Birth Day

To the woman he said, "I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children." Genesis 3:16a


With both Josie and Eadie, I was willing stay pregnant with them forever.  I didn't know exactly what their little lives had in store for them,  but I knew I didn't want to find out.  I felt they were safest and closest to me right where they were.  So much better than the alternative.  But in such things, we have no say.


My body started showing signs of going into labor mid December, so we needed to make a plan since we lived so far from the hospital.  I was told to start calling Labor and Delivery for a room on December 21st.  I guess babies love to be born around Christmas, the closer, the better, because L&D was very full and I didn't get a room until the 22nd and didn't actually get into that room until around dinner time that day.  I was exhausted.  I hadn't slept in over 24 hours.


For the birth of Josie, we had been at our home hospital, surrounded by so many people who love us and wanted so badly to meet our sweet baby girl who wasn't guaranteed that first breath.  Eadie's birth was vastly different.  Brett and I were so weary and so shell shocked, riddled with anxiety and sorrow, that we couldn't be around anyone, and as labor began to pick up, after five hours or so of Pitocin I was glad for the pain, the silence, the solace.  I was like an animal laboring in the woods.


At 37.5 weeks gestation, Eadie Joy McLeod came into this world on December 23, 2009 with a flurry of activity.  I honestly can't remember why.  She was breathing and even crying like a "normal" infant, so I have no real idea why so many people, doctors, nurses, rushed into our room when she emerged into the world.  She looks perfect.  She looks perfect.  What did that mean?


After that, I passed out, asleep, unable to stay present.  So tired, I didn't bathe my fourth child, for the first time, as I had my previous children.  A missed moment that even today, I regret, with so many moments to follow.  Unable to stay present. 


Later that day, many doctors came to get a look at our baby girl, another ultrasound is done, tests.  "She looks perfect...", let me fill in that blank for you; "if we didn't know better" doctors wanted to say.  The scans, the tests, say she was far from perfect.


A and G come to Seattle to meet their new baby sister.  What must have been going through their minds?  Oh, our kids!  They had already learned more about life and death than most adults.  We hoped that the decisions we made for them then would help, not hinder.  So far, so good.


We spend another night at the hospital, we wake up to Christmas Eve.  Eadie goes down for an MRI, just to get a better look.  More talks of surgery, of what to do, of what could be done.  For now, "nothing" they say, "Go home."


The ride home is brutal.  Eadie cries the whole way and I wonder now why I didn't just hold her.  She's gone, what would it have mattered had I held her in my arms as opposed to leaving her in a car seat?  It wouldn't have.  Mattered.  And now it does.


I guess we celebrated Christmas.  I assume we did.


Back to Seattle on the 30th, to Children's Hospital this time to meet with the neurosurgeon.  He was sweet.  Not.  He said he wouldn't operate.  "There's nothing there.  Go home." he said, right to me, as I gazed down at my nursing child.  So abrupt, so final, with very little empathy in his voice.  There's nothing there?  But she's nursing, she cries; the hopeful signs Eadie had that her sister didn't.  These had to be signs of life, right?  I guess not.  So, we went home.