Contrary to what this blog and my social media presence may lead one to believe, I’ve had an intensely private year. I didn’t know I was going to be writing our Birth story this soon, but it happened, and our hearts are mellow and mush. Being pregnant came with its due course of health concerns: from low platelets, to sugar spikes and a thyroid transgression and like everything else worth having, this rainbow had to wait out a storm.

Emotionally, Baby creation is and has been hard and overwhelming, and each day it feels like it’s not even begun yet. The one thing that kept me going in the last nine months was a plethora of audiobook led walks, and I am yet to find such an anchor postpartum (I suspect this blog may become important again).

Baby cometh by love to create love

It’s kind of ironic that on my first day alone with the baby (just him & me) I began writing this post after forcing him into some milk led stupor. My first time in a car alone without the baby in my immediate vicinity happened this weekend, and I cried on my way to the destination (thankfully killing no one in the process). These emotions are tangibly physical and uncontrolled. I can’t talk myself out or into them. They show up on demand. It’s not a miracle because I’m superstitious. It’s a miracle because so many things that we have no control over, have to fall into place for things to work. The human body generates an entire organ (I did not eat the placenta) to feed the gestating baby. What else could explain the physicality of the connection that feels so feverishly potent.

Before becoming a mother, my reasons for it were mainly related to my age and partly driven by the culture around procreation. I need to have a child by so and so time frame, because my OB will make me feel like I belong to the geriatrics ward in a second (it happened anyway). While making a baby in the past months, my feelings on this topic changed as a response to a physical and emotional transformation.

I’ve questioned why I’ve wanted a child, and it has inherently led itself to a very emotional cause. It’s hard to truly understand what I love you feels like unless experienced in a state of no control. I also believe that for me, this truly is the most unhinged and selfless love I can express. Of course it’s nice if baby loves me, but even if he doesn’t, I will, by instinct. It’s the most amount of courage I’ve had to put together being responsible for a little human. I do not ascribe to the cultural pressure around motherhood and believe that it takes just as much courage to take a different stand, and choose if it doesn’t work for you.

Having said that, I am now counting how many more pee/ poop explosions and feeding sessions remain till Dad comes home. While Dad is telling me he’s in some cool downtown Detroit meeting, I am trying to curb the urge to text back my panicked new Mama state.

Our Birth Story

A while ago in Germany, our friend Brian had kids and ended up writing an email about ‘what was happening in the world when you were born.’ I don’t know if I could be just as detailed, but I did want to think that baby came the weekend when Charles Leclerc won the Spa F1 race. I promptly tagged Dad via Twitter on the day I found out in the hospital. It was also Ganesh Chaturthi on the day we finally got the babe home. When the baby grows older, he’ll know his birth story and how Mama and Dad experienced his birth.

I had never imagined a birth. So, I didn’t really have a birth plan (except that I did not mind help in pain relief). Considering, intuition lies somewhere between fear and hope, I had leaned a little too heavily on fear, leaving much of the excitement and hope for Dad to think about. I’d conveniently skip parts of multiple pregnancy books which focused on the actual birth (we did attend a birthing class though).

My first plan was that, I’d work from home a week before the September 9 due date. On the Thursday night, a week before, when I did my post dinner walk, I felt a bit tired. At 12 a.m. I was wondering if I had contractions. I didn’t want to be sent back home with a false alarm, so I kept at it thinking this wasn’t real yet. We still had a week to go. At 4 a.m., we had called triage because we felt it was time to get external advice. We were asked to monitor and call back between the ideal 3 to 5 minutes contractions range.

My mother or any parent/ immediate family was not going to be with us through this process. Again this wasn’t something I had imagined, but then I hadn’t imagined much at all. I did fully anticipate that I would go to the hospital in the Alfa to bring home the baby (called Alfetta, till the name was announced) . Despite his aggressiveness, there’s few people who I would trust to drive beyond my babe’s Dad. Since we were a week ahead on our plan, he had a court appointment (contesting a traffic ticket) at the same day/time. A no-show at a court can be a legal issue, so we called our friend to stay with me. At 7:47 a.m., friend in tow, we decided to head to the hospital. Dad was at court and unreachable. The only plan I had going in, had also changed now.

The triage nurse came to check on me at 8:30, Dad reached in the meantime, and we discovered that we were already at active labor and 6 cm dilated. I felt we were going to meet the baby in a few hours. I thought 16:00, same as Dad’s time of birth. Dad thought 15:00. Water was manually broken, peanut pillows were used to arrive at the go-time. Finally, the nurse and a kind resident gave their heads-up for final pushing at 17:15. We had felt so overconfident we’d be done sooner, clearly, babe had other plans. The kind resident from San Diego talked about Michigan winters and her VW but did not push Mama enough.

Two hours in, a couple badass midwives had arrived. Finally, after four hours, a doctor came in to offer help via vacuum suction. It was long and arduous enough that Mama had to change music from Hum Aapke Hain Kaun to Eminem through the go-time pushing. Baby decided to stay sunny side up, took an enormous amount of time with Mama to push out of the pelvic zone, and came out only at 21:43. Physically, once I could feel the head, it was a fifteen minute push. His mop of hair seemed to explain my Tums reliance in the first trimester. After that everything felt like a blip. I can remember people messing around with my body, but all I can really recall is the babe on me, skin to skin. It’s hard to describe what this golden hour felt like, except a huge moment of relief, and disbelief. We had created this living, breathing thing. And it was so miraculous. What’s not to love or cry?

All bets are off

All bets and plans were off. It was in fact the beginning of reminders which said, this is not in your hands. All you can do is love, fully and meaningfully. The rest belongs elsewhere. It passes through you, but creates its own new universe.

Mama and Baba love you, Adi, our very own Alfetta. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to us. We are grateful that you chose to be a part of the world through us.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

– Khalil Gibran, Brain Pickings

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