Lisa Moore - Great Expectations: Twenty-Four True Stories about Childbirth

Copyright 2008 by Dede Crane and Lisa Moore

Copyright to each individual piece in this collection is held by the author of that piece.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Great expectations : twenty-four true stories about childbirth / edited by Lisa Moore and Dede Crane.

ISBN 978-0-88784-778-3

I. Childbirth. I. Moore, Lisa Lynne, 1964- II. Crane, Dede

PS8237.C4816 2008 C814.6 C2008-901397-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008924731 Cover design: Bill Douglas at The Bang

Text design and typesetting: Sari Naworynski

We acknowledge for their financial support ofour publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Printed and bound in Canada

To parents past, present, and future

BIRTH IS EVERYBODYS MIRACLE. There have been billions of human births, so many that one would think it would be a repeated story. How is it, then, that each birth is so unique? Complex, dramatic, full of human strength and frailty, fear, and humour, as well as invaluable wisdom, birth is all the stuff of good stories.

The authors in this collection are some of Canadas finest journalists and fiction writers. They have been shockingly generous in giving us a felt sense of what birth demands of us physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Because these authors pull no punches, the stories provide an intuitive map into a landscape that is as much about the practical as the wild.

We wanted first-hand accounts that would be honest about pain and joy. We received stories about the betrayals many of us associate with Western medicine and childbirth. We received stories showing the gratitude many of us felt for medical intervention, for the doctors and nurses who, in some cases, saved our lives or the lives of our children. There are women here who demanded epidurals and were denied them. There are women who wanted natural births and were given epidurals. There are stories of women who felt in control, and those who lost control. Men who felt outside the experience of birth, even though they wanted desperately to help, and men who were deeply afraid. There are also moments of naked bliss. And there is the kind of poignant humour uncertainty provokes.

These stories cover the spectrum: from a peaceful home birth gone mean to a life-threatening Caesarean to Joseph Boydens shock as he delivers his son in the back of a Buick Skylark. Caroline Adderson meditates on the absurd realities of pregnancy, and

Esta Spalding reminds us of the twinship that birth will always share with death. Bill Gaston shows off his baby-catching skills, while Afua Cooper bridges both cultural and spiritual divides. Jaclyn Moriarty reveals the endurance of mothers through war, earthquake, and heartbreak. Anne Fleming shares how one lesbian couple chooses a donor father. Lynn Coady describes the anguish of giving up a child for adoption, and in the telling, we see the strength and bravery such a decision requires. The list, and the variations on the theme, goes on.

Every parent, together and apart, ventures into sacred and unknowable territory to bring forth a child. Once that child arrives, there is little time to look back. We would like to thank these writers for looking back, for remembering so vividly, for being funny and scared and brave. It has been our great privilege to edit these stories.

Dede Crane and Lisa Moore

March 2008

Caroline Adderson

QUITE A NUMBER OF MY FRIENDS HAD already had babies by the time I did, none of them easily. One started leaking amniotic fluid and was ordered to check in to Vancouver Women's Hospital, where she had to lie around reading old magazines for months before finally giving birth. Another called me after her delivery to ask that I bring a mirror to the hospital when I visited.

"They don't have mirrors at the hospital?"

"I want to see my hemorrhoid," she said.

When I showed up with flowers and a hand mirror, I saw that her left eye was completely filled with blood.

"You have a hemorrhoid in your eye?" I exclaimed.

It was a burst blood vessel. (She paid at both ends, poor thing.)

I'd even been in the delivery room and seen the miracle first hand. The friend who invited me one of the kindest people I know got rather snippy with the doctor at the crucial moment and passed comment on his breath. I was even more shocked when I laid eyes on the placenta, which I had hitherto imagined as a giant egg white or a benign jellyfish, not a yucky liverish lump. We named it Warren.

You may wonder why I wanted a baby at all after these ruffling experiences. The truth is, if I could have put it off another ten years, I would have, but I was thirty-four. If I waited till I was dying to have a baby, I would probably be dead. So I too signed up for nine months of physical mortification culminating in...Never mind, I'll start with the mortification and save the anticlimax for the end.

The one thing that went smoothly for us was the conception. To this day my husband takes absurd pride in the fact that he hit the bull's eye in the first round. As he has so little else to be proud of in the whole birthing process, I refrain from mentioning the five million sperm he slung. Four weeks later, I went out and bought a home pregnancy test. There were two sticks to pee on, two chances per kit. I peed on one of the sticks and watched it change colour.

"I'm pregnant," I announced.

"No way," my husband said.

"Yes way." I showed him the stick. He still didn't believe me. He wanted me to pee on the other as a control, as additional proof. But the kit had cost me fifteen dollars, and in a matter of weeks there would be no doubting my condition anyway. Ever thrifty, I gave the leftover stick to a friend.

Like many couples reproducing for the first time, we didn't tell anyone I was pregnant until after I had passed the magic three-month mark. This was to spare us the pain of that second announcement should the pregnancy not come to term. At the time, however, this secrecy seemed like another social convention that ought to go the way ofwhite gloves and pillbox hats, because surely what any woman would want after miscarrying is sympathy. Now that I'm well out of the baby-making business, I feel differently again. The very best time of my pregnancy was those few weeks when I knew I was up the pole yet felt exactly the same. I was pregnant with a secret, with expectation. That schoolyard taunt "I know something you don't know!" was mine to recite silently to everyone I met. It was thrilling. I thought,