In my effort to merge art and life, and life and art, I would like to post more frequently about the on goings of being a mother/artist, and artist/mother. I’m not sure there is a better way to kick this off than with this story.
In honor of this months Birth Circle meeting, Sharing Birth Stories, I want to share this story with you. Eliot James Hown, born on June 19th 2011 is ten months old now and I have yet to share his journey into this world. Before I tell his tale I would be remised if I did not tell you a little bit about my journey as an unprepared, pregnant, graduate student in the College of Fine Arts.
When my partner and I found out that I was pregnant you can only imagine the horror and contemplation that ensued monuments after reading the two pink lines on the pregnancy test. It was not an easy decision to become parents, as we were both in our second year of graduate school, with two years left in a three year program. Naive and unsure of our options, I paid my fist visit to the student healthcare clinic on campus as a pregnant woman. To my surprise I was treated poorly by the staff at the clinic who assumed I was an irresponsible college student practicing unprotected sex with the first guy I met stumbling around on Court Street. Needless to say the woman that “diagnosed” me, had me in tears by the time I left the office. Due to her horror stories about her own birth, and how if my blood pressure did not go down I would have the same near death experience as she.
As the weeks passed we started visiting an OBGYN clinic in town and I stocked up on books and research materials covering all my pregnancy basics, like “What to Expect When Your Expecting” and “The Mayo Clinic Guide to Pregnancy”. Then a dear friend gave me a book written by Ina May and many others covering natural childbirth and nursing. In my mind I always thought if I were to have children I would like to have them at home, but due to my finances, if I went to the hospital to have my baby it was covered by Medicaid, and I was not sure of how much a Midwife would cost. I continued my research, with stacks of books all over my apartment and some of them containing conflicting information. At about 18 weeks I started a prenatal yoga class with Laura Post. I soon asked her to be our doula and we started taking Hypno-Birthing classes with two other couples. Things were starting to become clear to me. I wanted to have my baby at home because it is a natural part of life and should not be treated by doctors as if it is an illness. I knew then, although I don’t remember the exact date, that I would have my baby in the most “natural” setting possible and I would be surrounded by supporting individuals that would honor my wishes during pregnancy, birth and postpartum. All of the jive surrounding medical intervention during pregnancy and childbirth was not for me, and I knew that. Why would I even consider it? I was a healthy 26 year-old with a strong healthy baby in utero.
So we dug a little deeper into the depths of midwifery. We meet with Delphine Silvermoon about halfway through the pregnancy and everything changed. We were going to have this baby at home and I was going to see a midwife for all our care!
Despite all the noise coming from caring friends and family members I knew in my gut what was right for my family. I didn’t let all of the negative feed back get me down… until he was late! I know all that talk about a due date is just that, talk, but I was over a week late and tariffed at the thought of a medical intervention. A c-section, to have my baby, a part of my body medically extracted from my body, filled me with such anxiety I would tear up at the mere thought of it. Mind you spring quarter had just ended and we were on our way to summer break in this house. There was a lot of outside stress and tension that was on is way out. I also neglected to tell you about the conversation I had with my growing fetus about three months into this adventure, it went something like this, “Momma finishes school for summer break/maternity leave around June 9th, give me one week after that before you come out to meet us, because once you’re out, there is no going back, and we could all use some rest before you arrive”.
Well it was Friday June 17th about a week passed my “due date” and we attended a birthday party where we danced with our friends until late that night. On the way home I felt a few minor surges but didn’t get too excited as this was pretty normal for me now. Then Saturday came around, the day of my doula’s wedding, we were thinking about attending but something inside me was telling me to rest. Just stay home and relax with Bobby. We did just that, relaxed. We watched movies, I think Lord of the Rings, and ate some leftover spicy eggplant parm. Didn’t clean the apart just laid around and enjoyed each others company waiting for the little one to arrive.
That night we went to bed at a reasonable time, thankfully, because my water broke at 3am and there was no sleeping after that. Surges started pretty quickly and were regular so I called our midwife while Bobby did the dishes, and I tried to time the minutes between surges. Around 8am Delphine arrived and it was time to get into the birthing pool and assemble my birth team. We first called Chelsea, our birthing assistant, and waited until that last minute to call Laura, who I’m sure was exhausted from her wedding the day before. Soon everyone was there and I was going to give birth, to a BABY… that would someday be a PERSON like me, a live breathing being, and perhaps one day he would be assisting his partner in birth, either way he was on his way and I was going to have to do some work to get him out. So we got down to business and it was hard work and didn’t come free of doubt, but at 12:40pm, Fathers Day, after intense pushing and Bobby holding the weight of my body, while pushing out another body, our nameless baby boy was born. I ripped off my shirt and scooped my purple, black haired baby up and held him close to my chest for nursing. We walked to the bedroom from the living room where I delivered the placenta, and in pure bliss held my baby, crying, smiling, nursing, high on serotonin and hormones, I was in love. In love with this perfect being I was holding in my arms and the being that created him, who lovingly dozed off next to us in our bed, in our home. And yes I did drink placenta smoothies for two weeks postpartum. No, breast-feeding was not easy for us at first, and Eliot did not have a name until he was 8 days old.
Now here we are all three of us. Bobby and I had a baby, and his name is Eliot James Hown. A perfect blend of the two of us. I realize I paint a fairly rosy picture of it all, but all of this did not come without some self-doubt, uncertainty, sacrifice and hell of a lot of determination and if you are a parent you know that it doesn’t end there.
PS. Bobby and I passed our oral thesis defense and will graduate June 8th with our baby in you arms. Yes, literally Eliot will walk with us on graduation day.