The Beginning's End

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." -Semisonic

Tomorrow morning the birth center where my children were both welcomed to this world will close.  They will still have appointments there at the clinic, but the actual birth rooms will no longer be used. They have opened a new "Midwifery Center" at the hospital for the midwives where that will focus on low-intervention, physiological birth. They will still allow water births and families will be able to go home after 4 hours, just like they could at the birth center. They have real beds instead of hospital beds, and the requisite family waiting area and kitchenette.  All of the boxes are checked and it should be just the same, only in the hospital. 

But it's not the same.  It looks like a hospital, it feels like a hospital.  It is sterile.

About a decade ago, before we were able to even seriously consider having babies, A was perusing my copy of "Our Bodies, Ourselves" and read about births attended by midwives, home births, and free-standing birth centers. Being raised by a mother who had a home birth and avoided doctors when at all possible, my response to her exciting new knowledge was probably somewhere along the lines of "Yeah, so?"  Her next tidbit was that there was a birth center less than a mile from us.

I remember being more freaked out that she looked this up than excited, we were still years away from being able to start a family.  However, we both established well-woman care there so we could get a feel for it and start meeting the midwives. They were lovely, and we were sure this was the place for us.

Fast forward to 2012, we finally had conceived E and we were nervous and excited to start our prenatal visits and centering classes.  Since we had been foster parents, we had already had a taste of the marginalization same sex couples face as parents, but we weren't prepared for the onslaught that came with being pregnant.  The birth center was our haven.  We knew we would be included and valued.  We knew that our care providers would make an effort to use language that was respectful. When they didn't know they best way to talk about something, they would ask instead of being awkward and uncomfortable or downright insulting. We could have conversations and were empowered to be in control our health instead of just being told what to do. It was refreshing.

When we finally were able to tour the birth rooms, they were each carefully decorated in a different style and we fell in love with the blue room. That September, we welcomed E to the world surrounded by strength and love.

When it was time for A's pregnancy with C, we couldn't wait to get to know our new Centering class and be surrounded by this wonderful community once again.  This time we would regularly have to go back to a birth room to check A's blood pressure, it seemed to get stage fright. Often we would end up in the green beachy room, and decided that would be where C was born.

Since then I have been able to be involved on the community advisory board and my friendship and respect for this amazing group of strong women only grows.  As we learned about the plans to close, I was shown the true depth of spirit they have poured into the birth center.  My own sadness and nostalgia were nothing compared to the fierce protective force they showed as we tried to save it.

The new hospital unit is a welcome addition to the options for birth in Tucson.  But it also marks the end, because with this new door opening, the closed doors in its wake are being glossed over and brushed aside. Not only to the parents who do not want to be in a hospital when to meet their child for the first time, but to those nurses and midwives who searched out the birth center as the model they believed in and would dedicate themselves to. There are many of these women that I now consider my friends. It is for them that I mourn.

This space was made sacred as it bore witness to babies taking their first breaths. To mothers' blood, sweat, and tears.  To growing families. To the midwives and nurses who calmly supported each birth, giving away a little bit of themselves with each long night and beautiful new beginning.

Today marks a different sort of new beginning. I hope that, in time, the new space will have the quiet, heavy feel of a sacred space. A place where time seems to stand still.  Waiting for that next new beginning.

Anniversaries

Summertime is always a very full time of year for the McGills. Birthdays galore, a couple of wedding anniversaries, a couple of death anniversaries. This year, for me, it's a time of contemplation.

T's and my birthdays both are during the summer months. Born in the same year, we're the same age except for those days between our birthdays in July and September. Both T's parents and a handful of friends all have birthdays during this hottest time of year. And lest we forget, our E and many of her friends have birthdays in the summer as well. It's a solid four months of splash pads and zoo trips, of sunscreen and melting frosting. The slap of little feet in flip flops across the wet concrete and echoing shouts of laughter. There's much singing of Happy Birthday to be had, and plenty of treats to go with all these lovely birthday wishes.

Then there's the wedding anniversaries. Ours is tomorrow; August 22nd. This year marks seven years married for us. The Copper Anniversary - which we love, as we are southwestern women at heart. My parents' anniversary is only a few days behind ours.

Admittedly, T and I haven't been very good at the whole anniversary thing since our first anniversary. Since then, life has gotten in the way and we haven't felt called to have parties or even do much by way of celebrating. I like to think that we celebrate each other daily, even if that's not always true. Seven years hitched and ten years together feels like a good long time. My wife is a foregone conclusion - in the very best way possible. She's my rock, my sounding board, my tether to logic and reason. Ever the sensible and responsible one, my darling lady. This year was a pretty special one though, in that our state recognized our marriage early in the year and then the Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage is legal nationally - this is our first anniversary that our home state "counts" us as a married couple. Able to file jointly on both state and federal taxes for the first time. Able to both have legal rights to our children. Able to own our home together, instead of her half and my half. We considered doing a vow renewal for our anniversary this year, to celebrate with those who we missed celebrating with seven years ago. Unfortunately we weren't able to make that happen this summer. It simply was too costly. Then I ended up pregnant and now I'm selfishly thankful that I'm not about to be photographed in my current "chubbily pregnant" state. Regardless of gifts and cards though, I've never been more grateful for my wife than this year. The pregnancy hasn't been easy on me, and I've relied upon her moreso than I would have wished. I know it's been difficult for her, and she has truly impressed me beyond measure with her ability to stay cool under the pressure of running our lives. Just to embarrass her for a moment, I want to tell you all that she's done 100% of the toddler wake-ups and drop-offs and probably 99% of her bedtimes. She's singlehandedly balanced our budget, gotten all our bills paid on time, undertaken all the meal-planning, shopping, and cooking. Oh, and did I mention, she also got a promotion at work during all this? And she's taken time away from work to attend our prenatal appointments. I know she knows I'm thankful, but it can't hurt to reiterate.

Thank you my love, for being a supportive and endlessly understanding partner during our whole relationship - but particularly the last two months.

In September, we also take time to remember the family matriarchs whom we've lost. T and I both mourn the deaths of our maternal grandmothers in September. Both strong women, forces to be reckoned with in each of their respective clans. Both grandmothers struggled with our relationship, and I think I can speak for both of us when I say that I regret they departed this life without knowing the depth of joy and love we've found, and without having known their great-grandchildren. In many ways, this feels like a too-abrupt ending; a cliffhanger without a sequel; a novel whose writer never finished. I cannot believe that either one would have wished to miss out on our babies. I hope that in their own ways, perhaps these absent grandmothers get to witness our family growing and to know our children, even if from a great distance. You are both missed.

All these things cause me to reflect. I'm 14 weeks pregnant now, with likely the only pregnancy I'll carry. I know that come March, I'll be alone in this body once more and forever. I know and have said often to myself that I need to try and relish this time, to celebrate the life growing within me. But I frequently find myself firmly mired in each moment, thinking only of my discomfort and wishing I felt better. Then I feel guilty for not cherishing every second, even the ones spent vomiting or with a cramping stomach.

I've spent the better portion of these last two months either being sick, uncomfortable, or asleep. I've thought only of what I must force myself to do that minute, or the next. There's been little time to daydream about this baby. As you might imagine, this isn't exactly how I envisioned pregnancy going for me. Thinking about the last two months makes me feel very sad and full of regret, and yet I cannot see how to have done it differently. I've had this conversation (if you will) with a few people, and some seem to find it distressing that I'm not the happy, glowing pregnant woman they want me to be. I think this is probably just the first of many times that I'll disappoint my adoring fans with what they feel must be inappropriate feelings or reactions, but I've come to a conclusion. It's just too much pressure to try and feel joyful all the time. Sometimes, the fact is, it sucks to feel sick and that must be acceptable.

Now, all that being said - I seem to be feeling better and less volatile this week. I'm glad. So very glad. Bring on some new kind of pregnancy torture - this "morning" sickness is for the birds. I'm looking forward to our Centering classes starting in September, and I'm also excited for E's and my birthdays. We're extra fortunate this year to be able to take E to visit my great aunt and uncle for the first time in Iowa, and I am so happy. I'm waiting patiently (NOT) to feel the babe begin to move, and I am so excited for T and E to feel it, too. Our anatomy scan is scheduled in October, just after a good friend is getting married. Truly, I feel like we're on the brink of some grand adventures and I'm glad to put the first trimester behind us. I hope to find a little bit more of myself in the second.

To sum up: Happy Birthday! Happy Anniversary! Happy memories! Happy life!

A baby shower and an update

A few weekends ago was our baby shower!  It was a tad later than is considered "normal" to have a shower, as T was 35 weeks (at the time...), but our schedules and family schedules have been crazy!  Our good friend Deb offered to host the shower when we had just barely told her we were having a baby, and she lives in this awesome community where they have a kitchen and common room for large gatherings.  She put up with all our control issues gracefully and provided fantastic food and wisdom for us.  Thank you, Deb.  You've been an incredible friend for many years, and I count us as extremely fortunate to have you in our lives.

Our shower was full of love and laughter, carnitas tacos and chocolate buttermilk cupcakes.  Everyone gathered together to share food and stories and the atmosphere was thick with the love everyone has for us and for Evie.  It was nothing short of incredible.  I doubt I could ever thank the people who attended thoroughly enough for their generosity - especially the family and friends who came from a distance to spend the evening with us in celebration.

Many people wrote to Evie in her leatherbound "Love Letters" book that we've been writing to her in since her conception - I cherish these little notes.

We also had a table set up outside, where everyone rubber-banded onesies (and some shirts and socks) and tie-dyed them!  Check out what they all look like together:

Amazing, right?!  We love them, thanks to everyone who made one!

Not only did we come away from the shower with our hearts and bellies full, but our CR-V was full of gifts for Ever, too!  Wow, everyone.

There's just... it's overwhelming.  Whoa.  I can't help but feeling that everyone overspent, shouldn't have spoiled us so entirely.  Don't get me wrong, we are intensely thankful but at the same time, we just aren't accustomed to being so thoroughly at the center of so many presents and so much attention!

Now, T is 36 weeks 5 days.  Time continues to slip through my fingers and we find ourselves only one more day from the date that marks our Evie as "full-term".  I think I've spent much of T's pregnancy in a state of amazement, in awe of the human body and in awe of her body, specifically.  The creation of new life - what could be more impressive?

Since the baby shower, we've dropped off in our blog writing, in our social media participation, in many aspects of keeping in touch.  Our apologies.  The days have simply been packed full of things to do, places to go, and jobs to work.  The whole pregnancy, we've been saying that we need to clean out the office and make it into a guest room.  Of course, the nursery also needs finishing, and on top of those things we'd hoped to get all our carpet steam-cleaned.

Maybe there's always things that don't get accomplished on everyone's "Before Baby Comes" list.  Or maybe everyone else is less ambitious.  Or maybe they all had their houses in order before they got pregnant.  Or maybe they care less.  Who knows.  I am certain that there aren't enough hours in the day.  It gets quickly overwhelming when I think about all the little things I'd hoped to get done before little girl arrives, but I'm doubtful now.

Thankfully, the office/guest room is nearly finished.  Just in the organizing phase now, which is annoying and time-consuming and I can't watch the Olympics while I do it. The nursery is so close to being done, just waiting on some photographs for the walls.  (Her dresser is pleasantly filling up with clothes!  Amazing!)

Now for what you all want to know about: T and E!  T is exhausted much of the time now, and I keep trying to tell her that her job is only to keep cooking Evie and stay rested.  She is the eternal "do-er" and seems intensely frustrated by her tiredness and physical limitations.  Pregnancy isn't for the faint of heart, as it turns out.  Soon you'll be done with this part, love, and you can climb all the ladders and carry anything you want. Evie seems to be doing just peachy, she's very active and enjoys torturing T by stretching, punching, and kicking everything and everywhere.

At our most recent Centering class, the midwife mentioned that Evie had descended down into T's pelvis some and was positioned well.  We are so thankful she's head-down!  T's Braxton-Hicks contractions have been growing more and more intense, and it seems that her body is doing a lot of exercise in preparation for birth.

Last weekend we took some belly photos, I'd like to share them with you all:

And a couple teaser nursery photos!

The photographs on the wall are all courtesy of my mother, who spent all day watching her poppies blossom and taking amazing photos of them.  We are so pleased that all the photographs going on the walls in Evie's room were taken by my mother or T's mother; Evie has such incredible grandmothers and we are so glad for them.

Until next time... I hope life finds you all well.

Rough Night

Just wanted to write a quick post about our adventures last night. It was scary, but everything seems to be fine now.

Right after I got home from work, I was going outside to check the mail.  The dog decided to follow me out (which he is well trained not to do).  I told him to go back in and he didn't so I turned to get him and take him back inside.  Evidently I moved too fast and lost my footing which made me tumble forward.  I really don't know how it all happened, it was too fast.  I took most of the force on my right hand and left knee, and somehow really hurt my ribs.  I did get my belly a bit which sent me into a nice long Braxton-Hicks contraction.

I stumbled inside and collapsed on the couch while I remembered how to breath and took inventory of my injuries.  My belly finally relaxed and the baby started kicking after a little while.  I texted A to let her know what happened and decided to wait to talk to the midwife until I was at our Centering Class later in the evening.

When it was our turn with the midwife I told her what happened.  She listened to the baby's heartbeat, which was normal and told me what their procedure was for belly trauma.  Since my belly didn't take the worst of the fall she wasn't sure if I could get away with skipping all the extra tests and had me talk to the other midwife at the clinic.  The second midwife said we should go to the hospital for monitoring, just in case.

The next 4 hours were spent at the hospital. The baby really didn't like the hours of doppler and kept kicking the monitor and moving so it wouldn't pick up her heartbeat. They also decided I needed to go ahead and get a RhoGAM shot since my blood is Rh negative even though the midwife though I could wait until the normal 28 weeks.  Once I finally had the shot we had a quick ultrasound to check fluid levels (which were perfect), and went on our way. 

Since then I have been quite sore and having more contractions than normal, but they aren't often or regular enough to raise any red flags.

So yeah, nice way to ring in the last trimester (which starts on Saturday)!

Centering Pregnancy

Wednesday evening, we headed over to the Birth Center (I drove as T scarfed down a gluten-free english muffin with an egg in it...) to attend our first Centering class.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar, Centering Pregnancy and Centering class(es) refers to the same thing. It's a program through the Birth Center in which women of similar gestation and their partners regularly meet together under the guidance of a midwife and a nurse.  This program takes the place of the majority of our remaining prenatal appointments.  Instead of having a routine prenatal appointment every four weeks, we have a Centering class every four weeks.  (Until the appointments would be closer together, at which time the Centering sessions get closer together, and so on.)  *I'd like to point out here that there are still a couple of appointments, for the Glucose Tolerance Test/RhoGAM shot, and one to go over our birth plan.

Centering Pregnancy advocates for women to take a larger responsibility in their own prenatal care while simultaneously providing them with a community of others going through the same stages in their pregnancies.  At every session, each couple has individual time with the midwife to talk about questions and concerns, hear the baby on the Doppler, and have the baby belly measured.  At the beginning of each session, every pregnant participant weighs herself and records her own blood pressure - a nurse takes it, but we have a chart that we keep ourselves and write everything down in.  The midwife inquires after these vitals during the one-on-one time.  During the time the midwife is with each couple separately, everyone else eats snacks and chats and gets to know one another.

Centering Pregnancy is a program that is nationwide, and is supported in many other birth centers and hospitals across the country.

So, our night, our first session.  We arrived and everyone was shepherded into the Community Room, where chairs and couches had been set up in a circle.  The nurse, Jennifer, handed around markers and nametags, and then pushed her blood pressure checker machine thing around the circle and took all the blood pressures - of the pregnant women, not the rest of us!  She handed out binders to everyone with all the information for all 10 sessions.

There was the obligatory "Let's go around the circle and introduce ourselves!"  Which is always fun, when you're T & A.  T made sure to refer to me as her wife, so others would know how we identify with each other, and told everyone that we're expecting our first and that we'd just learned that we are having a baby girl.  (Joy!  I'm still filled with joy.)  I assumed ahead of time that we'd be the only lesbian couple, and I was correct.  Everyone else had a husband.  T was the only one with a wife; what a lucky girl she is.

The midwife introduced herself, but really the informational session was headed by the nurse.  Nurse Jennifer.  Who, incidentally, is also pregnant and due in September, which I thought was cool.

We discovered that there are 10 sessions in Centering, but the last one is actually a reunion, held in October after all the September babies have arrived.  The 9th session is 2 weeks after T's due date, and the 8th session is ON the due date, LOL.  The midwife assured us the 8th and 9th sessions are mostly review sessions and opportunities to commiserate and ask any remaining questions.  If we're that concerned, we'll just review the material in our handy dandy ... NOTEBOOK!  (Blue's Clues, anybody?)

The information in this first session is nothing we didn't know already.  One of the curses of being super duper excited about babies and reading everything I could get my hands on before we were even trying.  This session was about nutrition.  I'm already tired of hearing about it; I can't imagine how T is tolerating it.

At one point, another person due on the same day as T was talking about lunchmeat and do we *really* need to heat it?  The nurse suggested to just heat it until it's steaming, and the woman made a face and commented that it sounded really unappetizing that way, because "who really wants a pile of steaming meat?"  Which I thought was a point well-made.  She had all of us laughing so hard.

There are five other couples, in addition to us.  Twelve people total, in these sessions, and I guess our group is a large one.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that all the other couples were easy to talk to and it didn't feel awkward to be gay in that room.  I find that to be sometimes a rare commodity when first meeting a large group of new people who share only a pregnancy in common.  However, nobody batted an eye and everyone was very friendly.  Yay for that!

I fear that to combat potential awkwardness, my response is sometimes too pushy, too loud, or might seem like I'm trying too hard.  Before I knew it, we'd told stories about how we came up with baby girl's name, about our unplanned/unknown horse pregnancy, and about our gay family practice doctor.  In addition of course to stories about our ultrasound and about how excited we were to be having a daughter.

I did try to ask other couples questions and steer conversations their way, but I guess sometimes I'm simply too hilarious and charming and the conversation comes right back to me.  Rather like a boomerang.  What to do, what to do.  I will try to step back a little in our next class (if I can remember; it's not for another month!) and not seem terribly overbearing or needy.  Yikes.  Sorry, T.  I can be an embarrassment at times, haha.

Finally it was our turn to have midwife-time.  Naturally, we were last because I was busy chatting everyone else up until they'd all left... We got to hear little girl's heartbeat in several different ways, which was totally awesome.  We heard the heartbeat through her umbilical cord AND from her little body, both close up and far away.  Or at least as far away as she can get in the space of a uterus.  I didn't realize that you could hear a baby's heartbeat so many ways!  The midwife was more than happy to move the Doppler around and demonstrate the different ways to hear it.  She also pointed out that the squiggly noises were from darling daughter's movements!  Very cool.  T said that she was kicking away during the class, and she was certainly very active when the Doppler was looking for her.

And that was it.  All in all, we had a lot of fun meeting everyone and learning about their families.  As we suspected, the information isn't really anything new but we can always find something to take away from it.  That's the same experience we had with our foster parenting classes, as well, and both the foster classes and the Centering sessions are for 10 weeks - how funny.  Centering isn't 10 consecutive weeks, though.

I've blathered on long enough.  That's all for this evening!