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Christopher's birth story
It is with great apprehension that I approach writing
about the birth of my
daughter, Liberty Raine Largen. I fear that ink may
corrupt the sanctified purity of blood
and sweat, as words cannot embody such a
transcendental experience. I feel woefully
inept, like a graffitti artist in the Sistine chapel.
Nevertheless, I am compelled to make my
mark.
First of all I must confess that I nurture a silent
but profound dislike of hospitals.
In my opinion, they are tombs masquerading as
sanctuaries. Many suffering people have
spent their final hours abandoned in sterile rooms,
poked and prodded by assembly-line
clinicians, vivisected and taxonomized by
cannibalistic technicians who plunder the coffin
to fatten the coffer.
Yet it is in the antiseptic bowels of these factories
that children of the modern
world are born. Laboring mothers no longer retreat to
the shady womb of the forest,
calling out to the swaying branches and soaring birds
as their babies drop into an earthen
cushion of leaves and grass. Our collective
consciousness retains little trace of this
primative ritual. Away in a manger, no cry emits from
the mouths of babes. Perhaps there
is too much room at the inn.
My wife Gynni and I had hoped to perform a home bith,
but this was not a viable
option us. In the final weeks of the pregnancy, her
blood pressure was skyrocketing and
her ankles were swelling to the size of grapefruits,
rendering her barely capable of
ambulating. Gynni needed the ready availability of
immediate medical attention, and the
physicians chose to admit her early and induce labor
to avoid further complications.
I arrived at the hospital as the blazing sun broke
through the morning clouds. I
was just in time, as Gynni had been admitted the
previous evening and members of the
hospital staff were already preparing her for
induction. I had spent a sleepless night in a
lonely bed, haunted by my hopes and fears, wrestling
with a terrifying sense of being
utterly powerless. This vague notion would become
sharply defined during our birth
experience.
Our assigned nurse Carol had graying hair that was
seized in an excruciatingly
tight bun. Her pale, powdery makeup looked like
vernix, the soft cheesy substance
consisting of dead skin cells, gland secretions, and
temporary hair, that often adorns the
chubby, wrinkled faces of newborn infants. Her eyes
emanated a contradictory sense of
cynical naivety, as if she had seen so much that she
could no longer see clearly.
Carol spoke little, but I could deduce much from her
dreary demeanor. She
appeared to feel no joy at the prospect of bringing
new life into the world. For her it was
just another day on the job, another obstetric
disaster to be contained. Her voice was dull
and monotone, and she looked at my wife as if she was
a specimen. I felt a vague tinge of
pity for this bitter woman who could apparantly drain
the colors from a rainbow.
Our midwife Laura, on the other hand, was a pleasant
woman to work with. Her
brown hair hung over her loose fitting shirt. She
smiled frequently, and her physical
prescence was comforting. She was genuinely concerned
for our welfare, and she did
everything she could to preserve our autonomy
throughout the process. She was the type
of professional who put people before policies, and
she behaved as if she was honored to
be participating in this rite of passage with us. She
seemed to have an intuitive awareness
of the sanctity of her position as the gatekeeper of
life. Laura brought a sense of humanit
to the experience of birth.
Following the induction of labor, my wife spent four
hours pacing, rocking,
heaving, and contracting. I held her hand, or she
grasped mine, crushing my fingers with
the intensity of her grip. I massaged her back with
almond oil, refilled her cup of water,
and played Miles Davis in the cassette player I had
brought.
Gynni's labor gradually increased to a crescendo of
agony, and she expressed her
desire for drugs. Laura and I tried to distract her
with the allure of a warm bath. As the
water ran, my wife waddled toward the tub.
She froze in midstep and emitted a prolonged,
guttural wail of torment.
Carol opened the door and poked her head in. "You
can't have the baby here!"
She may as well have been standing on a seaside cliff
with regulation book in hand,
shaking her rigid finger at the interminable ocean
waves, shouting impotent protest while
the wind blew salt-water tears into her anesthetized
eyes. The whimsical forces of nature
do not bow to petty bureaucratic dictates.
Laura knelt down between Gynni's trembling, swollen
legs, and did not bother
looking up at the nurse . "This is where we are
having it!"
Gynni arched her back, clutching the side of the
bathtub, gazing through the
plaster ceiling to a blue Texas sky. She stretched
her mouth wide open, and released a
primal, terrified scream which reverberated through
the shiny hospital corridors. She
screamed louder than she ever did while fighting or
making love. My wife sounded like a
wild animal.
The midwife struggled to catch the slippery,
squirming mass of flesh as it emerged
into the world, still attached to a swaying, pulsing
umbilical cord.
The floor was spattered with blood, mucous, and runny
fecal matter. Gynni had
previously expressed a fear of defecating while giving
birth, but now that it was coming to
pass, no pun intended, she was in too much pain to be
embarassed. I felt the warm body
fluids squish between my toes as I stood barefoot next
to my wife, stabilizing her with my
arms.
Gynni looked between her legs and cried out in
ecstasy and amazement, "There
she is!"
Liberty grimaced, her tiny hands and feet flailing in
the air.
My sense of joy and awe was abruptly interrupted by
Carol, who grabbed some
towels off a shelf on the wall and irreverantly tossed
them on the soiled floor. She
clutched a hospital issue pen in her shaking hand.
"What time was the baby born? Was it
11:05 or 11:06am? I have to chart it."
I don't know, lady. I'm trying to keep my wife from
falling down and breaking
her hip or crushing our daughter. Why don't you check
your stupid stop watch instead of
bothering me with these irrelevant questions?
The midwife attached two clamps to the umbilical
cord. "It was 11:05." I suspect
that she was blurting out the first thing that came to
her mind in order to get Donna to be
quiet. The midwife handed me a pair of bloody
scissors. "Do you want to do the honor?"
Indeed I did. It took three strokes of the blades to slice through the tough, fibrous
rope that had nourished and sustained my daughter, tethering her to my beloved wife.
Lifeblood squirted from the tissue as I cut through
it.
"We've got to get her out of here," Carol said.
My wife tried to lift her feet. "I can't move."
"Yes, you can. You have to," Carol retorted.
"I'm telling you, I can't move!"
Our midwife looked up at me and spoke gently. "Will
you grab her ankle and try
to help her step out?"
"Certainly." I placed the scissors on the rim of the
bathtub, and then dipped my
hand in the water, rinsing blood from my fingers. I
took a firm hold of Gynni's leg and
lifted up. It was all that she needed to start the
process. I supported her arm as she
maneuvered back to her bed, exhausted and elated.
While nurse technicians weighed and measured our
daughter, Laura crouched
between my wife's legs, weilding needle and thread to
stitch her torn flesh.
Without any warning, Carol began to jab her fingers
against Gynni's abdomen.
Gynni cried out. "What are you doing?"
"We have to massage the uterus."
"Do you think you could wait until Laura is done
sewing on me?"
Carol recoiled, frowning.
"Is there any way we can keep the placenta?" I asked.
Carol looked at me as if I were preparing to perform
a human sacrifice. "Keep the
placenta?"
"You know? Instead of you throwing it out or
incinerating it, you give it to us."
"Well you can't keep it here! Our policy considers
it a biohazard, and we can't let
you take it from room to room. You've got to get it
out of here today, and you better keep it cold or it might start to smell!"
I confess that I felt a cruel delight in her
revulsion. Here was a birthing nurse who
probably wished that sexual intercourse was not a
necessary component of reproduction,
who probably could not bring herself to say the words
penis or vagina. I choked back
laughter. "Is this an unusual request?"
Carol sneered. "Most parents don't want anything to
do with that stuff!"
This woman needs some color in her cheeks.
I felt the sudden urge to grab the slimy umbilical
cord like a lasso, swinging the
bloody afterbirth in the air until it smacked against
her smug face with a sickening
sshhplaaat!
She must have detected my delicious, wicked thoughts,
because she raised her
hands up as if defending herself from a forthcoming
blow. "I don't have a problem with
you taking it, you understand, but I have never heard
of it before. What are you going to
do with it?"
I patiently explained that in certain cultures the
placenta is not perceived merely in
terms of utility, but is revered as a vessel of
vitality. The afterbirth is not viewed with
disgust, for it nurtured the fragile life of the
fetus, pumping blood even during the first
moments following birth. Many people in these
cultures choose to bury the fetus in the
earth, often planting a tree at the site. The
placenta continues to nourish the earth. This
ceremony is performed in honor of the cycles of
nature.
Carol shook her head in bewilderment, and headed
straight for the door.
Laura finished the stitches, and then congratulated
us. "I had never delivered a
baby with the mother standing up, but I always wanted
to."
Finally, the hospital staff filed out of the room,
leaving Gynni and I to cradle our
baby in the warmth of our bodies. While my wife
smiled adoringly, I reflected on the
messy miracle of creation. The evident contradictions
blended in harmonious distinction.
Liberty was born in a fortified web of bureacracy.
Joy is the incubated fruit of suffering.
The morgue is just downstairs from the nursery. Birth
is an experience which
demonstrates that life is not merely function and
utility, but form and beauty.
My wife and I felt a relieved sense of
accomplishment. As we breathed together in
quiet meditation, our daughter opened her tender mouth
eagerly to accept my wife's
swollen breast, and the sound of sucking mingled with
the hum of florescent lights.
Your Iconoclast,
Christopher Largen
5729 Spring Hollow
The Colony, TX 75056
(469) 384-3723
[email protected]
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