As with most stories, this one begins far before the big action stuff of the story -- the birthing day itself. I will begin a little over a year before Pan was born, rather, when the first sparks of our family of three were forming...
The Beginning
I couldn't have met Sebastian on a more perfect day.
It was the fall quarter of my senior year at university in Chicago. I was having a bit of a crisis, trying to figure out just what I might do after graduating that year -- I wanted desperately to travel, to live in France or Thailand or the Ukraine for a year, but felt that my options were narrowed by the fact that I hadn't intensely studied any foreign language in school. I thought I wanted to attend grad school for an MFA in creative writing, but needed a few years to develop some good material. Heaviest on my mind, though, was how I was going to reconcile the realities of being financially responsible for my very expensive (but worth-every-penny) education and still pursuing the creative process that called to me from far corners. After breaking down tearfully on the phone with my friend Liz, I told her that I didn't think I was in the right head space to come to her potluck that night (a much-loved monthly tradition she hosted in her apartment). She convinced me to come, though, and in the company of dear friends (and really good food -- the theme for that evening was "Brought to You By the Letter 'M'"), my head began to slow and ease off the worrying.
Through a short chain of welcoming mutual friends, Sebastian showed up at the potluck that night. I remember when he walked in, with his long, shiny hair (which my friend, Emma, deemed "Fabio") and funky workman's clothes -- he was meeting everyone in the room for the first time, but we had a quick smile. He had just moved to Chicago from Santa Cruz, searching for a hard winter to tuck himself into and bang out poetry on his old typewriter through. A bit later in the evening -- I think maybe we had moved on to the apple pie that Sebastian had made and brought as his potluck contribution -- we ended up sitting next to each other on the floor and we started talking about poetry. I had just spent a summer in Prague studying poetry and walking those cobblestoned streets with poems in my head and in my pockets and they were still high on my mind. I told him how I had recently fallen in love with poetry, and shared from memory my favorite poem, ee cummings' "since feeling is first" (the title of this blog comes from a line in that poem). Sebastian gets this wonderfuly jazzed-up glow when talking about poetry and we really just got into it. We talked of travel, and how it was such a huge part of his life. He had essentially spent the last 5 years travelling the world, rambling as he called it, a free and curious agent of adventure. And all that he had done came to him at whim, almost. As we were talking, I felt my mind let go of the frantic planning I had been doing for myself. I had a small moment of grace where I realized, it would all work out, no matter how hard I pushed or pulled at the thing, it was going to be wonderful.
Later, our talk moved toward the approaching Halloween festivities and Sebastian told me how he had this idea to dress up as Samson and cut off his hair, but that he didn't really know any girls in Chicago who might be his Delilah. Of course, I volunteered.
We agreed to stage the big shearing of Samson's locks the following Friday at the Halloween party I was hosting as a fundraiser for the play I was directing. We spoke on the phone a few times that week, under the pretense of planning our costumes, but really just talking. I have a lot of weird hang-ups about talking on the phone -- I just really don't like it -- but these conversations felt so natural and engrossing and silly and intense. And they lasted around 2 hours each. The Halloween party actually felt like a bit of a let down after those conversations, actually.
The party itself was really fantastic -- I had the whole cast and production team and theatre board involved in the planning and execution of the thing, and, I'll just say, theatre kids really know how to throw a good party. We used two whole apartments, with the downstairs apartment set up as a wicked good haunted house (again, theatre kids) and the upstairs being where the dancing and partying was at. It was totally the place to be that weekend, which was awesome for the fundraiser but not necessarily the most intimate setting for romancing.
Sebastian totally got into his Samson get-up, with handmade sandals and a bedsheet tunic and everything. He looked beautiful. My costume was a bit less obvious, but together it worked. However, I didn't get to see much of him that night. I was responsible for the whole thing, and kind of had to be everywhere all at once (what was really fun was when the high school kids came and tried to sell light street drugs at the party. That was really fun). As the party wound down, though, the dance floor cleared out some and we took our moment for the cutting of Samson's golden locks, the stripping of his strength. I totally cut off all his hair. And then we danced hard and fast, just a few close friends left, and it was perfect.
And then I didn't hear from him for almost a month.
I was busy with my play, so there wasn't a huge amount of time for disappointment. But I really did like him, and was so glad when he finally did call one afternoon to tell me about an estate sale (uh, this guy is such a keeper) that he had just been to that had some really rad vintage womens' clothes and hats. I decided I really needed to make a way to see him again happen, so I planned a "rare and odd talent show" evening at my apartment for the next friday and invited him to come.
He did, and the evening was awesome with the best of friends and silliness and dancing. We went for a walk after everyone had gone home and ended up at the beach. It was very cold and clear and he pointed out Orion's Belt and then he kissed me. And essentially, we spent every night together after that.
The Middle
Sebastian moved in with me at the new year (such a huge step in a relationship, and yet, there was really no discussion about it. His sister had just moved to town and decided to take over his lease, and he figured, since he was already with me every night anyways, he may as well move in. And so he did). We had a couple of busy months (I designed the costumes for a huge production on campus, he was working at a local swanky restaurant making brick-oven pizzas) and then, at the beginning of March, he took off on a month-long trip back to the west coast.
When I met him, Sebastian hugely defined himself as a wonderer. He loved greatly, but his love extended further than singular relationships. We were very happy together, but he had told me that he would eventually travel on -- that he would think of me and write to me, if that was where we were at, but that he would most certainly go. And I knew that being with him for the time that I was with him was worth this knowledge that at some point we would not be physically together.
But then I found out, two days after he left for his trip, that I was pregnant.
In a way, it was perfect for me to have that month to myself, to reallly think on how I felt about this. To decide what I wanted, regardless of how Sebastian felt. We really never spoke much while he was gone, I just couldn't talk to him with the heaviness of knowing what I knew on my mind. Instead, I spoke with my dearest friends, with a professor, with my parents, with my aunt, with a counselor. I spoke with my baby. And when Sebastian came back a month later, late, late into the night, I was ready to speak with him.
I told him as we lay in bed together. I told him quietly and calmly, I am pregnant. His response was whole-body. He described it as a thorough shock, an electric head-to-toe racing. It took a few moments to settle in, and I waited. The first thing he said to me was, Where do you want to live?
And so we were in it together.
We decided to live in Spokane, where his parents lived. We knew we needed family nearby to help us as we began our family. We spent the next several months in Chicago: I graduated from university, Sebastian coached a soccer team for the SCORES program, I worked as the director of a local farmer's market, Sebastian took on a position with a green landscaping company. That summer we were married at Priest Lake. And that fall we moved to Spokane to wait for our baby's coming.
The Birthing
I had a completely healthy pregnancy with Pan. Everything progressed beautifully towards the midwife-assisted birth we planned to take place in our basement quarters of Sebastian's childhood home. We took a hypnobirthing course together with an instructor in Chicago. We read Ina May
My mom came out to be with us for the baby's birth -- however, we thought the babe might come a lot sooner than he actually did so she was with us for 3 weeks before he was even born. There was a lot of waiting.
I had one night of pretty intense warm-up contractions -- lasting 1-2 minutes each, at about 4 minutes apart for several hours -- that we thought was the big show. But it wasn't. And we waited two more weeks for the real birthing time.
I started having show on the 16th of November, which just felt like FINALLY, something real is happening. It grew heavier over the next day and I was having fairly intense and regular contractions as Sebastian and I ran errands (or rather, went thrift store hunting) for the place we would be moving into after the babe came. At that time, Seb was working a bakery job with odd hours so I had much of the evening to myself (as much as you can have an evening to yourself when you are living with three soon-to-be grandparents who are awaiting the new babe just as anxiously as you are). I remember knitting a bit, maybe listening to a book on tape for a while, until Sebastian got home around 2 AM. We snuggled into bed to watch an episode of The Office, and I pretty much immediately began having really intense contractions.
What was unexpected about these contractions was that they were in my back. They came hard and long and close together and they took me completely by surprise. I didn't even know you could have contractions in your back. I could not sleep and Sebastian went back and forth between timing the contractions with me and drifting into sleep a bit. I went upstairs around 5 AM to tell my mom and Alexandra (Sebastian's mom) that I felt like this was it, and tried to take a shower to help ease the pain in my back. However, the contractions were so intense that I had a really hard time with standing and felt nervous about falling in the shower. Sebastian came upstairs to rest on the couch a bit and Alexandra went downstairs to be with me while Seb took a break. I remember that she had this wonderful concoction that she would mist about the room every so often -- a special birthing blend of essential oils that had frankincense and myrrh and other goodness. She told me that what I was experiencing was back labor and pressed into my back during the contractions. Margaret, our midwife, came around 8 AM.
Something wonderful about Margaret is that she is very good at explaining things in clear, plain language. I'm often helped in tackling my fears just in understanding them and what is actually going on, in facts. When she came, I was really pretty terrified by what my body was doing. It was intense and it hurt terribly. I didn't understand why all of the preparation I had been doing for this birthing time -- all the breathing and relaxation and visualization -- wasn't working. I felt defeated, and we had only just begun. But Margaret explained that the babe was posterior and that my good big pelvis was actually allowing him just too much room to dig in -- and that is why it hurt so bad in my back. She set Sebastian and I up in a position where he kneeled behind me in bed and dug his knees into my back while pulling -- really, really hard -- on my hip bones to open me up during the contractions. Every couple of hours, she gave us a variation of this position to try. We spent some time in the birthing tub, some time on the commode (we had set up a commode down in the basement so I wouldn't have to climb the stairs every time I needed to use the bathroom -- this was probably the most used object throughout the whole birth).
Honestly, I feel as though Sebastian worked as hard as I did during the birthing time. I leaned on him hard, both physically and emotionally, and he was so solid. It wasn't easy, trying to both dig into my back and pull on my hips while in the water, but he held tight and pushed hard during each contraction I had for the three hours we were in the birthing tub. I was scared pretty much the whole time, my confidence in myself completely drained. And he held me, and told me I could do it, that I was doing it. One of the best positions Margaret set us up in involved me sitting on the commode (a brief note on the commode -- this was my favorite place to labor. With each contraction, I was leaking a bit of fluid and had a strong urge to pee at the peak of it. Sitting on the commode felt like the most natural place to be when my bodily functions were acting as such) and him sitting across from me on a chair, face to face. During the contractions, he would push back on my knees as hard as he could and we just looked at each other, never breaking eye contact, breathing in sync. We did this for over an hour.
I didn't really experience the typical signs of transition (I felt fear during the whole labor, so that never seemed to be an indicator of transitioning). I think there was a brief point of relief in the contractions, but it didn't last too long. The birthing time really started moving along around 4:00 PM, when Margaret was having a difficult time getting a heartbeat on the baby and we realized he was in a distressing position. She convinced me to leave the commode for an all-fours position on the bed, and I HATED this. I insisted on moving back to the commode and as soon as I sat down, my waters broke. We had been uncertain about whether they had broken before, because I was having continual leaking, but this was definitely the real thing. Such a surprising pop and gush -- right into the commode! They were clear and fine, which was good to hear, but we were still concerned about the baby's heart rate and position. Margaret told me I needed to push, and I had no idea how to do this. I didn't want to do it. I gave some grunting nudges, which must have been enough to get the babe down and in a safer spot.
When it came time to really push, my body completely and totally took over. I was actually trying to resist the pushes -- but my body convulsed and bore down of its own will (which is a really good thing). Because I wasn't trying to force push, but rather just let my body do the work itself, it only took three pushes to get the babe to crown. During these pushes, I yelled. Big, ringing, make the room vibrate yells. Everyone (at that point, Margaret and her assistant, Violet, my mom and Alexandra, and Sebastian were in the room) was a bit in awe of these big yells. I was in awe of these big yells. I didn't quite realize they were coming out until they were -- much like the pushes. They grew with the intensity of the push. And then the head came through, and with one last push, Pan shot out, bright pink, arms pumping, screaming right down to the floor.
Pan Rainier: Born at 5:10PM on November 18. 8 lb 14 oz. A perfect 10 on the apgar scale, immediately.
It was exhilirating. After he came out, it was as if the last 15 hours hadn't happened. Such a huge rush of joy and relief and awe.
I had torn fairly bad, due to a previous injury I had, and Margaret ended up stitching me up (very gently, I must say) by candlelight with a head lamp as the electricity went out just as she was starting. But with all of that, it was a very beautiful birthing experience. It was the hardest thing I had ever done, and it was scary and painful. But my strongest memory of it all is in color, in the warm glow of the candles that Sebastian lit all over the birthing space. My recollection of the details is a bit shaky, but I can tell you how it felt, how intimate and gorgeous of an experience it really was.
And I can tell you how gloriously happy we were -- and are -- to have this little Pan come into our lives.
+Chelsea
