As my children can attest, I am not much of a TV person. I think it siphons away needed brain cells and deprives our lives of valuable time. Nonetheless, when tethered to the elliptical for my workouts I am known to watch a little and one show that I often surf to is TLC’s A Baby Story. I find myself nervously pacing (well, sort of ellipticaling) beside the anxious dads, beaming eagerly with the expectant grandparents or panting and pushing along with the moms.
And all the while I am remembering the three most beautiful and difficult labors of my life and agreeing I would do them all over again.
Yes, I would pack a massive cooler for my husband and friend/doula Barb for fear that we would be stranded for days with no food and water on the island of labor and delivery.
Yes, I would stay home as long as feasibly possible contracting with baby number one, sending my neighbors into fits of “she’s going to have that baby right here on the sidewalk,” so as to avoid being sent home for coming to the hospital too early.
Yes, I would tell my husband to cross against the lights at the railroad tracks in the pouring rain with little visibility because I don’t want to have the baby in the car and besides the only train in sight is the one bearing down on my bottom.
Yes, I would tell a former neighbor who just happens to be in town for a visit “sure you can come to the delivery,” as my husband looks on with a sort of “did-she-just-say-that?!” look.
Yes, I would also allow said friend to snap all sorts of indiscrete photos of my lower-half mid-delivery only to later bury them so deep in our house I cannot find them some seventeen years on.
Yes, I would go for the epidural even though the nurse tells me I am dilated eight centimeters and probably don’t need one.
Yes, I would leave the triage area all round and contracting with baby number two because I am only five centimeters and sixty percent effaced and I am not going to be strapped down to some table because the OB who said I could walk around to labor is not on call and the OB who is, is of the let’s-get-your-epidural- and- Pitocin-and-we-will-have-this-baby-out-in-no-time school of obstetrics.
Yes, I would then go with said unborn baby number two and dear husband to the car park (some 1.5 miles away) and retrieve my bag, stop in the cafeteria and get a snack and meet our friend/doula Tish in the lobby all so I could walk around and arrive back at triage (to the relief of the intake nurse) six centimeters and fully effaced, so there.
Yes, I would spend fifteen months painfully waiting to meet our third daughter who was somewhere in an orphanage in China.
Yes, I would write to that unknown child daily in a small journal, tears streaming down my face at times, seeking God’s protection for her and telling her how we loved her and how hard it was to wait for her.
Yes, I would pray and bargain with the Lord begging him to lift the SARS-related travel ban to China so that I could please, please, please go get our dear daughter who I could not possibly wait one more minute to meet.
Yes, I would fly all the way to China, with a loving spouse and a diaper-stuffed suitcase, arriving well after midnight to sleep on what seemed like a mattressless bed and later rise at dawn to trek the Great Wall and the Forbidden City in 100 degree heat, the whole while trying to be enthusiastic but really just wanting to get our daughter.
Yes, I would then travel another four hours to yet another city, where I would walk into yet another hotel room to see a crib all set up, realizing, finally, “tomorrow that crib will hold our new daughter!”
Yes, I would stare into the unsure eyes of my new daughter, a stranger to my body but not my heart, and thank God above that she was ours and ask him to relieve her stress and help her know we love her and she is safe.
Which all leads me to my “Labor Day” – a day when instead of remembering the legacy of unions or workers’ rights, I am recalling my own labor-filled seconds, minutes, hours, days, and yes, months which brought me my three precious daughters.