Born in the Bed You Were Made

By Brooklyn James

What the hell happened?

Not exactly the question one might expect from a postpartum nurse, it echoed in my mind incessantly after birth. Induction, intervention, ultimately cesarean were nothing new to me...until I was the one atop an operating room table birthing my firstborn through an incision in my uterus.

Brooklyn James grapples with her medicalized birth as she undergoes several unexpected health issues—fallout from a medically unnecessary cesarean, secondary infertility, miscarriage. While navigating the work and pleasure of new motherhood, there is also much shock, anger, and disenchantment over birth’s betrayal for her to work through. James finally identifies the root of her struggle: she was not prepared for the birth she might have envisioned. So then begins her exploration of all that is and all that can be in birth. The process leads her to a long overdue conversation with her instinct and her body in an attempt to surrender to, trust in, and accept the inherent wisdom within.

Born in the Bed You Were Made is intimate and penetrating, candid and reflective. It reveals a deeper truth about how disconnected many modern women are from birth. Most of all, it is a celebration of self-discovery found in the most obscure yet obvious, most challenging yet gratifying, role as child bearer and mother.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brooklyn James
• Release date: Dec 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463995563

Brooklyn James

Brooklyn James is an author/singer-songwriter who savors any opportunity to combine both books and music. Her first novel, The Boots My Mother Gave Me, has an original music soundtrack, making for a unique Audible experience. Out of Boots grew a platform where it was Brooklyn's honor to serve as a guest speaker with a focus on awareness and prevention of domestic violence and suicide.Her latest speaking engagements centered around accessibility, rights, and choice in birth, as well as writing workshops on how to put pen to paper composing one's own birth story with the release of her birth memoir, Born in the Bed You Were Made: One Family's Journey from Cesarean to Home Birth.Just Shelby gifted both the challenge and the thrill of this author's primary exploration into the Young Adult genre. She cherishes feedback from reader reviews, if you should be so inclined.Moonlighting occasionally in voice-over and film, Brooklyn played a Paramedic in a Weezer video, met Harry Connick Jr. as an extra on the set of When Angels Sing, appeared in Richard Linklater's Boyhood for all of a nanosecond, and was a stand-in and stunt double for Mira Sorvino on Jerry Bruckheimer's Trooper pilot for TNT. Although reading, dancing, working out, and a good glass of kombucha get her pretty excited, she finds most thrilling the privilege of being a mother to two illuminating little souls and a wife to the one big soul from whom they get their light.Brooklyn holds an M.A. in Communication, and a B.S. in both Nursing and Animal [e-mail]

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Arena Books, Austin, Texas

Arena Books titles may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please contact:

www.brooklyn-james.com

Edited by Cynthia Gage

Cover design © Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations

Interior book design by Champagne Book Design

First Edition—December 2018

ISBN: 978-1-73081-154-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018913240

Printed in the United States of America

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This is a work of nonfiction, and the events it recounts are true. However, certain names and identifying characteristics of some of the people who appear in its pages have been changed or excluded altogether to protect others’ privacy and good name.

The perspective published in this book is in good faith. The publisher and author assume no responsibility or liability for any adverse effects from the use of information contained in this book.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Foreword

Part I: the doing

1. I Know Nothing

2. Blue Curtain

3. Nurse Curse

4. Come Undone

5. Standing Orders

6. Katie Holmes’ Smile

7. Open

8. Dumb Luck

9. All Packed

10. More Is Less

11. Hobson’s Choice

12. Not Even A Fingertip

13. Insufficient Knowledge

14. The Average Woman

15.What If

16. What More

17. Just In Case

18. Slow Learner

Part II: the learning

19. Biological Clock

20. Tripartite

21. Storm The Castle

22. No Outlet

23. Egg Whites & BBT

24. Hurry Up And Wait

25. Expecting

26. Chant Sheet

27. Pain Cube

28. The Lizard & The Lotus

29. You’re Gonna What

30 Data…Yawn

31. Nurses On Horseback

32. Nesting

Part III: the realizing

33. I Know A Little Something

34. Sleep…While You Can

35. Wonder Midwife

36. Push That Baby Out

37. Now

38. She’s Got The Look

39. Laborland

40. Rabbit Hole

41. Moo-Howl-Roar

42. Adventure Of A Lifetime

43. Look What She Just Did

44. Pushy

45. The Body That Birth Built

46. He’s Home

47. Placenta Party

48. Birthing Among Women

Notes

Gratitude

About The Author

THERE ARE FEW TIMES IN a woman’s life where the passion of love, the surrender of nature, and the power of the body are so evident than during the labor and birth of a child. This is her unleashing, and her complete and utter joy. The birth of a child changes everything: whether or not she realizes it, she is forever different.

There are as many different experiences of birth as there are mothers. As mothers, our stories frame who we are, who our children are, and how our children see birth. Our stories are important! They matter.

I decided after birthing four children in a hospital setting in the 1990s to become a home birth midwife. This seemed, to many, like a wild and crazy idea. When I was pregnant, I didn’t know about midwives. I didn’t know there was an option to birth at your home with a knowledgeable, caring woman whom you had built a relationship with during your pregnancy. I spent a total of about 45 minutes with my OB during each pregnancy. When I went into labor, I drove to the hospital, then labored in bed while connected to IV’s and monitors. And when I was ready, I pushed my babies out into the hands of a doctor I hadn’t even met. But I thought it was good. I wasn’t induced. I hadn’t had epidurals. I hadn’t had any cesarean sections. My labors were fairly fast, and there were no complications. I would have been the perfect candidate for home birth. If I had only known.

After having a dream about attending a woman at her birth and a conversation about that dream with a dear friend, she invited me to her home birth. My life was changed forever. I met her midwife before the birth during a prenatal visit, and then she spent 45 minutes with her midwife at that appointment alone. The midwife addressed her fears. They talked about nutrition, her stress level, and her expectations for this birth. My friend asked questions that were answered fully, and she expressed her desires for this birth. I learned things about pregnancy and birth that I had never learned, even though I had birthed four children. The fact of this kind of care in pregnancy was a revelation to me.

When my friend went into labor, I went to her home. We walked, we squatted, we prayed, we laughed, and we walked some more. As her labor progressed, her midwife arrived with an assistant, set up her equipment in the bedroom, monitored mama and baby intermittently between the walking, squatting, praying, and laughing, and then sat in the corner while quietly knitting.

When my friend said it was time, she climbed up on her bed, gave what I call a gentle roar, and pushed her baby out. It wasn’t easy. But it was real, and it was beautiful. The energy in that room was like nothing I had ever experienced. With tears rolling down my face, I knew there was a new path for me.

I always suspected that there was more for me in birth than I had experienced. I knew that pregnancy, labor and birth held a fascination for me that I didn’t quite understand. The tears at the birth of my friend’s baby washed away those old expectations and assumptions. I didn’t know it at that moment, but that day was the beginning of my journey to becoming a midwife.

My story is special and unique to me. I have told this story to many women and men who often ask me, how did you get into midwifery? I believe my story tells of following the path others expect of you. It tells of exploration into parts of me and of others that I never dreamed I would know. It tells of compassion and empowerment.

The story told in this book is of those same things. It shares the exquisite journey of a woman through her first pregnancy, birth by cesarean section, the loss of a pregnancy, and the ultimate surrender and trust that led to a successful vaginal home birth. It is told with the voice of a great storyteller, one who you listen to with rapt attention, cry with when her heart is breaking, and laugh out loud with as she tells you what she really thinks. Brooklyn shares her thoughts and feelings openly, asking us to listen to our own hearts and best selves who almost always know what the right answer is.

I always suggest to my clients that they write down their birth stories before time and sleep deprivation cause them to forget the details. I was impressed and elated to read Brooklyn’s thoughts and feelings about her birth experiences. I am always grateful and honored to be invited into the very intimate setting of a family’s birth, and it is a great pleasure for me to invite you to read Brooklyn’s birth memoir Born in the Bed You Were Made.

Genevieve Schaefer, LM, CPM

Sisters Midwifery, Austin, TX

July 2018

THEY’RE COMING. CONTRACTIONS. AND I don’t know what to do.

I should have paid attention to the title of the only pregnancy-related book I thumbed through over the past nine months. It is quite clear that What to Expect When You’re Expecting is about…expecting.

I am no longer expecting. That cozy, magical, anticipatory stage gave way hours ago to something jarring, real, something I never anticipated.

This is not expecting. This is not pregnancy. This is labor. This is birth. I am not prepared for this.

Don’t read anything, they said. It’ll just scare you.

A sentiment to which I eagerly concurred.

Preeclampsia, placenta previa, nuchal cord, hemorrhage—these are but a few of the many terms that could rattle the nerves of any well-read pregnant woman. I know about these complications, as I am a registered nurse in the Postpartum Mother/Baby Unit.

I know too much. That’s what got me into this predicament to begin with. I should have stayed home, gotten some rest, and gauged contraction status. Basically, I should have given labor a chance. I should not have let them induce me. But I did, because as hospital legend goes…

Active labor and delivery must be achieved within 12-24 hours of membrane rupture/water breaking or the following may occur:

increased risk of infection, which can lead to…

chorioamnionitis, which can lead to…

newborn being whisked off to NICU—Neonatal Intensive Care Unit—which is every birthing parent’s worst nightmare.

Yet I know nothing. Contractions. They just keep coming. I wondered what they would feel like. Why did I stop at wondering? Why didn’t I explore contractions further, at least attempt to simulate them somehow, or at best actively participate in a birthing class that may have armed me with techniques in coping with them?

For these contractions make me feel as if I am an object in a vise, a bench vise equipped with metal jaws that clamp, hold, and force something, usually wood, together in its clutches. Yes, my lower back feels like it is in that vise. I am so sorry to any piece of wood I handled in shop class, to every piece of wood I coerced into a vise that must have felt like my lumbar with every contraction. It is crushing and on the verge of splintering. The pressure is unlike anything I have ever felt. Unbearable. Unmanageable.

No longer having to wonder what contractions feel like, I am left still to wonder how will I ever get through these contractions?

I am active, upright, and pacing. It feels like the thing to do. And…oh…sweet Jesus…please…here comes another squeeze. My eyes widen like a frightened animal, nostrils flaring and snorting. My jaw—akin to my lower back—is clenched and unsupportive of oxygen flow. I lean against the sink, the wall, my husband, anything. My knees buckle under mounting pressure.

Knees. I want to get on my hands and knees. That’s what instinct tells me to do. But again, I know too much. I can’t get on my hands and knees on this hospital floor. Although custodial services mopped it down after the last laboring woman, it is not her germs that concern me. Oxymoronically, super-sanitized hospitals in fact have many germs and are home to superbugs.

I can’t crawl around on the floor anyhow. What am I, an animal? Yes. Yes, I am! But I would not know this until my second birth. Right now, I know nothing.

Instead of instinctively listening to my body, I aim to be logical. In the few precious minutes of rest between contractions, I squander time thinking. Think. Think. Think! Before it comes back. How am I going to get through this?

You work out, you run, you are strong. I start the pep talk to myself. You have a powerful will…right? I mean, come on, you packed up with $600 to your name and drove off in a beat-up jalopy one week after high school graduation to a city 800 miles away where you knew no one and didn’t even have a place to stay, but you did…stay. You roped 200-pound calves from the saddle of a horse and wrestled them to the ground in order to tag their ears for identification purposes. You put in 16-hour days for weeks at a time in city after city with a traveling fashion show. You passed the CPAT—Candidate Physical Ability Test—for firefighters with time to spare! Heck, you survived the night shift in an Adult Medical/Surgical Intensive Care Unit straight out of a BSN program.

You’re tough…right. Right? Yes!

That’s how I am going to get through this. I am going to outmuscle, outrun, and outwork labor itself. That’s right. I’m going to out will labor, because that’s logical.

And the labor goddesses laugh.

But I don’t hear them because I am too busy psyching myself up as if I am about to run the ten-mile loop at Town Lake, as if I am about to put up a one-rep max bench press. Okay, yeah, get mad at it! You got this! I’m pacing, joggling my arms and legs, limbering up…oblivious to the fact that I am wasting energy…essential energy.

Contraction. Oh…good…God. I writhe and contort, overcome with resistance and anxiety and adrenaline yet again. How am I going to get through this? This contraction has not even peaked and I am already thinking about how to get through the next one…and the next one…and the next one. The moment escapes me while my jaw seizes hold of groans and moans and roars that would give anything to escape me.

I work in this hospital. I can’t make a scene. I can’t growl. What am I, an animal? Yes. Yes, I am! But I would not know this until my second birth. Have I mentioned that I know nothing.

Consequently, my rational thinking brain repeats this fruitless cycle over and over and over again—fight, fear, flight.

The thinking brain is, without a doubt, impressive. This outermost, superficial, more recently evolved new brain used by higher mammals and humans knows a lot. The same as every other human, my new brain knows things via observation, inquiry, information, deducing. But my new brain knows nothing about birthing. Birth cannot be navigated intellectually.

Birth is best navigated by the primitive brain. Equally impressive, this innermost, deepest old brain that evolved hundreds of millions of years ago giving rise to the reptilian age knows a lot, too. It is a unique kind of knowing. Again, the same as every other human, my old brain needs no teaching; it just knows. Basic physiological functions—hormones, emotion, memory, heart rate, blood pressure, moving, resting, feeding, breathing, birthing—are in my old brain’s wheelhouse, its primary concern to ensure my survival.¹

Survival…

That’s how I could get through this.

Reflexive, autonomic, involuntary—the old brain does without knowing it is doing. Routinely operating on the fly, reacting, and adjusting via an inherent feedback mechanism, the old brain is literally connected to the body.

I, the ego, the thinking self, I…do not know how to do this. But my body knows. My old brain knows, the brain connected to my body. The same body that has been wanting to get down on hands and knees on the floor. The same body that has been wanting to bellow, mouth open, to let go of the jaw, from the depths of its solar plexus.

That’s how I could get through this.

But I don’t. Unwittingly, I continue to sabotage my own efforts. I continue to listen to my new brain, which only inhibits my old brain. Mind and consciousness refuse to get out of the way, refuse to fade into the background and let intuition and body take over. I, the ego, the thinking self, I…cannot do this.

Sometime around shift change, after being up all night and enduring at least twelve hours of an artificial/induced labor, and zapped of its strength, its will, its toughness, the ego surrenders to the epidural.

Surrender…

Now there’s a concept. One I wouldn’t consider until left with no way out.

THIRTY HOURS LATER:

Cold.

Sterile.

Blinding.

You’re so strong…and brave, babe.

I’m so proud of you.

I love you.

We’re really doing this.

We’re gonna meet our baby girl…any minute now.

My husband, Wade, is no longer coaching at my side in the labor room. He soothes from a chair in the operating room at the most superior position of my anatomy—my head. He is situated there for three reasons:

This is where his chair was placed.

They do not want him to see.

He does not want to see.

And I definitely do not want to see. I don’t even want to think about what they are doing to my body, my abdomen, my uterus.

But I have seen…all the c-sections I ever want to see. Again, I know too much. That is why I am retching into a pink kidney-shaped plastic basin.

I know what they are doing behind the blue curtain. They are cutting through my skin, layer by layer, then into my fascia. Don’t think about it! Retch. Get yourself together. Focus. Look at Wade. It is going to be okay. Smile.

They are separating my rectus abdominis. My abs. Abs that support my core. Abs I have grown quite fond of in my health and fitness efforts. Vain? Maybe. Nonetheless, they are separating them—abs that by nature want to contract inward and together, an intrinsic reaction to protect the organs beneath—and literally prying them apart. Don’t think about it! Retch.

They have to part the abdomen to get to the peritoneum where another incision will be made exposing my guts. Yep, bowel and bladder—susceptible to nicks and damage, accidental of course. But it can and does happen. And I agreed to this? I signed off? Gave my informed consent? Don’t think about it! Retch.

All of that isn’t even the unnerving detail. What is unnerving is once they get my bladder pushed down and away for its own safety, they are going to cut into my uterus. My uterus which cocoons our precious baby girl—susceptible to nicks and damage, accidental of course. But it can and does happen. Retch! Retch! Retch!

I can barely feel any part of my body below the blue curtain. Just some pressure, a few tugs and pulls. C-sections are rough. There is nothing gentle about a cesarean. Cut, tug, pull, sponge, suction, cauterize, repeat. My body has to endure all of this alone because my brain has been tricked into thinking we are pain free. That is what the epidural does: blocks the transmission of pain signals to the brain by manipulating the nerve fibers that travel through the epidural space of the spinal cord. Apparently it has blocked my common sense, too. This is unnecessary, neither an emergency surgery nor a lifesaving surgery. How did it come to this? Why did you agree to this?

Don’t think about it! You’re okay. She’s okay. Look at Wade. Focus on him. Sweet man. God, I love him. Concern and wonder whirl in his compassionate eyes, his beautiful blue eyes with an inner ring of green flecked with gold. He is such a good man. He even remembered to bring his smartphone with my labor and delivery playlist into the operating room. Dutifully, he holds it next to my ear.

If left to me and my unwillingness to jump into the smartphone pond, the playlist would have been on my gym/running MP3 player with battery life up to eighteen hours. We just surpassed hour thirty and, quite frankly, I’m growing tired of my playlist. One more thing I failed to prepare for. Up-tempo workout songs are not that inspiring in labor. Salt-N-Pepa’s Push It is not so cheeky after all. Guess I thought labor was going to be a party. I knew nothing.

But the song playing now doesn’t bother me. It is perfect, really, a rare melancholy jam. Willie Nelson’s Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain reminds me of my grandmother. Gram had blue eyes. Gram gave birth to ten of her eleven children at home. I thought about a home birth with a midwife. My insurance would not cover it. So here I am…strapped to this table. Arms straight out to the sides, think Jesus on the cross. So I do…think of him, too.

Wade, Willie, Gram, and Jesus—with the four of them present, my retching subsides.

The chatter and activity behind the blue curtain shift from routine to climactic. In an instant, relief numbs worry, as swift and direct to my system as the numbing medication through my epidural. Relief comes in the form of a vigorous wildcat cry. A wildcat cry that to this day I can hear. My eyes and Wade’s eyes dart to the direction from which our just-born daughter’s promising pitch comes before a swift change of course to each other’s eyes. Our vision clouded amidst pooling tears, our lips seek and find connection by way of a Spiderman kiss. The room reverberates with triumphant laughter, now that we can.

Go, babe, go, I encourage, sensing that he is conflicted. Is he supposed to stay with me or go to her?

I want to go to her. That cry does something to me. Although I am unable to feel anything below my navel, I could feel that cry. Did that lower back vise somehow latch onto my heart with its iron jaws? No. It is that cry, innocent yet formidable. It has wafted its way into my body, enveloping my heart with its needs-be-met melody.

The monitor to which the anesthesiologist has me hooked actually starts beeping, a warning sign. The little red heart flashes, lub-dubbing over one hundred beats per minute. With her hand prepped over the epidural portal in case she needs to push a larger dose of pain medication through it, the anesthesiologist asks, Are you okay? Are you in pain?

I shake my head. I am not in pain per se. But something is happening. Something new and biologic—my heart, tethered to that eight-pound bundle of delectable flesh and bone that we made and has emerged from my uterus, is actually racing in response to her cry. The intrinsic reaction makes it easy for me to grasp an Elizabeth Stone quote I recently read: Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

I reach for her, but my arms do not cooperate. They are still tied down. All I can do is swallow the mounting lump at the back of my throat and make some sort of desperate growling sound. Her wild cry brings out something untamed in me. I want to bellow Let me up! Give her to me! But I don’t because I know they won’t. They can’t. I can’t. Yet it doesn’t negate how much I want to be the first to hold her, be the first eyes she looks into, to smell her skin and have her smell mine, to nuzzle up together, cement that bond, claim her as my own. I carried her for thirty-nine weeks and one day already—grew her inside my womb, shared oxygen, blood, nourishment, emotions, hopes, dreams, everything—and I will carry her for the rest of my life. As soon as I can get up from this damn table.

Finally it stops…as she makes eye contact with her daddy.

Hi, baby girl, Wade coos, mere inches in front of her face.

And she looks at him peacefully, quietly, knowingly. Yes, to him she belongs, a true born daddy’s girl.

I wouldn’t take that moment away from him…from them. He got to see her first. He loves that, and so does she when she recreates the story of her birth:

…I wanted back in Mama’s belly. I said ‘Waaah! Waaah! Waaah!’ But, but, but…then I saw Daddy. I said ‘That’s my daddy.’ I was so happy to meet him I stopped crying…

Wade and Mila’s meeting first would be the only saving grace of that c-section.

HAS THERE EVER BEEN A term more misleading than morning sickness?

I get it. The increase of pregnancy hormones, such as progesterone and hCG—human chorionic gonadotropin—coupled with lower blood sugar levels in the morning make a fine case for morning sickness. But it only shattered expectations as I counted, day after day, the hours from morning through afternoon and deep into the night, waiting determinedly for a settled feeling in my tummy that took thirteen weeks in coming.

I never felt