The Roller Coaster: Support

This is the sixth post in a special bi-weekly series.  It's a sequel to The Longest Weekend of My Life series.  Please check back next Saturday for Part 7.

Part 6: Support

After my break down on Saturday I chatted online with a good friend of mine who is another pregnancy/birth blogger. I think she felt the despair in my words and tried to help me feel better. I knew I was in a dark place and I appreciated her support but felt bad for her having been put in that position. She told me she had to go, but what she did next was the best thing she could have done for me in that moment. She posted a question on her facebook fan page asking for experiences from women who have bled during pregnancy and gone on to have healthy viable pregnancies and babies. I think at least a dozen women responded, describing their personal experiences with bleeding during pregnancy. I had no idea it was so common, and that helped me realize that my despair was probably at least a little bit disproportionate to the situation.

I had decided to turn my personal writings of this experience into a blog series. I thought that by publishing one portion each Saturday it would allow my story to unfold slowly to my readers and give me time to figure things out and maybe somehow find a resolution to the whole thing. I felt strongly that I needed to not only keep writing, but to share it with everyone I could. I felt that this was part of the purpose of what I was going through. I knew it couldn't possibly be the whole purpose, but being able to find an impetus to move forward and try to help others by sharing my struggle gave me strength, resolve and greater peace.

That evening I made a difficult decision. I had a strong feeling I should share my entire thus-far unfinished story with my family and personal friends on facebook. Oddly, I still didn't feel comfortable making a simple phone call to family members or friends to let them know what I was going through. By breaking the news in this manner I felt safer opening myself up to the masses. I prayed, asking if this was really what I should do, and I felt it was. Even as I typed my personal status update I was nervous:

“Most people wait until the threat of miscarriage has passed, but I'm no good at keeping quiet. There's a chance I could lose this pregnancy, and I don't want to go through this any longer in silence.”

My heart fluttered and I had to step away from the computer without sending the message. I took a moment to collect myself and then I came back and pressed the send button. I then posted a comment on my status explaining the situation very briefly and letting everyone know that I'd been writing as a form of therapy and would post everything I'd written so far for my friends to read if they wanted to. Then I spent the next half hour or so transferring my writings from the word processor into notes on facebook.

I felt that having my friends and family read what I'd written would be easier than trying to explain the situation individually. I understood that some people might be off-put that I didn't approach them individually, but this was part of my coping and healing and it was how I needed to do it.

I talked with my husband that evening, partially to give him a warning that I had just announced to our little world about everything we were currently going through, and he understood. He reminded me that part of how I process and heal is by being able to talk openly about what I'm going through, and this meant having my entire support system available. I loved him even more for understanding that about me, even though it's not how he functions himself. I reflected on how we'd connected in deeper ways over the past week, and it had given me glimpses of how much we really get each other. A different facet of our love was emerging.

Part 1: Looking Up

Part 2: Seeing Red

Part 3: Malaise

Part 4: Possibilities

Part 5: Break Down

Part 6: Support

Part 7: Perspective

Part 8: Normal?

Part 9: Hindsight

Part 10: Shift

Part 11: Empty

The Roller Coaster: Looking Up

This is the first post in a special bi-weekly series.  It's a sequel to The Longest Weekend of My Life series.  Please check back next Wednesday for Part 2.

Part 1: Looking Up

The Tuesday after the Longest Weekend of My Life I decided to call my midwife. After telling her what had happened over the weekend, she told me she thought the immediate suspicion of ectopic pregnancy based on my pain and proof of pregnancy alone was a bit of a leap. She said that with my history and having had absolutely no pregnancy complications and no risk factors, it was unlikely to be an ectopic pregnancy. I told her that I'd made an appointment with the OB for a 10 week ultrasound for my husband's peace of mind, and she told me that her birth suite now has the capability of doing ultrasounds and billing my insurance. I almost jumped for joy! I felt much more comfortable going to her for an ultrasound and canceling the OB appointment altogether. I told my husband, and he was very supportive of my choice.

I called the OB's office on Wednesday to cancel the appointment. The receptionist, who'd been working there for the past 10 years our family had been going to that office, seemed disappointed. She said “So you're not going to go with us?” I said no and explained that since my home birth midwife now offered ultrasound I would be seeing her for all of my prenatal needs. The receptionist, who had asked me about my home birth experience last year, didn't say anything else. I think maybe she didn't know what to say.

I thought about it. I wondered why the receptionist was sad that I wouldn't be going to their office for my pregnancy. After all, home birth is what I felt was safer and more beautiful anyway, and I couldn't have been more thrilled about my plans. I also felt much happier knowing I wouldn't need to have any unnecessary pelvic exams or other tests or interventions for the sake of routine. I hung up the phone feeling very good about my future.

That night I talked with my husband. He told me that his feelings of fear were easing and he was starting to feel a lot better about the situation we had found ourselves in. In fact, he was feeling hopeful, optimistic, and excited about the pregnancy for the first time since we'd discovered it. He had even confided in a close friend about what we were going through. This was great progress, and both of us were feeling like we were now in the clear with smooth sailing ahead.

Part 1: Looking Up

Part 2: Seeing Red

Part 3: Malaise

Part 4: Possibilities

Part 5: Break Down

Part 6: Support

Part 7: Perspective

Part 8: Normal?

Part 9: Hindsight

Part 10: Shift

Part 11: Empty

"Hope is better than nothing"

Women in Charge blog wrote this. It really touched my heart, and I want to pass it on to my readers:

Hope is better than nothing

by Maria Iorillo

I keep thinking about Sara from Uganda. She runs a 15-bed clinic along with 2 other midwives. She receives $5 per delivery. Some women come for prenatal care and not too many people come postpartum. Once a healthy baby is born, most of her clients feel they don't need to return.

Sara came all the way to Washington, DC to represent the Ugandan Midwifery Association at the Symposium to Strengthen Midwifery. She received a scholarship to attend Women Deliver. The UMA has over 2000 midwives and was started in 1948 when the government tried to make midwives retire at 55. You can imagine what the midwives said to that! So they formed an organization to better represent themselves to the powers that be. Sara says the UMA is the best midwifery organization in the world.

When the Symposium was almost over, Sara was discouraged and asked me what would happen on the ground. On my last day with Sara, we were walking from store after I had bought chocolate for her to take home to her children. She was hopeful, particularly because I had just made a blog for her that morning. She wants to use the blog to tell the stories of maternal death in Uganda. She wants to post about the midwifery meetings they will have. She has a new vehicle for communication. She is going home with SOMETHING already in her pocket. She says that hope is better than nothing. She says that she has a new friend, she has a blog, and that she knows that she is not forgotten. That the women of Uganda are not forgotten. Sara decided to call her blog, Women for Survival.

Women for Survival

I keep thinking about Sara and our fast friendship. I am thinking about our partnership and how one-on-one we can help each other strengthen midwifery. I know so well how the Bay Area's midwifery community has grown simply because of the one-on-one support we give each other. Why can't we do that across the global? I guess I'm saying there's no reason why not.

Quote

"What keeps our faith cheerful is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music, and books, raising kids up; all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people."

- Garrison Keillor

Finally, to take a step without feet

by Amy

"This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet." -Rumi

I keep re-reading this quote, over and over.

This quote perfectly describes what the conception of this baby and this pregnancy is for me. It came out of so much sadness and heartbreak, after being pregnant for 12 weeks then suddenly no longer pregnant. After trying desperately to fill my womb again with another baby for more than half a year with no success. Desperately wanting to be pregnant, yet absolutely terrified at the same time.

This is love.

Facing your worst fears of painfully losing another baby because you love your unborn child so much, before it is even conceived.

To fly toward a secret sky.

Trying to conceive. You don't have the power to control it. It's deep, dark, secret. There's no way to see what goes on inside of your own body. Waiting, waiting to find out. Waiting and flying all the time towards that secret sky...

Then, not knowing if the baby you conceived is alive inside of you, or if it has died. Perhaps the sky is dark and secret for a reason.

To cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.

Realization dawns upon the secret sky. You cannot be in control. Struggling with faith, fear, doubt, and then faith again, while your baby silently forms in that secret place within your womb. Each moment brings a new wave of emotion, new thoughts, new fears.

First to let go of life.

I cannot control fate. The only way to escape the constant anxiety is to let go of life. Nothing is my own. Not my life. Not the life of my children. If it is possible to let go of life, it's possible to see everything in a new light. To breathe deeply just for the sake of enjoying a deep breath. To know that here, in this moment, I am breathing, I am alive, and everything is ok. My baby is alive and in the safest place she can possibly be at this moment. What happened yesterday or what happens tomorrow has no hold over the perfection of *this* moment, right here, right now. To let go of life means to truly live life, to soak up each second as it occurs.

Finally, to take a step without feet.

Birth.

What could be a more accurate description of birth but to take a step without feet?

This is what I am preparing for. The faith to take a step without feet.

We can pretend there is some control by managing birth, but really is that a substitute? A poor one, if anything.

Rosie's birth was two experiences.

On one hand, it was terrifying. The lack of control--both control of my body as it took over to give birth, and the control of myself I turned over to hospital staff.

It was no longer my choice whether I wanted to eat, drink, soak in the tub, stand up, or sit down. If my body told me to push on all fours, the hospital staff said no. They were in control. Over all, Rosie's birth was not terrible. I was still able to do as I pleased through 80% of the laboring period. But the other 20% where I was not able to made a huge difference. The anxiety caused by simply being in the hospital also had an impact. I had no control over who was in the room, no chance to make totally informed choices for myself or my child once she finally emerged. Her first days of life were in the control of hospital policies, not bonding or motherly instinct.

I was totally unprepared for the trip my body took me on. I couldn't get off if I wanted to. There was no stopping once it started. Contractions came, and I knew they were coming, and I had no way of changing that. Pushing happened, and no one warned me that it felt like throwing up...only in reverse.

I realized something important during this. My body is extremely powerful. It knows something that I don't. It knows how to create a baby in a secret place. It doesn't need instructions from mankind to know how to grow a human being. It just does it from some ancient source of knowing. My body can create a fully formed human being, and if it is capable of that my body is also capable of birthing the human being it created. If my body can create a baby without any instructions needed, it certainly must know how to birth a baby in the same manner.

I could tell, as I was in labor with Rosie, that my body had taken over. Everything was different. Pain registered differently. Time warped. I went somewhere else, either deep within myself or outside of myself. I'm still not sure which. This was the second experience. Something powerful within myself, something I did not know previously existed.

While I was in labor I realized that I had made a terrible mistake by subjecting myself to the hospital. Every time I would get to that amazing deep place, that time warped world, I would be forced back to reality where pain was sharp and intense and anxiety was magnified. It was such a stark contrast. At one point it was so startling that my body reversed progress, from 8 cm back down to 6 cm. No wonder so many women have labor that stalls.

It was the hospital policies that kept causing this to happen. I would have to regularly be violated with a cervix check. Regular time spent in the bed strapped to the monitors for 15 minute periods. People were coming in and out of the room. Lights were too bright. Eventually, against my will, I was forced to get out of the water and lay naked on the bed with my feet in the air and strangers standing around. That safe place vanished completely.

I kept catching glimpses of that place, the time warped world where the pain changes to some sort of ecstatic level of being. It wasn't frightening there. It was powerful, and overwhelming, but it was right. It was where my body--the same body who knew how to grow the baby without any instruction--was trying to take to me in order to birth the baby it had created. The birth was to be the completion of the instructions my body was carrying out, the final step in creating my baby. The finishing touches, so to speak.

You can have a final product without the finishing touches, but is it all that it could have been?

What happens to your body when the instructions are prevented from being followed properly?

Things go wrong. It hurts.

It's painful. It's not supposed to be that painful.

This time, for this birth, I know better. I'm preparing myself to reach the secret place with the ecstatic feelings and the time warp. This time, I'm going to stay there.

I understand now why women need drugs to give birth. The drugs are a cheap substitution for that place. Either use drugs, or suffer horrific pain. That is the choice you have when outside forces prevent your body from completing the final bit of instructions it has been carefully following for the past nine months.

I will not make that mistake again.

There is a third choice, aside from the drugs or the pain, that mainstream society has forgotten. It's been traded for efficiency, for the sake of being modern, for technology, for the illusion of control.

The third choice is still there, still available to choose.

In our modern society there are always voices asking, "what if..."

But what good do those voices do? Seeds of doubt, fear, anxiety. Women love to share horror stories, tell you how much it hurts.

Those feelings cause tension. Tension causes your muscles to tense up. What hurts worse than tensing up a muscle that is working hard to gently open?

I'm purposefully letting those thoughts of "what if..." go. Those thoughts of my own, and of others. "What if..." will be what it is. I'll deal with that if it happens, when it's happening. I have a midwife I trust who will be there, quietly waiting without interference, to recognize a "what if" situation, and that is enough for me.

"What if..." is a lot less likely to happen when my body is allowed to follow the final instructions, to give birth with myself safely tucked deep into that place.

My body knew how to grow the baby. My body will know how to birth the baby.

Finally, to take a step without feet.

*****

"In my experience as mother and midwife, birth is more like a labyrinth than a runway.

When walking a labyrinth, sometimes it looks as if we are going away from the center, even backwards. Yet, eventually all of the twists and turns bring us to the destination. Progress cannot be measured in that realm. What is important is the journey because, once arrival at the center is achieved, there is the walk to get back out again. If you give up, you might feel lost, for in the Western myth of the labyrinth, the Minotaur at the center holds the secret of how to transform fear into the power to give birth.

Without meeting the Minotaur in the center of the labyrinth, that is, confronting our innermost fear, the way back may be more confusing. Tragically, when some women keep trying to avoid the Minotaur, they never make it back..."

--Jeannine Parvati Baker