Cabbage leaves and frozen peas,
Things I’ll never serve are these.
Foams and sprays and circles, creams,
Things I talk to - silent screams.
So if I thought I felt like a mom for the last 31 weeks, I guess you could say I’m in touch with that reality even more now. I keeping getting the worst songs – worst to Kevin’s sophisticated musical ear – in my head and I sing the same short phrases out loud to myself. “She’s a brick – house. She’s mighty, mighty – just lettin’ it all hang out.” …. Or … Alicia Keys’ “This girl is on fiiiiiii-yaaaaaaa.” …. Or …. a little known mid-90s lyrical masterpiece: “She’s lump. She’s lump. She’s lump. She’s in my head.” (Not really. I think my head is the one thing that is not under construction. Time will tell if I’m right about that).
Half of me benefits from heat; the other half requires constant cold. Head to toe, stillness is a good thing, so here I am writing again. My goal is to be a Mc DLT where the cool stays cool and the hot stays hot. Some of you will think I should be singing Madonna’s “Express Yourself” and aim to be more of a Big Mac, but, I promise, our situation is a little different. 31 weeks, no baby to nurse, etc. I’ll spare you my solution for accomplishing both temperature controls at once. But if there were an Olympic sport for such a thing, I would be tempted to enter since creativity is the key to survival, I mean, success. And modesty is no longer a word in my vocabulary, so why not ‘Go for the Gold’? The real question is: would it be the summer or winter Olympics? I’d be a powerhouse contender if I could compete in both – Phelps, who? I’ll show him what it means to sink or swim.
The graveside service on Wednesday was beautiful. Short, sweet, Godly and, yes, joyful. They even called it a “Homegoing” not a funeral or burial. That’s not even a word – which shows how counter-cultural it is to believe in God’s promise that this life is temporary and our real home is in heaven. I’ll get to all that in a minute or 60. Or in another post; hard to tell.
Jan. 25 – Every good birth story starts with contractions. I’m so thankful I got to post the Ease On Down the Road blog on Saturday before we went to the hospital. (It helped that I had no idea we would be going to the hospital. Blog time does not correlate to real time. So that post was a recap of a full week of activities.)
Contractions may have started Wednesday night, Jan. 22, just hours after what would turn out to be our last ultrasound. This was the night I joked that our baby might be a boy because the kicks were more like insanely strong punches of protest. We’d watch our baby literally bulge up under my skin in a round, alien-like manner. The pain was intense. I didn’t know what it was but Kevin rubbed me and I whimpered and we stayed up half the night.
I’m not a big fan of taking medicine but the next day we called to find out how much Tylenol I could take. We thought it was Braxton Hicks contractions – totally normal for third trimester. I figured the pain was extra intense since we had no amniotic fluid to cushion the blows. Walking was supposed to help or moving into a different position; both did help. Kevin got me a heating pad – why have I never known how wonderful they are??? – and Thursday night and Friday night were dreamy by comparison to that first night.
Friday night we were attending a two-hour dinner/seminar by Paul Miller, author of The Praying Life, one of the really great books I recommended in an earlier post, and the straight back chairs were doing a number on my comfort. Contractions or crazy kicks picked up again, and I left during the last prayer because I was in mucho pain. Ever the planners, we had taken two cars in case that happened.
It was a cool seminar. Part of how Paul Miller taught us was by having us pray silently to ourselves for five minutes at a time – just the closed-eyed-individual and God. After, the speaker would ask people in the audience to say what made them nervous or guilty or fearful or awkward about that prayer time. Toward the end, he asked us to write down one thing we would ask God for if we were a child and only put our needs first and asked like the answer would be a resounding YES! I wrote down one sentence: “I want my baby to be healthy.” Everyone – I hope everyone – had their eyes closed or were at least looking down because for the rest of the 4 minutes and 55 seconds, I did that quiet trembling cry where you don’t want anyone to see your eyes leaking so you close them extra tightly – think ostrich with head in sand – because like a child if you can’t see them, they can’t see you.
We were supposed to pray for five minutes, an eternity. I just repeated over and over again “please. Please. Please. Please.” I could only do that for so long without melting into full-body, turn-off-the-microphones, time-to-stare-at-the-crazy-girl sobbing. So instead, I spent the rest of the time convincing myself maybe they’ll just think I have a cold and I’m sniffling. I was trying to squeeze the tears inside, not outside. (Great, because trying to control things has worked so well for me in the past. And because you’re supposed to be thinking about what other people are thinking about YOU when you’re supposed to be talking to God. Good job, Lee – very pious of you.) Oh well, God knows what stood behind my please, please, please. He knows I could only point to the sentence written on my page. In fact, I had turned the notebook over so no one else could see my childlike request. I had to point through the book – I couldn’t even hold it upward. Good thing God has X-ray vision. He’s even better at reading thoughts. He does His best work in times of extreme weakness. When you’re 100% empty, He has 100% of your space to fill you up with Him. And that’s what He wants to do with us in this life – to make us full with Him. So, physically, I sorta held it together – not really – and then when the final prayer started, I left, got to the foyer door, and then burst into hardcore tears from there until the light at Walnut Grove and Perkins (not far) where I figured I should start paying attention to my surroundings. Outburst over.
In hindsight, not knowing about 27 hours later I would be in labor, this was as close as I would come to a line in the Bible when this one guy says – paraphrase, “Dad, I don’t want to do this. Please don’t make me do this.” Of course this guy in all His perfection – being the Son of God – also added the line “but if it’s what you want, Dad, let it happen.” He was a man, feeling man-sized pain and dread, talking to His Father on the night before he was going to be mutilated and murdered on a piece of wood to save the entire world from their sins. He knew He was not only going to die but to suffer greatly, and He knew it’s why His father put Him on earth some 30 years before. Wowsers, that’s some self control and discipline.
That night, in that fellowship hall, I did not add that last line. I only had the begging part down. I am the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great (times however many generations) grand-daughter of a chick named Eve, who at a piece of fruit that damaged our relationship with God the Father that meant I’m naturally sinful, living in a broken world and unable sometimes to add the “Thy will be done” part. When instructed to talk to my Heavenly daddy like his child, it was desperate. The three-year-old equivalent would be like begging for candy over and over again until the parent caves in. Some 27 hours later, Heavenly daddy said, “No candy for you. Not in this moment. It’s not what’s best for you – not what I have planned for you. I love you and will protect you. I will hold you in my arms. I will comfort you. I am yours and you are mine.”
Grace is the concept that makes my child-like prayer OK. Grace is unmerited favor – something that is given to you when you don’t deserve it. It’s the concept that – thanks to that one Father sending His one Son to earth to die for my sins – and for anyone who says “Thank You” to Him for that – that we are expected to come to Him bringing only what we have on us or in us. It’s a CAYA sorority party. We just mess it up a lot by trying to wear the perfect outfit, say the perfect thing and then try to act nonchalantly like we are CAYA casual when really we spent a long time thinking about what to wear and what to say.
Grace says “I already knew that about you. I made you. I love you. Be uniquely you. But look to me for every need, and I’ll make you the YOU that you were meant to be.” And then I’ll mess up again by forgetting the “thy will be done” and then Daddy will pick me up again and give me more strength for the next moment. It’s a circle of love – and no human can make you see it or explain it into your heart.
Decent night’s sleep Friday night thanks to the Tylenol and heating pad and probably good old fashioned exhaustion. Saturday morning’s shower told me I was in too much pain to go to the second portion of the seminar. (It was a big deal to have Paul Miller in town. He’s Jack Miller’s son and he ranks right up there with C.S. Lewis and Tim Keller in terms of his strong communication skills and honest faith.)
Kevin went, and I got back in bed to time my contractions. As I type this I realize what a nut job I sound like. But remember, I thought it was normal preterm stuff and we weren’t “normal” patients, so I expected the abnormal TO BE normal. And I have a freakishly high pain threshold. And I still didn’t want to hurt the baby I had inside of me because I still wanted that baby to surprise the medical world and be healed by the touch of God. Like I had joked with my Bible study girls early on, Holt is so easy to spell – it would look good in a medical journal! Or it would be cool if the ultrasound equipment – all of them, every time, for two weeks from November until January – and once at an entirely different office – was, in fact, broken or missing a light bulb or something. Anything. =)
(Sidenote, when I thought I was having Braxton Hicks contractions I thought of Dr. (or Doctors??) Braxton Hicks a lot as I walked around like a little old lady literally watching my phone clocking pain. I get it – smart people like to put their names on things; scientists like to be credited with what they discover. But why in the world would you put your name on something like that? That’s like saying – call me cancer! I found it first! Call me Crohn’s disease – I discovered it, and it’s horrible so I want my name on it. What? What? I envision ol’ Braxton Hicks as not having a woman in his life during the time of his medical breakthrough because if he had, the woman would have told him to call it something else.)
Saturday at 1 pm Kevin was home, and he served me what would be Gabriel’s last meal, a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. I won’t go off on an Elvis tangent, on how being a tour guide at Graceland was my summer job after high school graduation; on how my casually mentioning that to Kevin on our first date is a huge part of what got me a second date; on how Kevin’s girl (long space to emphasis platonic) friends called him Elvis in high school in New Jersey. I won’t go into all that, but you know me by now, I just did. Thank you Heavenly Daddy for this wonderful detail and connection. It’s almost like you’ve known my path since the beginning of time? It’s almost like you care about my goings and comings – even what I put in my mouth?
As I type this, I’ve just finished a bacon sandwich thanks to about a pound of bacon another friend brought over. No need to elaborate there either – but I will. On a fifth or so date, Kevin fixed me an indoor picnic in his apartment in Cordova. He had spent the last several dates collecting food intel on me, and he served bacon sandwiches, sushi, brie, chocolate covered strawberries and tons of other randomly perfect things I’d mentioned so far. I also got to see how well behaved his dog was, lying by the picnic blanket not eating the food. I remember thinking I could nevah-evah do that with my dog. You can tell a lot about a person by how well they listen and by how their dog behaves. (Other people’s dogs, not mine, of course.)
The pain is severe and now walking it off is no longer working, so we decide to call our doctor. Husband tells doctor the contractors are still only lasting one minute – a classic sign of Braxton Hicks – but that the frequency has increased from seven in a half hour at 7:30 am to about 12 in the same timeframe at 1 pm. Doctor says go to the hospital. I had Kevin write down a list of questions to ask: how much Tylenol should we take; can we come in first thing Monday; what changing signs should we watch for? Doctor says go to the hospital. Husband says Ok, I just have a few more questions she wants me to ask. Doctor firmly but politely interrupts with a great idea! – go to the hospital. Husband is calm and says OK. He has such a servant’s heart he wanted to give me answers to my stupidly naïve questions but it was clear our questions weren’t relevant. We pack a bag and a bunch of food – theme overload – and we go. I told Kevin this is just practice; we’ll be home by dinner. We were peaceful.
The first area is called triage. I joked that it’s like we’re on M.A.S.H. The admissions person wasn’t born in time to know M.A.S.H. She would be the first of many people young, young, younger than we are. But that’s a good thing; they all had much more energy than we did and the brain power to back it up. We stood in the waiting room and prayed together. Saturday about 3 pm. – totally empty room, which was nice.
Kevin remembers all the names of all eight of the nurses and their shift schedules. I would list them all here to show gratitude because they were ALL great, but I keep trying to keep people anonymous. The first one likes horses, has a farm, and gave me anti-contraction meds. She said we’d be home in time for dinner, too. The meds made my heart race and a quivering shake settled in, another side effect. The meds worked immediately but three hours later, the contractions came back despite the meds. Second nurse said I was dilated one centimeter, and she thought she felt a “baby part.” I explained that our situation was a little different, that she was doing a great job, and that it was Ok for her not to exactly know what she was feeling. She said she was going to call our doctor.
He was there in less than 10 minutes, sporting a smile and his favorite NFL team T-shirt and calmly talking about his son’s ball game and his pizza dinner. Kevin and I had already decided pizza would be good for dinner when we got home. That sealed it! Then our doctor said I was three centimeters and he felt a knee. He said we’re going to have a baby tonight; get your epidural ASAP; and I’ll see you over there. We had ruptured but he didn’t say that out loud; the first of his many silent moves that were filled with love, love, love and professionalism.
Nurses 3 and 4 had the same name so they were kind of a blur to me. Once we were settled in the delivery room we met nurses 5 and 6, the ones who later would stand on each side of me and coax me through this. Each had wonderful bedside manners. Our doctor would be the quarterback, of course. Super K would be by my head to my immediate right, holding a steady gaze into my eyes even when I stared through the ceiling tile or closed my eyes altogether.
But first, I forgot, we called my parents around that 4 pm/5 pm from triage to say, “Hey we’re at the hospital; it’s a trial run; we’ll be home tonight, and we’ll let you know if you need to feed the dogs for us.” Of course, that changed. Kevin called the fingerprint person and the Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep person; he had a copy of the Delivery Action Plan I had printed – showing the steps we’d take if we have a live birth or a still birth. It had all the names and numbers. We never had to give a copy to our parents. Planning, smanning. It was in God’s capable hands. Turns out the fingerprint person and the photographer had already ministered to me in our get-to-know-you conversations. They would never be at the hospital; they would not capture any moments. That was not God’s plan either.
So now it’ll make sense when I say my parents walked in the door sometime 8ish that night a little before we were in the delivery room ready to do the epidural and then inducement. Of course God put light and hope in the epidural story. It was two guys – young, strong, sweet. One was a resident but all I heard was TRAINEE! INTERN! Shouldn’t he hand the big needle to the other guy? That wasn’t my call, so instead I encouraged him, joked with him, and told him this was going to be a piece of cake. He did a good job explaining the risk. I liked that he said it so fast that most people probably wouldn’t hear the whole “you acknowledge you are legally aware this could kill you part.” They just hear the “initial here” part. Gotta love a good paraphrase. It was like I had jumped into the middle of one of those hair loss commercials where the side effects are way, way worse than having thinning hair, but I wasn’t allowed to change channels.
You have to relax your back entirely for the safest results with this spine shot. That was the task-at-hand so I draped myself limply over a standing nurse, nurse no. 5., and relaxed. One last soft hug of surrender. That encouraged the needle men. They said I was doing great but that my spine was tight – meaning the bones were close together, I guess – so experienced guy coached new guy how to maneuver things around, you know, during it. Super duper, but it was worth it because very soon after I didn’t feel a thing. Not a leg, not a hip, not a thhhhhhhhhhhhhhhing. Turned out it was the most perfectly placed epidural of all time!!! (To me.) Before the guys left, I had one more question: did they know my widow friend’s husband? He was an anesthesiologist. Experienced guy did! Yay! I told him we see his widow all the time, that we’re very close friends, that we’re so thankful to have had that special connection on this night. I laughed and said I thought it was best to ask them about it after the work was done, not before. They left. Good job, new guy!
Now I was at five centimeters and nurse no. 6 felt the bottom of a foot. She said she tickled it. I said, “Thank you for loving our baby.” I think that’s when her heart started to melt for us, but I can’t say for sure. I don’t know at what moments this nurse was in or out. I had no idea her hand came out covered in blood. Kevin saw that and told me about it later; everyone protected me from it visually. More grace in the moment. I think we still had a baby heartbeat about this time but I had asked the crew to monitor our baby silently. I didn’t want to hear when the heartbeat stopped. Nobody needs that kind of information. I think at some point, they only monitored me. I think, at some point. It’s not important as to when.
Sometime later that night, our doctor popped back in and this time he stayed. Nurse no. 5 said I was “adequately” dilated. I wondered what that meant. I would have liked to hear a word like abundantly or profoundly or overly dilated, but I stayed silent – for once. My parents left. It was after 10:45pm I remember because I was concerned about my parents driving home really late at night and I asked them if they were going to set a time in their heads that they would just leave and come back in the morning. I asked if they wanted to meet our baby no matter what and my dad said yes, that they were staying.
Dad looked sad and tired; Mom was doing her Nervous, Bouncy, Interrupty, Busy Mom Thing. She is one of a kind; she deserves all caps. Kevin did his patient, reassuring, comforting, calm thing. And I did my normal, keep-the-big-picture-in-mind-while-living-for-the-moment thing. Nurse No. 6 – I’ll call her Favorite Nurse from now on because she was – addressed Nervous Mom and monitored me and was wonderful. I remember Mom offering a helpful suggestion for how I should proceed, and simultaneously noting how different I am from my sister, and I calmly said, referencing the Bible again, “I’ve left and I’ve cleft and if anyone will do that it will be Kevin.” (Genesis 2:24). It gave me flashbacks to our wedding planning, which will sound SO weird, but it’s true. More grace in the moment.
Labor and delivery was a Holy Spirit-inspired thing. Don’t take it from me; take it from Favorite Nurse. Favorite Nurse, the trim, slim, young woman with a ponytail, encouraged me, assisted our doctor and could feel the calmness and peace. She saw the most horror – second only to our doctor – who held our baby flat as his feet, then body, then shoulders approached. I don’t know how long it took. I know I had about a minute and a half between contractions. I know I couldn’t feel them but the group said we were making progress. I trusted their instructions on when to push. At first it was three pushes per contraction then they slowed me down to just two per contraction. Is that when it happened? Did they decide to give me a break since our baby was already in heaven? I have no idea. All I had was Kevin’s steady eyes, our prayers, patience and repetition of action. Our doctor didn’t say much but eventually said I was doing great. I had been asking for pointers on how to push better/more efficiently since I couldn’t feel anything and honestly wanted to do better. When our doctor spoke up I asked, “Great like halfway there?”
“Great, like 75% there,” he said.
“I understand,” I said.
That’s when I knew our baby was in heaven – for sure. It was reinforced because when I said I understood that’s when tears started falling out of Favorite Nurse’s eyes. She knew I knew. There was no rush. 75% meant the head was stuck, or last to go, however you want to say it. Save the best for last? Our wonderful doctor could see I was Ok so he asked me if I wanted a drink and laughed that Catholics can drink anywhere – or something like that. Kevin and I practically said at the same time, “We’re Presbyterian! We can too!” I added, “Gin and tonic with lime would be great. Normally I’m a Beefeater girl, but let’s make it Tanqueray, and I hear they only have it by the case here….” I directed my side remarks to nurse no. 5, the more serious of the bunch. Doctor said, “I know a guy” and then we were back to contractions. How much time went by? I don’t know. Mere minutes I guess. Baby was taken away instantly. The swelling was so severe, our doctor didn’t stop to notice whether it was a boy or a girl. Later a nurse said it’s a boy. Boy – ha! – was that a surprise!! Kevin and I whispered to each other: Gabriel? Yeah, Gabriel. And it was so. Kevin went outside to tell our parents in the waiting room.
In the meantime, four men from church had gathered in the waiting room in hopes of a live birth, to support Kevin and me, to pray, and to wait with my parents there. We were hugely honored that they’d leave their homes in the middle of the night to love, love, listen and pray, pray, praise. Favorite Nurse said she was thankful they were there for us, too. It was the same four men who had gathered at our home the night the fetal specialist told us our options for our unhealthy baby. That worst night. Those same four men: our two pastors, our one community group shepherd, and Kevin’s weekly Bible Study leader – all good friends too.
Meanwhile back in my room, our doctor encouraged me not to see our baby. The swelling, the birth process, the effects of the failed kidneys. Both nurses said the same thing. They all told Kevin the same thing, separately. It was decided. A variety of things happened after that that I’ll skip. A variety. Of Things. Favorite Nurse took the lead from then on. She said she was grieving with us, and I believed her. When her shift ended at 7 am, we were already on another floor in another room. They were extremely thoughtful to move me away from the newborn floor. Favorite Nurse couldn’t leave. She just stared at me like a puppy with these longing eyes that soothed me. I kept saying we were Ok. I’d been saying it the whole night – God’s got this. He doesn’t make mistakes. Favorite Nurse knew that in her heart, too.
Finally, she walked over and held my hand standing in the place Kevin had stood and Kevin stood beside her and she prayed for us. She said all the things our hearts were saying. I wish I had an audio tape of that prayer – she said it so perfectly, echoing surrender to God, thankfulness for Jesus and patience in the moments ahead. It was the best part of the entire experience. She left.
I didn’t sleep during the 23 hours we were there; Kevin got a little shut eye but not much. By 3:30 pm the next day, our doctor cleared us to leave. A few friends had come and gone and went and saw Kevin in the waiting area. Our widow friend had dropped off the gown that Gabriel would be buried in. Since we didn’t know gender for sure, it was all white. Perfect. That story really affected nurse No. 8, our last nurse. Nurse 7 was Ok. Sweet and Godly, but we didn’t see her much so we didn’t bond as much. Nurse No. 8 was special too. She had been searching for a community church to join and had just moved to Cordova so she was really interested in our church and what we do. The gown prompted me to tell the story of our widow friend who we weren’t close to – really close to – while her husband was alive but then after his death we started tutoring her kids weekly and now we’re so close that she’s made this beautiful gown. We took a ton of pictures of it since we’d never see it on Gabriel. Then I referenced a text that the widow sent us at 8:11 am that Sunday morning saying her husband “is holding a little baby boy this morning. Thank you for allowing him to watch your boy while you watch ours. Tears flowing.”
That’s community – on earth and in heaven. Nurse No. 8 got it. It takes a few minutes to be cleared for check-out and we were packed and waiting for the final wheelchair ride when Favorite Nurse walked through the door – with her husband of nine or so months.
It was their day off and she often doesn’t see her husband for three days at a time because of his medical job and there they stood. We couldn’t believe it. She came back to check on us, to introduce her husband, to grieve some more and to love some more. She told us she went to church that morning – after working a 7-7 shift – and that she told some friends she had one of the roughest nights at work but also one of the most peaceful nights at work – because of God. There ya have it. Favorite Nurse for the WIN! I had just finished writing down our church web site info for Nurse No. 8 and had also written our blog address down on the back of a card for Favorite Nurse in hopes that Nurse No. 8 would give it to her. Sure enough, that’s when Favorite Nurse showed up so I handed it to her personally.
I was wheeled out a back way – again, very courteous of the well trained staff – and we went home. Home sweet home. Kevin sweet Kevin. Peace sweet, sweet peace. It was Sunday, Jan. 26. – 23 hours after the practice run. Zero hour of the new, new normal. Thank you, Jesus.
“The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.”
Psalm 121:8
