full, happy, relaxed and excited about the future I started to pee myself. Or so I thought at first. I made a beeline for the bathroom as more liquid came out, but nothing like the water-breaking situation I had with Clement, which was very intense. I wasn't even sure it had been my water breaking so I text my midwife. Let me just say now that choosing to do a home birth with the chillest of midwives (due to experience) during the pandemic was literally one of the best choices I've ever made. The chill level of it all, not waiting in doctors offices for hours, them coming to my house for occasional check ups, being able to text and call about any random thing. Glorious. Especially for a third child when you know a bit more about what the hell happens in child birth. (Shout out to Home Birth Honey in ATX).  She tells me to just wait it out a bit and keep her posted. Fifteen minutes later I'm on hands and knees contracting intensely.  Kellen calls her and asks her to please come asap. 

    As for what happened next in the going-ons around me, I'm not entirely sure because I was so focused on just trying breath. I labored mostly on the toilet, as that was the comfiest position, occasionally giving my bum a break and going to hands and knees. I do remember Kellen asking me what oils I wanted  diffused and what playlist I wanted as he franticly set up the birthing pool. Because ya know, before birth I had this cozy, glorious idea of twinkle lights around the tub, oils galore, soft music. But when it came to it I think I probably told him not so nicely to not bother. The midwives got there around 11:15pm, Kellen closed the boys bedroom door completely and they all went around rushing for towels, filling the pool in the living room, while one midwife stayed with me. When the pool was finally full, albeit not very warm because who has enough hot water to fill that tub, I slid in, ready to be done with this. I'd religiously read Ima May's Guide to Childbirth and Birthing From Within and was after the whole orgasmic child birthing experience but couldn't seem to relax enough to find that happening to me. In fact, my eyes were crammed shut the entire time as I focused on telling myself how strong I was while clutching Kellen's shoulders and yelling "fuck", but also trying not to yell too loud because of the boys asleep in the next room and the idea of them waking up was not something I was up for. It was actually the sweetest thing to be on my knees in the tub, leaning against the side and having Kellen's head next to mine, holding onto his shoulders when the pressure, the pain, that ripping feeling, got too intense. I don't even know if he said anything, but just having him there, strong and steady, was the foundation my body needed. It makes me tear up just typing that. To have him so present, so available, for him to be kneeling on hard tile and feeling a bit of discomfort in that but not even acknowledging it because this was about something so much bigger. It was so beautiful. A moment for us that I'll never forget.

    Then came the point where I was sure I was being split in half and I reached down and felt so. much. hair. Like moss floating around in a lake, hello my baby girl's head. It was a weird sensation, but I couldn't let go of the top of her little head. Finally, her whole head was out, and yet again, I was appalled I had to keep pushing to get her little body out. But midwives, I tell ya, they had me half roll over to my back and spread my legs wide and her body came slipping, easily, out and on my chest within seconds at 12:35am on December 28th under a full moon, giving us, just barely, separate birthdays. Her head full of blonde hair, her red little body. It was the most incredible experience to hold her like that, umbilical cord still attached, so freshly from my body. I didn't have that with the boys, so in shock was I after Foeller and Clement distanced from me with blankets and a hospital gown. I could have sat there all day, just holding her fresh and new into the world after all we'd just gone through. The images of all the mothers in the world doing this exact same thing, going through this same process, binding so many women of the world together, and here I was, birthing my first female child, it was like a part of me I didn't know was missing. The feminine part of me that needed more. A completion, but also a beginning in my journey toward finding my femininity in it's entirety. But alas, the midwives said the water was too cold to sit in it with the baby, so they hoisted me up, covered the couch in hospital protective plastic and towels straight from the dryer and I laid there with her on my chest as I pushed out the placenta, as Kellen cut the umbilical cord, as the midwives found a bowl to put the placenta in so it could be dried and encapsulated for me to take for the next few weeks to try to regain some of the nutrients I'd just lost, as my body shook to release the pain I'd just gone through. They cleaned her off a bit, but left all the white stuff, because who knew, its actually very good for a baby to absorb all that. After I quit shaking, well, quit shaking so much I could walk, they helped me hobble down the hall to my bed, covered as well in protective plastic under the sheets, and laid me down and baby girl started to feed. We laid there in our bliss while the midwives ran loads of laundry, cleaned everything up, talked me into eating a bit, helped me try to pee, while sleep pulled hard at me. As it was in the hospital the midwives were talking to me about something or other and I just nodded, half asleep already. By 3am, they were out the door and I was asleep with baby Zora nestled against me. When Kellen set the house alarm after they'd left, the boys woke up, but Kellen managed to get them back to sleep without notifying them of their new sister (because then they'd never go back to sleep, obviously).

    Baby girl and I slept hard for a solid 5 hours after that. Eventually the boys came in to meet her and it was a delicious moment of so much sweetness. Clement had had separation anxiety from me for most of October- December because he didn't want to miss her birth. He has the strongest attachment to her and its beyond precious. A friend came and took the boys for the day so Kell and I could sleep, which I did more than him, because he was still riding that new baby high/excitement without the bodily exhaustion. My pregnancy was so insanely hard on my body, the birth was quick and intense and I think for the first time I realized what my body has gone through to make these three humans. I felt more free to rest with Zora. More like it was not an option. My body deserved the care and love for all she had done the past 9 months, that night. I was so blown away by the fact that Zora slept so much right after birth, I got panicky thinking something was wrong, but the midwives said it was normal. Apparently when nurses and doctors don't have to come check in on the baby every 2 hours they sleep. Which, in a way, seems like it should be, a time to rest and recover for both mama and babe for what they just went through. The rate at which Zora came out of my body took a toll on her as well. Her little neck and shoulders were scrunched up close to her head, as if holding tension. Our PT, who's also a friend, came over the next day and worked her magic on Zora, loosening her shoulders and neck with what looks like baby massage. The midwives came and checked on her more than a few times. Weighing her, measuring her, loving on her. It was a cloudy few days and I'll never forget the flicking sweet tobacco candle, the dim lights, the baby cave of my room that we literally didn't leave for almost two weeks (major shoutout to Kellen for totally taking over the house and it's people and my parents for taking the boys for a week). So much of it was allowing myself time to heal, time to process, time with my baby girl. So much of the slow tender moments of soup, tea, placenta pills, baby snuggles, nursing struggles, brother and daddy snuggles. It was and probably will be, one of my most favorite moments in my history. All my people around me, just us, cozy and sweet with people popping in real quick to drop off food and say a quick -masked- hello to us. It all just felt easy and as it should be. I can't get over how lucky I felt in all of that. Over how magical it all was. The last little piece of our family falling into her perfect and beautiful place.