At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone. —Boris Pasternak

A love story in two parts, Part Two:

It took seventy-two additional hours of labor before our son was born. Several days before labor started, he suddenly stood up, a footling breech like the other children born into my family. My obstetrician, Yehudi Gordon, deliverer of celebrity babies, famous for water births, enemy of C-sections, and fond of suggesting to neurotic expectant mums that they accept their fears of motherhood, told me to come to his Harley Street office the next day and to bring Kevin.

“We’ll turn him,” Yehudi said. “Easy as pie.”

Not. At least not any pie I’ve ever attempted. Possibly, he could have claimed it was as easy as shooting, skinning, stuffing, and cooking a wild boar. The next day at his Harley Street office we were ushered into a small room containing an ultrasound machine.

“Okay,” Yehudi said. “Let’s do this.”

From above, it must have looked like an awful attack on a very pregnant woman. Yehudi placed both hands on either side of the baby bump and began to push clockwise. I had my feet braced against the wall as Kevin, ever the journalist, held my hand while positioning himself to watch my insides on the ultrasound. When the baby reluctantly circled, my husband asked the ultrasound operator, “What are those?”
“Her kidneys,” the man responded.

I stopped listening and tried to remember how to meditate, disassociate, and breathe. My baby dug his heels in, and Yehudi looked tired. I felt a deep sadness. Already, our son was feeling the push of authority. His will was enormous but Yehudi would not relent. Because of this last-minute migration, his head was not in the right position to dilate the cervix, thus the endless, largely unproductive labor. After twenty hours, our midwife suggested “a nice walk.”

St. John’s Wood was a leafy, wealthy London suburb, home to Paul McCartney, the Apple Studios, and briefly, many years previous, my family. In 1968 my family spent a year living in London while my father wrote another novel on Sabbatical from Rutgers. I attended. fifth grade at Barrow Hill Comprehensive where I defied the school bully who controlled a class of thirty fifth graders, largely through verbal cruelty but often with physical violence. She was a pretty well-dressed girl with perfect knee socks, while I was a wild-haired American whose school uniform was invariably wrinkled and frequently torn. Because I refused to bend to her authority, I spent the year in Coventry and was also punched in the mouth by a diminutive hitman who ran up to me and demanded in a Cockney accent: “Is your name Molly Moynahan?”

When I nodded, he punched me hard enough to split my lip open outside my favorite sweet shop where I was about to spend my stolen handful of shillings. Being sent to Coventry meant no one spoke to you or acknowledged your existence. Each day after lunch, you walk into the schoolyard and stare at two bricks, which were at the right height to be stared at, while the bully’s supporters stood in a circle saying mean things.

In the spring, a story I wrote was read aloud, and I came in second in a city-wide breaststroke competition. I made one friend and by the time my birthday rolled around, I found myself inviting my tormentor to the party.

Now, after a few rounds around the park, stopping occasionally to lean against a tree and breathe, I informed Kevin I was over the whole “natural childbirth bullshit” and would like to go to a hospital where I would be given morphine and have our baby removed by a nice surgeon. But then I looked around and recognized the crematorium where we had once had recess and Paul McCartney’s former front yard where girls set up tents and held midnight vigils waiting for him to return. I was in a place I knew very well, a place that made me feel so sad it knocked my breath away as much as the waves of labor pain. We were standing at the gates of a school, surrounded by brick walls, the gates opening up to a yard that dead-ended in a wall, a wall I could describe with my eyes closed.

There was a girl, a girl in a too-large jumper, socks falling, eleven years old, shoulders squared, back rigid, staring at the bricks, the bricks at eye level like old friends that would help her not cry. As I stood holding my belly I saw her, so stubborn, so hurt already, alone, wild, brave, and angry I thought, turn around. Turn around and tell someone how much it hurts to be treated like a freak outcast, tell your parents to put down their drinks and listen, tell your sisters, tell someone. But I never turned around.

Hour twenty, there is no one to witness the marathon labor but Kevin. My father’s depression had tethered my mother to him. She circled, but she could not detach. They had come to London eight weeks before my due date, and my father was so sad and quiet it was worse than not seeing them at all. I was huge, had carpal tunnel, little interest in a trip to Bath, which my mother decided would be a good thing to do with her vastly pregnant daughter and deeply depressed husband, walk around Bath, ignore the evidence, point out great architecture and insist we were happy. He would always come first, they never wavered from that position, and possibly it was a good thing. But I was terrified, and I needed a mother.

Returning to our London flat, my ankles were hugely swollen. I made a cup of tea, intending to sit for the first time in a long day, and when my father drank it, I wept.
“Why can’t you stay?” I sobbed. “I’m afraid.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “Don’t. Make another cup. By the way, I’ll pay for a baby nurse.”
When I told my mother where our baby was being born, she gasped. “You mean St. John and St. Elizabeth’s in St. John’s Wood?”
“It’s supposed to be the best hospital in England.”
‘That’s where your grandmother trained to be a nurse,” my mother said, her voice softening. “Before she was sent to the trenches in France.”

Now, sitting alone in the water birth tub, my midwife gone to deliver someone else’s baby since mine seemed perfectly happy to remain where he was, Kevin, sleeping through the dark hours of the night, I tried to imagine my grandmother as a young Irish woman bending over a suffering soldier, offering prayers and morphine, her accent still intact, not yet sharpened by the years she lived in America. I sank and stared at my huge belly and imagined her with me, horrified by my nudity and my lack of knowledge about the suffering of Christ. I knew about the crucifixion, of course. Walking through the museums as a kid, I loved to stare at those sexy martyrs, barely dressed and happy to bleed for their savior. My grandmother was horrible. She told us we were heathens and washed our faces with spit to go to Mass. She never said anything kind or sweet to my mother.

Our midwife was named Poppy, and she was very small and strong. She came in and helped me sit on the edge of the tub, took our vital signs, and then smiled at me.“Everything’s perfect,” she said. “Smashing heartbeat. Where’s your husband?”
“Sleeping,” I said.
“Are you all right?”

Poppy looks at me kindly but probably thinks I’m on the brink of a breakdown. Whenever Yehudi asked me about my parents during my prenatal exams, I burst into tears. “I think this is the last time I’ll have this much control over him. He can’t die now, can he? Do you think he’ll die?”
Poppy looked concerned. “Why would you think that?”
“Because everyone I love dies.”
Poppy doesn’t let go of my hand. “I can call your doctor, you know. You can ask for a C-section.”
I shake my head. “Do you think he’s okay?”
Poppy strokes the sweaty hair away from my face. “Yes,” she says. “His heartbeat sounds like thunder. Let’s have a listen.”

She hooks me to the monitor, and I listen as the horses gallop. My baby is coming on a great galloping stallion; his baby hands dug into the mane, his baby eyes focused on life. He will not get lost, and I will tell him “I’m sorry” if I do something stupid. I will make sure that he knows his mother will never walk away until he’s ready. I will answer the first cry: He will know as much as he needs to know when he grows up. Even if he tells me to go away, I will cross the street and make sure he is safe. He will never think I could stop loving him because of something he did. I will love him no matter what he does. No matter what.

After Poppy leaves, I am struck by the silence. I could be a woman in any century waiting for her baby to be born. It is dim and quiet in the water birth room. Somewhere, Enya is singing about mermaids and rainbows and something else. But I am alone. I have my unborn son jumping up and down on my spine, Enya singing about the mist or the dew or the angels. We are safe and warm. We are breathing. We are alone together alone.

We took a trip to Scotland at the beginning of October, the final trip before the baby came, the last time we would be together as a couple. I’m not sure what we expected from Scotland. The vertical rain, the mist, and the fog were a given, but we didn’t expect the people to be so oddly unfriendly, almost hostile. Certainly, as a vastly pregnant woman, I expected to be fussed over, but there was none of that. These Scottish people on the Isle of Skye resembled my grandmother to the extent I almost heard their burrs as brogues. We stayed in a very expensive, fancy hotel close to a town that was about to be invaded by hundreds of rave kids dressed in mufti, ready to swallow ecstasy and annoy the locals.

We walked up and down a mountain, and then I stripped naked and jumped into a loch whose temperature reminded me of swimming in northern Maine. The baby, practicing soccer kicks for days, suddenly went motionless. His going breach might have been a punishment for his mother’s icy plunge.

Poppy’s replacement is very tall and strong, with a braid down her back and green eyes. She is stunning and terse. I have only dilated five centimeters and recognize I am not gifted in this giving birth business. My husband feels judged and decides he will go to the office. This is not like the movies. I am not lying in a bed surrounded by people telling me to hang on. I am running naked around the maternity ward, looking for some surface to lean against to alleviate the pain of back labor and the endless boredom of birth. I recall that war is meant to be very dull except for the part where you are bombarded, and then it’s so bad you never recover from the shock or you die.

He offers to stay but I don’t mind his leaving. Being alone with this child seems exactly right. The pain is constant but different from other pain as the promise of him softens everything. The new midwife administers several homeopathic treatments and then leaves me alone. The hospital is emptier than usual. The following week, many wealthy Japanese women are expected to take over the maternity ward, where they will be waited on by private nurses and fed sushi by their chefs. Perhaps I will still be here endlessly giving birth, ruining the feng shui of the ward.

I wander down a hallway and find myself in front of a statue of St. Elizabeth. Mary and Elizabeth were cousins. Elizabeth knew that Mary was going to give birth to Christ. Also Elizabeth was the mother of John the Baptist which is sad and a little weird as Salome demands his head on a platter since he refuses to look at her and admire her sexy dancing. Elizabeth greets Mary with the words, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb."

Supposedly, Elizabeth had been barren, but when she saw Mary, she felt a baby kick her. But then she has John, who gets done in by that slut Salome. I’m not sure I want to think about these things, but there is much to find amusing about saints. I had just visited my friend in Spain, and we ended up in a town where the patron saint was Lucia. Everywhere you looked, she was offering a plate that held her plucked-out eyeballs. She is the one you pray to when you are going blind, which doesn’t make much sense, but then I don’t know that sense and sainthood have much in common.

I have always longed for a proper uniform, whether for school or work. Kevin returns from work wearing a spotless white shirt, a tie, and a jacket, clean and orderly. I am living in the world of childbirth of sweat and blood and mood swings. Mostly naked, my hair matted, we come from different civilizations. He epitomizes modernity and order while I am the goddess of chaos, of fertility, my existence arcing back to Eve’s punishment for hanging out with that sneaky snake, a type I pursued avidly, desiring their lying, smooth surfaces. I see my husband’s face and feel saved. I see his face and wish he would go away and never return. 

The midwives are my only connection to the world I inhabit, the world of women. My understanding of men is limited to disappointment, regret, sadness, longing, rage, jealousy, and pity. What will I give this boy, this alien creature, already so difficult, uncooperative, complicated, and stubborn? Ah, but I love him. I love him with so much love he can kick me and refuse to be born and be backward and upside down and I will love him forever.

“How are you?” my white-shirted husband asks, waving a paper bag around. “I brought you something to eat.”

I snarl. Food is not necessary anymore. The threshold has been crossed, and the midwife leads him into the hallway, where I hear them whisper together. I lean over, hands against the wall, and try to think if there is a saint of childbirth. Mary? But she didn’t even have sex, and she gave birth without much fuss in a manager remaining fully clothed and Madonna-faced.

Later, I discovered it was a man named Gerard, the patron saint of childbirth. How can any man understand this madness, this chaos? I have met all the midwives who work at this hospital and all the people who wax its corridors. I’ve met some people who have come to the hospital to celebrate the birth of other babies. Other women have had their babies and returned to their rooms. The staff whispers as I glide along naked, trying to find a place to relieve the pain. I am on my way to being famous. My labor may last long enough to break a record. This does not please me.

My mother calls to hear the cries of her fourth grandchild and instead speaks to Kevin, who tells her I am heroic. This does not please me. Nothing pleases me except the brief respite between contractions when I imagine myself in a documentary about the longest birth in the world. My greatest fear is everyone being bored. At some stage this whole thing will be tedious, people will ask for refunds and go home. So, I am very solicitous of my attendants, asking them if they want to take a break, offering up the good cookies, and apologizing for the endless delay in my son’s appearance. I suggest they watch television; I tell jokes, I compliment them on their hairstyles. This anxiety is familiar. I have spent my life worrying about other people’s welfare and comfort. I convince my husband to go to work again.

“They’ll call you,” I say, my smile slightly forced as the baby aims a blow to my lower spine. “I’m fine.”

He is afraid. I see it in his eyes. I have made other men afraid but this time I am blameless. I am not a drunken, suicidal, fucked-up, psycho bitch. I am a wife and future mother, sober, in labor, albeit a labor that seems to have no endpoint. Secretly, I am pleased at his fear. This fear means he loves me. He will be sorry when I die. I am pretty sure I will die when he is at work writing his witty columns about overgrown vegetables. I will die, and people will say nice things about me, even my sister Brigid, who rarely finds anything I do pleasing. All my old boyfriends will somehow hear of my death, and they will sigh and remember how once snowflakes melted on my rosy cheeks and the curve of breast and thigh they found so enticing. Lyrics from Bob Dylan songs and Joni Mitchell ballads will haunt their dreams. They will wish they dared to remain steadfast. They will regret their lack of faith. And my mother will blame my death on all of them, ending with my husband. She will point fingers and accuse them of ruining my life. She will raise my son to believe in good design, low-fat food, and swimming laps. Perhaps there will be a shrine that celebrates my martyrdom. My grandmother will look down from heaven and be pleased. She has finally gotten her way.

Poppy is back, and she seems happy to see me, although I sense she is concerned with the length of my labor. She checks our heartbeats, takes my blood pressure, writes everything down on my chart, and smiles.
“Do you guys keep a record?” I ask her, hoping I have outlasted all previous labors. “Will I get a plaque or something?”
“No,” she says, laughing. “Are you very competitive then, Molly?”

I nod. It is my dirty secret how much I want to win, be first, run faster, last longer, and write so people feel their throats close, and they cry until they can’t see the pages of my book. I have fought to get what I want, but twice my will has meant nothing, and twice I have been forced to concede defeat. First, my best friend was killed at twenty-one on a highway outside of Chicago. She is gone, but in the middle of this gothic labor, she quietly enters the birth room and sits close to where I am panting in the water tub. She has stayed young while I am older, but we are the same as the day we sat in a canoe and told one another we would always be best friends. I want to tell her everything, how I stopped believing in grace but then found it in the purity of loss. Art heals some of us and tortures others. But she fixes those blue eyes on my face to help me through these final hours. “What took you so long?” I ask her. “I’m having a baby.”
She laughs. Her hair is still blonde, yellow corn silk, Midwest Sun In, lemon juice, Love’s Fresh Lemon girl. She sits back on her heels, oh those big feet, my bendy, slender, strong friend.
“I need you,” I say. “We were going to be mothers together. Our babies were going to be best friends.”
She shakes her head, but her hand touches my cheek, so cold, yet those long fingers are familiar, soft. I’m not to grieve anymore, her eyes tell me. Let go. You were an answered prayer, my best friend who promised that things would feel better in the morning.

Poppy is kneeling at the edge of the birth tub. I hear her voice, but it takes a moment before I understand the epidural person is here and will give me a shot so I can sleep, and then we’ll see if the labor can continue.
“How are you?” she asks.
“My best friend came to see me,” I tell her. “She was still young.”

The epidural man is Indian and beautiful. I tell him I love him and ply him with sweets that he refuses. I cannot remember what it feels like to sleep. It seems to me that I once was a child whose head hit the pillow, and darkness followed. But years later, I became a New Yorker who ran on coffee and ambition. My husband put me to bed on our first date, saying, “You’re sleep deprived.” From that moment forward, next to him, I discovered the path to that place, that misty paradise in Atget’s photographs, the hidden, sweet, drowsy oasis. My mother claimed it was a result of his being from Kansas. “He puts you to sleep,” she said. “That’s good.”

But I know I have found safety and can close my tired eyes. My oldest sister waits just beyond the last tree. I have missed her so much. Sleep. I feel my baby and then nothing. It is a midnight blue velvet cloak wrapped around both of us, held in the arms of the Ice Queen we fly above the world of snow and fire, dipping down to note the details of houses and people and then returning to the dark universe, stars piercing the night, our speed is so great it feels like standing still.

I dream of her. The last time I saw my sister Catherine, we sat with her son Henry, eating lunch in a Hoboken diner, feeding her boy French fries, and talking about everything, nothing, our parents and Henry and my hopes to be an actress and how she wonders about John Lennon’s son and how he’s getting on without his father. Lennon was her favorite Beatle, brilliant, difficult, funny, fearless. He had her wicked sense of humor and genius. I tell her about sobriety, and she kisses me, her eyes full of hope and love. This dream, like the others, reintroduces me to my sister, and when my eyes open and she is gone again, it feels like there is no happiness until I remember why I am waking up, to give birth, to continue in this flawed journey through pain and sorrow, laughter, and relief. Her belief sustains this marathon.

She watches me and does not leave or turn away. We will live because it is the right thing to do, a graceful acceptance of a mysterious world. Someday I will look down to say “goodnight” and there in the dancing flames of my blue-eyed baby boy’s eyes she will look back and the truth of endless love will be revealed. “Oh,” I will whisper, “there you are.” And she will stay forever.

Poppy is standing by the bed. “It’s time,” she says. “Let’s go to the birth tub.” My husband is still asleep, but he isn’t needed yet. The sun is rising in St. John’s Wood. It is a Thursday.
“Thursday’s child has far to go,” I say and Poppy nods.
“Maybe that should be ‘had’ far to go,” she says. “He’s just about arrived. About time, the naughty boy!”

My legs are still numb from the epidural, but I feel strong after five hours of sleep, after five days of being awake. This is the end and I wonder how I can have a baby without my sister. It is a thought that fills the space around my lungs and heart with fear. Who will help me become a good mother?
“Poppy,” I say, “My sister died.”
“Oh dear,” she says, cradling my head as I slip into the water, “I’m so sorry.”
“She was amazing,” I say. “I wanted my baby to meet her.”
“Maybe that’s why he’s taking so long,” Poppy says. “They’re having high tea.”

And then we laugh. My greedy sister has shanghaied my baby, and they are having buttered crumpets while I wait for my turn. She was greedy. Food and fun and words and gossip and cold-water swimming and life. She was greedy for life, and now I needed to be greedy for both of us. Poppy touches my hand. “She’s watching you,” she whispers. “She’s very impressed.”    

I have finally dilated to eight centimeters. He will be born soon. I‘m afraid. Somewhere in this hospital, the ghost of my grandmother broods over my sins. I have sinned beyond redemption. God will punish me, but first, he has to allow me to have my baby. I am afraid.
“Poppy?”
“Yes?”
“Are you against abortion?”
Poppy is cleaning the birth tub. My husband is changing his clothes. I am giving birth, but I am filled with dread. What if God kills my baby because of the terrible things I have done? Poppy straightens.

“No,” she says. “If you knew how many terrible parents there are in this world, you’d recommend it to most people. I know that sounds bloody terrible but it’s the truth.” She looks at me.
“Did you have one?”
I nod.
She sighs. “Did you want the baby then?”
“I wanted a baby. I wanted to be someone who could have a baby but I was a car crash.
Poppy nods. “This is your baby, Molly. The baby who was supposed to be born to a mother who will be so good he won’t ever want to leave her. A mother who is so amazing he has to write her poetry.”
“So, I’ll fuck him up?”
“Completely.”

We both laugh. I am in the warm water, and the waves are smashing against the rocks. I am swimming with Catherine next to me and then ahead, her arms flashing white against the ocean. She is fast, but she turns to be sure I follow. I follow her path, a line of foam that marks the way. She is a mermaid, graceful and strong, while I am a clumsy human. I tread water and call her, “Don’t leave me,” I shout into the wind. “Stay.”

She pauses, turns, smiles, and then disappears beneath the water, down to the dark, the deep place I can’t survive. I turn and start the long stroke back to land. She has forbidden me to follow her. She is my older sister, and I must obey. From far beneath, I hear her voice promising something if I keep going.

He is born at two o’clock in the afternoon on Thursday. I stand at the last moment. I stand, and Poppy hands him to me, and he is awake and silent, blue-eyed, gorgeous, clean, and familiar. He is all the dreams, hopes, and love I have ever known. I see my sister, my father, and my mother; every part of him is familiar, but he is completely himself, fitting perfectly within my arms, his bottom against my elbow, his face turned up, and I see he knows I am his mother, and he is fine with that.

I give him to his father. He knows I will never leave him or hurt him on purpose. I will hurt him by mistake, but I will tell him I am sorry. For nine years, I have sat in church basements and stood in front of strangers who nod and laugh when I tell my story, that part of my story. He is not one of the promises, but he is my promise. The promise of my sister and Cindy and the promise that sometimes we get to return to a place of sunshine and hope, the phoenix emerges from the flames. His father is speechless, holding his son, his face alight with wonder and hope. I see why we found each other. 

I wonder if this labor, this marathon, led me to ask: How much do you want this life? How far will you travel for love? 

—Molly Moynahan, author and writing coach

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