Jack's Birth

Today is both Jack's 6 month "birthday" and also Father's Day, so it feels appropriate to post this today.  I figure I should probably write down Jack's birth story before it fades too far away. So here goes.

Jack was "due" on December 8th, 2016.  My pregnancy was almost bizarrely easy; no morning sickness whatsoever, no back pain, none of the adverse symptoms it seems most women encounter.  I didn't even have trouble tying my own shoes by 9 months.  So I had an inkling he was pretty dang comfortable in there and wouldn't be interested in making his debut early or even "on time."  I should note I use quotes around "due" and "on time," because it's been shown now that there is a span of 5 weeks in which birth timing is normal, so a due date or on time birth is somewhat misleading.  Anyway.  

My doula/BFF, Kristina arrives on Dec 1st.  I take her to my prenatal yoga class with me.  We hang out.  A few days later on the 3rd, my birth photographer/other BFF, Amy, arrives.  Both are from Tacoma, so they flew up to be with me for my labor and Jack's birth.  We commence waiting.  A week goes by.  Nothin'.  At every prenatal yoga class people start being like, "wait, you're still here?!" to which I reply, "tell me about it."  With no signs of labor, we start trying to entice him to make his way into the world in various ways.  We go to a hockey game, where I eat a burrito so spicy I was sweating profusely.  Spicy burritos and multiple fog-horn blasts do not work.  We try karaoke.  Nope (though Amy won the Karaoke contest that night!).  Next up: Zumba.  Zumba at full term is, well, it's a helluva thing, y'all. Mom, Amy, and Kristina joined me and we were all exhausted afterward.  I was pretty sure I'd get some kind of reaction out of the kid for all that jumping and bouncing around.  I was right.  That night I woke up feeling some cramping and Dan called in letting his job know he wouldn't be coming into work.  This was Wednesday, I believe.  Well, while I did get some action, it was just some Braxton Hicks contractions and the rest of the day I was back to business as usual.  Except I got to hang out with Dan all day because his work thought I was in labor.

No more signs of labor for the next couple days and by now I'm a week "overdue."  I have what I hope is my last prenatal appointment and my midwife checks my cervix and I'm dilated about 3-3.5cm, which is encouraging since it means I'm at least on my way to labor-ville!  She sweeps my membranes, which was an interesting sensation to say the least. We talk about some other natural labor induction methods and I decide to try my hand at castor oil to help get things moving along. Since I was a week overdue at this point we go in for a little ultrasound and a non-stress test to see how kiddo's doing.  He's in ship shape so back home I go, with a castor oil assignment to complete.

If you're wondering how effective castor oil is at moving things along in your GI tract, I'm here to tell you: Liz used castor oil and it was SUPER EFFECTIVE.  Well, at least at clearing out my gut.  Woof.  About 20 minutes after taking a shot of castor oil and I scooted my way to the bathroom where things moved along.  Everything but the baby.  Amy, my photographer, has moved her flight back a few days already and has to fly out.  She predicts I'll go into labor in the next day, because of course I would.

Next day I go back into my midwife for another check of my cervix and another membrane sweep.  At this point I'm solidly at 4cm, and it's at least encouraging to know that I'm almost halfway dilated already and haven't even had to labor to get there!  I go home and decide to do more castor oil and bouncing on my exercise ball.  At some point in the past week Dan's parents had arrived (expecting their grandson to already have made his debut), so that night we had a family dinner with both our parents and then make our way to the living room to play some funny board games.  As we're playing games, around 8:30-9pm,  I start feeling some periodic, light, contraction-like sensations.  They keep on coming, staying pretty light, and pretty regular. That night I go to bed to try to get some rest before the work begins, but I don't think I got any.  I may have dozed off a bit, but by 2:30-3am rolls around I have to get up and walk around and then I find myself ritually heading to the bathroom to grab the edge of the sink counter, swaying back and forth to get through the contractions.  I text Kristina what's going on and she decides to head over.

By 4:45 things are getting pretty intense so Dan heads down to start and warm up the car because it's Alaska in December and temps have been in the negative and single digits.  My swaying and moaning get me through my contractions.  Our bags head down to the car and I get in the back seat of the red van I've been driving since coming back home.  The same red van I would drive to school after getting my license.  If you'd told me back then that 15 years later I'd be in the back seat of that same van, in labor, I'd be incredulous.  For months there had been a weird, small trash can rolling around the back of the van making tons of noise every time I made a turn.  The day before I had finally taken that trash can out of the van, and as I get in the van I grab that trash can and bring it in with me because I'd been feeling a little nauseous and had zero interest in throwing up all over the car.  I think the trash can might still be in the back seat...

We get to Alaska Native Medical Center around 5am, maybe 5:30, and go in through the ER, since it's too early to go in the other doors.  We head up and go into the L+D Triage where, to my great dismay, I have to lay still for 20 whole minutes while they do another non-stress test.  I hadn't stopped moving through my contractions up until this point, even in the car I was swaying and up on my knees, not sitting down, so having to lay down and be still for 20 minutes was a pain.  Plus they had to put in a Hep-Lock so that I could be easily hooked up to an IV in the case of an emergency, which I was not anticipating and wasn't thrilled about.  So it goes. 
 

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My room becomes ready and I shuffle my be-gowned, laboring, self the 50 feet to my room where we get the tub filling and I slip in to begin the work.  Things are pretty hazy at this point, not really like in the way that things are fuzzy when you're drunk, but kind of.  Everything goes internal and I'm not aware of much outside of like 2 feet from my body.  Kristina and Dan are giving me double hip squeezes and I get pretty intimate with the walls of the tub.  It's intense and by the time I'm starting to feel a little pushy, I vomit a couple times after contractions and then decide to get out of the tub and move to the toilet.  Nurses have been coming in and out periodically checking on Jack's heart rate and, I'm assuming probably, other stuff, but for the most part it's just me, Dan, and Kristina.  

By the time I'm on the toilet I'm feeling pretty pushy, and between contractions at one point I'm like... I feel like maybe a midwife should be here... right?  Kristina went and let the midwife know that things were happening and at some point she shows up-- again, things are hazy and my sphere of external awareness is pretty small.  At first I'm laboring leaning forward on the toilet but as things progress my midwife has me lean back and put one foot on Dan's thigh and one on her thigh, both of whom are kneeling in front of me.  In retrospect I can't imagine Dan's staring-down-the-barrel view, I imagine it was intense, to say the least. There is a lot of groaning and pushing.  I keep trying to push after my contraction has ended, I just wanted to get it done with, but my midwife tells me to stop pushing when the contraction is over, and my over achieving self complies grudgingly.  Mostly I just remember groaning and having her tell me to groan lower and feeling a little ridiculous as I modulate my groans awkwardly from a higher pitch to a low pitch.  That and feeling like I might just rip the metal stabilizer bar off the wall with my hulk-like labor strength.  I think I probably squeezed Dan's hands or arms or shoulders or something uncomfortably hard.  

It didn't take long before the baby plopped out of me and everyone fumbled with this slippery little screaming, bloody new human and placed him on my panting chest. To which I responded, "this is weeeiiirrrdd!"  It was, you guys.  It was super weird.  After that there were lots of hands.  Doing various things.  Cleaning things, moving things, moving me, stitching me, cleaning Jack.  8:43 AM.  

Kristina went and told the parents, who had been anxiously awaiting the news out in the waiting room, that the thing had been done successfully, the new human seemed healthy, and told them to wait a little longer cuz my vag was getting stitched up (I'm also positive she said all of this in a much more lovely way, thanks Kris. This is why you are a doula and I am not). Shortly after all my "housekeeping" is done, the fam files in an ogles the bebe.  My Dad ogles him in his own way.  As a neonatal intensive care doc, he does his own examination and finds Jack to be a-okay. 

After that it's just a lot of chit chat and eventually we moved to the post-birth room for recovery, which is. a. bitch.  I had no need of an epidural for the actual birthing, but damn if I didn't want to cut off all sensation to my lower half for like the next week.  I may or may not have sobbed in the hospital room on one of the two nights we slept there because I felt like I still loved Dusty the most, my nipples and vagina were in excruciating pain, and Jack was crying and I couldn't make him stop.  Some angel nurse came and took him away and magically put him to sleep. Her witchcraft was a godsend. 

Oh, you might be wondering, "If your birth photographer had to fly out a day before you gave birth, who took all these photos?"  Well, I set up my settings on my camera, handed it to my Doula, Kristina, and between all her amazing Doula support she also pulled double duty as my photographer.  Dang.  

Anyway, that's pretty much that.  We didn't finalize Jack's name until we were basically heading out the door.  We had his first name picked out shortly after he was born but could not for the life of us pick his middle name.  We were vacillating between Tiberius and Gabel (Star Trek and Against Me! fans may recognize those names) but Dan threw out Polaris at the last minute and it just fit perfectly.

Jack Polaris Morrow it is.  

Alaskan Maternity Shoot

Back in December I was 39 weeks pregnant and got together with Catie Bartlett on a chilly 15 º day to take some maternity photos before my little buddy arrived.  At this time I thought his arrival was nigh, but I'd have to wait over 2 weeks before I got to meet him.  In case you were wondering, it only takes about 10 seconds of standing barefoot in the snow before your feet go completely numb.  ANYTHING FOR ART!!  Between outfits we thawed out in the car with the heat blasting, haha. 

I had made the quartz crown and bought the huge yardage of black sheer fabric for a burlesque routine I had planned on doing in June of 2016, but found out I was pregnant around the time I had started planning the act and decided to postpone completing the act until later.  I'm glad I brought these two pieces up to Alaska (I put all my other burlesque costuming in storage) because they had just the witchy-mother vibes I wanted for this shoot!

If I'm being completely honest, these pictures are super weird to look at.  And actually, now that I've given birth, pretty much all pictures of pregnant women freak me out a little. Which is weird because, like, shouldn't it be the opposite?  But I feel like now that Jack is out of me and I see him, it's even weirder that he was once inside me.  I know some people see pregnant women as beautiful and glowing, but it currently totally weirds me out to see pregnant bellies. #realtalk

Are we there yet?

I'm tired of being pregnant.  Not necessarily physically, though it would be nice to be able to wear my old clothes again, but more mentally.  I'm not good at waiting.  If I have an idea, I like to do it right then.  I start businesses on a whim, buy new domain names and make websites for ideas that burn in my brain late at night.  When I decide to do a thing, I want to start doing that thing immediately.  I'll start painting a room at 10:30 pm.  Start an RV remodel 10 days before I'm supposed to leave on a road trip.  So this waiting thing?  This incubation period?  I don't really get it.  I'm not a preparer, really.  I don't research or read books about things before I decide to do them.  I sort of jump in with both feet and figure it out as I fall.  So I want this kid to just come so I can get to the part where I start figuring it out instead of sitting her wondering how the hell life is going to change, what motherhood will look like for me, what loving a baby even means.  It feels like my whole life is on pause waiting for December.  I know it'll probably be here before I know it, but in the quiet moments where I'm alone at home with a mysterious creature kicking me from the inside, I just want the wait to be over.  

I hear a lot of pregnant women say stuff like, "I can't wait to meet him/her!" and I don't have that and that's not why I want the wait to be over.  Perhaps it's a more selfish perspective, or just one from someone who is not a baby person and has never had the desire to "meet" a baby.  Our culture feels so focused on the baby.  Like motherhood is an afterthought.  Like it's no big whoop when a woman becomes a mother.  Like it happens every day.  And it does, but not to me.  I only become a mother once in my entire life, and our culture doesn't have a lot of ritual, celebration, or ceremony surrounding that.  Even the celebration you have during pregnancy, a Baby Shower, is focused on the baby.  What the baby needs, celebrating his/her new life, getting a metric ton of diapers and baby onesies.  And I get that.  New life is exciting!  We should celebrate it.  But I also see mothers get lost in the fray.  I see motherhood get lost, the sacred and momentous time that happens once in a lifetime.  And then we immediately transition to our society's actual culture surrounding motherhood, which is: DO AND BE ALL THE THINGS.  Be a super mom, run a successful business, take the kids to soccer practice, breastfeed for at least a year, do yoga, be fit and sexy and fun, have a beautifully decorated Pinterest house.  And really, I like doing all the things, and I'm really good at feeling bad when I don't feel successful (which is almost all the time), so I have a feeling that's going to go over really well.   

These posts tend to get really ramble-y and lose focus (perhaps a symptom of pregnancy brain? I hear that's a thing?), so I'll stop before I start talking about something totally and completely unrelated to what I started writing about when I opened this draft.  Being pregnant is, overall, a good experience.  I don't want it to be over because I've had crazy sickness, or because my body feels horrible, or for any of the bajillion horrible pregnancy side effects my pregnancy app tells me are supposed to be happening to me.  No, I just want to not feel like I'm trying to peer into a black hole when I look at what life will be like come December.  I just want to buy the damn domain and start building this motherhood website (if we're mixing metaphors.  I'm not actually building a motherhood website).  

So it begins.

Well folks, it's begun.  I've made my first purchases of baby things, namely: some tiny onesies and a crib.  We finally got the room cleared out that will be the nursery (a word I kind of hate?  So I've been calling it our bebe den).  Now that it's a blank slate, I can finally start making it into the baby's room.  

Some days I still look in the mirror and think this is all some crazy dream and I'll wake up back in Tacoma in our little house, sans bump, shake my head and be like, "whoa, that was some crazy shit," and go about my day.  It's still bizarre to me that we are here in Anchorage, I'm in my 3rd trimester with a child that will come out and be all mine to take care of in 12 weeks.  In a way, I'm glad that it shook everything up.  I know I was getting restless in Tacoma and was Jonesin' for something new.  We had planned on moving into the Brave and living a mobile life, but honestly, it was really difficult to move out of our house and without the push of needing to move to Anchorage, I'm not sure it ever would've actually happened.  It was just such a cozy house, we were so comfortable.  Even though I wanted something new, something different, change, I'm not sure it could've actually happened without something pushing us to make the move the way this pregnancy did.

I don't feel married to Anchorage the way that I thought maybe I would be, moving back to my hometown.  I have a lot of cognitive dissonance about Anchorage.  Growing up here it was the best place ever and I loved it.  I loved coming back for visits over the years I've lived in Washington.  But now living here its sort of pulled back the veil and I'm not quite as in love with it as I was.  It's like how you idealize an ex, then you date someone that matches you way better, and then you meet that old ex again and realize how they really aren't as great as your idealized memories.  I don't know if we'll end up staying here.  Part of me feels like maybe not, maybe this is just an intermediary place.  But I don't know where we'll end up.  I like Alaska, I like the Northwest.  I want to be near family.  Sitka has been in the back of my mind as a potential home.  I like the idea of my kids growing up in a town like that.

But of course, all that is speculation right now and I really don't care to think about it all that much until next year, after the baby comes and we are ready to even begin thinking about what's next for us.

Control | Release

Childbirth (and parenting in general) is such a balance of control and release.  I'm a naturally controlling person.  I like to know as much as I can going into a scenario.  I remember traveling to Paris for the first time and doing as much research as I could just about the airport and how to travel around the airport and to and from the airport/Paris.  I looked up maps, read blog posts about navigating the airport, searched out how to get on the train that took you from the airport to Paris, exactly how and where to buy the tickets to get on the train.  I feel like I'm pretty good at winging it and figuring things out on the fly, but if I have anxiety about something, I like to suss it out and get as much understanding about it as I can.  

I grew up with an extremely medicalized perspective on birth.  My brother was an extremely sick baby, given only weeks to months (max) to live.  And with a dad in medicine, specifically concerning sick and premature babies, I got a very singular view of what could happen during/after pregnancy.  And that view was very negative (or at least very focused on the complications that can arise).  At the same time it was positive in a way, knowing how amazing medicine is and how incredible modern medicine is.  My brother who was supposed to have died after only a few short weeks of life is currently thriving in his late 20s, thanks to the incredible procedures, many of them brand new or experimental, that have kept him alive.  At 25 weeks along, my baby is definitely now in the realm of being saved even if it decides it wants to come out prematurely.  It's pretty incredible.  

But all of that history and knowledge conflicts with my own desire to trust my body and have the most natural birth possible. So much of my view of birth has been so baby-centric, the mother is merely an obstacle to get the baby out of.  But now, as a pregnant woman, I desire so much to be an active participant, and actually, the central focus of the process.  The message that it's no longer about me, or that I no longer matter now that there's a baby involved feels so alienating and discarding.  Like, I was important until I became a mother and now I'm just a second fiddle to the child I created.  While I know there's a mental shift that occurs when you have kids, and you do lose some of that self-centeredness that you have as a solo human, I also know that to be the best mom that I can be, I also need to be a full person.  And I need to be a full person in birth too.

I hear a lot of doctors (and non-doctors too, actually), make fun of women for wanting to have a certain birth experience.  They make fun of them for thinking that the birth process is about them or important in any way that is separate from getting a healthy baby out of them.  For believing that the birthing experience is a profound, spiritual, transformative event that is sacred in addition to biological.  And really, arguing with them feels futile, because you feel like you're made into this selfish, ignorant hippie who doesn't care about the outcome of the baby.  Which is never true.  No mother going into birth cares more about her experience than having a safe and healthy baby at the end of it all.  But ignoring the link between supporting women through birth and their ability to actually give birth more ably and successfully seems like such a common occurrence in the medical community.  

I will be (well, planning) giving birth in a hospital.  There is a huge part of me that would love to have a home birth or give birth at a birthing center.  But I can't shake the knowledge that, if something ends up going sideways, I need to be down the hall from people who can revive my baby, not a car ride away.  I've kind of been ignoring the birth part of this whole pregnancy thing, mostly because it feels so distant.  I haven't even really felt really pregnant due to not showing much throughout the first and most of the second trimesters, not having any morning sickness, and generally feeling pretty normal.  But, holy cow, I only have 3 more months until this child decides it's too cramped inside of me and I need to start focusing on doing what I can to ensure I have the support I need to pursue my desire of a natural birth.  (side note: it feels so backwards that after thousands of years of having no other option but to birth naturally, we now feel like we have to fight to birth naturally).  At the same time, I know that, like all natural things, birth is wild and uncontrollable.  It's unpredictable and spontaneous, and having a plan isn't going to ensure much at all except that I might be sorely disappointed.  

I thought maybe after getting all these thoughts out I might come to a point or conclusion, but maybe I just needed to get them out of my brain and into writing.  Parenting and childbirth are such hotly disputed subjects.  It seems like everyone has a strong opinion about the right way to do it, and will fight you tooth and nail to get you to agree with them.  Part of waiting to announce my pregnancy until I was 23 weeks along was due to wanting to put off the advice-giving for as long as possible.  As soon as you are with-child people feel like they have carte blanche to start pumping you full of advice and opinions.  It's been lovely to stay out of that.  Even the stuff like, "Oh enjoy that sleep now, as soon as baby comes you'll never sleep again!" feels so unnecessary.  And it seems to be never ending.  "You'll be wishing for those newborn days when you're in the throes of the terrible twos!"  "Terrible twos!  Just wait until you have a teenager!"  

I'm afraid the internet has played a large role in pitting parents against one another regarding parenting and childbirth decisions.  As much as I love the internet and getting to be a part of a larger community online that I don't have access to IRL, it can also be a breeding ground for online bullying, putting other people down from behind a computer screen, and seems to make people unusually certain about their opinions (or at least causing them to confuse the distinction between fact and opinion).