Birth Story - Home Edition

We prepared for a home birth two years ago that didn't end as we planned, but that was no one's fault and my wife was able to finish strong at a hospital with no complications. But that is another story for another time.

This story is how we came to meet Gwendolyn.

a room with no view

Our apartment is average for a three bedroom. The main issue is that we have accumulated enough possessions to fill an average house. My wife, Laura, has already bought all the clothes we'll need for any and all children we have, as well as any orphans and foundlings that turn up (up to size 2T). Having a thrift store with a great selection just down the street has proved to be a great resource and a storage nightmare. But somehow, with all the cramming, boxing, and moving everything we can into the basement, we've managed to carve out a nursery that had room for a 60 gallon birthing tub. Thanks to a two-hundred-year-old oak, the single window gets little sunlight, but it does allow a nice breeze, as on the day we needed it.

Having everything purchased and tested ahead of time gave us more options for decorating, settling on a Hundred Acre Wood theme with little "hunny pots" and branches suspended from the ceiling. Cozy and feeling prepared, we waited for labor to start naturally. And at nine days past her due date, Gwendolyn had waited long enough.

before dawn

Sleeping next to a pregnant woman is not always a reasonable option. Laura had several pregnancy related symptoms that didn't just keep her up at night, but also separated us several nights a week. Constant dry-mouth thirst combined with little room in the pelvis means mama doesn't sleep more that three hours at a time without a potty break. Heartburn, hot flashes, itchy skin - you name it, it was keeping her up at night. So when insomnia gave way to exhausted deep sleep, she relaxed so completely that snoring became my lullaby. Not "wow, it'll be hard to sleep now" snoring, but "woke me up from my own sleep and drove me out to the couch" snoring. Somewhere between a chainsaw and an outboard motor in sound and decibel level, I could still hear her through closed doors and walls between us.

This night, however, I heard sounds of discomfort. Loud enough to wake me up and odd enough to raise concern I asked, "What was that?" She said, "About ten minutes." She had been awake since a quarter to five, and having taken a walk around the block, returned after several consistent contractions. Now I'm wide awake at six in the morning, pulling out my phone to start the timer for the next one.

keeping time

The next ten hours passed with little to mention. Contractions got stronger and closer together. We alerted our midwife (and then backup midwife, more on that later) that today is the day! We didn't want anyone to get too excited until we were in active labor, so we held off on calling anyone else but our mothers. Hours passed without noticing much time. I was always getting food and water, and checking the stopwatch function on my phone religiously to track progress. Everything was going so well that when labor kicked into high gear, it was almost surprisingly on track. Our first experience with labor was start and stop, three steps forward, two steps back. Two days of waiting only to transfer to a hospital when Laura was too exhausted to continue without some rest. But not this time, not this baby. She was on her way, and with contractions now becoming painfully strong, we called the midwife.

"you're not going anywhere"

Early labor, with slow and steady progress, is quite manageable. With a little to eat, a little to drink, some Netflix, time passes. Laura was handling it like a champ. Then active labor feels like you're losing control. Each new contraction could feel like an eternity or come and go quickly. At least, that was the impression I was getting from Laura, who was now attached to me like I was her anchor in the rising tide of pain. On her knees and leaning over the rim of the tub, she wouldn't let me move anymore, gripping my arms or legs to be sure I didn't leave her side. I would sit in that folding chair for the duration. Once, I thought to make a phone call, or scoot back a little, and she grabbed me and said, "You're not going anywhere!" and I decided I'd have to call her mother later (when I did finally call Grandma Jill to tell her about her new granddaughter, she said "But... I didn't get there!" Sorry, Mom, I was going to call, but I was too busy "helping".)

The next hour was all action. We got meet our new midwife, the highly esteemed B we had heard so much about (our midwife was on a vacation that weekend, so her midwife came in her absence.) And she was wonderful. The kindest, most gentle woman we could have hoped for. She was there right in time and she really eased into the situation, checking vitals and taking notes. About then, M arrived as well, a birth assistant and doula, who was there when our son was born. Laura was reaching the end of her tolerance for the pain and strain on her body when they arrived, but we didn't have to wait much longer.

labor land is a real place

Laura went into a trance at this point. Aware of only the here and now, communication with a woman in active labor is about short and direct sentences. I was no longer of help in this area, I didn't know what to do, and couldn't see anything from my position. Laura was starting to nod off between contractions, so the next part was a bit of a blur for both of us. All of a sudden, she was startled awake by the fact that she was pushing, without her knowledge or consent. Her body had switched modes and was now ready to bring baby on out. Screaming at the sudden strength and purpose of the contraction, she was snapped out of her sleep. "I'm pushing!" Laura yelled. The midwife said, "Go right ahead, baby is almost here." M got her attention and explained what to do next. It was just what Laura needed to focus and give it all she had. Just a few more pushes and baby was in the water. Laura rolled and sat up and they handed us our slippery little angel. 

We just stared at her as she gasped and coughed, taking in her few first few breaths. It took five minutes before we even checked if she was a girl or boy. We were just stunned she was finally here.

Not once have I thought it could have been any better. 12 hours of labor, the perfect timing of our birth team. Laura and baby in perfect health. I am so thankful for all the great work and support.

no regrets

Home birth was and is the best decision for our family. If you have a low risk pregnancy, I highly recommend you consider it and talk to a Certified Nurse Midwife right away. Always go with the highest level of care you can find for you and your baby, and never settle for the second best option. Let your birth story be about what you did, not what "happened to you."

Our Home Birthing FAQ

Watch it, it's a good show. Bring tissues.

When you're preparing for a baby, people love to give advice and ask personal questions. Most mean well, and they are really just trying to gauge what kind of person you are by your birth/child related choices. Others are downright pushy. But this post is about the surprising variation in what people expect based on certain bits of information, and conclusions they jump to when you mention you're planning a home birth. A few categories:

The skeptics

"What do I do?" "Nothing dear, you're not qualified."

Advancement in TV medical drama has produced a hospital-based birth expectation among people that grew up watching American-style TV. There is an expectation of a birth "emergency", but childbirth is usually a slow, steady process with predictable success. I've been asked a few standard questions from this side.

"What if something goes wrong?"

My wife is a rock star. For our first child, she was in labor for ~63 hours, when our midwife recommended we move her to a hospital when she failed to progress half-way through the second night of labor. An epidural and a few hours sleep allowed her to recharge and have a successful natural birth of our 11 lbs baby. Yes, 11 lbs. It was the right choice to move to the hospital, there were very simple complications. However, we will be laboring at home for a planned home birth again. It is very likely we will be successful at home this time. We are dedicated to creating an environment of non-intervention until it's clear that medical intervention will be needed to avoid a crisis situation. Hospitals are built for crisis, and doctors get impatient when you go off their textbook timetables. Home birth is the right choice for us because there is no reason to believe that we are in more danger birthing at home than in a hospital.

"Is this a hippie thing?"

No, we are not doing a home birth out of a counter-culture rejection of modern medicine. We love modern medicine. But medicine is for when something is wrong. Most births are completely normal and require very little help from anyone. If things start going sideways, there is usually plenty of time to transfer to a hospital when intervention becomes necessary. Until then, we plan on being at home for the duration of labor and delivery.

"Do people still do that?"

Yes, in fact we know several people who have, including my own mother with all four of her children. Home birth has never been totally off the radar, and is just as safe for normal "low risk" pregnancies as hospital birth.

The naturopaths

I love our birthing community; the midwives and doulas in our area do amazing work. At the extreme end of this birthing spectrum are some folks who are really, really into home birth. They also tend to be into home everything. Backyard gardens, homemade clothes, home-brewed beer. They are dedicated to green and natural living, and that is wonderful. However, some of them also believe in a few odd things that lead to other questions:

"Are you going to eat/encapsulate the placenta?"

No. My lifelong goal of not willfully consuming human flesh prohibits me from eating placenta, no matter what dubious claims of nutrition are reported, or magical powers it may bestow. We may bank the cord blood because that is breaking science that could save lives someday, including our own.

"Will you be vaccinating?"

Yes, most certainly. Vaccination has saved thousand of lives, and countless millions of dol... no wait, they did count it up. $395 Billion dollars saved, and that's just because of the last 20 years of vaccination. "Polio cases have decreased by over 99% since 1988, from an estimated 350 000 cases then, to 406 reported cases in 2013. The reduction is the result of the global effort to eradicate the disease."

It's a proven science. Do you know what has been disproved? The link to autism.

The religious

They might have opinions about home birth, but this group is mainly concerned about rituals and rites, and so these questions only make sense in a religious context. I was raised in the church, but some people can be more than a little pushy. I'm only including them because these questions have come up more often than I expected.

"Will you be circumcising?"

I understand that there are some religious and ethnic traditions that continue to be observed, even when there is no good reason for mutilating an infant's genitals. As for my sons, they will be left as they are, just like the girls. The more I think about it, the more strange it becomes to even consider it.

"When will they be baptized?"

If all goes well, we might just bless the birthing tub water and consider it done. Otherwise, I'm sure it will come up at some point later and they can decide for themselves if baptism is for them. 

We will be fine

Really, if you've read this far, we don't need any more advice, but we love talking about birthing choices. Home birth is a natural choice that be made in a rational, science-loving home. If you still have questions, you can ask me on Facebook or Twitter. 

transitional informatics

My blogging has been slowing down due to a serious mental instability that I inherited from my progenitors. I am like a lot of personal bloggers in that I need this as a way to get the thoughts out of my head, otherwise I become overwhelmed with competing drives and I end up wasting entire days doing nothing. I used to think this fault was a lack of will or pressure, and I would blame myself for being "lazy". But I can be a very hard worker, and for little to no money if I'm enjoying myself, but I didn't suspect this type of paralysis could be linked to my previously known bi-polar/anxiety issues. Just a heads up.

Also, I'm now employed as a letter-stuffing, phone-message-taking temp, full time. Which mean posts will be mostly on the weekends, with some short posts during the week. I will be live-blogging about our trip to PAX EAST 2014 in Boston, starting 4/8, which will be on my Tumblr and Twitter accounts (#PAXEast).

Check back soon for the next of my Food Noob Series, "Gadgets, Utensils and Appliances".

Until then, here's a Finnish magician blowing the minds of dogs with his mad skilz:

Laaaaaterrrrrrsssss...

waiting for my cue

As I have mentioned in a previous post, we are awaiting our second child with the anticipation that only comes from having lost so much of ourselves in the loss of our first child. I've been in standby mode for so long, I have a hard time remembering what I used to be like and what I used to do before my life went off the rails. What was supposed to be a hiatus from church has turned into taking a full inventory about what I believe about God and choosing a new path. There is another thing I put on hold that has been a major part of my life and identity for over 12 years. Much like the Holy Church taught me to love and serve God and the needy, I learned about the value of working with others to serve the community through art from the Church of Bacchus, AKA local community theater.

There and back again (thanks, Bilbo)

Everyone likes movies, everyone watches TV and everyone likes some kind of music. Most people can tell you what books they would read, "if they had the time." Entertaining content is created, copied and sold the mass audiences every day of the year, but a local play only runs a few weekends. Why do we bother to compete with the convenience and talent of multi-billion dollar industries for a few minutes fame? Hundreds of man hours are volunteered year after year to put on shows for a fickle public. Friendships are forged in the fires of tech-week, families and marriages are strained with the effort to make it to rehearsals and performances. We pound lines into our heads only to have some of them melt away under the hot lights of opening weekend, much to our costar's chagrin. Some people go to audition after audition after audition, but due to limited parts and the highly competitive nature of the art, they are never allowed the chance in the spotlight. And still we attend, and compete, and sometimes perform. The risks involved are many, but the rewards and community are worth every minute because it's not about who you are, it's who you can be.

The raw potential of each production is staggering. Some shows are well known and draw all sorts of people out of the community's proverbial "woodwork" to audition. Others are heavy dramas that require personal phone calls and pre-made casting decisions to ensure a production worthy of the material. This blog is named for a day I was standing on a freshly-struck bare stage and thought about the show that just ended. I was impressed that it often starts with someone hammering together a few hundred dollars worth of wood into a sturdy platform, but much like a family makes a house a home, it's the local theatre community that turns a platform into a stage. An empty stage is where a show starts and where it ends. Building something worth watching on that potential requires a monumental effort from a performance community that is willing to try, and a fan community willing to make the time to attend. Being an active member of that community takes more time than I can spare right now, and that's okay because it will still be there when I'm ready to go back. 

I miss theatre terribly some days. Last year, when Neil Patrick Harris performed the Tony's opening number, he broke into a powerfully aspirational statement right in the middle and it hit me right in the feels. Theatre performance makes up so much of my self-image, I don't know who I am without it. I have been all but absent from the local scene for a year and a half, but my friends are still out there working hard and putting on inspiring and entertaining shows. "Circle Mirror Transformation" was one I was very happy we got to see. If it wasn't for the thoughtful invitation of a friend in the Heartland Theatre Company, we might have missed it and missed out on this beautiful production. The show reminded me that even the exercises that help actors interact with each other help create the friendships that I have enjoyed for so many years now.

Keep up the good work everyone; I miss you all and wish you the best from my aisle seat.

life on the edges

It's been a few days and I would be more consistent, but I'm not. I'm just being true to myself. Post production will improve. Eventually. Right?

Where do you go?

I currently sit on the edge of a wide ranging sub-culture I used to identify with, the White Christian American anthropological group. I am still white, Christian and American, but I no longer feel a part of the structure that I lived under for the first 30 years of my life. And this isn't the first time.

You can never go home again, as they say.

I desperately want to be a part of the culture again, to feel a part of something bigger than myself (truly bigger than the whole of known existence) and more important than any one person's problems. That's the amazing pull of the Christian faith, to know you are more than the sum of your parts and more loved than you will ever understand. That's the motto, God loves you as you are. Jesus loves you as you are. The Church loves you as... well, we'll get to that part.

As you can imagine, being alienated from the Church for the -third- time in my life, I have less of an inclination to return. There are scads of articles about how to get men back into church, to draw them back into a life of church-going. Some assume these men are in dire straits, just begging to be brought in from the cold, unfeeling world. Some offer men forgiveness so they can feel good about themselves again. Others offer various levels of brotherhood: "We have coffee! We have game nights! We have guns!" This assumes an average man is bored by church services, or church doesn't feel manly enough.

My case is a stubborn attachment to the ideal of Compassion above all else. I say 'compassion', because everywhere I turn, someone has another definition of Love (or in some nerdier churches, Agape). Nine times out of ten, when someone is seen to be committing a Sin-of-the-Week (such as lusting, a major favorite), they will say that confronting people is the most "loving" thing a good Christian can do. They are told "be gentle, but firm in your conviction. If they refuse to correct their behavior, you should bring it up to a pastor. If they resist the pastoral correction, they are subject to church discipline."

"Love" is just another word for peer pressure in many churches. Conformity to a set of rules is more important than the often referenced but seldom seen "Christian freedom". 'Freedom from sin is found in obedience to God', as the logic goes, but the definition of obedience changes from house to house and church to church. Freedom to be who you are, but only within narrow parameters, creates a predictable church of like-minded people, but everyone else is pushed out. Instead of trying to see the world from the perspective of the outsiders (to try to understand them better), we hustle them inside and tell them they are seeing things wrong. Evangelism is the idea that you have everything already figured out, and it's just a matter of convincing people that you are right. False empathy leads thousands of Christians to believe they understand everyone's problems and it's simply a matter of faith.

Empathy is a building block of civilized society. Empathy leads to sympathy and sympathy to compassion, the feeling that drives a person to act on someone else's behalf. Charity is the ultimate expression of compassion, offering free food, shelter, clothes, medical services and/or money to people who have too little to survive without help. Compassionate charity used to be the backbone of true Christian living, and today it can be seen mostly in foreign missionary work. I'm seeing it being squeezed out here at home by the new kind of "love": Capitalist Moralism.

Let me tell you a story

Capitalism dictates that you cannot receive what you did not earn, other than God's love, of course. Moralism is the belief that a person is of little to no value if they have vices, a person with "loose morals" can't be trusted with anything. So we find a charismatic speaker and pay him a salary to be super moral and preach moral lessons from the Bible. Every week, a portion of everyone's income goes into the hat, the lights stay on, the preacher keeps preaching, and a social bubble is created. Outsiders are now "sinners", "the lost" or "future members". Insiders are now required to continually prove their commitment to the common cause by volunteering their time and money for special projects or ongoing programs. Bylaws are written and followed, a code of conduct is developed. Obedience to the leadership becomes more than a suggestion, it's required to remain a member in good standing, and being in good standing is the best part of living in this bubble. It might even be the only good part.
Meanwhile, there is little to nothing left over for the people in need just outside the chapel doors. A single mother is handed a tract and pointed to the nearest shelter. A pot head sits in the back every week, but is rarely greeted. This goes on for a few decades, all the original members get old, and the church slowly loses relevancy in the neighborhood. The church disbands and all remaining faithful join other congregations.

Or that's what happens most of the time.

Sometimes a "miracle" happens instead. Someone with good business sense becomes a leader in the church. His ideas are fresh and his budget planning is dynamic. He recruits more men like him, and slowly the church becomes profitable by attracting people with more money. That money is then spun into family programs, larger screens, better buildings, softer chairs, brighter lights, trendier music. More pastors are hired to shepherd the growing flock, and the pastors "earn" bigger salaries as attendance grows. It's a BIG bubble, but now it's full of faithfully generous middle-class people. The church is finally big enough with enough extra money left over to alleviate every possible need in the community... and then they don't. The church has been run like a business so long, the budget to help the poor is about 13% on average (note: there are no real dollar amounts on any of these charts.)

Compassionate work is the "love your neighbor as yourself" part of Church, AKA the second great commandment of Christ. All the bylaws and moral code adherence is based on the idea that you first love God most, and then also love all other people as if they were extensions of your self image. This bar is almost insanely high. That is part of reason that even though there are about 450,000 individual church congregations in the US of A, there are still under-served individuals in every community. The de-emphasis on neighborly empathy is at best negligent, and at worst punitive.

It starts with empathy

So where does this leave me? I pray for a Church that is outrageously inclusive. That's all I'm really talking about anyway, as I know many people will be highly defensive of their church or outreach program. I'm not here to knock your church, I'm expressing my own loss of faith in The Church to reverse this trend toward spending 87% of the operating budget on everything other than helping the poor. I don't want a comments section full of messages about how great your church is (to you, from your perspective). Being a liberal Christian in America today makes me incompatible with almost every congregational model because of only one small difference - I want to love everyone as they are. Gay, transgender, strung out, too poor to give, emotional or depressed, disaffected, single parent, divorced, abused, criminal or ex-con, barely believing in a vague God-like concept but wanting more... that is not a bubble. It's an unpredictable, nearly explosive mix of people coming into your chapel/auditorium/stadium every single Sunday and into your homes for Bible study every week. These are also the people that need your church the most. Can you lighten up on the anti-gay, pro-traditional family, anti-abortion, pro-capitalist message from the mass-media long enough to love people the way Jesus explicitly told you to? Can churches survive cutting entertainment and member program budgets to crank up the portion given away to poor, non-member populations? 

I would be very excited to join a church that has a single spotlight on piano player leading us all in old hymns if the money saved in the media budget could be used to house a dozen homeless people that month. But that might put off the benefactors that want a big band and professional music pastor. I would love to be part of a small group that let each member take a turn leading, even if that means letting a transgender woman talk about how they identify with the woman Jesus met at the well. But that might scare away the young WASP families that need to grow up in the church to maintain a "core membership". I'd love a Church that abandons politics and legislative process (i.e. voter registration programs and letter writing campaigns) to focus on restoring dignity to the human beings at their doorsteps instead. I want a church that rejects well-padded budgets and strives for frighteningly generous giving.

God help me, that's all I'm looking for.