Leo the Lion

The first night we are home with Leo, his breathing becomes restricted, congested. 

This makes Scott's breathing feel restricted, congested. 

He calls the pediatrician's office.

Sounds like newborn breathing. The nurse on-call tells him. Sure, steam up the bathroom, that might help. 

The next day, Friday, March 13, 2020, at Leo's first doctor's appointment, the pediatrician pulls out her stethoscope and listens. She hears wheezing. Soon, on the papered table, he is screaming, which leads to gasping and to the ball of his belly bouncing. The doctor and a nurse check his oxygen. It's a little low.

She cannot clear his nasal passage with the bulb suction. They have more advanced equipment at the hospital, she tells us. Actually, she would like to call an ambulance ... to be on the safe side. She doesn't want us driving all that way alone. What if something happens on the highway? The hospital, where he was born four days before, the one with the children's emergency department, is approximately 25 minutes away.

My parents are home with Amelia, our 4-year-old. I want to go home. I don't want to go back to the hospital. Not on the verge of a pandemic.

I weep as I feed him. When the ambulance arrives with its lights and boxy gravity, I cry harder.

Two paramedics arrive with a stretcher. One, Firefighter Davies, crouches at the car seat and asks the doctor for a summary. At the moment, Leo isn't gasping, but silently sleeping. She explains that when she listened to his lungs, there was wheezing. Then she tells him about the gasping and his oxygen ranging between 92 and 94.

The paramedics strap the car seat to the stretcher and wheel him out to the parking lot. We follow.

Scott will go in the car. I will go with Leo.

In the ambulance, I sit beside the stretcher.  Davies is on the other side, attaching a mask to an oxygen hose. The mask is too big and powerful for Leo's newborn body and so he places it on his lap, aiming it toward his mouth. The oxygen monitor is attached to his toe beneath a blanket.

Once we are on the road, Davies looks up and asks,

And how are you doing? 

My shoulders shrug. My forehead wrinkles. Tears rise.

The oxygen helps. Soon, Leo's level averages 99.

I always say that you don't need to get nervous unless you see us get nervous. 

Davies then explains that Leo's lips and nailbeds are not at all blueish, which would be a telltale sign that he was in trouble.

Soon we are talking about our kids and I am laughing and forgetting, for the moment, that I am in an ambulance with my four-day-old. This stranger, Firefighter Davies, whose job it is to save strangers, fills me with so much hope and gratitude. Hope and gratitude for everyone in our small world who dedicates their life to saving strangers. 

At the ER, the nurses and doctors look surprised to see such a small patient wheeled toward their hospital wing.

In a room, under a heat lamp, Leo's bare chest is stickered with wires that connect to blinking, beeping machines. Soon, two young nurses flush his narrow nostrils with saline. Then one holds our baby in place while the other inserts a long tube into each nostril, sucking out all the hidden mucus. Leo screams like he has never screamed. I sob. As soon as the nurses pull away, however, Leo slips into a deep silent sleep and relief settles over me. 

Hours later, they do a chest x-ray. They test his mucus for hundreds of infections. They monitor him, checking his temperature, respiratory rate, and oxygen levels.

The Emergency Department doctor says that the mucus will return. It doesn't. The tests come back negative the next morning, and the chest x-ray comes back clear. (A week later, the Coronavirus test also comes back negative).

And there hasn't been a fever? 

No, not for his whole little life. 

After one night of monitoring, we return home.

That night, it happens again. Congestion. Crying. Gasping. It's our bedroom, I realize. Leo is allergic to something in our bedroom. 

We run the shower and close the door. For an hour, I stare at him, wondering if we should call an ambulance. I think about CPR. I think about his painful birth. I think about his lips and nailbeds turning blue. Whenever he cries and gasps, I panic. My parents watch from the couch, unsure of how to help. After the steam and the use of a Nose Frida (a snot sucker), and lots of nursing, Leo's congestion clears. That night, he and I sleep in the living room.

The next morning is Sunday. With the windows open, Scott removes all of the area rugs from our bedroom, vacuums and cleans. Then, he goes to Bed Bath and Beyond and buys an air purifier and a cool-mist humidifier.  All day long, wrapped in blankets, Leo sleeps in the cool fresh air of the open door. It works. All night and day, he breathes silently.

By Monday night, we are back in our bedroom.

A week later, I hold Leo in my arms while we lie with Amelia in her bed. Hidden in her room at bedtime, we are safe. Away from invisible infections and the uncertainty of illness, we cuddle as I sing about twinkling stars and sunshine. Once they are both asleep, I weep, allowing my tangled fears to stretch and seep out of me. During this pandemic of isolation and fear and never enough antiseptic wipes, bleach or certainty, I am trying to take one moment at a time. I cannot and should not think in terms of weeks or months, but from moment to moment to moment. Every instant my two children are well, I allow peace and gratitude to surround me. With every clear breath they breathe, I know that this loneliness is worth it.

Wild

I don't want an epidural.

Some people understand. Others don't.

It isn't to be a hero and it isn't for my ego. I don't want an epidural because during my first labor, an epidural lead to an IV and the fall of heart rates, which lead to a vacuum extraction and a c-section team at the ready. I don't want an epidural because, during my first labor, it lead to a team of doctors boxing out my midwife, while I tried to direct my pushing in a body half numb. The only good thing the epidural did was its job, which was to make me feel less pain.

Four and a half years later, I pace the hospital lobby, while my body bellows in labor.

I breathe in through my nose.
I breathe out my mouth.

In triage, I take off my clothes and dress in a blue gown. Two nurses check me in. Then a bubbly midwife pulls back the curtain, introduces herself, and examines me deeply.

Oh! The press of her hand surprises me. 

You are nearly ready. Jane will be your midwife. 

I sit in a wheelchair and watch painted walls pass. We go up a floor in an elevator. Soon I am wheeled past a crowded nurses' station.

In the birthing room, the pain picks up.

I breathe in through my nose.
I breathe out my mouth.

She's cool as a cucumber. A young nurse with yellow hair and pink lipstick says.

I breathe in through my nose.
I breathe out my mouth.

For every contraction, I am present. For every pause between the pains, I am present.

I breathe in through my nose.
I breathe out my mouth.

Then the contractions begin to roll so close together that they feel like a rising tsunami inside of me. There is a gush as my waters break, flooding the bed. We are so close.

Jane's wavy auburn hair is like a hallow. She sits at the end of the bed beside my curling toes and says, Try to relax your face and shoulders. 

I try, breathing in and breathing out.

I can do it. I can do it. I chant.

Yes, you can. The young nurse says.

Soon the storm inside me begins to spin. I feel baby's head as it sinks inside me like a round sword. I try to be present, but I want it to be over. I want him out.

On my hands and knees, growling and wailing like an animal, I push and breathe and push and breathe. An older nurse arrives and tells me how to direct my pushing. I arch my back. The sounds I make are strange and harsh as they rise up and out of me.

I am in too much pain to feel embarrassment.

I breathe in quickly.
I breathe out quickly.
I feel a little dizzy.

With utter vulnerability, I participate in this ancient ceremony of child delivery. I growl and cry and howl my way through it. I had wanted, so badly, to be like a monk in this moment. Instead, I am more like a monkey, screaming through every hot push. I don't know that all this racket I am making actually helps, but I can't seem to stop myself. In this calm room where three women and my husband gently instruct and encourage me, I need them all (it seems) to know and see and hear how tremendously painful this is. I grasp the arms of the bed. Then, as the baby burrows, I grab at the pillows and roOOOAARRRR! I am wild, but caged by the bars of time.

And then...
oh wait, no...
almost, almost there, almost...
No, not yet.
Wait. Maybe...
YES!!!
He is OUT!
Thank THE UNIVERSE he is out!

Baby lands in Jane's arms. I turn and land on the bed, gasping, sweating, my whole body exhaling. Immediately his warm wet body is placed onto my warm wet body. Scott cuts the umbilical cord. Jane presses my middle and lifts up the purple placenta before placing it into a small plastic pail.

I'm so glad it is right now. I say, able again to be present.

Baby roots, his mouth bouncing across my breasts. Then he drinks from me, while Jane sews my wound.

Two hours after birth, we are wheeled past the crowded desk of nurses and doctors. Many smile and say Congratulations. How interesting it must be to witness the wildness of strangers.

I return their congratulations with quiet thank yous.

I didn't have an epidural. I don't know that it matters. Birth is monumental no matter how one meets it. Both of my children's births were painful and beautiful. Both births made me into a warrior, just as it makes every woman. Whether one has medicine or not, whether it is through the vagina or the belly, whether it takes four days or two hours, whether it is quiet or cacophonous - birth is a journey of creation and, perhaps, continuation. It is a splitting too, which is fitting. For over and over again, this love will tear us open, and leave us gasping, sweating, our whole body exhaling. Once they are out and breathing and squirming on top of our warm wet bodies, we are faced with one truth which is that this is real vulnerability. This fragile being, of whom we already love so much, is now out in the wild beside us, no longer hidden inside us. For the wild can be painful. Just as the wild can be beautiful. And yet, even during the harshest times, with our hearts out in the rain on the line, we mother warriors can aspire to be present. We'll fail, certainly, especially when we're hurting, but with every new breath, we have the opportunity to try again.

I breathe in through my nose.
I breathe out my mouth.

Today is my due date.

Laundry, probably clean, but possibly infected await the washing machine.

Yesterday, a deep wet cough clambered out of my four-year-old, while a fever of 100 degrees burned beneath her skin.

The world warns me of the coronavirus. Cruise ships docked for weeks are disembarking. Travelers are walking out of airports and into supermarkets. Schools are closing. People are packing basements and pantries with boxes, jars, and cans. Pharmacies are sold out of sanitizer.

Is this what an apocalypse looks like?

Last night, I slept in her bed as she huffed and growled and heaved in her sleep. By the middle of the night, her breathing turned clear, and so I returned to my own bed.

A few hours later, she hollered, "I'm scared!"

"Coming," I called, carrying my pillow back to her bed.

For breakfast, she ate a bowl of frozen blueberries and a small square of cornbread. She coughed throughout the day, but her fever was gone. We took a walk to the mailbox in the sunshine. She drank cough medicine. She watched too much television. Then late in the afternoon, I read her a pile of paperback picture books.

A midwife told me recently that I should worry more about the flu than this mysterious and ambitious coronavirus.  I don't know that worry is ever productive, but I will wash my hands a few times more and do another load of laundry. Then I will clean the house and then I will clean it again.

Today is my due date and yet I can't help but hope that he stays inside me for a little while longer. Perhaps until summer?

I simply would like for her (and the whole world) to be a bit better before his arrival.

39 weeks

"Are you ready?" I'm asked.

All I want is to read and move into various prenatal yoga positions. I want some sweets, chocolate cookies mostly, and I want to lie comfortably to sleep. Oh and the other thing: I want certainty. Certainly, I cannot have any certainty. Not until the minutes between contractions narrow into nothing. Not until this baby descends from the depths of me. Not until then will I know it is time. And then, even then, there will be more uncertainty. Moments when I seek him out while he is sleeping to see if he is still breathing. There will be years of uncertainty - a lifetime!

I think I want to know all the surprises and tragedies that lie before me. Yet, I wonder, what if the meaning of life is learning how to surrender to all the mystery?

"Are you ready?"
"As ready as one can be. I mean... is anyone ever really ready?"