The pains first started on Friday at two in the morning. Courtney was up reading A Streetcar Named Desire, so to pass the anxious hours we took turns reading scenes to each other like the locos we are. You should hear Courtney’s Blanche, though.
And then, after four short hours, everything stopped.
Saturday was relatively uneventful, and on Sunday we hiked to Tzununa, a neighboring town, while the sun set on hillsides of brilliant yellow wildflowers. During the night the contractions began again at 2am. They seemed as though they would continue, so we called our midwife, Antonina, from Xela, two and a half hours away. They did not continue, though – four hours and out.
This cycle of four hours of labor continued through Wednesday, during which time we became excited, disappointed, frustrated, nervous – a huge bellyful of mixed emotions. One day was filled with relaxing meals and swimming, the next with tears and an interminable sense of limbo. Courtney took to walking at night, and one time was even surrounded by eight dogs in the barrio, barking and nipping at her – I imagine it was quite a sight (I was in bed).
Feeling something drastic was needed, something to clear the energy, we sent Antonina back to Xela where she was needed. We decided that our midwife here in San Marcos, Jenny, would be perfectly sufficient. This was the turning point.
Two notable but unrelated events bookmarked this decision. The first was on Tuesday night. Althea came home for a moment to check in with us during another bout of seemingly futile labor. While walking out on the street, she had come across a baby hummingbird that appeared to be hurt. She recounted her experience with the tiny creature: “Papa, I held her in my arms and I was worried about her, so I said a prayer for her and sent her my energy, and in the next minute, she started to move, straightened herself up and flew off. I think it’s a good sign for the baby.” Precious, no?
And then on Wednesday night, Courtney, Althea and I were visiting Rebecca (who would unexpectedly end up assisting at the birth) at Hotel La Paz. As we left the garden gate at the hotel, we heard a cat calling up in a tree. She was calling to us. We looked closer and realized that it was our old cat, Luna. We inherited her at the school, and she gave birth to our other two cats on our bed while we lived at the school. She took off shortly after Leroy arrived, about a year and a half ago. But there she was, still alive and well, up in a tree on the other side of town. We called back to her and she came down a branch and let us pick her up. A man approaching on the path soon scared her and she was gone just as quickly as she appeared. But we took that as another good sign. Oh, and that night was the luna llena – the full moon.
Courtney did not sleep much that night; she was up pacing the house, meditating, watching the moon, eating, singing all the kindergarten songs she could remember, and bouncing around as she slapped her belly and sang commandingly, “come on out now / stop being lazy / you gotta get your little butt out / so I can be a good mama to you.” Or something like that.
When I got up the next morning, she was at the kitchen table throwing down castor oil cocktails like only Courtney can do. She read in one of her birthing books that it speeds up labor. And it did. Wow. Like gasoline on a fire.
By 8:30am she was frenetically rushing Althea out the door. By 9:30am her water broke, and we started chaotically calling our midwives. We couldn’t reach Jenny for some reason, and Maria (our third back-up midwife) was stuck on the other side of the lake due to a landslide. The water was out in town. One thing after another. Finally we got Jenny and she came running up to the house. We called our friend, Rebecca, to come and help at the imminent birth. She was not expecting this, but she came quickly.
The labor was fast and furious, and by 11:45am I watched our baby virtually fall out of Courtney onto our kitchen floor – right in front of the refrigerator. She was caught by our midwife, Jenny.
We – and it seemed like nearly everyone else – were almost certain that it would be a boy. Althea, however, never tired of correcting us when we spoke of the baby as “he” or her little “brother.” She was insistent that this baby, whom she had brought about with her magic wand, special-ordered for this very purpose, was a girl. No doubts about it. When she came into the bedroom and saw her little sister, she looked at us with an ecstatic smile and knowing eyes. She graciously spared us those four patronizing words that are the due of the vindicated.
Mirabai Remedios Wilson joined us on Thursday, 13 November at around 11:45, weighing a solid 8 lbs.
She has already brought a little bit of heaven into our lives.
