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 14th--Belly

May 14, 1997 is the date of the last photos of me while pregnant. Well, second to last. There are a couple from May 15th, but I'll post those tomorrow. Today, I offer a short review of my pregnant look. I found an envelope of selected photos labeled in Markus' handwriting as "Pregnant Pictures." I rather like the poetry of that label.

Here's a photo in the baby's room. I'm relieved to see that we had a crib set up a full month before the due date. Also in the photo is a baby quilt by our artist friend Rebecca Cross. (You can see her in photos posted in The fashion post on May 10th.)

36 weeks: April 7, 1997

My friends at University Productions gave Markus and me a shower on April 17th. My office was in the Michigan League, and we took several photos outside on the plaza between Hill Auditorium and the League, just in front of the Carillon tower. It's one of those places that reminds me what a lovely town Ann Arbor is to live and work in.

38 weeks: April 17, 1997
Fountain next to the Michigan League

38 weeks
Markus is my go-to fashion photographer

Ready, ready, ready for this baby. Five days past the official due date, here I am showing off a favorite exercise position. These two photos were taken on the same day as the one I posted for May 3rd.

41 weeks: May 14, 1997

41 weeks: ripe

May 14, 2015: It's a holiday in Germany today. Markus was traveling (a quick trip to present a research project for a European commission in Brussels), so Miriam and I had an easy day at home. Weed pulling, reading, and tie dying. She's learning dye techniques and did a practice project today in one color (her favorite: black). Next will be some T-shirts in "screaming color."

I love, love, love to watch these hands.

Squirt.

Swirl.

18 Years Ago: May 3rd--Full term

~ 40 weeks, 1997

I'm trying to remember what it felt like to be pregnant. Especially to be 40 weeks pregnant. Here's a photo from about that time. I remember how hard it was to roll over in bed, that I needed to plan the movement and hoist my large, hard belly ahead of the rest of me. I'd turn down kind offers of a short ride around campus, preferring to walk-waddle a few blocks than to attempt sitting in the seat of a car and strapping on a seatbelt.

Look how red my face seems in the photo--as red as the stretch-knit maternity pants. I was pumping full of blood. From the back, I was told, you could not tell I was pregnant. The baby belly popped out frontward. At this stage, I frequently felt a tightening at the top of my uterus--the Braxton-Hicks contraction, warming me up for labor. I had continued working on the University of Michigan campus through then end of week 39. Sometimes those contractions would ball up while I sat at my computer. Sometimes they'd happen while I was walking around. Part of me got excited: something's happening! Part of me played it all down: perhaps this is me overreacting--just wait until something's actually happening. Remember, my mom and my sister both went past their due dates. I'd better be prepared to do the same.

May 3, 1997 (a Monday): My notes in the journal on this day say: "felt lots of pressure from baby's head on cervix during the night." Otherwise, I can only guess what I did on that day. I probably pushed a tape into the VCR and followed my pregnancy workout. Denise, the same neighbor who gave me the Kitzinger journal, had loaned me her tape. A lovely midwife from New Zealand narrated the tape, which showed a pregnant woman doing the exercises, alternating with re-enacted labor scenes. It was informative and trained me on many levels for birth. If I can figure out the name of the tape, I'll post it. Perhaps it still exists somewhere.

May 3, 2015 (a Sunday): Another rainy indoor day, the end of a three-day weekend. What's the best thing to do? Sleep in a bit. We bounced ideas around for possible vacation trips. Then we went to our upstairs neighbor for her birthday open house. Every year she follows a German tradition of inviting friends and family over. The birthday girl is the hostess and spends most of her time bringing drinks and food and generally spoiling her guests. Heike keeps it pretty simple: Weisswurst, pretzels, beer, champagne, cookies. It's a relaxing way to hang out with people--except for the hostess! Down in our place again (on the ground floor), Markus and Miriam worked on physics, and I did a little email. Dinner. Blog. Back to making plans.

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)