Five Years

We have this sweet, goofy baby girl who is suddenly a five year old. Huh? I mean that with the utmost sincerity. Seriously…huh? She was a baby, I remember that. And now she’s a kid? Not a preschooler. Not a toddler. A kid. I’d like to be all poetic about her as a person, but since this is the the first birthday post for Maya, you get a birth story. Lucky you!

Five years ago yesterday, I woke up in labor at 5:00am. I was having a dream that I had a new baby boy and I was taking him to the IGA and introducing him to the check-out lady. “His name is Judah,” I said very sheepishly. Back then, that would’ve been kind of an odd name in my area and I guess I had a lot of anxiety about using it, because all of my baby dreams were about introducing the baby by name and cringeing while somebody said, “Judah? What kind of a name is that?” Anyway, I woke up with a cramp that hurt so bad, it made me roll off the couch and get on all fours. I went to the bathroom, found bloody show, and figured the baby was coming. My mom and my sister, with 6 kids between them, never labored for more than 5 hours so I didn’t think I would be any different. Stupid uterus. I was having a super-secret homebirth so I called my midwife and she got there at about 10:00 am. I don’t really remember what my contractions did all day except they were there and they were, like, whatever, and I had this midwife and her apprentice over, and my friend was visiting from Maine, but I had to cancel her visit because I thought I was having a baby, but then later that night, her parents saw Bryan grilling barbecued chicken outside and they were like, “I don’t think Abby’s having the baby because I saw Bryan outside grilling.” And my friend was all, “Weird.” Maybe she knew about the super-secret homebirth. I don’t know. I don’t remember the few people I spilled the beans to in those last couple of weeks. But I do remember demanding barbecued chicken while we waited for the slow-ass baby.

Nothing really happened all day long and it wasn’t fair. Throughout my pregnancy, we took bets about when the baby would be born and I CHOSE THE 16th! When I woke up at 5:00am on the frickin’ 16th, I thought I just won myself $65. At the time, I had a neighbor who had been my high school English teacher and he bet the baby would be born on the 17th because that was his birthday. He put his $5 on the 17th and he would say with such smug, English-teacher conviction, “I’m not gambling because I know that the baby will be born on the 17th.” Bryan even saw the English teacher in the grocery store that morning and said, “It looks like today’s going to be the day. I guess the baby couldn’t wait until your birthday.” That was at 9:00 in the morning and my neighbor very coolly replied, “There are 15 hours left in this day, so I wouldn’t get over confident about anything just yet.” All I knew is that I didn’t want to have the baby on the 17th because that would have been my midwife and her husband’s 30th wedding anniversary, only her husband had died in June. Two months before. Yeah, and you know what else? She was supposed to come for my first home visit in June and when she didn’t show up, I called her and you know why she didn’t show up? Um, because It was the day of her husband’s funeral. I called her at home to see where she was and her son answered and he actually put her on the phone and she was crying and apologizing and explaining that she forgot to call me and she was ever so sorry, but her husband died and, well, she had to bury him. And then I went and had the baby on what would have been their 30th anniversary. I’m so selfish.

Somehow, 23 hours later (some not-so-hard hours, several really hard hours), Maya was born right in our bedroom. Bryan cried, I cried, my midwife cried (probably for other reasons). My sister was there with me, having forgiven me for waking her up at 6:00am the day before with promises of babies and then failing to deliver any new babies to her in a timely manner, and she cried too. We were happy. It was cool. Maya rocks. And the neighbor gave the $65 to Maya for a birth day gift. Sweet.