Robert James, II

Beatrice Elaine

Bee's story isn't quite so wonderful and it starts out a little bit rocky. Where I had to wait several years for Maggie, Beatrice was a surprise. I know, she shouldn't have been, I mean we know how babies are made, we had one, and yet I was rather convinced that we'd have to go through the same waiting and trying before Maggie would have siblings. I was nursing her full time and completely immersed in the little walking, barely talking person she was and Rob was saying, "You know, we might want to think about this" and I was saying "I'm not going to get pregnant that easily" and then I was pregnant. I was very unhappy about it and I actually didn't get too excited about the pregnancy until at 20 weeks we found out that this baby was also a little girl. This was a good thing because I'd practically set my mind that if it was a boy I'd give it away! (I know, horrible!) If I had to have another baby so soon, it had to be a girl because I had all girl's things and the only other bedroom in the house was Maggie's and it was already pink and boys are rowdy and obnoxious and I don't want any boys ever!! I said these things in jest, but there was certainly a grain of truth to them. Once I found out that the Lord had been overly kind to me and that she was a little girl, I began to accept the pregnancy and get excited.

What a change - two years earlier I would have taken any baby offered and now I was shocked and resentful that another one was being offered to me! I truly know what a fickle ridiculous person I am.

Well, Beatrice Elaine was due on March 5th, but because Maggie was born on a Holiday, I told everyone she would be born on Valentine's Day. I unpacked and washed or tidied all of the newborn baby stuff, we moved Maggie (Unwillingly on her and my part) to her own bed, we introduced her to the potty, and I accidentally weened her. (Once we moved her to her bed and I weaned her at night, then one day I realized it had been a couple of days since she nursed during the day. She was 18 months old and she'd had enough. If she couldn't nurse all night long, she just wasn't going to nurse at all!) The pregnancy went well, though I got bigger much faster, and I didn't have gestational diabetes this time like I had with my first pregnancy - and I'd even carbo loaded the weekend before my GD test, eating doughnuts and cookies because I was sure they'd be called off my diet for the next few months, so I knew that I really didn't have it - and I remember being slow and tired and trying really really hard to hang onto the "mama of only one child" thing.

On Monday, February 13th, Rob and I randomly decided to beat the Valentine's Day rush and go out to dinner. We went to the Newell House and I ordered a steak, wrapped in bacon with a crab sauce and asparagus. It was as close to heavenly as a meal can get. I stuffed myself. I'm pretty sure we even had desert and Rob had two martinis because they make them so well and we were enjoying ourselves so much, and I was a designated driver if there ever was one. We picked up Maggie from Grandma's house and she and Rob laid down in her little twin bed. Usually this was how we were getting her to fall asleep, then she'd sleep through the night, but Rob fell deeply asleep, too. So I went next door to spend some time with all of his sisters who were making truffles. I felt great. I was full of exquisite food. I was surrounded by women folk. I was in the tail end of my pregnancy. They joked that I said I was going to have the baby on Valentine's Day and I joked that I was still planning on it. We joked about that. I went home and went to bed.

And at 1 o'clock in the morning, I woke up with a jolt. I jumped out of bed and stood there a little confused and already feeling the adrenaline filling my veins. My water broke. That didn't happen last time until I was safely on the delivery bed. There were several still moments where the water spilled and I had a very long, in depth conversation with myself about what was going to happen. Finally, I thought, well there haven't been any contractions yet. And at that moment they hit. I went to the bathroom and got a towel because I didn't know what that amniotic fluid would do the the wooden floors in our bedroom (!!!) and once they were dry enough, I woke up Rob. This time the bag was packed, we knew the way to the hospital, and the only thing we had to do was wake up Grandma to come get Maggie. Well, and I had to put on dry sweats. I was working through the contractions and vaguely listening to Rob on the phone with his mom. He said, "Okay, we'll meet you at SilkWorm," (his parents live down the road behind that building in rural Murphysboro and we lived in Murphysboro) and I vehemently shook my head and said, "No, meet us there." He got Maggie in the car and that's the last time I remember her, though she was with us right up to the delivery room, in her fuzzy yellow footed pajamas. We parked at the wrong entrance to the hospital and had to walk quite a ways, taking up valuable time, dealing with the contractions as they came, Rob carrying a sleepy confused Maggie, and me pulled inward with transition. The ER folks had me sit down in the wheel chair, which I was able to do and they got us pretty quickly upstairs. Once in the room, I had a persnickety nurse who wouldn't let me stay in the hands and knees position. She hadn't ever had a woman do that before and I told her, briefly, "Don't check me, I'm going to push!!!!!" She made me lie down anyway and checked. Yep, a ten - why didn't she listen to me?? She got Dr. Gates, who was on call that night. I kept telling them I was going to push and they kept telling me not yet. And I'm thinking "to heck with you, I'm going to have this baby". But then something wonderful happened. That nurse left and a friend from church, who happened to be an L&D nurse came in. She was so happy to see me, I remember she gave me a hug and I thought, "Oh, that's nice, Hi, Debbie, please move so I can have this baby, I don't want a hug." It's funny the way your mind is so focused during labor, and yet you have these huge conversations with yourself. Dr. Gates was there, Debbie was there, and Lynne had just whisked Maggie away to the hallway and finally they let me push. Dr. Gates put gloves on my husband (the one who'd been rudely awakened less than 45 minutes ago and had had two martini's at dinner) and got him in position to catch little Beatrice. The nurses all reminded me to push while breathing out like blowing out a candle and a moment later she was born. And she was completely blue. They very quickly moved her over to the warming bed and every one in the room got very tense, except for me. I was in that blissful rush and a blue baby wan't going to change that. A moment later she began to cry and the nurses all realized that she was so blue because she was quite bruised by her quick entrance into this world. They called her birth at 1:57. Exactly 57 minutes after my water had broken with no other signs of labor. (These are my greatest bragging rights of my whole life: I can birth a baby in under an hour!!)

Brand new Little Bee.

Margaret Rose

Rob and I had been married for two years when I finally convinced him that he could handle being a dad as well as a husband. I hate to say that it took wheedling and nagging - there may have been a little of that - but I think he really needed to get his bachelor's degree and know that if we were going to be in charge of a new little being that he at least had some education that an employer might think was useful enough to hire him. (Rob's a city planner, but mostly he's an everything planner!) I figured that nine months from that date we'd be holding our brand new baby - evidently I like to build barns - but it took much, much longer for Maggie to come to us. About two years after we first started "trying" to have a baby I had a devastating miscarriage. Then several months after that I was pregnant again and feeling very much pregnant, too. My general thought before being pregnant with Maggie was that women were just plain wimpy and that morning sickness was just an excuse to make husbands run to the store for ice cream and pickles and to make everyone give a pregnant lady sympathy, and I had no morning sickness to speak of with that first pregnancy. With Maggie all of my pride and high-mindedness came back to haunt me! I was sick, but it made me happy, too, because there was no doubt that my hormones were working and this baby was being nourished and was growing. It was wonderful! I hope I didn't complain too much…

At about half-way through we contacted a doula. I have always been dead-set against having medical intervention to deliver a baby, but since she was my first I knew that I needed someone there who understood how babies come out and who wouldn't be afraid to speak my mind if I wasn't in the right mind to speak it myself. We met Sarah and hit it off immediately. She's a great big soft woman who had been to over 250 deliveries then and I'm sure a few hundred more since then. Right away we started doing birthing information classes with her, learning so much stuff that I've mostly forgotten. I remember nights spent watching women on videos birthing in open pools and an evening where we all spend the whole two hours sitting on birthing balls and just being mesmerized by the idea of birthing a child. Sarah filled me with even more confidence that I could do this job that was set before me and do it the way I wanted to. I laughed when she got down on her hands and knees to show us all the different positions we might want to consider for delivering the baby and I said there was no way I would deliver this child on my hands and knees like a farm animal.

The winter turned into spring - always a blessing in Iowa - and all of the new little flowers sprouting up, all the new baby ducks at the pond across the street from our apartment, and all of the Easter decorations at Hobby Lobby (where I worked) completely put me in the mindset for joining the rebirth of the world and having this baby. We had a baby shower. I got weekly updates on my 6 cousins who were also having babies that year - all of them girls, making me think that I was carrying a boy because what were the chances that one family could be increased by 7 girls and not one boy? Rob and I practiced what Sarah had taught us. And we waited.

However, I wasn't in any hurry because Rob was in grad school finishing up his master's degree. We had the best medical coverage of any grad student ever and my doctor worked for the University of Iowa School of Medicine - a world class facility that was getting a much needed 23 million dollar new birthing unit to replace the 30 year old set of rooms they'd been making due with. My baby was due the 17th and the new unit was scheduled to open April 14th. I told every one that there was no way, no way, I was having my baby before the 15th. I'd taken the tour and seen the brand new swanky beds, the whirl pool tubs in every room, the nondescript art work hanging above the beds which at a flick of a switch would raise up into the ceiling to reveal a hidden cache of emergency equipment. It was the tricked-out mack-daddy of birthing units and I wasn't going to miss out on my "free hotel stay" with my brand new bundle of joy! I promised my intern that she could go away for a week and do some special intern thing in southern Iowa because I wasn't having this baby before the new unit opened. (Her name was Jennifer Jones and she used the word perfect about 40 times in the first appointment that we met her. She was delightful and way too perky! Once she unexpectedly felt my ankles to see if I was experiencing any water retention and I apologized all over myself for not having shaved my legs. She said not to worry, it's only hair. I guess even interns have seen much worse things than leg hair. It makes me laugh now to think how young I was that having hair on my legs made me blush!!) I was sure that this baby was going to be born on the 15th.

My parents came up to visit us for the Easter weekend and we spent Saturday visiting the Amana colonies, nothing too exciting or crazy, just a good German meal and some antiquing. My mom tends to stress me out, but I don't remember that day being anything cumbersome. But Easter morning I woke up in a foul mood. I felt sort of tired and crummy and I kept crying at church for no real reason - I'm not usually emotional, even at such a wonderful holiday. We came home and had a little bbq of Iowa pork chops out on our little hibachi grill on our 3x4' porch of our tiny apartment. It was a fairly quite lunch and soon after my parents could tell I needed to rest and they headed back home to Springfield. That was around 2 and by 3 o'clock Rob had sacked out for a nap, and I was starting to come to grips with what I knew was going on. I hurt. And it was only April 11th. So I got in a warm bath and tried to wait it out. I got out an hour later and knew these were not Brackston Hicks contractions, they were regular and they weren't slowing down. So I tried calling Sarah, but being Easter Sunday she and her family were celebrating and she didn't answer her phone. So I woke Rob up, or maybe he rolled out of bed, either way, he called his mom who said, "Oh, it's just Brackston Hicks, go take a walk around the park." So we did! The park was just across the street from us and down a little ways, so we walked over, taking a pause about every 10 minutes to wait for a contraction to pass. We decided to walk around the duck pond. I vividly remember those steps and finally being at the half way mark around the pond and looking back at all the way we had to go to get back home and knowing the only way to get there was to get there. These were not practice contractions. When we got back to the apartment we still couldn't get a hold of Sarah, so I ate a small sandwich of bread, butter, and jelly, pausing with every contraction. We finally got Sarah to call us back and she described transition to Rob and told him to call her back when the contractions were five minutes apart. He basically hung up the phone, looked at me, and called her right back!! She came over as quickly as she could and accidentally turned down the alley before ours. She told us later how proud she was when as she drove by she looked up into our patio window and could see us standing there Rob with his arms around my waist both of us rocking back and forth with the contraction. I remember he saying, "You did everything I taught you to!!" She came up to our apartment and immediately asked Rob where the overnight bag was and he said, "What bag? We haven't packed it yet!!" He basically ran and grabbed the toothbrushes and a clean t-shirt and we got in the car. Now up to this point the contractions had been strong, but manageable. I tried sitting down on the birthing ball occasionally, but shot back up each time with sharp pain. Pacing and rocking with my knees slightly bent helped move the contraction down and out, the way it's supposed to go and as they progressed Rob would stand at my back with his arms under my armpits and let me just hang. This allowed all of my lower muscles to work towards their one goal: moving baby. This is essentially what sitting on the birthing ball allows, too, but I was having back pain. When we went out to get in the car, I couldn't sit down on the seat because of the pressure against my tail bone, so all the way to the hospital (which was mercifully close) I rode sitting on my knees with my face pressed into the head rest of the car seat, gripping it tight with each contraction. Sarah drove right behind us and claims that Rob merely stopped at stop lights and then went on. It was now around 9 or so, totally dark outside, and at one point in the ride I remember Rob asking "Which way do we go?". I don't remember if I told him or if he remembered on his own, but we made it to the hospital. Sarah was right behind us.

The University of Iowa hospital system is huge. We parked at a good entrance, but still would have had miles (!!!) to walk to get to the labor and delivery units. We got about half way across the parking lot, having contractions all they way, when a young man who was just coming out of the building noticed what was going on. Sarah asked what the quickest way to L&D was and he said, "It'll be quickest if I take you there the back way". Praise God for this man. We came in to the main hallway and began to turn down the labyrinth of hallways and corridors and I was moving fast, maybe trying to out run the contractions and definitely trying to make sure I got to L&D on time. The helpful man offered me a wheel chair several times and I just shook my head. (This is a huge indicator that I was in full transition because I was so focused inward on managing contractions that I didn't speak.) I didn't want the wheel chair because I couldn't sit down - that was more painful than the contractions! Sarah knew I was trying to rush and she warned me that hurrying and moving my body was would speed up the contractions. That was like a switch for me, I slowed down and began to walk rhythmically, coming full stop with each contraction. More than the myriad hallways, which are a nondescript blur to me, I vividly remember our 7 floor ride in the elevator. I remember it so well because by this time Rob's arms were exhausted from holding me up and Sarah took over. But instead of holding me from behind I faced her and just smooched myself into her big, pillowy bosom. She was so soft and warm. It's such a strange thing for me to remember fondly because I am not a person who likes to be touched or held. I have a very very large boundary of personal space and often feel weird hugging family members! But this warm, round woman held onto me as the contractions rocked longer and more emphatically through this elevator ride and I'll never forget it.

At some point we did finally make it to the L&D unit. I remember the helpful man wishing us well and going back out to whatever the rest of his evening held. I sort of wish I knew more about him and could have sent a thank you card. His involvement was integral in our birth story and I have no idea who he was. I hope he knows.

Of course, this is three days before the very fancy, very plush, very cozy and inviting new delivery rooms were open for business. But it was a room equipped for birthing, and it had a nurse named Sue. A rock star, biker nurse whom I love with all my heart, though I only knew her so briefly. We got there and she wanted me to lie on my back so she could see how dilated we were and I said no. There was no way I was going on my back. She told me she was very sorry, but she had to check me, and Rob and Sarah helped me lay down and when the contractions left off for the briefest of moments, she checked, and she disbelieved. So I had to lay on my back through another contractions and she checked again and said, "Yep, you're at a ten." Oh, what bliss those words are. A ten, oh, a ten! That's the goal, that's all the way, I'm about to have this baby. But not quite yet.

Sue called my doctor - Dr. Jill, but came back to say she wasn't sure the doctor could get here in time. And I so vividly remember her saying, "But I can deliver this baby." Oh, what a nurse! They had put up the "roll bar" on the end of the bed and I was hanging my armpits over it rocking back and forth on my knees, Rob stood in front of me and my arms were so tired that I stuck my hands in the back pockets of his jeans to keep them in place. I remember with each contraction I made a rumbling, groaning, grrring noise, a real ferrel animal sort of noise, but I wasn't screaming out or cursing, or anything that would embarrass me later on. I'm so silly, even in the throughs of labor, I had to keep my composure!

About this time Sarah's apprentice doula, Rixa came in. This was her second delivery and really her first, because the other one she'd been to turned to drugs right away and sort of pushed Rixa out the door when her own mother arrived. Rixa was the exact opposite of Sarah, tall and thin, athletic, but just as loving and totally jumping in. She rubbed my back with ice chips because I was so hot with all the work and I remember at one break of contractions all I could manage to say was that my knee was too cold - a puddle of ice chips was giving me frost bite.

In my mind, all of this, from checking dilation to the ice chip at my knee lasted about three minutes, but Sarah told us later it was closer to 15. Dr. Jill showed up then, still sort of snapping her gloves on and getting her scrubs in place. When all of a sudden there was an incredible pop and the only other thing I said the whole time I was in labor was, "What was that?" and I said it with such alarm that Dr. Jill and nurse Sue had a little laugh. My water had just broken. That was the most incredible feeling, like taking a thin rubber balloon and squeezing it in the middle with your insides until it explodes. I imagine that I heard the pop and felt the slosh. It was amazing and not like any experience I've had since. At this point everyone knew it was time to deliver and Dr. Jill asked me if I wanted to roll on to my back and I shook my head no. She said, okay, and that was that, I was birthing my baby on my hands and knees like a farm animal after all! (Oh, yes, God has a sense of humor!)

Pushing out a baby is an incredible thing. It is a rush and a release. Your whole body knows what is coming and knows that the end is so near. But, being my first baby I had no idea how far the baby had to go down this tunnel. You can feel every millimeter of advancement, but because it's on the inside you can't gauge it. When I felt ready to push, I pushed timidly. I knew that I had to get the head out and everything else would be cake, but how far did it have to go? How much pushing would be involved? You hear horror stories of pushing for hours, just what was each little push accomplishing? I timidly pushed twice. Then Sarah said, "Come on, you can push harder than that." She didn't realize what she was saying, as I could've used a little less encouragement and had fewer stitches in the end, but on the next contraction I took a big breath and pushed the baby's head out. Once big push, millions of feet of birthing canal were breached in that moment, but there she was. And the shoulders were cake. On the next contraction they really could've fallen out. And then Dr. Jill was handing the baby straight to nurse Sue who shows Rob, It's A Girl, and she's swaddling her and handing her to Rob and he's calling her, "Oh, my little Margaret Rose" in a moment of such pure bliss and adoration and thanksgiving and finally, I'm able to roll over onto my back and rest. rest. rest. Sarah and Rixa are cooing and I'm resting and they keep wanting to hand me my brand new baby, but I'm so tired, so utterly pleased and happy and exhausted, and my arms are so fatigued that I'm a little nervous that I won't be able to hang on to her if they do hand her over so I just watch and rest, happy, so happy, and successful, and feeling like the biggest, awesomest rock star that's ever lived.

Eventually - and in probability only a few minutes later, the time that had been moving by at a weird warp speed had suddenly slowed to non-speed - I felt something strange and said, "I think I have to pee." Dr. Jill said, go ahead. So what I thought was a desire to urinate was actually the placenta being birthed. I'd completely forgotten about that part! That, too was an enjoyable sensation, after birthing a baby birthing the placenta is no more stressful than a bowl movement! It made me laugh! And then, finally, I held my new baby for the first time. And there are no words.

Maggie was born at 10:20, less than 25 minutes after we walked into the main corridor of the hospital. If the helpful young man hadn't been there, she could have very well been born in an elevator and at the very least, Dr. Jill wouldn't have gotten to the hospital in time.

Things moved very slowly after that. An intern came to do the stitches. I had seven and teat that they decided not to sew. Sarah said it was excruciating to watch this intern try her hand at the stitches and she was just about to demand that Dr. Jill take over, and I do remember the sharp needle pricks - there must have been anesthesia - but I had my baby and it didn't matter. D. Jill congratulated us and left, and then Sarah and Rixa did, too. And it was just us, my little family. Dr. Sue came back - or maybe she never left - and offered me an ibuprofen and I said, "No, I feel fine," and she said something like, well you did an awesome job just now, but the adrenaline is going to wear off soon and you'll be glad to have this. And I was like "Oh, yeah, of course I want ibuprofen! I just had a baby in three pushes!" Rob held Maggie and I go ready to move to the recovery room. He was emotionally wiped out by everything and after we were settled in and everything was calm, he went back to the apartment to breathe and collect all of his thoughts and I think he probably had a nap, too. Several times a nurse came to see if she could take Maggie for her first bath and for several of the things that they do to newborn babies and I kept saying, not yet. But then she hit the magic button and asked if I was hungry. I was starving. She brought me a little cup of peanut butter and graham sticks and I finally relented to Maggie going away with her and I sat in the dark at two o'clock in the morning eating my snack and surfing the late night tv, waiting for my baby and husband to come back and feeling about to burst with bliss. I didn't let them take Maggie again for the rest of my stay.

The next morning when Dr. Jill came back to check on my she told me that after she had gotten home she realized that Maggie had been "sunny side up" and that it hadn't occurred to her at the time because she looked the way babies normally look when they are birthed, but I was reversed! That was why I couldn't sit on the birthing ball, or the car seat, or the wheel chair, or lie down on the bed! Little Maggie was awkwardly placed against my tail bone. And if she hadn't been - if God didn't provide for his children and expectant mothers - she would have been born at the side of the duck pond across from our apartment. Because I have babies fast and my tail bone slowed her down. She had an incredible hematoma on her head to prove that she'd been fighting with those immovable bones and I had a matching one down below because I'd pushed her so fast.

She weighed 7.1 and was 22 inches long and she's been my smallest baby, and my longest labor, which I consider to be 4 hours long because that's when we realized that she was coming, on Easter Sunday, three days before the coveted new L&D unit opened up.

(They "kicked" us out on the 13th because they decided to move everyone upstairs a day early. The room we stayed in I wouldn't wish on an enemy. My bed unplugged itself every time I raised or lowered it and Rob said that the fold out chair he had to sleep on in the room with us felt like it'd been nested in my gerbils. Angry gerbils.)

But we had our baby girl.