'Twas the Night Before Joshey

Tomorrow is Joshey's birthday, which means that precisely one year ago today, I was home on a Saturday evening, straightening up the house after the girls went to bed. Dave was at the lab, slaving over another do-or-die experiment, and Joshey's due date was a couple of days away. After I got the house in decent shape, I eased my pregnant body into bed, and then I felt the tell-tale rush of fluid signalling that my water had ruptured. I was scared. I had known, of course, that labor and delivery was imminent, within the next week, but it's one thing to feel like something hard is a day or two away, after another full night of sleep, after another normal day perhaps, and it's something very different to realize that the hard thing has just started at that very moment. You've made it to the top of the water slide, and there's no one left in front of you in line. You sit down, and the only way out is through that dark, fast, frightening tunnel. I'd like to think that I knelt down and said a prayer first, and I probably did. Those are generally my instincts. Then I called Dave, who was slipping into the "die" part of the do-or-die experiment and was very willing to manfully set aside the possibility of his boss's wrath and come home to his laboring wife. Then I called my midwife, and then I called my dear friend Candida, who was my babysitter-on-call. I didn't know how fast labor would progress, and Candida assured me that she was ready to come over and stay with the girls no matter what hour of day or night. So I found my guided imagery labor-and-delivery CD (yes, I placed FULL trust in this soothing voice to get me through this difficult, scary thing), and I listened to it over and over as I was packing my hospital bag and working through the irregular, minor contractions that were developing. Oh, and I ate a big bowl of oatmeal, because I knew that as soon as I went to the hospital, all eating would cease. Then--nothing happened. I went to bed, I counted contractions, I slept, and by morning, productive labor hadn't started. But since my water had ruptured, I needed to go in to the hospital, so we dropped off the girls at Candida's house, took a few pictures, and were off to Mon General with the giddy excitement of going on a very long date without the kids (that giddyness didn't last too long). I won't recount the full birth story, which probably isn't entirely suited for a public audience anyway, since it ends with my shrieking like a banshee as Joshey finally emerged at 6:20 pm that night. But I find myself dwelling on that night before Joshey's birth. It feels heavy, solemn, even dark in my memory. Dave was unhappy at work, and we had recently realized that this meant a major divergence in his career path, with all of the accompanying financial and family insecurity and uncertainty. I was quite concerned about my little Cici, whose speech was very noticeably delayed by that point. It was the middle of a long, cold winter, and I knew that I was embarking on the fatigue of mothering an infant. It just seemed like a stark realization of all of the heaviness and difficulty that was awaiting us without that emboldening joy that comes from holding a newborn and seeing how little everything else matters in comparison. Now we are here, a year later, with a chubby, dapper little toddler enthroned as the reigning baby in our house. He charms everyone he sees, and he beams light out at the world. He is as strong and as good as his name. The year of uncertainty and fear and darkness and heaviness, the year of long, tense conversations late into the night and grim calculations of our savings account, the year of unpaid internships and job applications, the year of packing up and saying goodbye and then unpacking and saying hello--that year has ended now. I was making the very unremarkable observation to Dave that the first year of Polly's life seemed like FOREVER, and the first year of Cici's life seemed quite long, but the first year of Joshey's life flashed by. I really do feel like our family was scooped up by a kind, protective, wise hand and placed down in a new and more sure place. Polly was my Tuesday child ("Tuesday's child is full of grace"), Cici was my Monday child ("Monday's child is fair in face"), and Joshey is my Sunday child ("But the one who is born on the Sabbath Day is bonny and blithe and good and gay").