The Birth of ASRA By Marisol Cortez

January 2021 PROLOGUE by Marisol: When our baby was born thirteen years ago, we assumed he was a girl and named him Xochitl. A couple years ago, he let us know his pronouns were he/him and asked us to call him Asra. Here I share his birth story as originally written, with his permission.

November 28, 2007

 I hold you in my lap as I write this, your head propped on my knees. You're finally here, baby. It's both exhilarating and exhausting.

 You were born two nights ago, at 10:14pm on November 26th. You were early – according to my due date, anyway – by about 10 days, born at 38 weeks and 5 days.

 Before I get to the story of your birth, here are some interesting and marvelous things about you:

 you were born just the way I was hoping, with a full set of dark hair that sticks up everywhere

you were born at home, on my bathroom floor, without pain medication

you came gently – I hardly tore

you were born with a set of gnarly claws

you have creature feet – preternaturally long and bluish-red – and along with your hands they're wrinkled, like those of an old person. grandpa miguel says the fact you have long feet means you'll be skinny. grandma adrienne (and i) think your long, elegant, tapered fingers are beautiful. (me: “maybe she'll be a surgeon.” miguel: “or an artist.” me: “or a harpist. like harpo marx.”)

the bridge of your nose is your father's, and the base is mine, i think

you also have your father's crazy peaked eyebrows, and his cupid's lips

i have to force myself to turn away from you at night in the bed, because if i lay facing you, i'll neglect sleep for staring at you all night long

already – and especially since my milk came in – i can distinguish your hunger cry from the dozens of other squeaks and grunts and sighs you make: hunger is a high pitched, panicky whimper. a whicker, i want to say.

your smell is bewitching. once you were in the other room with your dad and i curled up on the bed with the fleece blanket we like to wrap you in. i inhaled it like i would the garment of a loved one, missing you, and i cuddled it as though i myself were a baby with a lovey

you smile sometimes – sometimes just with one side of your mouth, sometimes a full smile – and it's like you know a secret. your face has been preprogrammed with the shape of every conceivable human emotion – happiness, fear, anxiety, contemplation, skepticism, confusion – but i know these expressions are yet unattached to any emotional referent.

at two days you like nothing more than to sleep curled up on my stomach. i love you so much.

now, about your birth:

i had been feeling like something might be happening, or changing, for a couple days before i actually went into labor. i've read that you can only identify when labor begins in retrospect, and in retrospect i think that's true. looking back i can see stages, and signs, and when such and such began. in the middle of things, though, i experienced things piece by piece, as they came, and really didn't even think i was “in labor” until things were fairly far along.

 so – on the one hand, you came pretty quickly and efficiently, in a matter of just a few hours. but on the other hand, looking back, i can see that things happened slowly and gradually, my body preparing to birth you for a good couple days before you actually came. saturday morning i gushed a watery discharge a couple of times that on the one hand seemed too copious to be vaginal fluid, but on the other hand smelled sort of yeasty. i had recently met with some success in battling the yeast infections that plagued me throughout my entire pregnancy, and i wasn't sure if perhaps i was simply experiencing the normal pregnancy discharge i didn't otherwise experience due to the constant infections – or if my water was in fact breaking. since i had only a couple of random squirts of the stuff, though, and since i didn't seem to be going into labor, i decided to just wait until my next prenatal visit to ask about it rather than call right away, and see what happened until then.

 by saturday evening, though, i started feeling not so great. where i had been regularly famished for the few weeks prior, i instead had little appetite and after eating felt somewhat nauseous. i also began to have what felt like menstrual cramps and just generally felt achy and icky and tired and weepy. miguel volunteered that night at a cold weather homeless shelter in davis, and when he came home that night around 11:30pm, i snapped at him unfairly when he brought up problems with the car. my whole body hurt, and i was having irregular but painful braxton hicks contractions. though feeling really tired, i stayed up until 2am and then tossed and turned and couldn't get comfortable. at 3am i went out to the living room to sleep on the couch and dozed fitfully until about 9:30 the next morning.

 despite feeling so out of it the day before, sunday i felt pretty good – took it easy, took a nap midday, called my mom and had a nice, long conversation. i told her about the menstrual cramps, the irregular contractions, the possible amniotic leakage, but since nothing definitive had really happened i wrote these things off as incidental – signs that could possibly point to impending labor, but could just as equally not.

 monday morning, however, i woke up at 7:30 to a weird, tight, squeezing uterine pain and the feeling that if i didn't pee right then i would pop. i got out of bed painfully and waddled to the bathroom, where miguel was getting ready for work. when i sat down on the toilet, though, i was surprised to find that i peed very little – and that after i did, i continued to drip something that was not pee. i wiped several times, and each time i did i wiped away a clear, slippery fluid sort of the consistency of glycerine. miguel was watching me as i did this, and we both sort of looked at each other like, uh oh.

 crawled back to bed to try to go back to sleep and had one or two more weird, tight, squeezing uterine pains. couldn't go back to sleep and so got up again around 8. when i stood up another gush of fluid came out, soaking my underwear. i put on a cloth pad and went into the kitchen/living room to have breakfast and check email etc – all the normal stuff i do in the morning.

 every time i stood up, though – and sometimes while i was sitting – i would gush fluid, and at 8:45 or so i messaged miguel on gmail chat: dood, i think my water's breaking. i think so too, he messaged back. i called amy around 9:30 and she was kind of nonchalant, advising me to change pads as needed and wait and see what happened; it could be amniotic fluid or it could be vaginal mucus. she and rachel would check later that day at the appointment, meaning i should save whatever i changed.

after the call, feeling a sense of urgency,  i took a shower, brushed and flossed my teeth. i wasn't sure if labor was starting or not, but my contractions weren't going away, and the fluid coming out of me wasn't letting up. if labor was starting and it was going to be a long process, i wanted to get clean just in case i didn't get another chance to do so for a long while. and if labor was starting and it was going to be quick and dirty, i wanted to be as presentable as possible for the arrival of the baby. soaping up my crotch in the shower, i stuck my fingers inside my labia and felt something gelatinous flick away from my fingers. i picked it up from the bottom of the tub - it was a piece of my mucus plug, a blob of jelly just blood-tinged enough to be slightly amber colored.

all the rest of the day i waited and watched, not really allowing myself to think I was in labor – not really sure if I was in labor or not. I thought about calling my mom and telling her what was going on, but I also  thought it highly possible that the contractions could just stop and that it would be another couple of weeks until they started again for good (later on at the appointment when i asked the midwives whether this was possible they looked at each other and laughed: “no, when your water breaks, the baby generally comes in 24-48 hours!”)  mostly I just wasn't sure what was happening and what was going to happen. so I refrained from calling anyone other than miguel, and worked on my dissertation and sat on the birth ball and gushed fluid and changed pads like the midwives advised (five thick all night pads in total by the time they came). I felt torn between a desire to sleep (for the same reason I felt a desire to shower and brush/floss) and a desire to work, to get writing done just in case I was going into labor. the dissertation won out, however, as my attempts to sleep were unsuccessful.

 I worked all day up until the time of my prenatal visit with the midwives, Amy and Rachel. I got a lot done, actually – but by the time they came I noticed a subtle shift in my physical/emotional state. Whereas earlier in the day the contractions were mild and easy to ignore – I could talk through them, though doing so made me snippy with whoever I was talking to; I could return to what I was doing fairly easily – now they were just a little stronger and made me feel overall uneasy. I felt tired and wanted to curl up on the couch with a book, but I couldn't get comfortable. I ended up playing solitaire on the couch till Amy and Rachel arrived.

 At the appointment I was both glad to see other human beings – I had been alone all day, wondering what was going to happen – and agitated that I had to be social through both the physical sensation of the contractions and the growing sense of emotional uneasiness I felt. Amy and Rachel examined the collection of pads I had saved for them in the bathroom and concluded that the sheer number of them and their uniform sogginess made it fairly certain that I was leaking amniotic fluid rather than regular vaginal discharge, and that they didn't for that reason need to test the fluid itself. It was official: my water had broken.

For that reason Amy and Rachel performed what's called a non-stress test to make sure you were okay. Rachel had brought to the appointment this enormous contraption that looked like an old fashioned radio receiver – a large white plastic box with lots of knobs and dials. She lugged it in via one of those rolling suitcases people pull behind them in airports; as soon as she brought it in, our cat Sasha curled up on top of it and went to sleep (“I forgot how much she likes luggage,” I said to Rachel, and she laughed.) To conduct the test, I lay down on the couch on my back while Rachel held a doppler device connected to the fetal monitor over my abdomen, down low on the right side – where you've been hanging out the majority of the time since you went head down, and where your heartbeat is most audible (the sound of a fetal heartbeat heard by doppler is oceanic, an electronic underwatery whooshwhooshwhooshwhoosh). As the doppler picked up your heartbeat, the machine recorded it, graphing a jagged line down a long strip of paper slowly feeding from a slot. As it did its thing, Rachel instructed me to tell her every time I felt you move or when a contraction began or ended. When I did she would press a button on the machine – once for a movement, twice for the beginning or end of a contraction – and the machine would note these events with little hatch marks on the graph paper. That way the midwives could easily tell whether your heartrate increased when you moved like it was supposed to and whether contractions slowed it down, indicating distress. You were totally fine and healthy. I had two contractions in the roughly ten minutes they monitored me and was surprised at how strong they were. I wasn't making noise involuntarily yet, but i couldn't stop my face from pulling a grimace. Toward the very end of the appointment I remember standing by the couch with Miguel, Amy, and Rachel and having a strong contraction that made me stop and close my eyes, gripping onto the couch. I wanted to moan but still felt inhibited and self conscious as everyone in the room simply watched me, and I was glad the appointment was nearly over so that I could have some space and time to do what I needed to do to deal with the contractions.

 It was about 6pm when Amy and Rachel left. Between their departure and when they returned a few hours later my sense of when things happened becomes increasingly jumbled – I remember what happened but not really when or in what order. I remember being more and more distressed by how tired and disoriented I felt, and I tried unsuccessfully to lay down on the couch and sleep, waking up to moan and yell when a contraction would hit. I remember feeling cold, taking a shower, Miguel bringing me water to drink in the shower. Miguel asking what I wanted to wear after the shower, bringing me my fleece bathrobe and a pair of underwear and my brown bandanna so that I didn't have to deal with wet stringy hair in my face. I remember calling my mom, telling her that this was it, that I was in labor, and having to set down the phone to have a contraction. I remember laying on the couch and realizing with dismay that I was in a no win situation: laying down to conserve energy between contractions made the actual contractions longer, stronger, and more intense, but being upright to deal with the contractions more effectively increased my sense of exhaustion and distress between contractions. I remember feeling cold, Miguel bringing the space heater to the rug in front of the couch, putting socks on my feet. I remember feeling repeatedly and uncomfortably like I had to shit but being unable to, remember getting up once to pee between contractions and all of a sudden finding myself shitting, remember wiping and bringing the toilet paper up to see clear mucus streaked with blood and blood dripping into the bowl below, remember yelling for Miguel and Miguel running to the bathroom.

 After that: Miguel calling Amy, Amy saying the blood was a good thing because it meant my cervix was dilating, shuffling around the house like a zombie counting my steps and bracing myself on the furniture when a contraction would start, attempting to rotate my hips to relieve some of the pressure. Back to the couch and asking Miguel for a hot water bottle, placing it against my aching lower abdomen, crying out in frustration when I realized the heat spurred on contractions rather than relieved their pain. And then a new feeling with each contraction – of opening or being opened, of a trembling inside that was my body wanting to spasm downward, to heave out what was inside. I didn't know if it was time to push, but I tried it out and found that doing so felt better: it didn't relieve the contractions, but it was something I could do when they came over me, some counteraction I could take so that I felt like more of an agent rather than the mere vessel or recipient of pain – pushing made me feel like I was doing and not just being done to.

 I pushed through two contractions on the couch while Miguel called Amy again; it was around 8:30 at this time. Amy suggested she come over and this time I didn't balk. I was so out of it that it didn't matter to me anymore whether people were around or who they were. Back to the bathroom after getting off the phone with Amy; the only way I could raise myself from a side-lying position on the couch was by having Miguel lift me by the arms as I kept my entire torso completely rigid. I tried walking on my own but was having such difficulty that Miguel suggested I wrap my arms around him so that he could guide me, walking backwards as I leaned into him with my entire body weight.

 In the bathroom I sat on the toilet to pee and found I didn't want to get up afterwards, so I just stayed there to push through more contractions. At some point pushing made me rip this long, deep fart – it didn't stink, but it was a depths of hell, Stephen King novel sort of long and deep – and I apologized to Miguel who was kneeling beside me (who of course didn't care). Right before Amy arrived I started feeling numb in the long muscles of my thighs and I told Miguel I wanted to lay down on the floor, so he spread two sleeping bags on our bathroom floor and I laid down on my side again, facing the bathtub. At some point Miguel turned out the lights in the bathroom and bedroom, which was somehow a relief.

 Amy arrived around 9pm and Rachel a little bit afterwards and between that time and the birth I couldn't really see what was going on. Miguel was behind me somewhere (at times touching me on the shoulder, he tells me afterwards, though I can't remember this) and Rachel and Amy were in the doorway looking in and  sometimes not and when they weren't I could hear a scuffle of activity from the bedroom, Amy and Rachel whispering and getting things together (what things?) and occasionally shining a flashlight in on me to check my vaginal area (why?) and listening to your heartbeat on the doppler after contractions (after every contraction? every other? not sure). From outside the bathroom, the sounds of rustling plastic and packages opening and whispered instructions; and from inside, with every contraction, growling and grunting peaking to wailing from me on the floor, ecstatic, in the traditional Greek sense: literally beside myself.

 “Pushing” is far too mild a term for what it feels like to be at that stage of labor where the baby is descending and birth is imminent. It's more like the experience of dry heaving, except the sensation and pressure are focused downward rather than up. Pushing makes it sound like it's something you choose to do – you could push or not push during contractions – but I experienced it as a totally involuntary seizure followed by a hard hard sensation of squeezing. Interestingly, I didn't feel nauseated or sick at any point during the stress of labor, something I had feared would interfere and possibly cause me to fail to progress (and in retrospect I feel like even if I had, it wouldn't have mattered – the intensity of labor when it passes a certain point is just too powerful). I felt hungry, in fact, throughout much of my early labor, and tho my appetite went away during active labor and pushing, my stomach seemed otherwise unaffected by what was going on elsewhere inside my body.

 So I lay on the floor on my side and pushed, and pushed – or rather was swept along by pushing – and growled and moaned and wailed and screamed, and Amy held up one leg during contractions and told me I was working hard and doing a good job, and at a certain point asked if I would like to move and I think I responded that I just couldn't imagine moving. But at a certain point I got tired of pushing and tired of contractions and tired of the ineradicable unassuageable fatigue I felt and that was getting worse with each contraction and I just wanted what was inside me to come out (I wasn't even thinking of you as a baby inside me, Xoch; I had forgotten that I was having a baby; it was all about the sheer physicality of the experience) and so when it was suggested again to me that I might get into an upright position I did, kneeling in front of the tub and resting my upper body, my arms and chest, on a pillow someone slipped between me and the hard edge of the tub.

 Once I did this things seemed to go much faster. At some point someone said there was a dime-sized circle of the head showing, and then with each contraction there was more, and I could feel something bulging out of me during contractions that receded during the periods in between. Amy encouraged me to reach down and feel the top of your head emerging from deep inside me; expecting hard bone, I reached down and was astounded: the top of your head felt mushy. Each time that circle of mush receded I was disappointed, I was angry, I was determined to make the thing that receded come out and stay out! I'm a warrior, I told myself as I growled and screamed; I'm a warrior and this is a test I have to pass, and I'll do it, I'm going to fucking do this. Then in between contractions whimpering, the voice of a hurt child: I'm tired...I'm so tired, I just want to go to sleep. The midwives reassuring me that I would be able to sleep soon, that the contractions would stop when the baby was out. At another point telling me they could see hair, Miguel telling me that you had a lot of hair, then a momentary sensation of burning with one contraction that receded as the contraction did and then a BURNING SENSATION THAT STAYED AND THE FEELING OF SOMETHING STUCK THERE, SOMETHING I COULDN'T PUSH OUT AND THAT WOULDN'T GO IN AND THE NEXT CONTRACTION COULDN'T COME FAST ENOUGH BECAUSE WHEN THE CONTRACTION ENDED SO DID THE URGE TO PUSH EFFECTIVELY AND I WANTED IT OUT! It burns, I wailed; What do I do? And the midwives telling me to slow down, not to go too fast, blow out in short pushes, that the baby was being gentle and coming slowly so that she wouldn't hurt me or tear me. I was aware that I pushed more effectively and that the midwives seemed pleased when I pushed deep, deep, deep, past sound or screaming, pushed so that it felt like I was giving birth with my asshole (later Miguel told me that at the end when I pushed my perineum bulged like the pictures of the women giving birth in the birth books our midwives loaned us; he said he could see three inches up into my rectum).

 Not long after I felt the stuck thing begin to give, and a flood of searing fluid pouring from me (blood? water? urine?) like water escaping behind a boulder wedged into a crack in the bottom of a dam. Then more fluid, hot and dark, and someone told me to take a deep breath and give one good push and I did, I pushed, beyond the contraction, I kept bearing downward and downward and there was more burning fluid, a torrent of it, and then the thing, you, were out! And making noise from between my legs, not crying but a thin, high pitched eh! eh! sounding strangely distant and cracklng and otherwhere, as if being played back on a recorder. That was your head out, and your body was still inside me. But the hard part was over, I knew that. Another good push and I felt your body slip out of me and then I was done, I had done it, and someone lifted a warm, sticky, tiny body up to my chest and I held you for the first time. There was blood and goop and wax all over you, just like in my dreams where you came out all waxy white.

 You were born with your hand curled up beside your face. You weighed seven pounds even – two more ounces than me at my birth, three less than your dad.

 After you came Miguel pulled me up beneath my arms while Amy held you to me; together they walked us to the bed where Rachel had spread absorbent pads. I lay down and not long after delivered the placenta which fed you while you were inside me. Amy examined it and pronounced it healthy, and when the cord stopped pulsing (the cord: a thick helix of veins covered in a tough white membrane) Miguel cut it. We have pictures of that. I asked for the phone so that I could call my parents back in Texas and let them know you were here and healthy – later my mom would express amazement that I called so soon after giving birth. When I took a shower a couple hours later, Amy expressed a similar surprise that I was up and around and mostly back to normal so soon. But she had been right about the exhaustion and pain lasting only as long as the contractions. Almost immediately after you came out and ended the contractions, the fog of delirium I had been in lifted and my appetite returned, raging. The last thing I'd eaten – half a bagel with cream cheese – had been 7 hours before. The midwives brought me cheese and bread and slices of pear and kiwi on a plate, organized around a candle for you, and came in singing happy birthday.

Happy birthday, my baby. I'm so glad you're here.