BRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrraziou!: March 2011

After reading some of your comments on the pictures and emails from my friends I feel that I have to add a few words. These days life in our family is all but smooth and peaceful. On the other hand Coline is, so far. She sounds like a kitten when she wants to feed. But everybody else around is experiencing a little bit of chaos. The pictures on previous posts do reflect a moment of reality though. And I am grateful for these moments where Leila is calm enough to be with us, when she holds her sister with care, when she plays mummy with her dolls, and when she softly dried my tears at the doctor today. But most of the time I am filled with fear and guilt. I fear that I am not going to make it when my mum is gone and I have to take care of both of them. Getting Leila to do anything that does not involve play in the way that she feels like at that particular minute is mission impossible. And I feel guilty because I do not want to be with Leila. I just want to hold Coline, look at her on my breast, and lie down with her in bed for most of the day. And it hurts when Leila comes and wants to touch Coline so much but is so restless that I want to send her off far far away. It hurts because I know I love her but I just do not want to be with her now.

Coline was born yesterday, Tuesday March 22nd 2011, at 8 pm, in our home in Ouro Preto.

In a few words, her birth was just perfect. The long story is below.

My wish for this birth was for it not to be too short (I was told that second babies are often born much faster than first babies, and Leila's birth already wasn't very long), and for me to feel everything. There were no bad surprises in this birth, and there were many good ones. Today I feel serene and grateful for such a peaceful experience. I felt pain and pleasure. At times I felt weak and thought I would faint. At times I just wanted to withdraw from it so that I could skip a contraction of two, or even just stop it all and continue another day. And I felt excitement and the infinite power of my body that was just doing its job, allowing the birth to happen.

It all started before the birth. Early in the morning Natasha postponed her flight. Coline was 9 days late according to her due date. Until the night before we had imagined that the birth could happen before Natasha was supposed to fly back to South Africa, at noon on March 22nd. But it did not and we were not very happy about having to postpone the flight. I was also starting to worry that I would end up having to be induced and have the baby in hospital. That morning Natasha did a cervix strip to try and trigger the birth. It was not the first one and I was reluctant. Each of them put me down, was physically uncomfortable and triggered my being in a bad mood. I felt empty and hurt and my mood was horrible. I was angry at everybody including myself, I just wanted to lie in bed and cry. And so I cried, until I could say that I was sore, because this intrusion in my uterus reminded me of the abortion I had 7 years ago. I did not realize before that I had not healed after many years of crying. At that stage I was hoping that the cervix strip had not worked because the last thing that I wanted was for this new baby to be born with me in such a horrible state of mind. But it changed as suddenly as it came. At noon I was having lunch with Leila, Natasha and mamie-Claire, the atmosphere was light, I think we laughed (we had watched a short movie of Charlie Chaplin also in the morning and Leila loved it), the storm had passed and the first contractions came in.

I was not sure if labour was really beginning. After waiting so many days I did not allow too much enthusiasm at first, but the contractions became regular very rapidly and soon there was no doubt about it. I did a bit of cleaning in the kitchen and around, with Natasha, then I searched for a few things that I wanted to have around me, the necklace from the birthing ceremony, a candle, some music, the receiving blanket for the baby, pillows, and the angel pendant that my grandmother gave to my cousin and I. Natasha told me to find a sound to use during the contractions. She suggested humming on a low tone and that is what I had practiced before. It felt good.

I hummed through every contractions until Coline was born. It helped me breathe and relax, it forced me to take a big breath in at the start of every contraction otherwise too little sound would come out and I would be missing it.

Until 4:30 pm I was alone in our bedroom, listening to the same music that Christine used to play when we were practicing yoga with Lee-Sa. It was as if there were in the room with me, helping me to focus on relaxation. I walked through most contractions, with my eyes closed most of the time. Sometimes I sat on the side of the bed, sometimes I lied down on my back with my legs like a butterfly, sometimes I was on all fours. The important thing for me was to be in the position already before the contraction came, feel when it was about to start and relax my shoulders while taking a deep breath in. And then hum and feel. Natasha told me to welcome every surge with a "yes" instead of "no" and it made a huge difference. I was thinking about how every surge allowed my body to open and the baby to move a little further down. I could feel the stretch in my pelvis and in my lower back. What surprised me the most (and I still cannot believe that it was this way), was that I managed to take a deep inbreath at the beginning to every surge, however reluctant I was to feel pain. That inbreath made the stretch even greater, but only the first inbreath in each surge was painful, the others felt like a relief that the stretch was operating, very similar to what I often felt during a yoga practice.

For many hours the contractions were not long, and so even though they became more and more intense (and painful) I was not fearing them. I had the impression I was calling them by telling myself that I was ready, and another one would come. Then I came out of the room to search for support. Natasha came and applied counter-pressure on my lower back during a contraction, or pressure on my feet. Cristiano had come home from his lecture and started preparing dinner. I was not too pleased with the smell of garlic he was cooking mixing with the rose-geranium of the room, but I was happy to know that he was there.

I did not want to hear voices anymore, I did not want light (other that the candle), and I did not want to be touched. I was feeling weak and dizzy. I started saying that I did not want the pain anymore, that I wanted it all to stop, which Natasha interpreted as my cervix having dilated by 6cm, and a good time for a hot shower, which I took and enjoyed. I was cold also and it made me warm. I sat on the floor in the shower, until the bathroom was steamed up. The water took a bit of the pain away and gave me some strength.

From there on I lost track of time and I am not even sure if what I remember really happened. It was more and more difficult to find a comfortable position. I was not talking anymore, not looking at anyone or anything, only moving a hand to tell whoever to stop what they were doing that was bugging me. Leila came in, I liked her hand on my shoulder, but she started complaining when I hummed (she was worried) and I did not want her in the room anymore. I asked Cristiano to support me sitting against him, in the same way as Leila was born. I did not want to squeeze his hands, I just wanted to feel my body all soft, still able to relax, except in my tummy that was so extremely hard during each contraction. I was regularly going to the loo right after a contraction and the position there helped call the next one, which was generally less painful.

Back to the bedroom I do not remember what happened, but as I took one contraction on all fours my waters broke. After that it felt as if everything accelerated. The contractions were then very long and there was very little time for me to recover strength in-between. Cristiano was supporting me when I started feeling the first urge to push. As Natasha had told me, it was easy to tell because I could not hum when that urge came. I was surprised because I did not feel much pressure on my perineum then, but that was because the cervix still had to dilate a little to allow the baby through. I felt excitment, I felt as if I was coming back to myself in this room and getting ready to hold the baby. I was surprised that it was going to happen so soon. Natasha sent me to the bathroom to make sure that nothing would be on the way when I had to push the baby out. I sat and waited for the next surge, and it came with a irresistible urge to push. Natasha asked if I wanted the baby to be born in the bathroom and I said no. And then I said yes, I was not going anywhere. With the next surge I could feel her head on my perineum, I could touch it with my fingers. I had thought before of how I did not want to feel the burning of the head crowning, as I did with Leila, but I did not feel it, I just felt power bigger than me, bigger than anything. And I felt pleasure, and I must have shouted very loud because Leila was scared, but in my head it sounded like a roar of victory and joy and relief, and I could not believe how quickly she was being born. I was neither sitting nor standing, grounding my feet on the floor and supporting my back with one hand on the toilet seat. It felt like the perfect position to push and she was born in one contraction (or I think so!).

We sat there for a rest, she let us hear the sound of her voice, I held her for some time without knowing if she was a he or a she or how many fingers she had, she was just the perfect baby. Then we went back to the bedroom and let her find my breast. We sat there forever, we were so alert and happy. I am crying my first tears now as I write, so far it just felt as the most natural thing in the world. Now it feels a bit like a miracle that it all went so smoothly, so according to plan, unlike the birthdate!