It's late, the night before my daughter's fourth birthday.
I'm on my period, having the kind of cramps that remind me of the first contractions I began to feel four years ago, contractions that kept me up all night, leaning my weight against the kitchen stool. I remember at 2 am I started to enter another dimension mentally and needed my husband to time my contractions.
Tonight I'm up late baking her the cake she specifically requested: a decadent vanilla cake with green frosting, raspberries around the bottom and strawberries on top. The oven beeps at me but the cake is raw in the middle; it needs more time. The pain of my menstrual cramps is pressing intensely on my pelvic floor in a way that again reminds me of childbirth.
I remember the car ride to the hospital, during which I held my entire weight above the passenger seat, gripping and pulling up on the handle above me as the pain pierced through my tailbone and pelvic floor. I didn't know at that point that my baby was coming down the birth passage sunnyside up, her tiny spine which would normally be up against my soft belly, instead pressing tortuously against my spine and tailbone. That unbearable pain which had me convinced my skeleton was shattering, wouldn't let up throughout the entire labor until she fully emerged from her cocoon, at 12:53 pm the following day. The hot shower in my hospital room was supposed to be my best friend for this labor, but as soon as I got under the water I started to feel light-headed and nearly passed out. I sat naked on the end of the hospital bed to steady myself, and vomited in between contractions. I lost all of my strength at that point, but at 5 am, still had hours to go. The pain in my lower back and tailbone was so severe that I crawled pitifully onto the hospital bed and clung to the side.
And that is how I labored. No birthing pool or yoga ball or birthing stool or leaning adorably against the strength of my husband. I settled in with the hard plastic arm of that hospital bed and held on with all my strength, pulling my body almost up onto it to try to relieve some pain from my lower back.
In the last hour, after eleven hours of labor and already one hour of pushing, my baby's heart rate dropped, and my midwife sternly told me we needed to get the baby out. Her voice let me know that she was concerned, but was keeping calm for my sake. I felt I couldn't bare even one more contraction. I've been told that my guttural, animal screams were heard in the waiting room clear across the hospital floor. My eyes squeezed shut, I was not talking to anyone or hearing much. I felt like I was floating above the room in a dimension outside of time and space. Each enormous wave of pain crashed through me and left me winded, only to have another one lined up right behind it before I could come up for air. I was exhausted and felt my bones and sinew were tearing and shattering. My body had gradually expanded for 41 weeks to accommodate the fledgling life within, and was now going through its most painful expansion, an expansion which would take me to the very edge, where death and new life sat patiently, waiting. I couldn't imagine what would be left of me.
And so it's been for many of us this year, and for our nation. Contraction after painful contraction, hitting us in consecutive waves, our sense of time gone. It's just today. It's just this moment. And the next. Contractions of loss, of trauma, of grief, of fear, of lack of control, of painful realization. How many times have I heard, "it's all just too much."
My midwife spoke to me. I met her calm eyes that had a terrifying warning behind them, and decided that for my baby to live I'd have to break myself and probably die. I couldn't imagine any other way, and a switch flipped.
In an instant, the image of a magnificent and ferocious mother Tyrannosaurus Rex overcame and possessed me. (I'm not a big dinosaur fanatic, but this is what happened.) With each fearsome roar, I fought to defend and protect and give my baby life, knowing it might be the end of mine. I wept and wailed and roared with pain. My child emerged so slowly, another entire hour of pushing every thirty seconds, but I had no concept of time, it was just me and my pain and the possibility of life on the other side.
There is a reckoning happening and it is relentless. There are painful truths that must be fully felt. And still we survive, clutching and gripping whatever is within our reach, to help us through this terrible labor. When we're brave, we let it crash into us, the tears hot and wet. We feel each new wave of pain, and struggle, hoping and believing that something better is trying to emerge.
Our nation is throbbing from the painful but necessary contractions that could lead to new life. It is tender and fragile, but it must be born, just as necessary as what must die: the poisonous ideas and oppressive systems of white supremacy which birthed our nation and keep corrupting us to this day. Capitalism, classism and elitism, misogyny and able-ism, homophobia and religious bigotry, slavery masquerading as incarceration, surveillance, voter suppression, police brutality, detention centers, deportation. All of this must die so that people may live and be free, so that oppressors may regain their humanity.
After my daughter did finally emerge, slippery and tiny and nothing like I'd imagined she'd be, she had to spend the night in the NICU due to fluid in her lungs which caused an accelerated breathing rate and the risk of pneumonia. I hadn't slept in two days, had just labored to the edge of my life, and now, in order to breastfeed her like I wanted to, I had to leave my hospital bed every hour through the night, make my way to the NICU, nurse her, make my way back to my room, pump, sleep for 15-30 minutes, and then repeat all night so that my milk would come in, we would establish that brand new bond, and she'd get accustomed to my breast instead of a bottle.
It is now four years later and my Penelope Rose is strong, healthy, fierce, hilarious, creative, curious, interesting, sharp, and tender. The labor of bringing her into this world was only the beginning of the longer labor of raising her, which has daily, sometimes hourly peaks of utter joy and transformational love, and also daily, sometimes hourly lows of frustration and exhaustion.
And so it goes.
Life and expansion and death and reckoning. And we grow. We leave some things behind to rot and compost and feed the next version of ourselves.
We labor and endure and allow new life to emerge when it's ripe and ready.
May we all find the mama T-Rex within us in our greatest time of need. May we release what brings about suffering for ourselves and others, and fight like hell to usher in new life that will bring us deeper connection, more expansive love, and truer freedom.
Happy birth-days to us all. God help us.