Susan Senator

Morning has broken
Like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken
Life the first bird
Praise for the singing
Praise for the morning
Praise for them springing
Fresh from the world.
–Cat Stevens, Morning Has Broken

Seventeen years ago today I also slept badly. I had a much better reason back then: it was my third day of early labor with Nat. A few times every hour I would feel a big sqeeze in my middle and some mild pain and then a foot under my rib. I would laugh about the foot.

Nat’s labor became more intense but did not progress very well because this was my first baby. So by the third day (November 15) I did what any suffering young woman would do: I called my mommy! I said, “Mom, I still did not sleep and I am SO tired and I’m afraid I won’t have any energy left to push out this baby!” I was panicking.

I did not know if I was having a boy or a girl. I figured it would be a girl, since I only knew of girl experiences. Even though I had had a dream where I saw a laughing blond toddler boy in my sister’s bedroom at my parent’s house, I still thought, “Oh, it’s a girl, and I’ll name her Melissa!” I even listened to the Allman Brothers’ Melissa, over and over. Laura made me a labor cassette of that song and all my favorites, to use while laboring. I did not remember to bring it but I loved listening to it. It had Genesis’ Follow You, Follow Me, the Allman’s Melissa, and others I cannot now remember but will forever associate those two songs with Nat coming into the world.

On the phone that morning, Mom said, in typical no-nonsense fashion, “Tell your doctor to get the show on the road.”
I called the doc and he said, “Okay, let’s have a baby.”

I went in and was set up almost immediately on the monitor and the pitocin drip. The pains got intense pretty quickly so they came in and gave me an epidural, which, it turns out, was too strong so I could not feel the urge to push.

Nevertheless, from about 4:30-7:30 pm, I did my best, with the doctor saying, “Come on, before my shift ends!”

It was taking a long time. I think the baby was under distress for a little bit of it. They took blood out of the crowning baby’s scalp and the doctor did not even wait for the elevator to go to the lab; he took the stairs. My mother, who was right outside with Dad, panicked and thought, “Susan’s dead!”

I was not dead but I wanted to be. Suddenly the epidural was taken off and there were the pains, loud and clear. I remember feeling like I was being split in two. In some ways, I was. The old me was dying and the new me was being born: Me as Nat’s mother.

I yelled, “Cut It out of me!”

They did not.

Ned was on one leg, my sister Laura was on the other. They kept cheering me on. Finally I pushed like I was being ripped inside out and out came Nat.

I don’t know what his apgars were. I don’t know who was doing what to him, cleaning him and so forth. I just wanted him, my long-awaited son, and I wanted him with a hunger I had never known. I was ecstatic holding him. I could not get over it. This beautiful, perfect pink baby was MINE.

Here we are, raw new parents.