52 years ago: Another birth to tell you about

Today is Flag Day again. On this day in 1963, flag day or not, my mother's utuerus yawned and heaved until around 3:30 pm out I came. She was in Allen Memorial Hospital in Oberlin, Ohio, attended by Dr. Siddall, who presided over the births of most everyone I came to know. I had a head full of coarse black hair, which the nurses pulled together with a tiny bow at the top of my head. My father was invited to sit in the waiting room, where no doubt someone came out to exclaim, "It's a girl!"

June 14, 1963

Since the small town anesthesiologist took summers off, there was only a machine attached to a mask with some sort of ether-gas to ease the pain. Self-serve. As she'd done for my sister's birth three years prior, my mother took a little whiff when she needed it. Two years later when my brother came in April, who needed an anesthesiologist?

I was born on Friday. Back then, mothers and new babies somehow spent about a week in the hospital after the birth. I walked out the very next day after both of mine, so I do wonder what Mom and I did that week. I know she breastfed. Somewhat counter to prevailing 1960's culture, she nursed three babies about nine months each, going straight from breast to cup--no need for bottles.

At our house, Granny watched over Julie, who asked every day during that long week, Is it Saturday? Granny patiently explained, No, it's Monday or It's Wednesday. When Granny finally asked her why she wanted to know, Julie exclaimed, Because Saturday is pancakes! (Our mother's trick to limit Julie's daily wish for a messy breakfast. Saturday is still pancake day when you visit my parents.)

Home from the hospital to live with sister Julie.

I don't often think of the umbilical connection to my mother or about the months I spent tucked inside her. Each one of us comes from that experience--so far as I know, there's no other way to arrive as a mammal on this planet. And here is my welcoming sibling--somehow exactly me and somehow entirely different. Isn't she a cute almost three year old? (The hilarious hair I was born with fell out and was replaced by softer actual baby hair.)

Julie's baby.

When I got language, I called her Dee. I'm told I stood with my face pressed to the front screen door whenever she went off on her own with a little sadness in my voice saying, Dee go out? I know I welcomed her home like a frolicking puppy.

On the day I was born, cousin Sarah, who was already big sister to cousin Ken, lived in Portland, Oregon. That day she went out ringing the neighbors' doorbells to announce a confluence of events: Today is Flag Day, and Grandma and Granddad are getting married again because there's a new baby in the family.

Factoid: 52 years at 52 weeks per year makes me some kind of perfect square today. I'm 1,144 weeks old.

18 Years Ago: May 21st--The Story

May 21, 1997: Here's what it looked like in our neighborhood after the trees finally burst into bloom. I truly believe they were waiting for Simon. And he was waiting for them. And that's why it took so long...

This photo is labeled "first stroll" with Simon. He was five days old.

May 21, 2015: This evening, I am finally posting a narrative of Simon's actual birth. I'm not sure why I've been putting it off (maybe because it's long? maybe because it's such a weighty experience?). Someday I want to start an essay with these words: "My son's birth didn't cause me any pain."

It's true. It took some concentration, some patience, and a whole lot of trust, but it was nothing like pain. Maybe the secret is having a doula. Maybe the secret is having what the midwife calls a "favorable pelvic opening." Maybe it's having a 7-pound baby whose head is not too large. Whatever it was, I'm grateful.

On May 16th, I wrote about watching a movie with our friend Anne, how my belly became unusually quiet, how Markus listened carefully for a heartbeat, how we went to sleep. Going solely from memory, I will tell about Simon's birth. (Here is my biggest clue that my birth files are incomplete: I'm missing the multi-page handwritten and later typed up account I wrote of Simon's birth. I remember Anne typed some of it for me. I know I wrote it. I need to dig around in the basement someday. For now, I will go from memory alone.)

Around 3:00 am on May 17th, I woke with a dull ache in my low back. I squirmed into a hands and knees position in bed, stretching for some relief. Markus rubbed the uncomfortable spot a little. We both settled back to sleep. By 5:30 am, after a few more half-wakenings, I couldn't lie in bed anymore. My belly squeezed up for a few seconds, then released. Was this a contraction? Real labor? False labor?

We took a dawn walk, looping around the sidewalks of Northwood IV. Now and then I stopped and leaned against Markus to let the tightening pass. He looked at his watch. We tried to remember guidelines about noticing how many seconds long and how much time in between.

Back at home, we had breakfast. I ate toast. Perhaps it was at this point, perhaps even earlier, that I began a series of bowel movements that weren't exactly diarrhea but that seemed intent on clearing me out. I recognized the phenomenon: the same thing happened to me on the day of a big performance (like my voice recitals in college). I have a name for it: worm poop. I can see why the body wants to clear itself in both situations.

Mid-morning we notified Bonnie, our doula. She had a complex schedule because she worked several jobs. That morning, she was at the clothing boutique. As a professional doula, she had maintained back-up plans so that she could drop out of her normal routine as soon as we made the call. We told her not to hurry, but to head over to our place by the end of the morning.

Meanwhile at home, I tried different ways of handling the sensations of labor. Was this still early labor? I could talk through a contraction (that was one of the tests). I called the on-call midwife to let her know things were starting up. I said, "I think I'm in labor..." and choked up. It was Carol Shultheis who took the call, the nurse-midwife who had followed me prenatally. Lucky! She was the midwife du jour. She told us to relax, that it sounded like we were doing good early labor at home, that we should give another call if we noticed a change.

I tried the bathtub. We filled it with warm water, and I hoisted my body in. As soon as I sat down, legs straight out in front of me, I felt terribly confined. My legs and back went into spasms. Nope, not in the tub.

I sat on the sofa and asked Markus to microwave two compresses to set behind my back. This position worked well for a while. The warmth was soothing, and I could read a bit. Markus timed a contraction now and then, but he needed something else to do. He went to the kitchen and cleaned out the refrigerator! I began to feel nervous about breathing right during birth. I had no technique! My birth teacher had said, "Just breathe." My prenatal massage therapist, the amazing Audrey Simon, had taught me to groan for labor: a walrus bellow from low in the pelvis, down by the pubic bone. Screaming in a high voice only makes you tense. But I picked up the Kitzinger birth book and read her section on breathing. For the first time. While in early-mid labor.

At some point I had another strong urge for the toilet, so I hauled myself upstairs. Bonnie arrived, and she came straight to me in the bathroom. "Good position!" she cheered. While I sat, she reached around and rubbed my back during contractions, which were getting louder. When I said I wanted to stand up, she helped me into another favorable position of leaning against the wall. I remember one interchange clearly. A wave of muscle work washed through me. I leaned onto my hands at shoulder height on the wall. Bonnie doula-rubbed my back, praising my progress. When it was over, I rested against the wall and said to Bonne: "The good thing about contractions is they stop."

The endorphin rush was delicious.

There would have been another call to the midwife. There would have been a point when Markus lugged bags to the car: my overnight bag and the duffel bag with Aqua Tub supplies. By 1:00 pm we were on our way. The seven minute car ride was more like nine because of construction on one of the streets, which had been stripped to a bumpy surface. Markus had to go slow because the bumpiness made me crazy, and my contractions were intense.

We left the car in the drive. As soon as the elevator door opened, I went into a contraction. I waved the elevator away, leaned against the wall, and bellowed till it was over. In the relaxing pause, I had thoughts like this: "Wow, I wonder how bad this will be when it really gets started!" I'm amused and a bit dismayed to remember our entrance in the maternity waiting area. It was a quiet Saturday, and there was no one in sight but a receptionist. I said something like, "I think I'm in labor."

In the triage room, I was nervous. What if this isn't really it? The nurse-midwife would come and check my cervical dilation and effacement. Dilated to only 4 cm (instead of closer to 10 cm) I'd probably get sent home to labor on my own and not in the confines of the hospital. Carol arrived, asked some questions, put on a glove, and gave me a check. "10 centimeters!" she said, "and just about fully effaced. Let's go have a baby!"

Markus, Bonnie, and I felt like people hitting the jackpot on a game show.

I rode in a wheelchair, piloted by Carol, over to the birthing room area. She took back hallways to make the trip faster. In the chair, I began to rattle. My whole body shook. My consciousness flew up to look down on us from above. In the hallway as we neared our birthing room, a couple walked slowly in the opposite direction. She wore a white flared nightgown and had long brown hair. He wore jeans and a sweatshirt. The woman may have been a little startled by the shaking woman in the wheelchair. The man just looked at me and said, "Labor!"

It was, in fact, transition--the part of labor that moves from contractions to open the cervix to contractions that push the baby out. Surprisingly, I found all the rattling deeply relaxing.

In the birthing room, Carol suggested I try a semi-upright position with the head end of the bed raised to a 90-degree angle. She had me turn around and drape my upper body over the raised bed so I could kneel and let gravity help. I thought, But then I can't watch. (I had pictured using a mirror so I could watch the birth.) But I trusted her impulse and gave it a try. Markus stayed close to my face, talking to me and putting a straw in my mouth so I could sip juice between contractions. Bonnie massaged my back.

At some point Markus remembered the Aqua Tub stuff down in the car. He asked Carol if he should go down for it. She smiled. It was way too late for a tub.

After pushing was definitely underway, Carol asked our permission to break the amniotic sac. That whole "her waters broke" event never happened, and the sac was still in tact. I was reluctant to do anything "unnatural," but we agreed because she was concerned about meconium. Babies who come past their due date have a greater chance of releasing meconium from their bowels into the amniotic fluid. It's highly dangerous to the baby's airways. If there's meconium, you need to do careful suctioning of the nose and mouth immediately after birth.

She poked three tiny holes in the sac, and clear fluid trickled out. She said it looked good.

Push. Rest. Push. Rest.

As Simon progressed down the birth canal, the amniotic fluid came more freely. His head had been a cork, Carol said, and behind that cork there was indeed meconium. She called two pediatricians into the room to stand by for immediate suctioning.

When the baby crowned (i.e., you could see the top of the head), I sent Markus to my backside to watch. Bonnie came to be "with me" in my reverse position. This was the moment, the will I rip to shreds moment, the no-thank-you episiotomy moment. Whatever happens to me, they will fix me up! I told myself. Let go.

Out came his head, upside-down and facing Markus, who says Simon immediately blew a raspberry. (I consider that nature's way of dealing with meconium. My body squeezed in on him and something--air? fluid?--released through his mouth and nose.) In that moment, I felt a flash of energy from my perineum to my navel. I have ripped completely in half, I thought, and I don't care.

In fact, I didn't tear at all. Later, Carol's assessment was "just a few skid marks."

One shoulder. Now the other. (We had a tense moment when Carol asked me to push the second shoulder out even though my body wasn't contracting. I'd been taught not to do that. Again, I trusted her and followed her instructions.)

Out he slipped. Snip went the scissors on the cord, and the pediatricians whisked Simon to a warming table, reassuring us he was fine, this would only take a minute, we could hold our baby very soon. As Simon was flying through the air--a wet and purple thing--one of the doctors asked, "What's his name?"

"Simon!" Markus and I said together.

May 17, 1997 ~2:40 pm

He came to our arms soon enough. He was fine. APGAR was 8 out of 10 (I can't remember why). We'd been at the hospital less than 90 minutes. Good for me. Good for Simon. Good for all of us. We were a great team, and we had a great birth. Look at Markus--birth looks great on him!

18 Years Ago: May 20th--All that preparation

Markus and I became parents in a planful way. I was 33 when Simon was born, not old for becoming a mother, but also not young. We approached prenatal care with diligence, and we did a lot of things to prepare for birth and for life with a new baby.

As I mentioned on May 12th, we practiced perineal stretching so I'd be ready for natural birth. I went to all the recommended prenatal appointments with the obstetrician and midwives. We attended a six-week birth class. We read books. For the record, we both found Sheila Kitzinger's The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth considerably more grounding and useful than the more popular "What to Expect" series. The newest edition of Kitzinger's book appears to have been 2003, alas. I just learned while googling the book that she died at the age of 86 in April this year.

In consultation with the midwife team, we made preparations to use the Aqua Tub during labor at the hospital. The deep tub offered a laboring woman the chance to be immersed in warm water to ease the physical strain of contractions. Hospital policy required the baby to be delivered "on dry land" and not underwater. The tub was a temporary unit (something like a portable backyard pool) that could be brought into the birth room (as long as no one else was using it--first come, first served). Markus assembled the elaborate list of required items, all of which needed to be new and unused so as to be clean: a garden hose (for filling the tub from the faucet), a plastic drop cloth (to line the tub for hygiene), a butterfly net (to remove any excrement that might enter the water). That's only the most memorable part of the list.

During our last birth class with Patty Brennan, we got quite serious and literal about the possibilities of birth. Patty had a fabric doll baby and a set of pelvic bones. The big trick, of course, is to get the baby through the pelvic opening. Patty showed us what it looks like when a baby comes out the classic way: head down, back side against the front of the mom's belly. Easy. She slipped the doll right through the pelvis. Then she showed the baby coming through facing the other direction, with the baby's back coming up against the stiffness of the mother's spine. Yes, Patty said, this can be more painful, but massage and movement can help things along. Then she showed us a breach birth (butt first instead of head first). And one foot first. And so on. Each time, the doll baby slipped on through, and Patty smiled reassurance.

Watching this display, I had a thought: it's only about six inches, really, that the baby has to traverse to leave the womb and make it outside. Six inches. I think I can do that! As for breathing during labor, we never learned techniques like Lamaze. Again, we followed Patty's advice: just breathe!

May 20, 1997

I'm not quite sure why the birth narrative hasn't made into this blog series yet. On May 20, 1997 we already had a three-day-old son. The birth reverberated still, but we were on to other preoccupations. I'll say this much about birth today: secretly, I wanted a home birth. My reasons for going to the hospital instead: 1) I was afraid of making the noise of birth through those paper-thin walls at all hours of the day or night and 2) insurance.

Simon did all the things babies are supposed to do. He nursed, slept, wet his diaper, transitioned from meconium to real baby poop, burped, made eye contact. Here's a father and son, communing while Dad talks on the phone (I'm guessing with his family in Germany). Our newest textile: the burp rag.

~May 20, 1997

Sleep was precious, as it always is. Even when he was this tiny, we welcomed Simon to sleep next to us. We read everything we could about co-sleeping (will I roll over and crush my baby?--not if you aren't crashing drunk; will my baby be spoiled and never sleep alone?--are you seriously worried about that?; etc.).

If it looks like the only photos from these early days are of Simon and Markus, it's true! I was there, behind the camera, behind the breasts.

May 20, 2015: I had a full teaching day and was glad to be home for dinner with Miriam (Markus was out at a function). The engineers are striking again at the Deutsche Bahn (the rail system). Train service is radically reduced, making all plans for getting around the region dicey. You can drive your car, but you'll end up on the road with a bunch of people who would have preferred to take the train. The situation can be a huge schedule changer. So, my writing group has switched to a virtual meeting tomorrow morning, just to avoid the headache.

It's more fun to think about our tiny Simon!

18 Years Ago: May 18th--The day after

May 18, 2015: Simon's birthday fell on a Sunday this year. The big 18th birthday--the one I've been gearing up for, the one I wondered how painful it might feel, the one I've been writing up to--came at the end of a four-day weekend. We used the time as a lazy "stay-cation," and I'll admit I got used to the slow pace. Waking up for Monday again today was tricky, especially since it was a "home office" day for me, which means I can use my time as I see fit to get done what I need to do. Sometimes it's hard to un-pause.

It was a gorgeous day, and I spent some time in the garden--long enough to stake my peonies (they reach my shoulders) before they open their heavy blooms. Lunch on the back terrace and some reading time. Course prep. Invoices. By late afternoon I felt mostly back to normal. I wasn't sad today, but I experienced some blankness. I think that's one of the harder modes of grieving--it's vague and uncomfortable. It's not a time for tears; it's a loose-ends feeling. A gap.

May 18, 1997: After Simon's 2:30 pm birth on Saturday, we stayed one night in the birthing room. Markus must have had a fold-out bed. I was on the hospital bed. And Simon moved between the clear plexiglass bassinet thing and a place tucked in beside me. We never let him out of our sight and scarcely let him out of our hands. We chose not to circumcise, and we didn't want anyone to assume otherwise. On Sunday morning, the three of us followed a nurse to another station where she would prick Simon's heal to soak five quarter-sized circles on a paper card for the PKU test. We had tried to get out of that one but followed our birth teacher's advice not to get a mark against us in the State's records by refusing. We didn't like doing it, but doing it together made it feel OK.

Anne Adams

Before our discharge in the afternoon, we had three important visitors. Anne Adams, who had watched Gilbert Grape with us the night before my labor started, came to meet Simon. We were lucky to have her nearby. She was a huge support through pregnancy and labor, and she was a patient friend and willing babysitter later on.

Markus and I had thought a lot about our wishes for getting started as a new family, and we decided we wanted to be on our own in our home for the first two weeks. We wanted to learn from our baby and give ourselves time and space to bond. We'd encountered this recommendation in a number of readings and birth class discussions.

Grandad

This bonding time made sense with Markus' academic schedule, too. He was nearing the end of his first two years of PhD studies. As I recall it, we had two weeks before Markus entered a three-week period of intensive research and writing on three complex questions. The PhD students and their families talked of prelims with shudders befitting horror movies. (The Organizational Behavior department changed the process not too many years later.) We wanted Markus to get undiluted father-baby-mother time before that craziness started.

Grann

Soon after Simon's birth, we called my parents in Ohio to tell them the happy news. We wanted them to meet their tiny grandson, and we invited them to drive up on Sunday morning to meet Simon in the hospital and spend time with us after we got back to our apartment in Family Housing.

My parents did some grocery shopping, and my mother cooked a nice evening meal. It was lovely to have them there and to be taken care of. Respectful of our plan to move forward as a threesome for the earliest days, my parents drove home again that evening. Simon was the tiniest grandchild they had held in their arms (the others being born further away). That is, until my mom was right there in the room with us when I gave birth to Miriam (but that's another story).

18 Years Ago: May 17th--1997 Great Joy!

May 17, 1997 about 4:00 pm

In the night before May 17, an active

kicker settled down in focused

quiet. As day followed night,

with increasing momentum, this

little one took a journey

from a gentle, wet

place into a world

of light and 

air and

love.

In
der
Nacht
zum 17. Mai
beruhigte sich
unser Strampelfreund.
Mit beginnendem Tag
begab ar sich auf eine
Reise von einem sanften,
warmen Ort zu eine Welt
voller Licht und Luft und Liebe. 

With doula Bonnie Marquis.

Wide awake.

18 Years Ago: May 15th--Balance

May 15, 1997: In our file of assorted notes on pregnancy and birth, I found a sheet of paper in Markus' handwriting with instructions for our appointment at the Fetal Diagnostic Center. We were nearly one week post due, and it was time to check in on the baby. 5/15/97 at 9:00 am, a Thursday. A person named Colleen had called. We were to report to the 4th floor of "Mott Hospital" and the note includes how to get there: "2nd level of Taubman, left from elevator, follow signs to Mott." I add that detail not because it's particularly interesting, but because it emphasizes the fact that there was a time when we had not been inside Mott (except for a tour of the birth station on the 4th floor). We later became so familiar with that place during Simon's cancer care.

The appointment involved checking my vitals (heart rate, blood pressure, temperature I assume), looking via ultrasound at the amount of amniotic fluid, and hooking me up to a fetal monitor, which places a few sensors against your belly to measure what your contractions are doing and what the baby's doing. We could watch a monitor and see it blip when I had a Braxton-Hicks "fake" contraction. I'd read about nipple stimulation as a way to encourage labor to start, and I had received the midwives' blessing to give it a try if I went past the due date. Sitting there, I could generate a contraction, watch the monitor spike, and return again to neutral. Sigh. (Nipple stimulation played no significant role in Simon's birth; 28 months later, however, it was my nursing toddler who kicked off labor five days "early." I'm 100% sure about that.)

At the end of my appointment, the technician offered to do a vaginal check. I'd read about those, too, and the lack of real predictive information to be gained from checking cervical softness and dilation. But I was a week overdue, and I was curious. She also offered to rub on prostaglandin gel, a hormone that occurs in semen, as a means of stimulating labor. Once she checked, though, she said I wouldn't be needing any gel. She made a follow-up appointment for fetal monitoring on Monday, but she said, "I don't think you'll make it--I think you'll have this baby over the weekend." Reassuringly, she said we wouldn't need to worry about canceling the appointment--the system had that covered.

Markus and I left the Fetal Diagnostic Center, planning no further need for fetal monitoring, especially not during birth. I was convinced I wanted to be free to move around during labor: no IV in my hand, nothing strapped to my belly. Mott Hospital is adjacent to the green and spacious Nichols Arboretum, and we decided to go for a walk there. Walking was another way to rev up the body for labor, of course. I took so many walks during the last weeks and days. In the photos you can see I'm wearing a warm jacket, as it was still cool for mid-May.

Nichols Arboretum
May 15, 1997

"Balance beam" walk on parking barrier

May 15, 2015: This writing project revives the great anticipation of giving birth for the first time. I have been so unsure how to approach the date this year, the day Simon would have become a legal adult. I'm glad I chose to dive into the memories and reoccupy that magical time of becoming a mother. Through my time travel, I am approaching Simon's birthday this year not primarily from the depth of loss (and this moment is a startlingly deep point) but with forward motion and rising joy.

And so it should be. I'm reminded of a visit to Ann Arbor several years after Simon died. I took a walk toward the medical campus, still wondering if I really wanted to visit the cancer clinic, just to say hello to the nurses who had cared for him. At the upper end of the massive complex (up near Angelo's Diner), I saw a familiar figure walking toward me. It was Carol Shultheis, the nurse midwife who had attended Simon's birth. Feeling the pull of the cancer center, I was glad for Carol's reminder of the joyous parts of life with my son. His struggle with illness dominates my memories of this hospital, and his absence pervades my life.

Yet, he was born right there. He was gloriously born, and I have never felt more complete alignment and personal power than on that day.

18 Years Ago: May 12th--Stretch

Riesling Schorle
with local strawberries

Like last Wednesday, I've been watching soccer on television this evening. It's the 73rd minute of the semi-final in the Champions League (the elite Europe-wide tournament), and Bayern Munich just scored goal number three off the foot of Thomas Müller. Exciting! Barcelona has two goals. You would think things are looking good for the German team, but this is a home-game/away-game tournament. Last week Barcelona won the first game 3-0 in Spain. To get to the final, Bayern needs a margin of four points to make up for last week's negative three.

The sportscasters certainly don't expect the German team to pull it off, but it's an aggressive game, and the yellow cards are flying. Who knows? The stadium is full of red and white spirit colors and non-stop chanting. We've been in that stadium ourselves once. Last fall we joined a group from GGS (the business school where Markus is a professor) for a match-up between Bayern and Dortmund (Bayern won). All the guys running around the field looked like our old friends (from the TV screen). I enjoyed the chance to see a game without slow-motion replays and obsessive commentary. It all moves lightning fast.

Multiple times during tonight's game I saw both goalies reach and dive to ward off an oncoming shot. I wonder how they practice that, how they find the capacity in the moment to let out an extra inch of length to get their hand in front of the ball. Stretch.

Back in 1997, Markus and I took a birth preparation class called "Trusting Nature" from Patty Brennan in Ann Arbor. We learned so much to get us through pregnancy, birth, and beyond: starting with raspberry-nettle pregnancy tea all the way through handling required hospital procedures (vaccinations and tests) and breastfeeding successfully. Patty's voice was joined by several others in supporting a natural birth: our doula, Bonnie Marquis, my work friend Whitley Hill, and the nurse-midwife team at the University of Michigan Medical Center.

One day, early in my third trimester, I took a walk on campus with Whitley, who is a dancer and who had given birth herself and attended many others. I was weighing information from the obstetrician's office about the merits of episiotomy (a tidy cut in the perineum) vs. tearing (more ragged and uncontrollable). "You don't have to do either," Whitley said.

I was thrilled to broaden my vision beyond the duality of cut or tear, and I began working toward the goal of being ready to stretch when the time came. Around about the beginning of my third trimester, I switched my prenatal care from the obstetricians to the nurse-midwife team. And I began regular training--like these impressive soccer players--to increase my stretch.

To get an idea of the stretching sensation of the vaginal opening during birth, Patty Brennan instructed us to open our mouths as wide as possible. At the corners of the mouth, there's a slight burning sensation with this much stretch. That, she told us, is what birth feels like. The more practice you have, the better it will go.

Perineal stretching is a two-person task, and Markus was an excellent and conscientious partner. We followed various handouts, all of which guided us in the following procedure. I would lie on my back with my rear end near the edge of the bed and my legs bent. Markus would carefully wash his hands and generously lubricate his thumbs and fingers with olive oil. Using fingers and thumbs together, he would massage and expand my opening to a slight point of "burn." I'd breathe as he held the stretch. At the beginning, it was difficult for me. Near the end, it was more difficult for him because the training had worked and I had stretched beyond the expandable reach and strength of his fingers.

Soccer night candle

May 12, 1997: Three days post due. I'm guessing I took some walks (good for stimulating labor), followed my exercise video, and maybe did a perineal stretching session with Markus. Ready for birth would be a good description. If you're curious, I was not the one "nesting" by tidying and organizing things in anticipation of the baby. That person was Markus.

May 12, 2015: A pretty good mix of work and errands (two hours at the car place). Miriam made tortellini salad for dinner. Yum. I settled in for the news and the game around 8:00 pm, got the laundry folded and some mending done. It's been a two mini-candle night, one after the other. The game ended 3-2 for Bayern.

18 Years Ago: May 2nd--Serial inspiration

Simon candle, May 2

I am inspired to write serially in approach of Simon's birthday on May 17th. To meditate, to assay, to reiterate. To compare myself then--pre-motherhood--to myself now--bereaved parent.

Just as back then in 1997 I was more than expectant first-time mother, I am also now more than bereaved mother. My life has gone on nearly 11 years without Simon. I have my daughter, my husband, and our two black cats. Our family far and wide has not sustained another loss since we lost Simon, although we very sadly lost our dear friend Steve Horton from our Salt Lake community this January.

We have many things to be grateful for and many ways to keep busy. I want to draw a line through my life in 1997 and one through the present days to see how they might meet up and intertwine. I'm inspired to write in a series by my friend Nicole Walker, who often writes serially on her blog. Nicole is a creative writing professor in Arizona, one of the states with a governor targeting education with severe funding cuts. Her current series is letters to Governor Ducey. She began on March 6, 2015, and she's now around letter 40. Her blog is Nikwalk.blogspot.de. Or you can go to Letter #1 and read reverse chronologically.

May 2, 1997 (Sunday): I made no specific notes in the pregnancy journal that day, but I did make notes a few weeks prior about my expectations for the approaching birth. My feelings: "Excited. Suspenseful. Anxious to meet the baby. Curious about how birth will be. Wondering if I can labor well at home for a while before we go in to the hospital."

Any signs of approaching labor? "No diarrhea yet. Don't feel coconut, but do often feel zinging pressure on pelvic floor and cervix. Have to watch posture. More backache. No show yet, but increased mucous."

Yep, that all sounds pretty end-of-third-trimester, doesn't it? Kitzinger gives advice for what to do about the coconut: "The baby's head feels like a coconut hanging between your legs and you have to remind yourself to tuck your bottom in and stand tall when you walk." (104)

May 2, 2015 (Saturday): Spent time this morning at two furniture showrooms with Markus and Miriam. We're considering some changes. Shopped with a parking-lot-ful of people, everyone dashing for stores on the day between a holiday (yesterday) and a Sunday (tomorrow). Bought strawberries and rhubarb roadside and worked with Miriam to make a strawberry-rhubarb crisp for tonight. That is, I did the tasks she was willing to leave me--she loves to slice berries and blend butter into dry ingredients for a streusel topping. I've raised a competent young cook.

And I'm sorting, sorting, sorting. Binders from classes and various writings. I need space on my shelves. So far I haven't found a prose journal I might have written in back in May of 1997, but I'm keeping an eye out.

18 Years Ago: May 1st--Simon's 18th birthday is coming

Eighteen years ago today I awaited my first baby, my first birth. I lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with my husband, Markus. I kept notes in a journal book by Sheila Kitzinger called "Pregnancy Day By Day," a thoughtful gift from a neighbor in Family Housing. I highly recommend the book, if it's still in print. My baby's due date was May 9th.

May 1, 1997, a Saturday, was the last day of Week 39. My note that day: "started maternity leave!"

Today under a steady but not entirely unpleasant rain, Markus, Miriam and I joined his parents (up from Stuttgart) and his sister and her husband (visiting from Berlin) on a walk around the vineyards and Hohenbeilstein castle in Beilstein. May 1st is a holiday in Germany--Tag der Arbeit (like Labor Day). We eventually found shelter in a Weinstube and had a pleasant meal washed down by wine grown on the surrounding hills.

I've been wondering how to approach this month of May in 2015. As I have written before, my son Simon was born on May 17, 1997. It's a joyous day and a joyous time of year, all flowering tree and strawberries. And it's a mystifying day because I now experience it without him here. Eleven years ago we celebrated his 7th birthday, knowing it would be his last. And now?

Today I re-filled a container with sparkling white sand for the Simon candle in our living room. We've somewhat dropped the custom, one we began at Simon's memorial service. We light little candles from a central flame, each person taking a moment to choose a color, to draw flame from the light we call Simon's light, and to set the candle in the sand. Ritual comfort.

Simon candle, 2015

I plan to light candles, read my journal from 1997, and write some blog posts this May. An absent 18th birthday--what does it mean?

Here are some previous posts about Simon's birthday.

Happy 17th Birthday, Simon Craig Vodosek (pt 1) (2014)
Happy 17th Birthday, Simon Craig Vodosek (pt 2) (2014)
May 17th Coming Up (2011)

May 17th Coming Up

Certain dates acquire meaning. For most of my life, May 17th was a day I wouldn't notice passing by for any particular reason. Then I gave birth to my son, Simon, on a May 17th. And suddenly that date took on a grandeur and importance beyond any I had ever known. Not my own birthday, nor any other member of my family's. Not the day I got married. But May 17th, the day I became a mother.

Simon arrived eight days "late," having been predicted to arrive on May 9, 1997. It was a cool spring, and the flowering trees still huddled with their blossoms tight in buds. I don't recall being terribly impatient, that last "extra" week. Markus and I went in for one "post-due" monitoring appointment with an ultrasound check-up to see if things looked OK in there. I remember walking, in my winter coat, that Friday after the appointment. We strolled in the Arboretum at the University of Michigan, up near the hospital entrance. The nurse had offered to apply a bit of prostaglandin gel to my cervix to "help things along." But after checking for signs of softening and dilation, she decided I was on my way and would probably have my baby before the weekend was over.

She was right. I woke to sharp cramping pains in my low back the next morning. By mid-day it seemed like time to go in to the hospital. By 2:30 that afternoon we were holding our little boy (7 pounds, 13 ounces and fabulous).

When we took Simon home the next morning, the crabapples and cherries had begun to burst into voracious bloom. I wondered if Simon had been waiting for the warmer weather, just like the trees.

Tomorrow will be my first May 17th since moving back to Germany. And, as has been true for the past seven years, we have the strange task of marking the day of Simon's birth without him here to celebrate with. His last birthday was in 2004, when he turned seven.

For the first four years, we held Lemonade Stands on his birthday to remember him and raise money for childhood cancer research. In 2009 we took a trip to visit family in Germany (and for Markus to attend a conference in Istanbul). We celebrated Simon's birthday with my parents-in-law, eating a cake Miriam baked with her grandmother. In 2010, we were in Salt Lake City and kept the day just for the three of us. If I recall, we went out to eat at The Spaghetti Factory (in Trolley Square), which had been a favorite of Simon's.

We haven't made particular plans for tomorrow. We'll light our candles to remember Simon. Maybe we'll bake a cake or a pie. There's no easy way to do it. May 17th will never return to being any old day in May. And we had eight really good ones--the day Simon was born and the seven celebrations of that day with him.

Without him, we do our best. Maybe we'll take a short walk tomorrow. Or a bike ride. And remember.

A brief photo history:

Early May 1997

About a day old (1997)

Happy Birthday at Linda's house (1999)!

Happy Birthday in Family Housing, Ann Arbor (2000)!

Happy Birthday in Salt Lake City (2004)!

Lemonade Stand 2005.