The California Zephyr, Part II: Transcontinental

Two weeks in Chicago, not a single snowflake. Dire illness, bitter cold, yes. But no snow.

The day we leave? The remains of a massive ice storm, uncharacteristic for Chicago, pelts inches of crunchy snow at us as we trudge the three city blocks from Ogilvie Transportation Center to Union Station in Chicago, even unintentionally eliciting the aid of a friendly mother-son duo who insist on us letting them help us with our bags. We must look pretty pathetic. But that’s the Midwest for you–don’t try to be Superman, because if you do, someone is going to help you anyway.

After checking our bags and catching lunch with a dear friend, we wind our way through the recesses of Union Station, directed by the wonderfully patient security guards, to our platform.

We’re riding in the cheap seats, coach. We show a conductor our tickets on the platform, and he assigns us seats, writing their numbers and the station code of our destination on a small sheet of paper. We leave our larger carry-ons on a rack on the lower level and head up the stairs with our personal items. Ten minutes and a new seat assignment later, our remaining luggage is stowed overhead and we wait.

On a Superliner, the coach cars are directly behind the engines, with the lounge car and dining car in the middle, and the sleeper cars at the end. As a coach rider, the top floor is the party floor–not literally, but it’s where life happens. The cars are only linked via the top floor, and the lounge and dining car are on the upper level as well. The toilets are downstairs, and the snack bar is below the lounge car, but in the middle of winter the bottom floor is dark and drafty, convenient if you have difficulty on the steps, but dreary otherwise.

Our seat-assignment cards are clipped to the overhead luggage racks, and as we glance around, we notice a pattern. These are the long-haulers. The personalities occupying this car will be with us until Salt Lake or further. And, of course, our little man is the biggest personality of them all.

As the clock strikes 2PM, the train commences. As we pull out of the station, we're surrounded by graffitied walls and occasional glimpses of Chicago's industrial underbelly. We take the opportunity to scope out the snack bar's offerings and get acquainted with the family restroom downstairs.

Before long, the sun fades and the warehouses give way to field and hedges, all darkness outdoors save for the occasional obliging streetlamp or barnyard floodlight. In these moments, we see ice-encrusted twigs shimmering in the light, and the world is covered ever more thickly in nature's diamonds as the storm rages on.

Inside, we set into the dinner we've packed and then head down to the family restroom to start the bedtime routine and change into pajamas.

Sleeping on the train shouldn't be terrible, as we've brought a pillow to help us manage the little man on our laps, and the reclining seats are spacious and the foot rests are adjustable.

Except that it was pretty terrible, at least for Soren and I. Because the train stops throughout the night, an overhead light needs to stay on so that passengers can easily board and leave the train, and that light is perfectly positioned to shine its understated glare directly into our eyes. We finally rig up a little curtain using a scarf tied to the overhead baggage shelf, but while we are able to keep the little man quiet, it would be a stretch to call the night’s sleep “restful”.

Luckily, we didn’t opt for coach seats with a 5-month-old with expectations for a refreshing sleeping experience! When the little man wakes up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 6AM, we rejoice in the fact that he is well rested, and stake out a table in the observation lounge, where the little man can babble to his heart’s delight and we can watch the sun come up.

As the day breaks, we’re in the outskirts of Denver. Every few hours, the train makes a long stop usually 20-30 minutes, during which restless passengers can get some fresh air (Or smoke. Mostly smoke.) We look longingly to the West, eager for the next stage of our journey: the mountains.

After what feels like hours, the train slowly pulls out of Denver, making its way through the rest of the city and back and forth across a series of huge switchbacks, pushing its way up the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Once we’ve made the climb, we plunge into the mountains, quite literally–in the first 50 miles past Denver, there are 31 tunnels on the Zephyr’s route, culminating in the 6.2-mile Moffat Tunnel. There is a reason why tunnels this long are rare, aside from the practicality of building them, of course: there is no way to properly circulate the air at the heart of the mountain. Thus, our conductors make it exhaustively clear that we need to refrain from moving between cars to avoid bringing toxic fumes on board.

Between these tunnels, the scenery changes. No longer are we looking out over the vast Plains of middle America–now we are skating along the sides of ever-taller peaks, deep green forests dotting their slopes and vast blue lakes gracing their valleys. The horizon is a distant memory as these gargantuan hills surround us, and all concept of scale is lost.

Still we continue, and a few miles after Moffat Tunnel we join up with the Colorado River, our constant companion through the Rockies. Our route follows this unassuming trickle of water through gorges and across alpine expanses. Bolderous outcroppings, distant snow caps and layered red rocks each take their turns in dominating our surroundings, our trusty river ever by our side. We catch a glimpse of eagles, nesting in a tree along its shore, and extensive networks of snow tracks indicate that they’re not the only living creatures in this cold, wild place.

Dotted along the way are little hamlets and hidden winter parks. Back in our seats by now, Soren and I take turns holding the little man while he naps, and read him books when he wakes up. When he gets really antsy, we take him for walks or hold him over our heads so that he can use his coos and smiles to win over the hearts of our neighbors. This works wonderfully to cheer him up, except for when he tries to swoon the young ladies across the aisle–they don’t fall for him, and he turns back to us, wailing in disappointment over his unrequited affections. This happens at least half a dozen times, but his delicate feelings are salvaged by the appreciative encouragement from other passengers who had slept peacefully the night before.

We claim another table in the observation car and soon find ourselves in conversation with a woman who regularly rides the rails because of its environmental sustainability. We all agree that we love this space because it is bright and cheery–essentially the train’s patio, the best place to enjoy the sights. The scenery isn’t the only thing worth watching here–we also have the opportunity to observe the train’s strongest characters in their finest. Whether it’s the outgoing, market-speculating retiree, the ultra-liberal evangelist, the lego-building family, the thoughtful watercolorist, or that one guy who decides that this, of all places, is the prime spot for a nap, this is where the people of the train congregate, and it’s lovely.

Almost as soon as the foothills are behind us, the sun fades and we commence the nightly ritual of the diaper-change, pajamas, and ear-infection-fighting antibiotics downstairs. The family bathroom was definitely a godsend–it allowed Soren and I to tag-team on managing the little man and getting ourselves changed (which not everyone does, but it’s fantastic for morale). It’s really nothing fancy, though. The restrooms can probably be best described as a cross between an airplane restroom and a port-a-potty. They’re small (the family one has an extra tiny room attached) and have wall handles so that you don’t fall over on the next bend or bump in the tracks, but sometimes they’re great, sometimes they stink, and sometimes they’re missing...something. The germaphobe would likely want to bring their own supply of hand sanitizer (and maybe a small roll of toilet paper or wet wipes, if they’re really grossed out by things), but we had a ready stock of helpful items in the diaper bag, so we were able to adapt easily when there were shortages.

Night Number Two is not quite as smooth as the first, however the little man has already skillfully charmed our neighbors, so nobody seems to hold it against us too much. In my own restlessness, I decide that I’d love to do this trip again in the summer–the longer days would allow us to see twice as much scenery our December adventure, and I’m endlessly curious about what is outside the window.

We opt to have a hot breakfast in the dining car on our last day, and we enjoy both the food and the company. One of our companions has a friend who lives near Reno and calls her to see if they can meet up at one of the stops. As she runs toward her car to prepare to catch her friend, we stare in awe as the foothills of the Sierras rise around us, the early morning sun dressing them in every shade of pink.

The Sierra Nevada is special to both of us–it was the first big, snowy mountain range that either of us had ever experienced. The Sierras are not jagged or fragile–they are vast granite monoliths covered in ancient green forests. We stare lovingly through the window for hours, enjoying views of forested valleys and cloud-topped peaks opposite us. We enjoy the patterns of wetter, heavier snow that covers our surroundings as we wonder whether there have ever been any other mountains as breathtaking as these.

Such joy, however, cannot last forever. Before long, the little man decides that he is very much done with trains, and we discover that one of our phones was uploading photos via 3G last night. By the time we leave these gorgeous mountains, we are taking deep breaths and reading all of the children’s books we’ve brought, over and over, and then resorting to the little man’s favorite downtime activity, selfies.

By the time we meet the water’s edge, the flurry of activity has begun–the final destination approaches, and we will soon say farewell to our compatriots and join our loved ones in Emeryville. We gather our belongings. Soren helps a Monterey native order his first Uber car. We take one last trip to the family restroom. And we soak in our final moments on this wonderful adventure, having discovered that our backup flight (the one we'd scheduled in case we chickened out of the train plan) was cancelled due to the Chicago ice storms. We are overjoyed that we chose to spend our time seeing some of the best of America, because the alternative would have involved plenty of waiting and dangerous driving, but no mountains to enjoy or new people to charm or crazy faces in the bathroom mirror to giggle at. We are so glad that we decided to do this crazy thing.

And then, in the blink of an eye, we have arrived, completely confused as to where to find our checked bags, but excited for the little man to finally meet FarMor and FarFar, 51 hours after departing from an icy Chicago.

A Merry Christmas indeed!

The Last Weekend

Shock. Polls had been moving steadily toward leaving the EU for some time, but then Jo Cox was murdered in front of a library in Leeds and the campaigning stopped for two days in the week leading up to the vote.

The Remain campaign now had a martyr, and the investment bankers, the “bookies”, took the following silence as a change of heart. Mistook.

And so did I, to be honest. The experts were clearly Remain, the Leave campaign seemed shady at best, and you would think that, after the events of the past ten years, no country in its right mind would vote to destabilize their economy, Europe's economy, the world economy, just to lose their say in the formation of EU regulations that they still wouldn’t escape.

I heard the word immigration thrown around a lot, because immigrants tend to be sensitive to that kind of thing, but I never really understood why--Europe's single market is predicated upon the free movement of workers. A change would never be allowed, not without great cost. And what's more, with a million British pensioners (retirees) living in Spain, deportation of EU nationals would mean bringing them back--and adding a lot of pressure to an already under-resourced NHS.

In the end, I hoped for a Remain vote, because we're paid in pounds and our student loans are in dollars, and the first and surest effect of a Leave vote was going to be a weaker pound.

So yeah. Shock.

I wasn't the only one caught in disbelief--nearly all of London was majority Remain. The Remain sentiment was so strong here that the pound, after being down to around $1.40 in anticipation of the vote, was up to $1.50 by midnight on voting day.

When I woke up, it was $1.33.

Thank God we beat the crowds in moving money early--with the rates up and the surrounding uncertainty, Transferwise* was bombarded with requests. They completely shut down on Thursday and Friday. American expat forums were filled with people kicking themselves, wondering whether they should still move their funds before it went any lower.

And then David Cameron resigned. What??? Soren heard about it from his coworkers, and that's when we decided to buy a TV license**. How do you deal with a public catastrophe except to glue your eyes to the television? I must have watched some segments a dozen times on Friday, but I don't care. In fact, I needed to. I needed the truth to sink in. I needed to see people who were angry, people who were calm, people who were hopeful, the people who were going to lead my country of residence through this mess. I needed to move beyond panic, to understand why anyone would do something so obviously stupid, to get an idea of what comes next.

Two years, a two-year period that the Prime Minister told us he can trigger when a new leader is in place and ready to negotiate. October, he said, would be a good time for that, at least for Britain.

Two years means that, of our five-year visa, at least half of it will elapse in a time of uncertainty and what may be bitter negotiations, both within Britain and beyond it.

Then Nicola Sturgeon announced that Scotland may hold another vote about whether to leave the UK. Scotland was completely majority Remain, 62% for the whole country. Many Scots are angry, regretting that they didn't vote for their own independence when they had the chance two years ago.

I understood the sentiment--I was angry too. I love London, and it is not in spite of the people. But the whole vote, even the fact that it happened, seemed selfish in the face of the refugee crisis and terror concerns. Every inbred prejudice my Yankee heart harbors against England bubbled to the surface--but then, plenty of English people felt that way too.

And those that voted Leave did so for a variety of reasons--some because of (probably false) anti-immigration propaganda, but others because they’ve seen the junior doctors driven to protest because they’re underpaid and overworked, and others because the EU is not strictly a democratic institution. They wanted to take control, to have a say in how to handle immigration and trade relations and funding. Many view it as a declaration of independence.

The figure on this Vote Leave bus was revealed to be false on Friday

I understood that too, and I pitied those who were dismayed and regretful when Nigel Farage revealed that some of the Vote Leave adverts were definitively misleading. I pitied all of the UK, that such a decision that was rooted in so many lies and half-truths and undeliverable promises, on both sides of the debate.

In the afternoon, we went for a walk, discussed whether we should stop investing, whether we should start packing our bags, where we would even go if we left. Wait and see, we concluded, because we love London. We love London in a way that we’ve never loved a home before. Still, I quietly rejoiced that our lease has elapsed and we aren’t tied down.

By Friday evening, the pound had recovered slightly, and the stock markets reflected the same small dip up. A breath. Inhale, exhale. In, out.

The BBC made it clear that a unified front would be the only way to stifle the worst of disasters, and they convinced me. They emboldened me, and gave me hope. Hope, until the markets open again and the Tories start competing for the top spot and prices start climbing. Hope, until the EU leaders’ summit decides how they’re going to respond and the reality of the long slog of the next three years settles in and companies start reshuffling their staff.

Hope, for this: the last weekend.

The last weekend where a United Kingdom outside the European Union is still a blinding shock.

***

*Our preferred money-transfer service

**A fee for watching live feed that allows BBC channels to produce quality content ad-free. We were going to buy one for the Olympics anyway

The California Zephyr, Part I: Train Brain

Through the darkness, clickety-clack…

Coming closer, down the track…

Hold your breath so you can hear

Huffing, chuffing, drawing near.

  -Steam Train, Dream Train by Sherri Duskey Rinker & Tom Lichtenheld

November is dark in England. Whereas I think of “winter” as being mid-December through mid-March in Chicago, the depth of our first winter here seemed to span from early November through early February. That meant that during the dark and wet and chilly days of November, I was planning a trip.

Like, a big trip. At first, it was going to be a quick dive to somewhere fanciful and romantically wintry like Hallstatt, Austria. Then, we found out that Soren was going to have to go to Berlin.

And then, we had our first snow.

Now, the snow itself was terrible, anti-climactic, laughable even--a thin sheen of slush barely visible on the neighboring rooftops. But during the first snowfall of every year, I look up the YouTube video for the song “Snow” from White Christmas, because how else do you keep the romance alive?

Snow, Those glist'ning houses that seem to be built of snow

Snow, Oh, to see a mountain covered with a quilt of snow

  -”Snow”, Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” (Watch on YouTube)

And guess where our beloved songsters are when they sing that song? ON A TRAIN! And a sleeper train at that!

Add to this that I was reading the delightful book “Steam Train, Dream Train” to Aksel every day (and the fact that I hadn’t flown with Aksel yet and was accordingly terrified of the prospect), and we had a plan: we were going to get Eurail passes and take a monster train trip through as many scenic routes as possible in Europe, beginning with a few days in Berlin and then traversing to everywhere beautiful and spending lots of time in the Alps!

Because two years ago, I finally learned that the best way to survive winter is to embrace it. How better to do so than to soak in the Black Forest and Salzburg and the Swiss Alps on a cozy train? Heck, why not add Vienna as well???

I cannot describe the manic obsession that overtakes me when I get an idea. It’s actually kind of a problem at this stage in my life, because I think Aksel does appreciate my attention from time to time, so when my eyes are glued to my computer as I look up train timetables and hotels, working out schedules and budgets, my “good mom” status definitely takes a hit.

“But Janel,” you say, “you didn’t mention the train or the Alps in your post about Berlin. What happened?”

In the midst of my train-mania, I was trying to book flights for our Christmas travels in the States, and I was dismayed at the cost of Christmas-week flights from Chicago to California. I decided to poke around and see just how expensive a train ride would be.

Now I'm transcontinental

3000 miles from my home

I'm on the California Zephyr

Watching America roll by

  -”California Zephyr” by Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard (Listen on YouTube)

The prices of trains were definitely competitive with the cost of flights, and if we changed our dates by a day or two, we could go direct from Chicago to Emeryville, CA on the California Zephyr, which has a whole, beautiful song written about it. We booked it. We also booked a flight, in case we decided it was crazy (both were flexible fare options), and decided that this could be a great way to test out the train before the monster Europe trip.

The flight and the train would both set out on December 28th. Fast forward to the week of Christmas, during which Aksel got ridiculously sick (and before which we forgot to buy travel insurance, which was a very expensive mistake), and we were torn. To fly, or to ride the rails?

On December 27th, we had to make a decision. We decided to take the 52-hour train trip, and in our next post, I’ll explain why that was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.

Wintry Wanderings

Our first two post-birth European excursions happened this past winter--first, we went to Edinburgh during Christmas season to see a friend who had been in the area for her studies, and then we spent a few days in Berlin for Soren’s work in late January. Our experiences could not have been more different.

Edinburgh

Hello, Scotland! -4-month-old Aksel

Everything that the light touches is...Scotland!

Edinburgh is a city for romantics--as you walk down the streets of Old Town you feel that you're being hugged by the aged buildings, and you begin to truly understand Gothic architecture for the first time. The gray structures tower against the overcast backdrop and suddenly the whole world is a picture-perfect black and white, and you are walking the steps of history with your haggis and whiskey, a tartan scarf shielding you from the biting winds that catch you at the crossings.

Old Town is stunning. 

What will you find at the other end?

New Town is also beautiful.

Charm comes in many hues. 

Any travel bug would find it impossible not to fall in love with this city, and the Christmas lights and festivities add a twinkle to the eye of this softly wrinkled place with all of the warmth, charm, and comestibles you could desire.

So many mysteries!

Cheerful Contrast

Warmth indoors!

Christmas Market and Festivities

Comestibles--and the wonderful Yasmeen!

Festival of Lights!

Berlin

Contemplating Berlin...and eating the drapes. -6-month-old Aksel

Aksel at the Aquarium, and a fish that is bigger than him!

Berlin, however, is understandably more stark. With the softening glow of Christmas gone, the winter has taken root, and Berlin is revealed to be a city ever paying for the crimes of the last century. Numerous memorials and charmless buildings remind us that 70% of the city was leveled during the Second World War, and subsequently rebuilt during the unimaginative (or too imaginative?) modern era. On occasion, you stumble upon a museum, a state building, a statue--hints of its former glory--and you are struck by how much was lost. The human losses during WWII were devastating, but my American eyes have spent little time comprehending the physical realities of the aftermath--a continent tattered and scarred, a burden of guilt that will be carried by the German people indefinitely. We pass by rows of temporary housing, and I see the commitment of a nation to move past its shameful history, and the creaking and groaning that it has been feeling as a result.

The Berlin Wall

Holocaust Memorial

One of many memorials left to ensure that Berlin never forgets its past.

The Scars of War

I

don't

understand.

Brandenburg Gate

Some of Berlin's former charm remains.

Berlin Victory Column in the Tiergarten

Tiergarten

Tiergarten

I take a stroll through the Tiergarten, breathing in the pine smell, throwing a snowball, studying the majestic monument at its heart, and I mourn that such beauty can be tainted by such evil. This is no place for romantics--it shows the world as it truly is: beautiful, broken, desperate for redemption.

Berlin

Everything you never wanted to know about Aksel’s birth

So, the thing you need to know about Aksel’s birth is that I had spent a lot of time agonizing over whether to pursue a home birth or go with a birth centre, with the assumption that medicine would play only a small role in our birth experience. In the end, choice had nothing to do with it. Instead, we rode the roller coaster of real life right through a series of misadventures and into the delivery suite at the hospital. Not that anything went particularly wrong--the kid had an APGAR score of 10 just one minute after birth! But, well, let’s just say that it was all a little bit unexpected.

You see, Aksel was due to be born on July 11th, and my mom and her sisters were scheduled to arrive in London that afternoon. Still pregnant, I somehow managed to get a bad summer cold on July 10th. That must be why, when I started having contractions on the 13th, my body shied away from active labor. The pains would come every few minutes, but just when I thought they’d settled into a rhythm, there would be a huge fluctuation. After a day of this, my dear aunts suggested I try going on all fours to see if that would help. Brilliant idea. I tried it later that night. Question: Have you ever been kicked in the lower abdomen? And maybe peed yourself a little? You know, just a little?

No? (If you said yes, I’m sorry). Well, nevertheless I’m sure you can imagine the outcome of my experiment. A warm bath accompanied by a dramatic reading from The Princess Bride helped soothe the spasm, until maybe an hour later, when the doorbell pierced our calm, quiet environs with its heinous voice. It rang again and again. Upon answering it, we found out that our downstairs neighbor had water pouring through her ceiling. We discovered water under our tub, and that was the end of the bath. I rested while Soren helped our neighbor manage the mess, and then we packed up and went to the hospital. There, in triage, the midwives said my waters were definitely leaking and that I was dehydrated. I could stay and have fluids injected into my bloodstream, or go home until the following evening if I promised to drink a lot. Home we went.

We arrived back at the hospital at 8pm the following evening. Next time we’ll remember to call ahead. Shift changes and a busy night meant that I spent the next hour in a small waiting room, contracting, with a sharp, nauseating ache building in my back. At 9pm, a midwife walked us to a room with four curtained-off sections and a bathroom outside. Just before we entered, she casually mentioned that, of course, as it was a shared room, only one birth partner could stay the night. We should have anticipated this setback, but as I said, intervention wasn’t part of my plan, so of course I’d forgotten to research the standard induction procedures. When she saw the looks of terror on our faces, she quickly added that Mom could stick around for a few minutes as we talked about what was going to happen.

Once we’d settled into the 8-foot by 8-foot square occupied by a hospital bed, tray table, monitoring equipment, armchair and birthing ball, she told us that they were going to start by monitoring me for 30 minutes, but as there were so many laboring women coming in, I'd have to wait to be induced for at least six hours. Which would not have been so terrible if I wasn’t battling heartburn and a cold, if I wasn’t already exhausted from two days of relentless pain management, if the constant, needling pain in my back wasn’t teaming up with sufficiently painful contractions to shred my soul to pieces. It took less than two hours for me to give up on my plan of avoiding painkillers, but the wise midwives would only give me Tylenol and Codeine. This lovely combination took away the ache in my lumbar region, but it couldn’t cover over the latest unexpected development of the evening: back labor. Yes, that’s right. Back labor. Aksel was in the optimal position. Didn’t matter. That whole night, I laid on my side and Soren had the charming job of shoving my hip into the bed during each contraction so that I didn’t die.

Let’s not forget that I was still dehydrated. I’d tried to make good on my promise to fill up on fluids, but I simply couldn’t keep anything down. So after the loooooong night on the ward, I thought I’d managed to keep my breakfast down, but I was immediately met by my nemesis: heartburn. I sought relief in the form of a licorice-tasting substance that had the consistency of glue (they tried to tell me it was antacid, but I couldn’t hear them over the retching), however that didn’t last long, and the pressure of the regurgitation caused another type of explosion. My shorts were soaked. The floor was covered in water. I had fluid on the top of my pregnant belly. I straightened, wide-eyed, cardboard bowl of my rejected breakfast in my hands, my legs dripping in amniotic fluid. And that, my friends, was when we laughed on Aksel’s birthday.

Around noon, I guess they decided they were tired of bringing me stacks of incontinence pads*, because the midwife came in to give me a small dose of Prostin gel. She said she’d monitor me for six hours, and then I’d be given Pitocin if it didn’t work. She also mentioned something about this being a bit of a risk because I’d already started contracting and, well, once the gel is in there, they can’t exactly take it out. Indeed.

It took a grand total of 15 minutes for the breaks between contractions to diminish. In the blink of a proverbial eye, my life had become one loooong contraction, going from bearable to unbearable and back again. I managed to survive by breathing through the first 30 minutes, and then through one hour, then two hours. But then I thought it had been three hours and it had only been two-and-a-half hours, and that’s when I broke. The pain was mounting. Time was slowing. And I wasn’t even halfway through my six hours. Soren told the midwife I was done. She came in and I told her that I, the girl who had practically begged to be approved for a home birth, who had sworn that I would avoid unnecessary interventions at every turn, could not do it anymore. I told her, in not so many words, that it was time for--duhn duhn duhn--The Epidural.

Now, during this 2.5 hour stretch, I'd been given a tank of entonox (a.k.a. gas and air/laughing gas/nitrous oxide and oxygen), and I'd tried to take a breath of it here and there, but all it really did was distract me from my controlled breathing, so I’d abandoned the whole thing. Hence, after the midwife gave up trying to convince me that I could follow my birth plan and use natural pain management methods, she said, “In the meantime, put [the entonox mouthpiece] on and leave it on!"

Two minutes later, I became a true believer in entonox. Silly me, I’d been doing it all wrong! I still had to breathe through contractions, but after all I'd been through in the previous days, that was nothing! The midwife resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she told us to call her back if I felt the urge to push. Five minutes later, she was back, declaring me to be 4.5 cm dilated and ready to be transferred. Two young, cheerful midwives arrived with a wheelchair to take me to the delivery room. Like any laboring woman would, I begged them to run so that the high wouldn’t wear off before I could renew my supply. They didn’t. It didn’t.

This was around 3pm, and after that, my experience gets a bit more hazy. What little awareness the entonox spared was dedicated to pain management, but I do know that they succeeded in placing an IV for fluids on the fifth try, and it took Mom about an hour to get to the hospital. Soren says the midwives really enjoyed the playlist I’d made, but I didn't even realize the music was playing. I ended up having the urge to push before I was fully dilated, and that was Mom’s time to shine. When I was born, I beat the doctor to the hospital, but not until after my mom learned how to avoid pushing. Eventually, my dad told the nurses (certified nurse-midwives, actually) they weren’t going to wait for a doctor anymore, and that’s how I entered this world. So Mom was able to coach me through waiting until I was dilated. (Hint: Blow out! You can’t push a baby out if you’re pushing air out!)

It was actually pretty fortunate that things were hazy for me, because in these later stages, they noticed Aksel’s heart rate dropping during contractions. They called in OBs and the head midwife and discussed with Soren how low they'd be comfortable with it going, and carried on without intervening for awhile. They decided that things were not serious enough to transfer me to the "theatre" (operating room). When I (finally) reached 10cm, they had me get up and push through a couple of contractions, but his heart rate dipped so low that they wanted to get him out, stat! So they had me get in stirrups as they took away the end of the bed, and the OB who had cleared us for a home birth weeks earlier was there with some sort of cord. I was like, "Oh look, Ines is here!" in my mind. I was totally out of it. As it turns out, Ines was operating a vacuum (ventouse here), and after three pushes, Aksel came out with his hand in front of his face (“Oh, a little Superman!”). They took him to the baby station on the wall to be checked by a pediatrician, and he had that perfect APGAR score. They put him in a scruffy little hat and wrapped him in a blanket.

And then they brought him to me.

There it was--the end of life as I knew it. The end of sleep, of independence, of reckless abandon. The end of waiting, of empty arms, of deepest longing. All wrapped up in this precious, pudgy, wide-eyed little lump.

Speechless.

I was so tired, so unprepared, so unsure as to what came next. I knew what was ending, but I had no idea what was beginning. I was content with the care we’d received--the midwives had done everything they could to honor my birth plan. It was all a bit unexpected, but I’d been given the grace of time to accept the changes as they came. I held this little person who didn’t know he was a person yet, looking around for the first time, and I simply couldn’t comprehend. I didn’t feel a gush of love--that would come soon--but I felt such a glorious weight settle on my heart. My son. My son. Aksel. 

Psalm 139:13-16 (ESV)
For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;

my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there was none of them.

 

*This is a joke. They finally had room in the delivery suite.