Part 2

Unraveled: One Woman's Story of Moving Out, Moving On, and Becoming a Better Mother
by Maria Housden

(Page 2 of 2)

"You're doing great," she murmured softly. "Once this contraction subsides, I'll hold the mirror up so you can see the baby's head."

I nodded briefly, consumed by the intensity of the crescendo running through my body as I tried to remember to breathe. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the grip of the contraction released and my attention returned to what was happening in the room. Everyone got busy in the pause. The nurse helped the doctor position the mirror between my legs. Claude asked, "Do you want some more ice chips, honey? Is there anything you need?"

"No, just keep holding my hand. I'm doing fine as long as I know you're there."

I had barely exhaled the last word when the next contraction began. It rose like a tsunami from the center of my body. Relentlessly, it rolled outward into the whole of my awareness, swallowing any separate sense of myself. I gave myself to it - opening, offering, and surrendering. Leaning forward, aware of nothing but sensation, I saw in the mirror my swollen, bulging vagina, impossibly stretched around a protruding, dark orb. Dr. Menon took my left hand and placed it gently on the wetness between my legs.

"That," she whispered, "is your baby's head."

Some part of me, silently watching, suddenly woke up. As my fingers lightly caressed the slippery softness, the being who until now had been an inherent part of my self and my body became in this moment its own separate person, touching me with its own, slippery head!

I took a deep breath and bore down again, feeling the burn as my perineum tore. "Breathe," the nurse reminded me in a loud voice. I pulled myself away from the center of my body just long enough to expand my lungs and inhale another breath. I screwed up my face and bore down again. "Relax your face!" The nurse spoke more loudly. I had never experienced such fullness in any moment; so many things were happening in my body and my awareness that it took everything I had to bring my attention to any single thing.

Then it happened. The intensely concentrated pressure pushing out from the center of my body shifted slightly and began to slide. As the outer lips of my vagina became an expanding ring of fire around the baby's head, Dr. Menon leaned in, closer to my body, and the nurse lifted the mirror out of the way.

"One more push, Maria. Make it a strong, good one," she said.

Claude gripped my hand more tightly and turned his gaze from my face toward what was happening between my legs. I opened my mouth, inhaled a huge breath, closed my lips around it, and bore down. I felt as if my body was being forced through my legs, outside of itself. In the moments before this one, when I had tried to imagine the moment of my baby's birth, I always imagined my eyes closed as I concentrated on the last push. Instead, they remained fully open, allowing everything: the ring of fire, Claude's anxious face, the sweeping second hand of the clock behind Dr. Menon's head, the relentless pushing, sliding, straining pressure inside me, between my legs.

Suddenly, the intensity popped, and I felt the baby's body, distinctly, sliding through me.

"The head is out. Pant without pushing just for a moment." Dr. Menon and the nurse busied themselves with a blue bulbed syringe, clearing the baby's mouth and throat. Claude started to cry. "I can see our baby's face," he said.

I could no longer contain the pressure building inside me. In a single rush, the rest of his body slid into the world.

"It's a boy! It's a boy!" Claude exclaimed, tears sliding down his cheeks. The two of us couldn't take our eyes off our son's slippery form. Everyone, even the busiest nurse, was smiling. Although Will's umbilical cord was still attached to the unborn placenta inside my body, Dr. Menon laid him, cheek to breast, against my chest. As I held our son in my arms, he gazed at me quietly, not crying, awake. Claude leaned over and kissed the top of Will's head, then turned to me. The two of us looked into each other, transparent and trembling as if we were each seeing the other for the first time.

Dr. Menon quietly interrupted our reverie by handing Claude a pair of scissors, instructing him where to make the cut in the umbilical cord. I stroked the top of Will's head and brushed my lips across his cheek. Instinctively, his head turned toward my breast. I slipped my nipple between his lips and he began to suck. I felt a searing goodness being pulled from inside me. As he nursed, Will's blue, deep-seeing eyes never left mine. For a single, timeless moment, the rest of the world vanished, and everything was my son and me.

Copyright © 2005 by Maria Housden.

About the Author

Maria Housden is an author and lecturer. She and her husband, Roger Housden, live in New York and New Jersey. Her first book, Hannah's Gift: Lessons from a Life Fully Lived, has become an international bestseller, translated into more than fifteen foreign languages.