Exactly nine months ago there was a rush on romantic, all-inclusive getaways in the Poconos. Everyone I 'know' in the blogosphere (urp… mmm, my own barf) teased bangs and donned polyester high-hipped teddies for Lionel Ritchie-accompanied shenanigans in champagne-glass hot tubs and heart-shaped beds with mirrored ceilings.

Because not only are they all pregnant at the same time, they’re all dilating at the same time (cervixes and eyeballs, the women and the men respectively).

In the midst of it all, awaiting news and pictures, I’m sulking like a petulant child. After all, didn’t anyone tell you? Your births are ALL ABOUT ME.

I want to grow up and out of this, this high-pitched internal whine that every run-of-the-mill contraction in the history of the world exists for the purpose of reminding me of my own body’s shortfalls. I'm tired of it. It's illogical and self-pitying and ridiculous, but it persists.

The voice snides they were stronger, more zen, less affected, more prepared. They were made of tougher stock. Their husbands say they’re badass, proud. And you, you had to be strapped down both times by surgical teams, babies wrenched from you while you were pinned to a specimen board, frozen solid. You’ve never been able to just do it on your own. You’ll never.

It’s not easy for anyone, I know. But every labour that progresses more or less as it should stacks up against me, demotes me further to an increasingly extreme percentile of intervention and disaster.

The bootstrap-puller in my brain mutters shit happens, and that’s true enough.

I have had three babies. Two are so happy they almost never stop smiling and one is lost. Many people have been through so much worse. I sit here in my warm, cozy house thinking myself enlightened by grief, by catastrophe, and yet I’m oblivious to scores of other brands of heartbreak, envied by others who are helpless, right this second, trapped at the bottom of their own entirely unexpected black holes.

Birth. Some wear it proud, a tattoo, a badge. I envy them, mystified. I’d never wish another woman anything less—I’d rather be lonely in this minority, branded, owned, herded like cattle.

And just moving the heck forward.

My mama is a birth warrior says the tiny t-shirt, one of two. Sent with love from one ever-healing birther to another to say be proud.

But a while back, several days before we lost Liam, it felt fraudulent to be on the receiving end of such a sentiment.

Birth warrior. I was unconscious, for chrissake. Strapped down and knocked out amid frantic yells. One boy transfused and weak, the other lifeless despite nine minutes of chest compressions. I was dissected, an hour of my life sucked into a void of anesthetized nothingness.

There’s no way this applies to me. I couldn’t decide to cry or laugh.

I tucked them back into the box and placed them on the shelf above Liam, shaken. But for the rest of the day they called to me, those tiny tees, as did their patroness. A gentle challenge.

The message camped out in a corner of my brain as I cuddled, enclosed in the boys. Birth warrior. I shuffled down the hall, sat in the pumping room, stood hands through their portholes. It persisted, hands on its hips. Deal with me, it said. I’ll wait, but you have to deal with me. I’m not letting you rest until you do.

The words have a new shape now, rounded up to this.

Birth: to see them safe.
Warrior: to match them in bravery.

It fits all of us, mothers and fathers pressed through trauma into the out-of-womb gestation of the NICU. Whether our babies stay with us or not we work up the nerve to handle them, be witness for them, stand tall among the doctors. Safe doesn't always mean the outcome we'd prefer, but we accompany them to it with fierce love, nonetheless. We cobble together the broken pieces to be whole for our other children, present and future. We have the odd breakdown-free day, and heal, and type one-handed while pumping. <ahem>

All this deserves immense pride, despite our births being not the domain of goddesses but of blue scrubs and crash carts.

Ben is with us, and Liam is gone. My mama is a birth warrior.

I’ll get there.

++++++++

Ben squeaks and gulps at the mama-trough as we sit with one of his primary nurses. How emotional all this must be for you, for you steady souls, our nurse-mothers, I reflect to her. They are mentors to both babies and parents, keeping us all afloat in this disorienting tangle.

After a lengthy pause she looks at me and says softly, "I was there, you know, when they were born."

She’s been at our bedsides from the beginning, cheerful and brisk. I’m suddenly curious. She’d never mentioned this until now. I hadn’t been looking at faces, only blurred figures, before it all went black.

Perhaps it’s just too much to look someone in the eye and tell them you’ve seen their guts, their heart and hopes spilled open, their catastrophe, while they lay unknowing.

"What was it like?" I ask her, unable to resist.

She looks at me earnestly and replies without hesitating: "It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen."

My heart emits the soft, squelchy pop of validation, of shared experience. Shared even though I was only conscious for the preamble and the aftershocks.

The scariest thing ever.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way.

I wish I was something. Collected, resolute, strong-like-bear. Or uncollected, shaken, scared shitless. Either would point me towards a course of action. But I'm neither. I am blank. No matter what the mechanics, birth will be decided for me, on my behalf: because there are two.

I pause, wait to feel a sense of fight or flight.

But it is plain, ordinary quiet. Not peace, but quiet.

Birth mentors summon the spirits of goddess, eagle, owl: I summon Plastic Man from the Fantastic Four. Bendy brain, bendy belly, bendy heart. Able to twist and stretch, too slippery for the grip of panic, to the point where it is done and I am a mother of two babies. Two babies that bring me twice as far from birth being subject to what I’d prefer.

I'll do whatever you need me to do to keep you whole, to keep you nourished. Inside or outside, waited for or early-lifted. I'll stay light no matter what the flotsam and jetsam: tubes or boxes or surgical masks or machines that beep. Or perhaps nothing out of the ordinary but two.

I'll be light above it all, strong enough so that you feel the warmth of it and know that we’ll be alright.

You are two! I have to be fierce for you, but not fighting-fierce. Plastic Man fierce. Nonplussed. Is stubbornly calm a contradiction in terms? I want to define it. I want to be buoyant, not merely joyous-buoyant but literally, unsinkably buoyant. So that all I need do is go limp, kick a little, before currents and physics pull us up to the air, for you.

a c-section would be:

pulling and tugging
flat
restraints
straps
cut
immobile
I would be a subject, object, case

It is unnatural
(the body is not supposed to open there)

At least I am still pristine, unopened
I thought, having narrowly escaped.

…but did I? Evan’s birth was:

pulling and tugging
flat
restraints
straps
cut
immobile
I was a subject, object, case

It was under duress
(it wasn’t supposed to be that way)

but on the same day there was also

relief
laughter
unconditional love
surrender
lime popsicles
kindness
strawberries
the sensation of a hot shower and reams of blood, strangely pleasing to watch it swirl down the drain, washing away the spectacle, to be me again. Heaven to be standing on shaky, phantom legs in steam and wet heat and half-darkness.

and it was over
and a baby-burrito stirred
and onto other things.

where did all that come from?
me.

Thanks to Brooke , Leigh , Jeanette and Marybeth , that strange new breed of never-met but intimately known friends. You've prompted and inspired me to contemplate the upcoming gong show with respect and spirit and pride and possibility. Lord, how these women glow. They make me want to bring something bigger than 'just one day' to this birth, no matter how it happens. They've got me lit. Thank you, fantastic four.

“What’s it like?” she asks shyly, unsure she wants an honest answer. I pause, consider. “Is your…” (she looks for witnesses within earshot, leans in to whisper) “...patootie ever the same again?”

Ahhh, the child-free friend. How morbid is her curiosity? This is the question you must ask yourself before answering. I take a deep breath and begin, gathering unexpected, uncensored momentum on the downhill slide.

Despite qualifying the epic with plenty of ‘wasn’ts’, ‘nots’, ‘buts’ and ‘not-alwayses’, the inquirer will always – always – depart your company with the following nuggets churning around in her head:

• giant needle
• third-degree tear
• alien abduction
• squishy
• episiotomy
• “just a little cut”
• fifteen masked strangers
• strapped down
• stitches
• drippy
• droopy
• industrial-strength
• barf
• bucket
• audience
• “…and then the head came out”
• “couldn’t sit down for a week…”

Then I look at her and realize her mouth is open, slack-jawed as she listens. She looks as though she’s just made a decision. Perhaps to never get pregnant. Ooops.

I know now why mothers relish the chance to describe their labours in terms of fantastical gore. We do it nonchalantly (“You only had first-degrees? Lucky twit! I tore all the way back to my *@$*&#$!”) to make a point: none of it mattered as much as we thought it would.

None of it was as scary as I thought it would be, or as uncomfortable. I healed. I lost the inhibitions, the scars, the embarrassment, the weight. The mystery is gone, replaced by a confidence-building matter-of-factness. Experience trumps melodrama. Hearing these words come out of my mouth – remembering that it all happened to me – gives me a secret, deep-down pride. Pride that I can be nonchalant. I own it. I mastered it. I survived it. It’s mine, down to every last popsicle. I cherish the mess of it. You do too, don’t you?

Problem is, such gore-cherishing costs the inquirer dearly. Next time we’re together, I must rewind – tell her more about the magic, the sweet, palpable female righteousness, the deliciousness, the godliness, the super-heroineness. The awe on a new daddy’s face.

But there’s really nothing I can say, is there? She won’t know for herself until she discovers her own reserves of strength and humour and bravery. And she will. Until then, I hope she’ll forgive me. And eventually stop doubting the continuing sprightliness of my patootie.

Many things culminating lately, banging together, rollicking around in the brain. Contemplations of a second pregnancy, labour and delivery bring the first one to mind for rehashing and reflecting.

The story of Evan’s birth, I admit, is sterile, tidied. I recorded the plot points faithfully, but much of the mess trickled away down into the bilge where it belongs, sloshing around beneath the ocean. A vivid but less than pristine collection of memories that stinks a little on a hot day. I keep them, but I don't take them out much.

They're irrelevant now, footnotes diminished in the brightness of Evan.

Birth is gorgeous, but not pretty. It makes you feel indescribably powerful, but its audience requires the shedding of all inhibitions.

Birth stretches you, pushes you, taunts you, bullies you, thrills you, shames you. It kicks you in the pants so hard you won’t sit down for a week. But then it’s over, and the next day breaks. They bring you soggy toast, cold tea and a celebrity gossip rag. You look outside and buses are running, people are late for work. The world trudges on, oblivious.

I’m a mother now! You want to hang out the window and yell, shaken and bruised but joyous. Can’t you see? I did it. Everything’s changed.

Your child-burrito snores in a plastic box, nose squashed, forcep-dented, chalky goop clinging to every crease. The most perfect 7 pounds, 9 ounces you’ll ever know. And you are more proud, more fulfilled, stronger than you’ve ever been in your entire life.

The messy stuff faded with the thrill of meeting our son. But contemplating another round of pregnancy and birth, I’m remembering more. To remind myself that I’m made of tough stock, that I can do it again.

Pride is not in having labour go exactly as you planned, all soft music and chanting and kissing and eucalyptus oil in the air. Sometimes your inner goddess says I'm outta here. Pride is in something else taking over. In discovering reserves of adaptability. We survive, even when it all goes to pot.

I was curled up in a ball for hours, immobilized with back labour. I had envisioned being a natural champ: moving, walking, bathing, turning, coaxing. But it wasn’t to be. Both of us, me and my backwards boy, were frozen. A full day like this made him stressed, exhausted.

His heart rate plummeted. The room erupted into Plan B, a gruff OB-GYN was brought on board and I was given a cup of some vile liquid to drink: NOW. What’s it for? I asked. Just drink it, an unfamiliar nurse replied. I obeyed, and it made me throw up. Christ. A heads-up would’ve been appreciated.

People are running in and out of the room, unplugging instruments, tugging at me. They tell me to hurry, and Justin’s wearing scrubs. I’m trying not to cry, to keep it together. An emergency c-section after twelve hours of back labour. Hysteria bubbles, wrestles with logic. I have not failed. I have not failed.

One nurse in particular laughed at me all the way down the hallway as they wheeled me into the OR, yelling, “She’s a puker! She’s a puker! We all had to wait because she puked!”

Stupid twat. I wished I’d thought to aim it in her direction.

The operating table is shaped like a T, and arms are strapped down to keep them out of the way. I was a sacrificial offering, soon to be devoured. Fixed at the wrist and ankles under spotlights, fifteen-odd masked faces staring at me, whispering, waiting for gore. 'Vulnerable' isn't sufficient. All that was missing was the bone necklace. Half of me found it funny: the other half was terrified.

The obstetrician gave me one contraction – one chance to push under duress of major surgery. I pushed to avoid that c-section, to get out of that room, to get back to soft lights and people I trusted. And so my very own Rocky Balboa corkscrewed his way into the world.

They stitched and wiped and pressed and murmured around me, and I strained to see past all the blue-clad figures huddled around the plastic box. Two purple legs, kicking, the flash of a tiny hand, matted, sticky dark hair.

And Pouf! There was no one else in the room but me and our son. Even Justin was a blur as I thought Bring him to me so I can finally look in his eyes and know he’s real, my inhabitant.

I’ll always remember the lime popsicles. The smiling nurse who came to look at me, early on, and said briskly, Dear, now dear, you’re a mess. Let’s mop you up, and you’ll be good as new. She made me feel dignified against all odds. The fresh strawberries and pineapple our family brought from Pete’s Frootique on Spring Garden Road, explosively refreshing. The quality of light when late one afternoon, we laid a sleepy Evan on the hospital bed and he obliged us with pictures, and we fell in love.

It was the first day of a bigger, vaster life.

I’m not sure why I’ve revisited this, revised it. Labour is a raw, complicated endeavour, the entrusting of a piece of your soul to another. I’m going to do it again before too long. I’ll be swept away in the rapids once more, hoping not to be smashed into the rocks.

But, as in everything else, all we can do is turn our smashings into learning, conviction, and passion for life.

The first time I saw Evan, I felt much the same way I did the first time I saw Justin. It wasn’t quite the thunderbolts and lightning that I expected from falling in love. It was more a profound sense of peace and contentedness, a relief and recognition at finally discovering that person that you always knew you’d meet.

Evan is such a gentle, old little soul.

He’s been a wonderful and patient teacher, showing us how he likes things to be. Luckily we all seem to be on the same page so far – we all like quiet days, naps, Miles Davis and bare skin. I think we’re slowly getting the hang of it, especially handling his tiny, floppy body. It will take us some time before we feel confident, but we’re learning.

His arrival did all start with a splash after all.

At 3:09 AM Wednesday morning I woke from a deep sleep and speed-waddled to the bathroom faster than I have in nine months. Minute-long contractions started immediately following – one, then another in fifteen minutes, another in ten, another in five and then every 2-3 minutes. Since they became regular so quickly, we were on the road to the hospital within about half an hour of waking up.

Although I didn’t necessarily have my heart set on a natural birth, I did want to have a few tools and methods on hand to see how far I could get before needing intervention.

With this in mind, I’d been practicing a self-hypnosis program for labour for a couple of months, amounting to an hour and a half of breathing and guided relaxation every day.

It was wonderful, kept me from getting all tense and tangled up in fear. We got to the hospital with hypbirth in tow, in the form of a series of CDs on a discman that helped me through contractions. This raised lots of interest from the nurses who hadn’t seen that kind of method used before, but they were very encouraging. I had steps to take, things to do to cope. My mind was kept busy and it helped both time and pain pass so much more easily.

Shortly after getting settled in at the hospital, we realized that baby was posterior-facing, resulting in what’s called back labour for me. All the contractions were radiating through my lower back – in fact, I felt almost nothing across the front.

For about four hours, contractions were about a minute long with only 15-30 second breaks between them, during which the pain in my back didn’t abate. At 8:30 that morning I asked for an epidural, which was nothing less than heaven-sent. Hypbirth got me to five centimeters, or the halfway mark – which made me very happy. Back labour is, from what I’m told, particularly relentless.. and I felt proud that I got as far as I did.

By 3 PM that day, I was fully dilated and we all waited patiently for our little boy to turn. Hoping that a few good pushes would corkscrew his head into the right position, I got down to work – but not before baby’s heart rate started to drop.

He was starting to go into distress, and that’s when the day changed.

An obstetrician walked in the room, looked at the fetal monitor, and said, “Alright Kate, we’re going to wheel you into the O.R. now for a probable c-section. See you in there in a few minutes.” Until that moment, I hadn’t felt scared, out of control or vulnerable.

Five minutes later I was being strapped down to an operating table with about fifteen doctors looking on.

The day so far had been nothing but positive, wonderful in just about every way – and although I had tried not to have too many expectations, an unplanned c-section wasn’t what I had imagined. But when it comes down to it, it was not my birth experience – it was Evan’s. What he says goes, and he was getting tired.

After being given a c-section-worthy dose of freezing, the doctor decided to try forceps as a last resort. Maybe it was the threat of a major operation that did it, who knows – but three pushes later, Evan was born.

I feel great about the day, and don’t regret a single thing. It was everything and nothing like what I expected, all at once. The nurses felt badly, I think, that there was a fair amount of intervention I’d been hoping to avoid – everything from the IV and an internal fetal monitor to the episiotomy and forceps – but every decision was made with my and Evan’s best interests at heart.

The surest way to have a dramatic birth experience is to be dramatic about it, and I see no need.

The thing that surprised me most was how much you have to surrender yourself when you have a baby. Not unlike being a baby, I suppose.

You need someone to soothe you, wipe up after your messes and take care of the most vulnerable pieces of you. We were in such caring, thoughtful hands. The nurses were our cheering section, our advocates and the first official fan club of our son.

Not coincidentally, they also prompted our first ‘Good god, we really *are* parents now…’ moment, when they told us Evan was one of the best poopers they’d ever seen.

We felt so proud.

Evan Alexander Inglis is now snoring on his dad's chest after a couple of very interesting and tiring days.

We're all happy and healthy, so proud and blessed. Thanks so much to everyone for the good wishes! We're filled with fascination and awe, and can't wait to introduce him properly to everyone.

We're going to tuck in now for a few days and get to know each other, and we'll make our way back into the world once we've had a chance to get our sea legs. Love to all.

Today my doctor swept the membranes, which means she gave things a bit of a poke and swish to move things along.

Being dilated just over 2 centimetres and 80% thinned out, I'm apparently a good candidate to have this work.. although it doesn't always. But it's well worth a try to avoid a hospital induction, so I'm hopeful. She said my 'bag of waters is bulging'.

Yet another one of those weird pregnancy-reality moments: I have a bag of waters. Ewwww!

If this does work, contractions should/could start within 24-48 hours. I'm feeling very crampy now, especially in my lower back. But it's good. Everything at this point is progress, little milestones that mark the start of this incredible journey.

I feel like I'm standing on a stage and everyone I know is in the audience, watching and waiting for something interesting to happen. Every now and then someone yells out, "we're waiting!"

I hadn't felt differently until last night. Baby is quiet. Strangely so. Is it possible to still be in denial?

Christmas Day, 1:17 in the morning. Baby is jazzed up on granny robson's shortbread cookies, which means mommy doesn't sleep.

Every time the baby moves, which is still constantly, I can feel new kinds of pressure and strange, sometimes painful twinges or cramps. Until now, I've been more anxious about the prospect of living with the baby rather than the process of delivering it.

Giving birth to a baby has to be one of the biggest tests of mettle in the human experience. But with hardly a beesting to my name, I have no idea how I'll handle pain. I might completely fall apart. My brain tells me that's okay, that this is no time for pride.

But some other, baser instinct in me would rather be brave.

Maybe it's vanity, or some kind of hero complex, I don't know. But there's a part of me that hopes to discover some superhuman version of myself when the big moment arrives. I hope I’ll be inclined to just get down to business, rather than wasting energy by indulging the ‘fight or flight’ instinct. But then, maybe I won't be able to cope. This whole experience will probably be much more intense than I can imagine right now.

This whole notion of performance anxiety is somewhat of a surprise. I know once it's all said and done I won't care what happens. I suppose we'll be too busy with the baby to dwell on the mechanics of it anyway.

This picture was taken the morning after our wedding. I can't feel afraid when I think of this moment. Somehow, it doesn't seem possible for fear and this kind of blessedness to co-exist in my brain at the same time.

I'm going to try and keep this image top of mind when the baby starts, in the hopes there won't be room for anything else.