A Sterling Birth Anniversary

It’s been ONE YEAR since the birth of an ocean of love. Sparkling, squirming, GIGANTIC, flower blooming into our mini sea tub. I willed and invited the opening while held in the arms of my loving man, our midwives and the inflatable, makeshift merbaby portal. Candles, cacti, nibbles of honey toast, moans and waves of distraction. Questions, oh the questions: “When will it happen?,” “Is it happening?,” “Is it happening fast enough?” Whatever it was was assuaged by the presence of these women of birth, in our home, rooted in our place of love. Le sigh. I was ok because they were with me. They’d ridden the wave but I’d only been outside of it, gifted it’s treasures but never erupted myself. I was peeling apart like a banana, over three days and nights. Unfurling. Unwinding. Creaking and squeaking apart like some heavy-hinged door. I was in the current. I was all the women before and after me. I was the stories I read and videos I watched. I was nothing. I was a star birthing a planet. It was definitely time. 

A home birth during a pandemic turning inside out. Welcoming the deepest, most prolonged pain because I knew what it meant. Life. Our baby. A treasure. I was stoic and I was wrecked. I cracked jokes, moaned throughout. I waddled, I wilted and dripped. I felt like I was going to crap on the floor. I was mad doing what I was prompted to do to move it along - fuck you - just wanted to lay and moan. I sat on the toilet and that got it going. Then the birthing stool. In and out of the shower and tub. THANK YOU WATER. Thank you inner me responding to my “I can’t do this!!” with “Well you better fucking do it because this is what you wanted and you’re going to go in there and have that baby in the fucking tub!” “Ok…..” 

And when the world was cracking it’s eyes open, we crawled back into the comfort of the water, in and out of waves as the babe inside me rocked and I sang and howled. My manlove pressed his hands into my knees and with all the terror, love and surrender the most beautiful, squishy, cone-headed, perfection emerged. And while he was cradled by my heart my natural pharmacopoeia kept me in an induced haze, so much that I didn’t realize that all 10 lbs 6 oz of him and 14.25” head circumference had left a battle wound where my crotch used to be. (And here’s where the midwife magic comes in because TWO days passed before I even heard the word hemorrhage). I held my baby and they held me, held our whole family. And in that moment of carnage, bliss and twinkling daylight, our family was more unified than ever. We were bathed in the light of new life, of Sterling. We were forever changed and more us than ever. 

ONE YEAR has passed and I’m still in awe. I’m surprisingly restored, still bathed in love. I’m still falling deeper into his sparkling ocean. Sterling Wylde Wood Younger, I love you so.

~ Molly