On Motherhood: A Confession (Part II)

I am the youngest child in a family of four.  So, I don’t exactly have a lot of experiences with babies (also, see below).  Some of our good friends from seminary had an adorable little girl, and I had the esteemed privilege of getting to hang out with her for a few hours every once in a while when her mom and dad were taking much-needed breaks.  They were always so relieved to have a few hours to themselves, and they lavished me with much undeserved gratitude.  The truth of the situation was that they were giving me much-needed experience with a baby.  At the ripe old age of 27, I finally changed my first diaper, put a baby down for a nap, fed a baby with a bottle and with some baby food, and tried to soothe a screamer.  Granted, there was the afternoon I had to call the mother because I was trembling from head to toe from the blood-curdling screams that lasted for two hours . . .

But, I digress.

My first experience with the birth of a child came upon me when I was an old child myself, at 18.  I had started growing closer to a friend from church who I will call Emma (not her real name, you know, to protect her privacy).  She had been dating one of the members of our high school youth group for several years, and near the end of the summer before our senior year began, they broke up.  She was sad, so she had sex with him (the logic of adolescence?).  She got pregnant.  He told her that her pregnancy was the inevitable result of her lack of faith that God would forgive them for doing this heinous thing.  His parents said that they couldn’t make him do anything one way or another since he was eighteen, but they were careful to argue that their son, the man-child, was clear of any legal responsibilities since Emma “had forced herself upon him” and was “more than consenting.”

Our church responded by asking Emma to step down from her leadership responsibilities in the youth group.  When it became clear that I was going to continue to associate with her, they politely and discretely put other people in charge of my leadership responsibilities, too.  No one ever talked to me about it, but it was clear that they didn’t want the name of their church’s youth group sullied by a pregnant teen or any of her condoning friends.  I left the church and went to another.  I was too busy with school and other matters to contemplate the church’s actions anyway.

Emma considered getting an abortion.  She researched information about clinics in Texas, which can be very dangerous places and very difficult to know of.  But in the end, she decided to give birth to the baby and to arrange for him to be adopted by a family with the financial and maturational resources to support him.  Emma’s mother was mystified by her decision, wanting Emma to keep and raise the baby with her help, but she allowed Emma to make her own decision.  In another controversial decision, Emma decided she did not want her mom to be in the delivery room when she gave birth.  She feared it would be too painful and difficult for her mother.  Plus, she was sixteen!  She thought her mother would drive her crazy!  So she asked me if I’d be willing to be her coach.  I said yes and accompanied Emma to six weeks of Lamaze classes and almost all of her doctor’s appointments.  She scheduled her induced labor for the Friday before our spring break.  We got up early that morning, drove with her mom to the hospital, and waited.

How can I describe a child giving birth to a child?  How can I describe it as I saw it, through child-eyes?  Emma breathed heavily and writhed on her bed.  She squeezed her eyes shut and moaned in a private world of pain.  Her lips chapped, and her throat grew parched.  She sucked on ice and gripped my hand.  I tried to remember everything our Lamaze teacher had taught us.  This was, however, unlike any test I had ever taken before.  I couldn’t remember my notes, and there wasn’t any time to think.  We felt like we had been waiting forever, and then, suddenly, Emma’s legs were positioned on stirrups and a blackish red mass began peeking through.  The nurses smacked an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth.  I grabbed her face and made her look into my eyes.  I started shouting at her: “EMMA!  Focus!  Breathe!  You can do this!  You’re almost there!  It’s almost over!  Breathe!  Push!  Breathe!  Push!  You’re doing great!  Oh my God!  I see his whole head!  Breathe!  Push!  Oh my God!  He has arms!  Breathe…”

A creamy and bloodied blob emerged, attached to a cord.  Emma released my hand and fell back on her bed, exhausted.  Tears were streaming down my cheeks, and I was trembling.  The doctor suctioned the little blob’s nostrils and mouth, wiped his eyes, ears, and lips, and handed him to a nurse.  The doctor turned back to Emma, coaching her through the afterbirth process.  But I felt like I was floating, hovering over the scene, everything tinged with a mysterious shimmer.  The nurse cleaned the baby, put an identification tag on his ankle, swaddled him like she was wrapping a burrito, and started to hand him to Emma.  She opened her eyes, took one look at him, and pointed at me.  “Give him to her,” she spluttered.

The nurse obeyed, and I fixed my eyes on this tiny newborn creature staring back at me, sleepily.  I kissed his soft and fuzzy forehead, not even considering that he hadn’t yet been bathed.  I cradled him and rocked him and wept over him, and he gulped tiny sips of earth’s air.  The room spun around me in a dizzying frenzy, but I held onto that little, beloved, precious being with all my heart and strength, and I felt more incontrovertibly embraced by God in that moment than I have ever before or since.