They Were There All Along

Part One: Holding On

Here’s all you need to know about me: when I dated online, I ignored every match who described himself as a “laid-back guy.” The guy I wanted was busy, focused, and slightly neurotic. I found him! He’s wonderful. We got married, decided we wanted children.

That’s where this story begins.

We were so excited and relieved when I was finally pregnant. Birth also frightened me, so I addressed my fear the ancient, natural way—by ordering a pile of books from Amazon, reading them at an inhuman pace, and getting mad at my husband when he couldn’t keep up.

One of my fears involved this phrase I kept encountering: cascade of intervention. As I understood it, taking so much as a Tylenol from a nurse would put me on the fast track to a c-section and a double kidney donation.

Don’t get me wrong—I was all in favor of necessary interventions. It was the unnecessary ones I didn’t want. But how was I going to tell the difference? I didn’t have time to get a medical degree before I gave birth. Meanwhile, my husband was still not reading fast enough.

The pandemic arrived. I heard about hospitals where women labored alone. This did not help my fear. So, with the support of my husband, I arrived at a new plan: homebirth. I loved our homebirth midwife from the start. She monitored my health with precision; she gave me more books to read.

I felt really good about my plan. When I was interviewed by a local journalist writing about homebirth trends, I explained to her how homebirth would allow me to “engage the process” of labor.

Friends, only someone who has never experienced labor could utter those words. In case you didn’t know, you do not engage labor. Labor engages you.

But I didn’t know that yet.

There’s a picture of me lying in bed as I went into labor. Faint smile on my face. The look of a woman who will soon meet her baby.

There are no more pictures for fourteen hours.

I had back labor, which sounds uninteresting unless you know what I’m talking about. No books, no breathing exercises, nothing could have prepared me for such unrelenting agony.

In the middle of the night, the midwife made a note in her log: Mother may need hospital transfer for pain management.

But I didn’t transfer to the hospital. Not because I’m a hero, but because the idea simply didn’t occur to me. I was too busy holding on—clenching and white-knuckling my way through the hardest night of my life.

Then it was over. I heard my own screaming go quiet. I heard the swish of water as the midwife dipped her capable arms into the tub to scoop out our child. I took her rubbery warm body to my chest. This was worth it.

Part Two: Letting Go

I wanted a hospital birth for our second child, mostly in case back labor kicked in again. A couple weeks before my due date, strong, regular contractions started coming and going, around the clock, for days and days on end.

I did everything I could to get labor started. I ate piles of dates, had vigorous dance parties with my toddler. I even baked the baby a birthday cake to try to entice her to join us. My doula gently suggested that I, you know, relax? But what good was that going to do?

One afternoon, though, I gave up. I ran myself a warm bath, rested my weary body. By total coincidence, I immediately went into active labor.

Of course it wasn’t coincidence. Lying in the tub and watching the winter sky darken above the Bridgers, I realized that all those breathing and visualizing techniques weren’t designed to give me mastery over birth. They were designed to help me let go. And I did.

We drove to the hospital under a full moon. As the contractions became stronger, I let go on a deeper level. It was as if each new level of intensity called forth from me a level of surrender to match it.

Our second daughter was born in four big pushes. She arrived pink and hungry and so dear.

I spent three blissful days in the hospital, nursing and napping with my baby, watching with my heart in my throat as my toddler met her sister, being delighted by the regular delivery of hot meals I proclaimed absolutely delicious, and wanting all the nurses for my new best friends.

I was so happy—mostly because of this beautiful baby, but also because I knew I’d been lucky. I’d had a very positive birth experience. With the support of my doula and the doctor and nurses, I’d had the intervention-free birth I’d hoped for. And in the course of that birth, I’d experienced the gift—the grace and the glory—of letting go.

Part Three: Losing It

Ten days after the birth, our doula came over to check in. As I hugged her goodbye, I felt an odd gush—not the warm trickle of lochia, but something that left my pad heavy and hot. I told myself it was nothing. In the bathroom I found my thick postpartum pad sodden with blood. I changed it; fifteen minutes later it was soaked again.

I called my OB’s office for an appointment.

“I’m not making you an appointment,” said the receptionist. “Go to the ER.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, because there had to be a simple outpatient solution for this.

“Go now,” she said.

My husband drove me and the baby to the hospital while family members, who were visiting, watched our toddler. As I was being prepped for surgery, I pumped for the baby. Would she have enough milk? What if the surgery took longer than expected? I knew my husband would take care of her, yet it hurt to hand her over. I tried not to look back as I was wheeled away.

When I woke, I was told that it had gone well; I’d go home that very evening. A nurse offered me ice chips. As I sat up to take the cup from her, I felt another hot gush. My heart fell the same way it used to in sixth grade when I realized I’d done a worksheet wrong. “Sorry,” I said. “I think I’m still bleeding?” The nurse looked under the sheet. “She’s pooling!” she called.

It was the beginning of a long night. The procedure that was supposed to stop the bleeding didn’t. Neither did the drugs. Neither did the additional drugs that were described as “all the drugs we have.” Still, I bled. Every time I sat up or shifted in bed, I felt blood pour from me. The volume, the endlessness of it, was sickening.

By 3 a.m., the mood in the room had turned grim. The doctors weren’t out of options, but I hadn’t responded to a single treatment yet. The question hung in the air: how far would they have to go?

I tried to focus on my dear little baby. I had to be here for her at this vulnerable stage in her life. Then I had to be here for her for the next five decades, too. It hit me, then, that if things kept going wrong, I might not.

My face crumpled. Sobs rocked me. The days since my baby’s birth now felt like a ridiculous dream. What had happened to that person made so powerful by her own surrender? Here there was no glorious letting go. Here was a woman who was losing it.

At around four a.m., my husband called a friend to support us. I know this doesn’t make sense, but her calm, kind presence seemed to stop the bleeding. Hours passed, and it didn’t come back. I was anemic, disoriented, and exhausted, but it was over. For the second time in about a week, I was discharged from the hospital.

A nurse joked, “Don’t come back again, you hear?”

“I won’t,” I promised.

But I did.

Six days later, my husband woke up quite sick. He had covid, and immediately isolated in our tiny study. By no fault of his own, I lost his support as I recovered from the hemorrhage and tended to our newborn.

The next day, I woke up with a low fever and an unfamiliar pressure in my abdomen. I figured it had to be covid. But my own tests kept coming back negative. Finally I called my OB’s office again, got the same answer: “Go to the ER.” This time I didn’t bother asking if it was really necessary.

A friend dropped her morning obligations to come to the hospital with me and the baby. What we learned: a blood clot the size of a cantaloupe was trapped in my uterus, brewing an infection. I would not be going home that day.

“You again!” the nurses exclaimed, but we could only pretend it was funny.

I remember hauling my body, yet again, from wheelchair into hospital bed. I couldn’t believe I was back here. I still loved the medical staff, but I was no longer enthusiastic about the food. I was no longer comfortable in this room. I no longer found it interesting, or fun, or remotely restful to be here. I wanted to be home. I wanted to stop terrifying my toddler by disappearing into the hospital.

I wanted my body to stop giving out from under me.

A different drug was used this time to put me under. Someone warned me it might burn a little. And maybe it would’ve, if this were a planned procedure for which I was rested and ready. But after nine months of pregnancy, ten days of prodromal labor, childbirth, two weeks of fractured newborn sleep, and a secondary hemorrhage—and now, with my spouse tossing feverishly on our secondhand futon while I lay in the hospital with a uterine infection—no, it didn’t burn a little. It seared my hand, and I cried for help until everything cut to black.

Part Four: Moving On

As we drive down Highland Boulevard, my three-year-old says, “That’s the hospital where you went when you had your owie. They gave you a big shot that made you cry.”

“Yes,” I say. “Sometimes we have to do things that hurt in order for us to heal.”

That’s enough for now, but when they’re older, I’ll tell my daughters this: Your whole life, people will tell you to “hold on” or “let go.” Ignore them. You’ll hold on when you need to; you’ll let go when you’re ready.

But as the hospital complex shrinks in the rearview, I wonder what to tell them about the times in life when we are past advice, when we are losing too much too fast, when we feel like we are stuck on a platform while a train carrying everything we need starts chugging away.

Then I remember handing my baby to yet another good friend before the second surgery. Again I tried not to look back as I was wheeled away, but I couldn’t help myself. That’s when I saw her cradling my child with the same tenderness she’d shown her own. I couldn’t tell anymore if my tears were out of sadness or relief.

So I’ll also tell my daughters this: I’ve stood on that platform, bereft and afraid. It was hard. But the story didn’t end there. Because eventually, I had to turn away from the line of smoke disappearing into the huge Montana sky, turn away from the empty tracks.

That’s when I saw them: the people who’d been standing with me all along.

~Mindy Misener