Birth of a son

Little baby Thorn comes into the world

It’s normal - we were told - for first time births to go to 41 weeks. Then - as 42 weeks approached - everybody began to freak out.

Our midwife couldn’t do a home birth past 42 weeks, and wanted to induce. The hospital, we were told, would be upset if we went in past the 42-week mark.

I was skeptical. If we had been told that the danger moment was 41 weeks 6 days and 4 hours - I might have believed - but 42 weeks is too round a number to be real. The kind of number that institutions love to throw around.

Your chances of miscarriage double after 42 weeks, we were told. In the fine print we found that it doubled from 0.2% to 0.4%. Very scary.

Nonetheless the midwife wouldn’t go past that arbitrary moment. We were getting little contractions - but nothing real. We tried castor oil and got contractions that eventually petered out. We tried a cervix sweep which brought them back and then they left again. We slept fitfully, waking up through contractions - eventually sleeping through them as morning came.

That first night we got contractions. I set everything up perfect. Candles lit, fires prepped, hot water ready, food prepared. The house was spotless. I remember holding Talia through the early contractions, trying to figure out what a contraction even felt like - and then they faded. Thorn wasn’t quite ready to be born.

I was skeptical of induction - we were clearly almost there - within days - and a baby will be born when their astrology is right - why rush it? We couldn’t get a straight answer. Some people said the old midwife’s rule used to be 44 weeks. Others said we should have induced earlier. One nurse finally said that the reality is that the placenta isn’t made to last that long and begins to decay - she admitted it’s not tied to the specific date - but that there is a physical reality.

We decided to sleep before inducing - coming into the hospital at 42 weeks and 1 day. Rulebreakers.

---

Peccalah came in the morning, bringing gifts of broth and goodwill. We had been going full meal train - another neighbor had given us soup in her living room the night before. So much support. Joy had been there too - offering any help we needed.

As was our custom we drew runes in the morning - and invited Peccalah to do so as well. She pulled Thorn. We mentioned that the rune had been coming up a lot in conjunction with the baby. She mentioned that Thurisaz - the norse name for the rune - has an energy connected to the Jotun. The untamed. The wild. The ancient powers older than the gods.

---

We arrived at the hospital around noon. Talia was having inconsistent contractions that were picking up. I took two trips up to bring all our stuff - we brought food and herbs and as many hides as we could fit. Wolfee, Chrysanthemum, and Foxie, the trinity of canines I put on the bed next to Talia. I covered the barren hospital room with the furs of the tended dead until it smelled a little like home.

Trudy who we had so enjoyed in our hospital tour was there, along with a nurse named Allie. They helped us get settled. Our midwife came and talked to the nurses and sat with us. Outr neighbor came and brought us a hot water bottle just as the male doctor came in, talkative and confident telling us we were going to do what we knew we had come for - a little bit of pitocin - and then see how Talia’s body reacted.

They hooked up the IV and started with 2 units - and the contractions immediately got stronger and evened out. the midwife had given us herbs to even out contractions the day before - brought to us by Ash (we reached out to 4 people - all of them said yes they would make a special trip to bring them to us) We hadn’t used them at the time - but we decided to secretly do them now. Allie was amazed that the pitocin was so effective. I think it eventually went up to 4 units and then back down to 2 - but hardly any was needed. The IV was annoying though - limiting where and how we could go.

The nurses brought in nitrous oxide - laughing gas - which is neat in that it doesn’t stay in the body and so won’t affect the baby. Talia took a couple puffs, put on her music, and began to relax into the rhythm of labor. I covered all the ugly lights with cloths and had the nurse bring fake candles. Something shifted.

Joy came around this time - helping give touch and allowing me more movement. As Talia came into a contraction we would touch her sacrum, hips and belly giving pressure for her to push against. As she began to vocalize we started gently matching her sounds - Joy providing harmonies and counterharmonies.

And then - time passed. Uncountable contractions. We sang together. All three of us were just there. Allie would come in from time to time and exclaim how beautiful we were - this was all there was.

Talia changed positions often. Shifting onto her side, back, standing with a leg up, all fours - it was while on all fours - during a contraction that her water broke explosively - baptizing Joy in the waters of the womb.

At 1:00 in the morning - around 12 hours of toning and trancing later I’m wearing Wolfee and Chrysanthemum and feeling like I could do this forever. Allie goes off shift. The midwife comes back and we transition into the tub. It’s here that the midwife offers a honey packet and Talia taps back into a sense of her energy. She hasn’t eaten since breakfast.

It’s also around here that she starts pushing. She’s fully dilated - and we’re told we’re “Almost there” - and then half an hour passes. The depletion hits her all at once. I watch the trance crumble and the desperation come in. She asks for an epidural. She just wants to sleep. She drinks some juice. She asks for an epidural. She just wants to sleep.

The epidural takes a long time to come and a long time to set up. The man doing it is impatient and rude and tells Talia to sign a form she has no brain power to understand - and to her he’s an angel. When the epidural is in she falls asleep. I’m deflating now too - trance gone - bright lights returned. Nurses and doctor talking in hushed voices.

Ten minutes later a nurse comes and shakes Talia awake.

“We have to do this.” She says. “The baby had heart palpitations. Let’s go!”
And we went. Doctor and nurses gathered around the bed, Talia on her back. The doctor coached the pushing and Talia pushed - pushed until her face turned purple. Pushed with every inch of her being.

Then I saw a little patch of hair appear and disappear at the end of the push.

Talia says that after I exclaimed “I see a head!” - and she reached down and indeed felt a head - it was watching my face and the excitement on it, that kept her going. The little patch of hair appeared and disappeared over and over - probably a dozen or more times - seeming to get no closer to coming out. The doctor said that he was stuck on the pubic bone and might have his shoulder caught. The nurses huddled making sure they knew what to do.

The doctor asked permission to use a “vacuum” - which amounted to basically a large suction cup with a handle. We gave it. Baby’s heart was missing some beats - normal we were told at this stage - but not ideal.

Talia pushed, the doctor pulled, twisted and out plopped the weirdest thing. My brain initially saw a head attached to a dead grey-blue floppy chicken. I imagined this thing must be malformed - but then as they slapped him onto Talia’s chest I saw arms and legs and the rough shape of what a baby should have. The nurses exclaimed that he looked healthy - and indeed as he made his first kitten-like cries he grew pinker before my eyes. I glanced at my phone - it had just turned 4:01 - he had been born at 4:00. The nurse later claimed 3:58. I think it was 4:00 on the dot.

It was then that emotion washed through me - I cried - pausing only to tell the nurses to stop toweling him off - Talia said it was okay. And again to stop them from clamping the umbilical cord. Under the fluorescent lights I made a little blanket cave, just Talia and baby and me. They made me come out and cut the cord. The doctor pulled out the placenta and then reached forearm deep to get all the leftover membrane. Talia says she’s so glad she had the epidural for that part.

I don’t remember much of what happened after that. We didn’t sleep. I remember Talia commenting that maybe he was a Fenrir.

My mom and her husband arrived early in the morning with hot broth and held the baby. I don’t remember when I held him for the first time - but I remember lying on the couch folded out into a bed with baby on my chest. He was still “Baby” then.

Talia was learning to nurse - a harder ordeal than expected. His mouth so tiny - her n*****s the wrong shape. We wrapped him in a baby blanket - and saved the first tarry poops for the garden.

We pull runes that first day - Strength for me - initiation for Talia - Thorn for the as of yet unnamed baby.

Peccalah and Luke came with soup and a hotplate we couldn’t use - Mama came again. That second night we did sleep a little. Handing the baby off to Trudy in the middle of the night so we could exhaustedly sleep. Talia up and moving before conscious thought when she heard a baby cry of pain.

There had been other babies in the halls making other sounds - but she knew hers and that it was in pain. Trudy was doing the heel poke for the first metabolic screening.

We eat cold hospital food and stare lovingly at our baby in the darkened room and on the third day Talia puts on her raccoon vest, bundles the baby who we’re pretty sure is Thorn by now, but maybe Hawthorn and possibly Thorndris - and definitely Tandsmor Fenris of the Greenwood - onto her chest and the nurse wheels her down to the van. We leave the hospital one fox lighter, and will arrive home to one less chicken - but with the love of our lives - worth every part.

Reviews

[JayG]

• I write predominantly about myself.

And as you know, everyone here woke this morning hoping to learn what’s bothering you today. 😆

Seriously, people read for entertainment. So look at this piece as a reader must:

• It’s normal - we were told - for first time births to go to 41 weeks.

We? Who in the pluperfect hells is “we?” You know. But for the reader? Someone unknown, of unknown age and gender, was told about first-time births, for unstated reasons, in an unknown place. So, right here, because you provide no context, you lose the reader. And your story deserves better.

• Then - as 42 weeks approached - everybody began to freak out.

Everyone? Who’s everyone? And who did it approach? This is meaningless to anyone but you, because readers require context as a given line is read. You cannot retroactively remove confusion. So, a confused reader turns away right then.

• Your chances of miscarriage double after 42 weeks, we were told. In the fine print we found that it doubled from 0.2% to 0.4%. Very scary.

So... 2 out of a thousand is VERY scary? Either you don’t understand percentages or, you’re an alarmist. But that aside, you’re talking to the reader as if they already know about your situation, and actively worry about you. But they don't, so, you need to give the reader reason to.

Here are the problems you face:

1. In school we learn ONLY nonfiction writing skills because that’s what employers need. Professions—and Commercial Fiction Writing is a profession—are acquired IN ADDITION to the general skills of public education. Try to write with nonfiction skills and anything you write will read like a report. It has to.

2. The reader cannot know the emotion you would place into the words. So what rings with emotion when you read it is a dispassionate text-to-speech voice to the reader, because you’ve given them a storyteller’s script that lacks performance directions.

So, here’s the deal:

You want to write. I think that’s a great idea. And, you have the necessary perseverance. But if you’re going to go to that much trouble, and write what people won’t read because it’s in a format that FORCES it to be uninteresting, why not spend a bit of time learning the tricks that add wings to your words? If nothing else, it makes the act of writing a LOT more fun.

The learning will be filled with interesting surprises that you’ll kick yourself for not seeing without having to be told. And, you’ll be able to guide those of your students who want to write fiction into missing the traps that catch virtually all who turn to writing fiction. So, it’s win/win.

Try this: Jack Bickham’s Scene and Structure will hook you on the first page or so. So take a look. Like the proverbial chicken soup for a cold, it might not help, but it certainly won’t hurt.

https://archive.org/details/scenestructurejackbickham

And for a preview of the kind of thing you’ll learn in it, try this article, on Writing the Perfect Scene:

http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/scene.php

And perhaps it’s a bit vain of me, but my own articles and YouTube videos are meant as an overview of the many traps, gotchas, and, misunderstandings that catch so many hopeful writers.

Jay Greenstein

Articles: https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334

- - - - - -

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
~ Mark Twain

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
~ Ernest Hemingway

“I try to leave out the parts people skip.”
~ Elmore Leonard