On Dec. 11, my mom's co-workers handed her $1,700 in cash and told her to go see her grandson. On Dec. 15 she was on a flight bound for Dresden. And on Dec. 17, six days after receiving the money, she held her first grandchild.
She'll be with us till Jan. 1 and we're having a fantastic time watching her work her maternal magic around here. Thank you to my mom's friends and co-workers. We are humbled beyond words by your gift and are making the most of every moment together.
From: Val Erickson Subject: FW: Project Germany Pictures Date: December 12, 2008 12:53:21 AM GMT+01:00 To: Jasmine Michaelson, Jake Michaelson
Guess who's coming to dinner????
My sweet friends at work have had a secret project going....me. They've been gathering donations to buy me a plane ticket to come over. I am totally blown away & cannot even believe this. I didn't think I was acting that desperate or sad.
I grossly underestimated how much time a new mom spends with her can glued to the couch. I haven't actually worked it out, but I'd guess that on average I now spend about two-thirds of my waking hours sitting on the couch.
I think this would drive a lot of people nuts, but lucky for me, couch-sitting is something I've always done remarkably well. It's integral to almost all of my primary hobbies: knitting, guitar playing, movie and TV watching, reading, and couch sitting. The thing is, now, my couch sitting is accompanied by my hands being occupied. And usually sticky with milk and baby puke. So that means that, most of the time, knitting, guitar playing, and reading are off the list. Oh yeah, and we don't have a television. But (thank the heavens), about a week before the birth, Jake — in all his unparalleled brilliance — figured out how to get us American television.
Normally, videos on sites like hulu.com and all the network sites aren't available to us because the Internet fairies tell them that we're not in America and some sort of legal-copyright hullabaloo makes viewing the videos in other countries illegal. Or something. Anyway, turns out, the trick is getting a server in the States and routing your traffic through that. You'll have to ask Jake for the details if you're interested. All I know is that now I can watch TV. And, boy, do I watch a lot. Random stuff. Stuff I never watched before. And I have a new favorite show.
Seriously. You should watch "Family Ties" again. They have a kajillion episodes here on cbs.com. It is a fantastic show. You'll thank me.
Michael J. Fox aside, though, all the guilt-free time on the couch is made even better by the fact that much of it is just spent snuggling this:
In the 25 years I’ve spent in this body, I’ve never pushed it to any kind of extreme, never exposed it to pain beyond everyday bangs and bruises, never nursed it through any illness or ailment requiring more than antibiotics and sleep. I’ve never performed well in athletics, and I’ve always dismissed myself as being a little on the weak end of the spectrum.
And so I had my doubts.
I knew going into this that, in Germany, epidurals aren’t passed out like candy the way they are in the States. Under the socialized medical system they have here, nobody stands to gain anything by pushing them. As I understand it, they are normally reserved for special situations. My midwife told me several months ago that they are available to everyone, but nobody stands over you with the syringe saying, “You ready for it?” The attitude seems to be if you are young and healthy, had a complication-free pregnancy, and are progressing normally through labor, an epidural will only serve to slow things down — which, of course, is highly inefficient. And we know how the Germans feel about inefficiency.
Initially, for the reasons stated above, this worried me. But as the pregnancy progressed, I started to embrace the idea, thinking this would be a great opportunity to let my body, for once in its existence, show what it can really do.
But as Jake and I waited outside our apartment building for the taxi that would take us to the hospital at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 16, I said, “Actually, I wouldn’t say no to some kind of painkiller right now.” Thirty minutes earlier, the contractions — which had started at about 3 a.m. that morning and had been coming (mildly) every ten minutes or so all day — sped up to every five minutes, and the pain was increasing exponentially. I’d spent the day cooking and cleaning and knitting and watching movies and thinking, “This is labor? This is a breeze!” But now, pacing the parking lot in the dark in my pajamas, semi-doubled over and forcing myself to breathe through the stabbing in my abdomen and lower back, I thought, “Ah. This is labor. And it’s only starting.” And I was nervous.
The taxi ride took about 15 minutes, which meant about three contractions, one of which hit just as we pulled up to the front of the University Frauenklinik. I had to lean on Jake outside the cab and breathe through it before heading up the steps. The cab driver wished us, “Alles Gute,” and we checked in.
The place was empty and half-dark when the lone midwife on call in the OBGYN office checked me. She said I was dilated to a 2, and if I wanted to, I could go home, get some sleep and come back later. I was shocked. The pain was already the most intense pain I’d ever experienced — and I still had 8 centimeters of dilating to go, followed, of course, by the pushing. I told her I felt I should stay, and we headed upstairs.
Jake and I were put in a room with a bed big enough that he could lie with me and hold me in his arms as I rode the waves of contractions. They grew stronger and breathing evenly through them became almost impossible. My water broke, and the nurse gave me an injection in my hip to dull the pain a little, warning me that the injection would hurt some, which I found strangely funny. The contractions still hurt, but the pain didn’t increase. And then the shot wore off. Jake and I were alone in the room when the full force of the contractions laid into me. They were incredible. I was clawing at things, shaking uncontrollably, and trying not to vomit when the midwife stuck her head in long enough to apologize and say she’d be back in 20 minutes, but there was an emergency down the hall that required her assistance. Jake held me and soothed me until they could come back and give me another injection. It was a long 20 minutes. This shot was a little stronger and allowed me to allow Jake to sleep for a few short, fitful intervals and allowed me to close my eyes. But I didn’t sleep.
Eventually light came through the windows, revealing a cold, gray November morning and a bustling construction site across the street. By mid-morning, the contractions were still coming and I still had not reached 10 centimeters. Mentally and emotionally I was sucked dry, and physically, I was so weak, Jake nearly had to carry me to the restroom.
I’d been in labor long enough that the work shifts had changed. I’d been handed over from one midwife with excellent English to a young midwife-in-training with no real English skills and her overseer, another midwife with good English. They told me that they were concerned about me keeping my strength up for the pushing and felt that it was time to put something in my I.V. drip that would expedite the last 2 centimeters of dilation, followed by something else that would speed up and strengthen the contractions. I can only imagine what my face must’ve looked like when they delivered this news. I was upright, but I can’t in good conscience use the word “standing”. Jake was holding me up by my armpits, and my head was buried in his chest. I couldn’t lift it anymore.
“I can’t do it,” I remember mumbling into his shirt. “My body can’t do it. I’m too weak.”
I wanted nothing more than to be able to say, “Well, I think we’ve put in a good day’s work. Let’s hang this up for today, get some sleep, and pick up tomorrow where we left off.” But it doesn’t work that way. Jake told me that I could do it, but I didn’t believe him.
Gradually the pushing contractions began. I clung to Jake and the pillows as each one overtook me. They were disembodied things. They didn’t feel like they were coming from within my shivering shell of a body. They were too powerful, like a rip-tide. They’d suck me under, and rather than fight it, the midwife would encourage me to push, to dive into it. Each time I came back up for air shaking harder.
I read somewhere that the average duration of the pushing stage of labor is around two hours. As it was happening for me, I had no concept of time, but Jake guesses I pushed for something like four hours. I don’t remember much from this time. I remember the midwife-in-training patiently encouraging me to breathe deeply and try to rest and store my strength between contractions. I remember changing positions every few contractions in an effort to shake things loose. I remember Jake’s arms around me and him whispering, “Good girl,” into my hair each time I surfaced, gasping and sputtering. I remember yellow cranes out the window at the construction site across the street. Mostly I remember feeling like I was drowning.
I was lying on the bed on my side when the midwife said the head was coming. She took my sweat-slick hand and brought it down so I could feel the top of my baby’s scalp. It was slippery and had hair. She and Jake were delighted, smiling and cheering me on and telling me it was almost over, but I think I was too delirious for the reality to set in. Then, suddenly, there were a lot of people in the room — other midwives in scrubs, people in white coats. The place was a beehive. Everyone was doing something. And I was screaming. Not screaming, really, not like on a roller coaster. It was like an animal. Stroking my leg, a midwife instructed me to shut my eyes and mouth when the contractions came and use the scream to push, and I did. I screamed through my chest and belly and hips and fingers and toes.
And then the biggest tidal wave yet slammed me into the rocks. I pushed until every molecule of oxygen had been forced out of every cell in my body. I tried to contain my scream, like they told me, but it leaked out, with a desperate sob. Everyone in the room was shouting encouragements in English and in German. Then all at once, everyone gathered around the bed started breathing hard and fast in and and out through their mouths with wide-open eyes. I followed their lead. And then all together, we clenched our teeth and bore down as another massive wave pummeled my body.
Then there was a flash of fire and a rushing flood of warmth. And then there was a cry. A raspy, staccato cry. And then I cried.
Jake cut the umbilical cord, and the tiny, purple body was laid on my bare chest. (I’m not even sure how or when my chest became bare.) We were both soaking wet and shaking. He was screaming for all he was worth, but it still sounded so small. I stroked his warm, wrinkly skin and shushed him and told him everything was OK. Because it was. Everything was OK.
I delivered the placenta a few minutes later, with a freshly blanketed, quieted and named infant sandwiched between Jake and me on the bed. Then the doctor stitched up my body where it had torn admitting my firstborn into the world. She did it in true German form — with no anesthesia — but I was too drained to protest. Much. Soon they were finished and everyone congratulated me and left and then a midwife and Jake took Jethro to be weighed and checked. I was left alone in the room, shuddering a little beneath a bed sheet. As exhausted as I was, I couldn’t sleep. I stared at the ceiling and gingerly rubbed my soft, deflated belly and marveled that, in spite of the violence my body had only minutes prior experienced, the emotion that had floated to the top was one of absolute peace.
And that is how I brought life into the world for the first time. I’m still, two weeks later, in disbelief over it and can barely talk about it without getting emotional. Never in my life have I felt more scared or more exhausted or more hopeless.
I'm from Idaho, but I live in Dresden, Germany. In a former life I was a journalist. I'm married to a mad scientist from Las Vegas named Jake, who is working on his Ph.D. here in computational biology. We have a baby boy named Jethro. We are Mormons fascinated by various things. This blog is about our lives, with particular emphasis on life in Germany through the eyes of an American. Enjoy your stay.
