Morgan's Birth

[This is Peggy's journal entry about Morgan's birth, which was a peak experience in our lives. I'll try to edit the text back into its original form as soon as possible.

In the event, Morgan turned out spectacularly well! She was an elite swimmer at Barrington High, majored in neuroscience at Harvard, and got her Ph.D (in neuroscience) from Cambridge. She married Wayne Pommen, who was an Olympic class rower and did a Ph.D at Cambridge in political economy. They visited Blanca and me in Spain several years ago. And I was the first person on earth to see her come down the chute!]

Journal Entry Margaret Miller, Southeastern Massachusetts University

March 21, 12:25 a.m. Diane is 6 em. dilated now; she's on Demerol and is sleeping between contractions. It brings back memories, but not vividly-- I remember floating through those hours, so different from the blood, sweat, and groaning to come. I do love her, and would like to touch her hand lightly to let her know I'm with her, but I fear above all to disturb her concentration or her rest. I wonder how Jack has the confidence to rub her arm during contraction.

She said hello to me just before the last contraction, and with this one I held her hand, oh, so lightly.

Twenty minutes to go before she can push--she's been irritable and panicked, which I feel with her totally. I told her, "This is the worst time--you feel it will never end." " But it will , won't it," she said. And yet she's holding on--no whining, no loss of control. We are so alike--I feel her skin is mine. This baby will be very special to me.

Jack wants so much to be able to help--it gives him a sweet officiousness. He wants to be doing it too, when the truth is that all he can do is to be there. 23rd March After I wrote that, she was finally able to push, which she did for, a couple of hours. The time seemed interminable--I had that boredom which comes with the prolongation of an intolerable situation in which you are impotent--like I felt watching Linda die.

I even dozed off, vaguely ashamed of myself. Then the doctor came in and examined her--he told her that the baby's head was tilted to one side, that she'd been pushing all those hours without effect. To me he said; "It's been strange all along--from the start the baby was in phase three, and it hasn't moved since." There was general confusion. I was worried about Diane's morale, about what would happen next--we could all see him edging towards the mention of a c-section as he explained why forceps are no longer recommended, due to an increase in risk to the baby. Diane is on her side by now, trying a different position despite increased pain. Jack has tears in his eyes. Then he starts to argue with the doctor--he's on one side of Diane, the doctor on the other, and they cross ego-swords over her body. Jack's angry/hurt/logical/argumentative, the doctor's cautiously defensive. Then Diane cries out, in anguished irritation, "Jack, please, don't!" He walks out of the room, stiff and hurt. Rick slides into his place beside Diane, jerks his head from me to Jack, and I follow him out of the room.

Such mixed feelings. Sympathy for Jack--I am as appalled, he is, at the thought of Diane slit open, at how we too have been led down the chute to this slaughter, despite our confidence that we would know how to resist the coercion when it came. But the coercion takes a different shape than I had thought--it also con­sists of Diane's pain and exhaustion, concern for the baby (did he exaggerate the risks?), a sense of no time to be lost, a sense that the doctor is the expert we had to, had agreed to, trust. And then, despite my terrible sympathy for his feelings, irritation that Jack could allow himself, at this moment, to have any feelings, hold on to any positions, that would make it harder for Diane. It wasn't that I wanted a macho man, but what I think of, perhaps unfairly, as a peculiarly female sort of supportive strength that says, whatever I feel at this moment will be put away to be faced later, while I efface myself to be a pure support for you. Irritation at him for seeing the c-section loom so large, when the whole picture makes it relatively insignificant--concerns for his beloved wife's belly (and yet, how much he loves her!) looming larger than the questions of life, death, health. And yet, maybe his masculine assertion is what she needs now; maybe it's the only thing that can effectively intervene in what seems like an inexorable process. Maybe my touch is too light.

So I talked to him, trying to pour into him through the tone of my voice the certainty of what I felt was needed from him at that moment. He expressed his pained.anger--"They always want to cut them open!"--and we discussed the options. Some of his points sounded good--maybe I'm caving in too quickly--he should talk to the doctor, I said, but in the hall. "Diane needs for you to be calm," I said. he said. "She's panicked, at the end of her rope." "Yes," he said. So back we go. Dr. Lowe is working with Diane, so Jack stays in the hall to talk with the other doctor. Diane turns over; "Where's Jack?" she asks, tears in her voice. "In the hall talking to the doctor." She's reassured by the truth. Lowe discusses the options with me. About forceps he ays,"If it were my baby, I wouldn't do it." I believe in his concern.

Jack comes back in. Diane says to him, "I need for you tobe strong. I can't be unless you are." Lowe has backed off from the c-section, says he'll let her push some more, in different positions, in a last attempt to dislodge the baby. She's on her knees, face buried in the sheets. Then someone--Jack? the doctor?--suggests squatting. "Get up," the doctor tells her. She's been pushing for hours. She's drained of strength to move, to push, to bear more pain--the pain of pushing is worse than that of transition. open me up." How can she possibly do it, not say, "I give up."

Earlier in the evening both Jack and Rick had talked of her "heroism." I didn't like the word. I didn't want her to feel that she needed to be stoic to conform to some image we had of her, and besides, every decision she had made had seemed to me to be inevitable, given who she was. You bear pain because you have no choice--the choice to forgo the whole experience and let them haul it out of her was no more available to her than it would have been to me, had she any strength left. What I had felt, all along, was that Diane was confirming her identity to me, that as things progressed she revealed herself more and more nakedly, and that I knew her. As her flesh became more and more tortured--as her face grew red, her hair lank, her lips puffed and cracked with a yellowish line around the opening; as the calm, almost ladylike quiet control of her Lamaze breathing gave way to grunts, admissions of pain, total collapse between contractions; as the sweet, familiar, female smell filled the room--I felt like her flesh melted away for me and that I saw her naked soul, and she was my beloved sister. But could she do more, with no strength left?

Without a word she lifted herself from the bed an~ assumed a squatting position at the end, grabbing hold of the bedpost. Rick is on one side--supporting her, brushing her hair back protecting her forehead from the post--Jack is on the other, and Nancy, the labour 'nurse, is at her ass. "Push my hand away," says Nancy, as the contractions each start. I see her rectum blossom like a tiny purple rose. I take a couple of pictures (how can I pull myself into detachment at a moment so intense? How can I record what might turn out to be futile? But Jack, seeing me with the camara, nods, so I shoot); then I stand by her head, whisper my cheers, bear down with her, lending her my fresh abdominal strength, as we all were. We do this for a moment which could have lasted hours. Flurry. They'll be giving her a spinal in case they have to move to a c-section; first they'll try forceps. "The baby!" Dianewhisper/cries. I bend over her: "I've talked to the doctor. He'll do what's best for the baby--don't worry." Jack objects to the spinal". "Forceps hurt," says Christine, the nurse. They wheel her away to the delivery room. Jack is called in. I'm sure we won't be, but several minutes later a nurse fetches us for the delivery. We're hustled into a corner, told to stay there. It's a shock to see Diane; after the dim-cave experience of the birthing room, she's stretched out for sacrifice in the bright lights of the delivery room--arms strapped down, legs in stirrups--nothing but the imperatives of this moment would make her submit to such a posture, but she's beyond protest. The forceps look so big, and as they go in she says they hurt--it's all too quick, but pain is rendered irrelevant as the doctor gives a cry of satisfaction. She's turned the baby around, spun the little critter into position out of sheer grit. He pulls the baby out and presents her, feet-first, to Diane. "It's a girl!" she sobs with relief and happiness. "Look at her vagina!"

Someone sobs next to me, echoing my own as I see the baby laid on her belly--it's Rick, choking on his mask, arm around Jack, who's cry­ing too. The rest was a piece of cake. Morgan's purple color faded quickly, and she cried only once or twice before settling down next to Diane, blinking at the world.

I snuck around to see the afterbirth, and her vagina was wide open, dripping bright blood, wonderfully empty--it needed to look like that after what had just happened. I thanked the doctor for not shutting us out. "You were a big support," he said. It's true; we were. You need all the love and self-forgetful support you can get at such a moment. She said she would never forget the sight of my face over her at moments during that night.

I loved Rick for the effectiveness of his love for Diane, for the way he'did what was needed and was totally with her. I loved Jack for letting us see him naked and for trusting us with this experience. "This baby will be special to us," I told him--"apart from all the other reasons why it will be." Morgan has beautiful long fingernails and lips like Diane's, the ones I kissed, as I said goodbye to her, told her she was heroic (I give up--it's the only word we have).