Hernando: Well, what was it Walter? A Unicorn? Sasquatch?
Walter: the negative?
Hernando: Yeah!
Walter: I didn't look.
This past January, almost exactly 9 months ago I blew out the candles on my 35th birthday cake. I wished for a daughter and the wish was so real I remember the candles blurring in my teary eyes and the emotions rolling up into my throat. I swallowed them back down quick enough and got on with my life. Later that evening I sat down with my husband who, for my birthday, promised to watch Joy Luck Club with me. That movie is a great reminder that mother-daughter relationships are hardly sunshine and rainbows, but I love them anyway. Maybe great movies and novels would be the only way I would feel that beautiful pain?
About two weeks later I found out that I was pregnant with my fifth child. I made a decision after my 4th child was born out-of-hospital with midwives, to completely immerse any future pregnancy in midwifery and never look back. So, for the first 8 weeks I enjoyed the quiet secret knowledge of a new pregnancy before I called my midwife to schedule my first appointment. I was excited to call them again. I actually missed them. I never had that feeling about any of the characters in the parade of obstetricians I had seen.
My first appointment was at twelve weeks. I went to the appointment with several questions because this was the first time I would be seen by home birth midwives from start to finish. During my last pregnancy I switched to them at the beginning of the third trimester so I had no experience with first and second trimester care there. I wanted to know about genetic testing and ultrasounds. I was leaning heavily towards eschewing both. The midwives were able to provide/outsource both but the decision was ultimately mine. Because they worked with a heavily Amish population, my midwives were experienced and capable of working with a technologically "blind" pregnancy.
That was ultimately my decision. I decided that I wanted a completely "old-fashioned" and medically hands-off pregnancy. I mean, pregnancy only recently became highly medical. This decision isn't for everyone, but I had been developing some philosophical and somewhat political views of pregnancy and most importantly, it just felt right for me.
So, I talked to the midwives about what would happen later in pregnancy or at delivery if I had a tricky placenta or a child with genetic or birth defects. The discussions we had were amazing. The information they have collected over years of working blind is a treasure I fear no one but other midwives will seek. I really compare it to a blind person, who because of lack of sight, has developed heightened senses. These midwives, because they are technologically blind, have paid attention and learned things about pregnancy and delivery that others don't have to because they rely on tests, ultrasounds, and monitors.
Personality-wise I'm not a planner and I have a strong internal locus of control. So, I really have no need to try and control things around myself. It's much more comfortable for my personality, to take on problems as they occur, and until then, not stress much. This is me. It might not be you, and that's okay.
The other angle of this decision was the gender card. I have found out the sex of every baby at the 20 week ultrasound. This time, something was calling me to secrecy from myself. It was going to be my last pregnancy and wanted to experience it like pregnancy used to be. I also wanted to have the daughter dream as long as possible. At the 20 week ultra-sounds, I had experienced various degrees of gender disappointment. Then, like mothers do, I beat myself up with guilt for being disappointed. And finally, after that nonsense, at every delivery when a son was born, all was forgotten and I was as happy in-love as ever. So, why do all that to myself if I was just going to fall in love at first sight anyway? I decided that this would be secret life... from me and from the world.
Sean O'Connell: Number 25 is my best ever, the quintessence of life, I think. I trust you'll get it where it needs to go, you always do.
People in the birth world say, "trust birth" a lot. I say, "trust women". My midwife is a religious woman and would say, "trust God", but in a round about way she's also saying, "trust women" because she believes that God made womens' bodies strong and perfect and their wisdom over and about their own bodies is mandated by Him and absolute. Don't interfere with that shit.
We shot ourselves in the foot with technology in pregnancy. For the thousands of years before ultrasounds, the woman was the primary and most important patient. She was the only one who had a relationship with the pregnancy, and everyone else had a relationship with her. The woman, as the patient, was the one you could see. She was the one you knew. She was the one that would have ripple effects She was valuable to her husband and children. You didn't want to loose her, and as cold as this seems now in our highly fetal-sensitive culture, she could almost always have another child.
I also think our early pregnancy testing and ultrasounds have contributed to an increase in mental health issues surrounding reproduction and just a lot of straight-up situational anguish for women. Ignorance is bliss as the saying goes, and when women and society knew less about early pregnancies, when it was a secret from everyone, those early losses weren't as hard to take and a lot probably went unknown. You may have been labeled "infertile" for a period or a lifetime, and as hard as that may have been to take personally and socially, you didn't have the anguish of thinking your body was constantly loosing "babies" and Google-ing to see eye lids and finger-buds.
My husband trusted me. I told/asked him, "I'm not going to get any ultrasounds or testing because ______. How do you feel about that?" "I'm fine with that." Now, I don't want to assume to know how he feels, so I texted him quick.
Me: When it comes to us personally and childbirth which is the most true/important for you. A) I trust my wife. B) I trust birth/the process C) I trust our midwives.
Him: A. Which then leads to the other two in no particular order.
Trust women.
Walter Mitty: When are you going to take it?
Sean O'Connell: Sometimes I don't. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don't like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.
Walter Mitty: Stay in it?
Sean O'Connell: Yeah. Right there. Right here.
So, I stayed right there. Right in resolute secrecy. I didn't feel movement until about 19 or 20 weeks so the only evidence of this secret life was the VERY occasional prenatal where I would hear the mysterious heart beat and obviously my stomach was growing. This did worry me a little but I wasn't sure what would be done anyway. It was best, I decided, to just stay in this moment. Right there. Right here... to follow the secret to completion no matter what that was. I believed in the secret life wholeheartedly and found a lot of comfort and peace in it.
After about five months the secret life started to move or I started to feel it move, I should say. We don't know what secrets are doing before they reveal themselves after all. The outside couldn't feel the secret yet, only me, and a small bond formed. I have to say something that may make people a little uncomfortable. I really didn't feel a connection to the secret until then. I hadn't seen that little peanut with arm and leg buds on an early ultrasound and I hadn't looked at chambers of the heart at 20 weeks. I had had maybe 2 or 3 prenatals by that point so hearing the heart beat for that few seconds was far and few between.
I didn't connect until the secret revealed it's presence in a very physical way. I was well into the second trimester and almost to the point of viability. Is that the natural, healthy point for a woman to connect? Have we snooped and spied into the secret territory of God and/or mother nature? Are we forcing women to connect too early now? Maybe.
In a few weeks the secret made itself known to dad's hands as well and since I didn't have ultrasound pictures to frame or put on Facebook, the secret life was really only known to our family.
We entered the summer and one day I was sitting on bleachers at Warren's baseball game. A mom friend of mine asked me if I felt any way about the gender. I didn't. I honestly had no clue or innate "feeling" about it. I don't really operate that way anyway, but if I based the pregnancy on the four boy pregnancies I had, I would say it felt like a boy because everything felt the same again. I told her that, and she responded that she had been thinking about me randomly and really hoped that I had a girl because she felt that I would be a "really great mother to a daughter". I teared up immediately. One of my biggest fears/insecurities (and it has been played upon when people want to hurt me) was that I was given sons because I wasn't built to be a good mother to girls.
I felt an interesting connection to this mom for the rest of my pregnancy, like God was watching me through her eyes. In fact, the very hour that I began active labor she woke up from sleep and wondered about me and said a prayer.
Another interesting thing is that my mom didn't dream about the gender. For EVERY one of my previous pregnancies, my mom had a dream about the baby were the gender was revealed in the dream and she was always right. This time she hadn't said anything so I asked, "Did you have a dream about the baby yet?" "Yep," she said. "Well, what is it? Did you learn the gender?" "Nope." Weird. Even a secret in dreams.
So, the summer plugged on. People were interested left and right in the lady with four sons who had a secret fifth pregnancy. Family, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers where invested for me to have a girl. It felt great. I don't mind the gender questions, "Are you hoping for a girl?" "Absolutely!" "Well, I be thinking about you! I really hope you have a girl!" I am 100% secure in my love for my sons. I love them as fully and completely and as painfully unconditionally as I can. So, I have no insecurity or guilt about wanting a daughter. None.
Sean O'Connell: They call the snow leopard the ghost cat. Never lets itself be seen.
Walter Mitty: Ghost cat.
Sean O'Connell: Beautiful things don't ask for attention.
I even had the Amish rooting for me. Often, I am the only English (non-Amish for youse outside of Amish country) woman in the waiting room at my midwife's office. The Amish ladies almost always come in pairs and groups and always seem to know all the other Amish ladies there. So, they mostly talk amongst themselves in plat-deutsch. One day in July I sat down next to an Amish woman who was very unusually curious about me. She wanted to know where I was from, how many kids did I have, what did I have (boys or girls), etc. When she found out that I had 4 sons and wanted a daughter, she smiled with understanding and I noticed that the chatter of the waiting room had died down and when I looked, the other Amish ladies where smiling too.
The Amish value a quality called, Gelassenheit. It's often translated as "submission" or "letting-be" and some English synonyms would be - calmness, composure, or letting go. Gelassenheit is at odds with our strong American value of "individualism". The Amish submit to the will of Jesus and community and a lot of their cultural norms and religious doctrine and values come from this. It's also in their was of "being". I see it in these women I would encounter in the waiting room and I hear of it in their pregnancy styles.
That's what I wanted for the secret life, Gelassenheit. So, when my two friends, both pregnant and due within a week of me, faced various issues, Gelassenheit kept me calm and steady. Gelassenheit let me hear of a new baby's death with sorrow yet without fear. Gelassenheit kept me joyful and stress-free about my pregnancy until the very end. I kept steady with the secret life.
Walter: Todd, I have to go. I have to make oxygen choices here.
So, when I first felt some sporadic contractions early Sunday morning I kept calm and watchful. I calmly told my husband that things might be starting. The contractions didn't really seem to be coming together into an active labor pattern, so David and I did normal things, laundry, shopping, cooking with an air of "waiting" about us. We both knew that the secret was coming.
Then around 4 am on Tuesday morning, things came together. My contractions were consistently 10 min apart. At 6 am I woke David and told him that it was time. That we would have to start heading to the midwife after we took Warren to school. He got right out of bed and into the shower. He packed the car and helped me get the kids ready. After we took Warren to school, we took David Jr. and Brody to my parents house. Then we headed out.
"How fast do you want me to drive?" David asked. "Just drive normally." I answered. The ride went smoothly. I labored in the car well and went through male saints names on my phone with my husband because we hadn't completed a boys name. We picked a middle name and then suddenly switched the name around because we liked the middle name so much we made it the first name. We finished and fist-bumped on it 2 miles from the midwife.
We checked in with everyone and this time we were given a huge room in the B&B with a private bath and huge sunk-in tub. The midwives wanted to listen to the baby and get my vitals, then they asked if I wanted to be checked. I actually did want to be checked. With the prodromal labor I had I was curious. So we found out that I was 4 cm, 100% effaced, bulging bag of waters, and baby was at 0 station. I felt great about that and wanted to go outside and walk around since it was such a warm fall day.
David and I walked around the B&B gardens and then even wandered down the road to a farmers market. I would stop and lean into him during contractions and he would rub my lower back. When we got back to the B&B it was 2pm and we were both hungry. David searched for somewhere that I could get a turkey sandwich and off we went in the car. I labored smoothly again during the ride and enjoyed the sunshine and beautiful farms everywhere. We sat down at a table at the restaurant and I was glad the hostess sat us away from people. I gripped the table during contractions and chatted and ate in between them like nothing was going on. As we were finishing I noticed that they were harder and getting closer so I told him we should get back. The ride back to the B&B was definitely harder. I had to have the window down and when the car took turns it was pretty awful.
It was 4pm when we got back to the B&B and I sat on the birth ball while David snoozed on the bed. I took a picture of him and sent it to friends saying, "My view while laboring". I got sleepy and tried to lay down next time him when my water broke with a huge pop and it totally freaked me out for a second. I woke David up and he got the midwives. They changed the sheets and helped me into dry clothes. Then I sat on the ball and labored a little longer. With each contraction, more amniotic fluid came spilling out and I decided that the tub would be better.
The midwives filled the tub and I got in. The warm water felt great at first, but then I was hot and uncomfortable and my contraction were so intense and right on top of each other. I felt myself pushing and told them I needed to get out of the tub. They had the birth stool there in a flash and I sat down on it with David behind me, just like when we had Brody and I started to push. I was checked and I was 10 cm and baby was +2 station. My pushing felt out of control and I felt like mentally I wasn't handling it as well as before. But after a couple of pushes the midwife told me to feel my baby's head. I couldn't do it. I couldn't move my hands from where they were gripping the birth stool.
But as intense as it was, in just 4 minutes of pushing, at 7:17 pm, the secret life was born. After a simple, calm, free pregnancy and a relaxed, secure labor and delivery, I had a baby in my arms. But what was it? There was towel on the baby hiding the sex and I was already in love like I knew I'd be... but what was it? I didn't care right away. I was looking into those alert little eyes and marveling at what a fantastic secret it had been. I eventually wanted to look and with David looking over my shoulder, I pulled back the towel.
And Imogen Anastasia was a secret no more...
