My twelve year old wants her birth story. It's a conversation prompted by an upcoming unit on the reproductive system in Health class. It's fine, really. It should be fine. I can, mostly, answer honestly. She's irritated because the boys in class were giggling and laughing about something that the teacher said in regards to a baby coming out of the birth canal, and I say to her, "Girl....you have a birth canal. You came from a birth canal....it's not funny, it's life. It's why we are. It's beautiful and powerful and miraculous, and it's painful and scary and boys never really get over laughing about the mystery of the female body, so just get yourself used to rolling those beautiful brown eyes." She laughs, but there are more questions. I'm fine. I answer. I try to gauge the information that she needs without overwhelming her, because this is a girl who just learned that a 'tramp stamp' isn't an actual stamp...it's a tattoo. I want to give her the information. I want to arm her with the best truths that I know and I want her to understand the power of the female body and I want her to wield the power in her hands like she is a goddamn goddess. But there's still more.
I can tell her the funny parts. I was in labor for, by my count, fourteen hours. I made dinner and rearranged furniture and packed for everyone to be gone for a couple of days. I picked up kids from school and I called her Dad and told him to hurry home, but by the time I finally checked into the hospital, got to a room, and got into a gown, I was dilated to ten, and the doctor barely had time to sit down before her arrival on the scene. We walked into the hospital at 6:30, she was born at 7:10. There was no time for drugs, there was no time for family. Just me, her dad, a nurse who all but begged me to hold off on pushing, and a hurried doctor. I remember, sitting here, like it was yesterday, hearing that nurse say, "Jennifer, I can do it, but I don't want to, so maybe let's try to wait for the doctor?"
She is, as she has always been, on her own schedule. She has more questions. Why's and why-not's. It's ok. I can answer, mostly. But something in me hesitates, just a little. I feel as though I am not telling her the whole truth.
The bare truth is this......I am struggling because her birth story is so closely tied to another. A birth story from 19 1/2 years ago.
I was 19 years old when I found out that I was pregnant. Having grown up in a family with single mothers, I was both scared to death, and doubtful that my nineteen year old self could handle what I knew, even then, to be the most difficult job imaginable. I was afraid. I was scared to tell anyone, and so I didn't. I started drinking a lot of milk, I wore baggy shirts, and I waited for an answer from the God that I found myself praying to all hours of the day and night. I thought about abortion, but someone I knew and loved was struggling to conceive, and I couldn't make sense in my brain of why God wouldn't give them a baby, but gave one to me. And so, four months into the pregnancy, I admitted to the outside world that the pregnancy existed, and I asked that couple to adopt my baby.
Five months. I lived for five months knowing that the child growing inside me was no longer mine. I marvel at that thought now, because, today, my world is measured by my kids.
In early fall, I woke up at nine o'clock in the morning to my first contraction. I alerted the adoptive mother, who alerted the adoptive father. We drove to the hospital on a blazing day, summer not ready to give up yet, and listened as the doctor said, "Yes, you are in labor, come back later." And so, we went back to their house, and we waited. I napped, and while I did so, the adoptive mother made several calls, and when I awoke, there were many, many more people in the room. Twelve. Twelve extra people, not including me, that baby, and the adoptive parents, sat around, just waiting. I was contracting, the adoptive mother was stressing. Fifteen hours after the initial contraction, I, among others, decided that the hospital would probably be the best place to wait out the remainder of the time, and so, in a caravan, we headed back to the hospital.
For another six hours, I walked the halls and tried to hold conversation with the people who were there to see the show. They were there out of love, I know, but it felt to me like they were there to witness my destruction.
Finally, 21 hours after that first contraction, my doctor broke my water, and left the room to do rounds, only to be called back by a frantic nurse moments later. My daughter was here. Except, that she wasn't MY daughter. She was promised to someone else. And there were people everywhere, and I just wanted a minute to absorb what the hell had just happened to me, to my body and my mind and to my soul. I just wanted a minute to look at her, and explain myself, and I wanted to tell her things that I would never get to say.
What I didn't know then, was that we, she and I, had run out of time.
Later, much later, after everyone had gone home for some much needed rest, I lay in that hospital bed begging for answers. Just begging anyone who came near me to LISTEN for a minute. By now, I had seen her face. By now, I knew the shape of her nose. And I just needed someone to LISTEN for a second. Was I sure? Was this right? Was I failing her? And Jesus H. Christ, could I get a Tylenol because my back was hurting so bad that when I tried to stand up, I thought I was going to faint from the pain. My doctor prescribed Darvocet, and I spent the remainder of the day and night on the cusp of consciousness. I don't remember my parents coming back that day, but I have pictures showing they did. And I don't remember the lawyer coming, but I know that I signed.
The next day, we were discharged.
Walking away from her was the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life. There is no pain to which I could compare it. I can not, with any clarity, tell you what goodbye looked like. I don't remember. I know that I woke up every hour and a half that night. I know that the next time I visited her, I prayed for some miracle that would make her mine again. I chanted that prayer to myself so many times over the coming months that you could number the stars and still not reach the correct amount of times that I uttered the word, please.
A reunion was not to be. As a matter of fact, nineteen and a half years later, as I sit and write this in my dining room, I can honestly tell you that very little of what I prayed for in that situation has come to pass. She doesn't speak to me, though she could. She is a college freshman, and past that, I don't know much more about her life.
So, when the 12 year old wants her birth story, the one I want to tell is this: my story and her's, our birth story, is closely tied to the story of a girl who didn't understand what she was giving up. It was done out of love, absolutely. I wanted more for her. I wanted everything for her, and I felt that I had nothing to offer. That first girl, her very existence paints my world with a different color every single day of my life.
After she was gone, I didn't want to have children. I thought it would be unfair to her, to find out that I had chosen not to be a mother to her, but chose to fulfill that role for a different child. Then, I met a man who had children. I reasoned with myself, and I came to the conclusion that if I didn't actually give birth to the kids, it wouldn't be a betrayal of her. And then, one day in late April, my now husband, made an off-hand comment about pregnancy, and was immediately sent to the drug store to purchase two tests. Two, because one wouldn't be sufficient evidence.
When the strip developed the second line, I was securely locked in the bathroom, alone, with the water running so he couldn't hear me sob. I wasn't overwhelmed with gratitude or joy. I was broken hearted because I felt what I had done was the ultimate level of disloyalty to the memory of my daughter, who at that point, was six, and had no idea that I was her birth mother.
Joy came later. Joy came in the face of her father, telling me that it was going to be ok. Joy came in the face of my five year old stepson, who was excited about the prospect of a brother. Joy came, but she wasn't my first emotion.
In the following three months, I reasoned my way into thinking that it would hurt less if the child I carried was a boy, and in July, during an ultrasound appointment, we learned with no uncertainty, that it was a girl. On the way to the car after the appointment, I asked her dad if he was disappointed that it was not a boy, to which he scoffed and reminded me that he had said from the beginning that he wanted a healthy child, period. I was grateful for her health. I was grateful for her existence, and some place deep inside myself, I realized that this was what was supposed to be. That this child I now carried was supposed to be mine.
And so, on a snowy December day, I waited too long to make the calls I had to make, because I didn't want my time with her to end. On that winter evening, when the nurse asked if I minded having students in the room for my labor and delivery, I said no. I didn't want spectators. When she came into the room, with a head full of dark hair and legs stretched long, for just a second, I looked away. I was afraid of the face I was going to see there.
Later, after visitors, with the lights dimmed and her dad snoring on the hospital love seat, I stared at her, unable to look away for even a moment. God in Heaven, I loved her. And right in that second, of me staring at her, and her looking back at me, I realized that I had never truly understood the extent of what I had done six years prior. Even for all of my brokenness and self hatred, I came to realize the magnitude of what walking away from that first baby had done to me.
Every second of every minute after they put that 6 pound wonder in my arms was a moment that I was reminded of what I had given away. Every diaper was a diaper that I didn't change, every bottle was a feeding that I missed.
And so, when the 12 year old wants her birth story, I tell her that birth, like life, is messy and painful. And maybe someday I will tell her the whole story, and maybe someday, I will be able to tell the whole story to the girl who came first. Maybe I will tell them how much their stories are alike, neither wanting to wait until everyone was ready. Maybe I will tell them how much their stories differ, how I left the hospital the first time a broken mess of a girl who didn't fully understand the length and breadth of the commitment I had made, and how I left the hospital the second time feeling more whole than I had felt in six years. Maybe I will tell them that the first night after I left the hospital, I woke up every hour and a half, and later learned that the baby had done the same, miles away. Or maybe I will tell them that the second girl baby slept through the night three weeks after she was born, secure in the knowledge that her mother was never more than three feet away from her at any given moment.
These are our birth stories. There can not be just one. They are weaved together. I can not, and would not, untangle the threads that connect us.