Birth Story, Part 1

It's hard to know where to begin a birth story like this. You start to feel like everything that ever happened to you your entire life was meant to lead you to this moment. Everything feels important, and you go back and back, looking for the beginning. Was it my fortieth birthday, when I told my husband that he needed to decide whether we tried for another child, or he got a vasectomy and I got a cat? Was it six years ago on Friday, when my friend Tanja's son Lincoln was stillborn and I got my first glimpse of a kind of grief I never imagined would one day be mine as well? Or does it begin in my childhood? Was all of that sadness meant to prepare me for this?

It's going to take a long time to work all of that out. For now, I'll begin at my thirty-six week prenatal appointment, March 21, 2012, when my uterus measured small. My midwife recommended I make an appointment for an ultrasound, which the woman in the x-ray department scheduled for April 6. I was already due to be induced on April 9.

My mother worries a lot and it makes me crazy, especially when there's nothing anyone can do, but in this case I agreed with her that it made no sense to wait that long. Wasn't the whole point to see if there was a problem? So I called back and insisted they see me sooner. My new appointment was on March 28.

Everything appeared fine at the ultrasound: heartbeat fine, amniotic fluid fine. His weight was estimated at 6 pounds 3 ounces, which put him in the 43rd percentile for his gestational age. The technician remarked approvingly that he was really active.

You see why I am having trouble knowing where to start. Was this important, or incidental? In light of future events it looks ominous, but did it mean anything?

Because I was still worried after the ultrasound. Balthazar's brother Jasper was 8 pounds 15 ounces at birth. Six pounds sounded awfully small for a baby of mine, even at 36 weeks and 6 days. I called my brother the pediatric geneticist. "Is everything OK?" I asked him. "I don't know," he said dubiously. But there was no medical intervention indicated for a baby who was just under average size.

"Hang in there and grow," I whispered to him, pushing against my belly to feel him kick, which he had always obligingly done.

On Sunday, April 1 I took Jasper to a birthday party at a playspace. My worry, which had been at a low level ever since the ultrasound, became acute. Balthazar was not moving much. I spent the party pressing on my belly, poking and prodding, trying to get him to respond. I ate a piece of birthday cake with raspberry filling, which I didn't want, with little effect. I went home and called the labor and delivery nurse, who predictably told me to lie down and do a kick count. I counted 10 kicks in 40 minutes, which was within the guidelines, though less than usual. Also fainter. But I thought I was probably overreacting.

That was the last time I felt him move. 

Monday, April 2 was my 41st birthday. I went to prenatal yoga and told everyone that I was worried. The teacher reassured me that everything was fine, that babies move less when they move down into the birth canal as they prepare to be born. "I wish I had a Doppler at home so I could check on him," I said apologetically and everyone laughed.

I guess I still hate that teacher, which isn't fair, really. There was no way she could know, and I suspect by then it was already too late. I thought I could feel his bottom pressing toward the front of my belly, but I now realize that those were just Braxton Hicks contractions.

He didn't die on my birthday after all. Instead he died on April Fool's Day, which has its own cruel irony. You thought you were getting a baby? April Fools!

That day I took my husband to a mall to buy running shoes. I browsed Anthropologie and bought a cupcake. That night I ordered a pizza and Jasper and I watched Kentucky beat Kansas to win the NCAA men's basketball tournament. I can't believe what stupid, frivolous, pointless things I did that day, while my child floated lifeless inside of me. How I managed to push down my worry, ignore my anxiety.

On Tuesday, April 3 I took my son to school. I went to a coffee shop and finished a piece I was working on. I mailed it to the writer who was helping me with my memoir. Then I went home and called Kaiser labor and delivery again and asked to come in for a non-stress test.

I still thought I would be reassured. I thought I might feel a little silly when everything turned out to be fine. I thought, that, at most, if anything were wrong I might have a C-section. Maybe even an emergency C-section, but then everything would be OK.