A Christmas baby

 

I’m writing this with a newborn asleep on my chest.

Something tells me this will be a common occurrence for us in the next few months; like me, my son doesn’t like to be left alone. Sometimes I set him down for five minutes just to use the bathroom, and as soon as he realizes I’m gone he starts struggling, flailing his arms and legs, shoving his tiny hands into his mouth, screaming that raspy gargoyle scream that newborns have, until I return. Sometimes I return and he doesn’t stop crying and I’m not sure what to do, but I like to think that at least he knows he isn’t alone. At least he can hear his mother’s voice and feel her there near to him, even if her hands are too cold. It must be a scary thing to experience solitude for any amount of time, after being held so close for so long–as close as is humanly possible. Maybe it’s something like what Jesus felt as he cried out for his Father in gasping breaths on the cross.

Christians believe that Jesus knows the full experience of humanity; he shared our flesh, our confinement to temporary bodies, our need for care and closeness. He knows the vulnerability of babyhood, the dependency and the discomfort. The pain and the joy of growth. It’s been interesting to me, going through my pregnancy, to think that my own son would be born so close to the day on which we celebrate the birth of our Savior. The connection there is one I can’t really quantify, but it feels important.

Before he emerged from the womb my husband and I named our son Salem Isaac: Salem, for the city of which Melchizidek was king, meaning “peace;” Isaac as a fulfillment of a promise I made years ago to a dear friend, who was unable to bear her own children but dreamed of a son with that name. It means “he laughs.” Salem’s name is, to me, a prayer over him–that he may experience the peace of reconciliation with God, that he may laugh with joy for the beauty of a redeemed life. His birth reaffirmed God’s promise to me, that He brings good out of every situation, that His work in us is never done.

Salem made his grand entrance on December 14th, 2020 at 12:25pm (12/25, the same numbers that denote Christmas Day, which I think is pretty cool). Eight months ago the due date predictor on my phone read December 14th, and I took it with a grain of salt, knowing that it was just an estimate. I wasn’t anxious about specifics; all I wanted was a healthy baby, and I hoped it would be a boy.

My pregnancy was overall a joyful and wondrous experience for me as the earliest stage of motherhood. Those nine months spent anticipating, preparing, hoping and praying were some of the most fruitful of my life, and my husband’s. I’ve never experienced God’s blessing so abundantly as I have during this time–or maybe I just never noticed it as acutely. His people, our friends and family, rose up to support us the entire time; because of His provision Zac and I have never had to fear that our needs and Salem’s wouldn’t be met in exactly the right way, even if the timing and method was unknown to us.

Salem’s birth on his due date was yet another reminder of this for me. For the last two weeks leading up to that day, I felt so ready to be done. So tired, so anxious for things to get moving, so impatient to see my son’s face. I wasn’t afraid of labor. I knew it was just something I’d have to do, though it felt surreal to think it would ever actually happen. Ever since I was four years old I’ve dreamed of my own family. My sister and I stuffed pillows and blankets into our shirts and put on dramatic theatricals. We watched “A Baby Story” on TLC. Now that I’m 23 and (some of) those things have become a reality for me, it doesn’t feel strange like I thought it would–it just feels like it was always meant to happen.

Labor itself was like a bizarre dream. We’d scheduled an induction two weeks in advance, for Tuesday the 15th, since my doctor didn’t want me to go too far beyond 40 weeks and I didn’t want to give birth the week of Christmas. So I knew the preceding weekend that one way or another, we’d have a baby by Wednesday.

I really didn’t want to induce. To me, scheduling the induction was just a way to better prepare myself to give birth, but it felt a little selfish and scary. I wanted Salem to come out on his own time. So for the two weeks before the appointment I tossed and turned at night, dreaming I’d already given birth, feeling things move closer and closer but also doubting my ability to read my body’s signals. I don’t think I’ve ever been so steadily anxious and preoccupied about something, and the closer we got to Salem’s due date the more panicked I got–what if we had to force him to come out before he was ready? I prayed and prayed that God would move things along, that I would be able to know when it was coming.

And God showed me again how faithful and reliable He really is. If I could’ve chosen, my baby would have been born on the 7th, not the 14th. At 39 weeks I felt like I’d taken the baton as far as I could. But God knew what I needed–I needed a chance to trust Him and not myself, to believe that His timing is best, to recognize that He was my sustenance throughout the whole pregnancy, and that that wouldn’t change simply because I felt the need to control things.

On Sunday the 13th, around 9pm, my husband and I left for the hospital. It felt scary and wrong. I was afraid we’d arrive and the doctors would laugh in my face and say “you’ve been imagining things.” I was afraid they’d send us home for another anxious night. Honestly, I just hate being wrong–and the whole experience of labor was so unfamiliar to me that I had no idea how to measure what I was feeling. But I had asked God for some clarity, and I felt something telling me it was time. So I followed that instinct.

In my experience, if a word is from God, there is no fear attached–so even though I wasn’t in as much pain as I expected, even though I would rather have stayed home and avoided the possibility of the doctor’s correction, I told Zac we needed to go. I wanted to trust God and not be led by my fear.

We arrived at the hospital. The nurse didn’t tell me to go back home, like I’d feared–she told me to walk around the maternity ward and encourage the baby to get a move on. An hour later I was finally in significant pain from the contractions, which I welcomed. The doctor told me I needed to stay.

Even despite the pain, I was so relieved. God had made me wait until almost the last minute, but He came through in the end, and I realized there’s no expiration date on His faithfulness.

I spent the next 13 hours hooked up to monitors and under careful observation; the first five and a half exhausted and unable to sleep because of the pain, the last six feeling pretty much the best I’ve ever felt, thanks to the miracle of the epidural. My nurses were jolly. They laughed at my jokes. They dutifully repositioned the baby’s heart monitor every time his heart rate dipped–which happened a lot, apparently because he wasn’t a fan of being squeezed and jostled by the contractions. The anaesthesiologist told me I should give tips on receiving an epidural to other mothers, a comment I was immensely proud of, because I’ve never felt that I cope well with needles. My husband slept, while he could, on a fold-out bed in the corner. He woke up to hold my hands during the epidural, and almost fainted because he forgot not to lock his knees.

He prayed with me before going back to sleep. I love that man’s prayers.

At noon, my doctor arrived and said it was time to push. Thinking back, I’m a little surprised at myself for not being afraid–I’d spent the last few months reading everything I could about ways to control my breathing and avoid tearing, but in the moment none of those paranoid thoughts came in. I pushed for about 15 minutes, the last 7 or so of which were the most painful of all as Salem’s head crowned. Zac was beside me, letting me crush his hand, exclaiming that he could see the baby’s head. And finally Salem was born. I found myself crying tears of relief and amazement as they put my baby on my chest.

I hadn’t expected to cry. I never cry when I’m supposed to. I cry at obscure things like the beginning of my favorite movies and upon rereading poems I’ve written, or when I hear Zac talk about his sorely won faith in Jesus. But I cried when Salem was born, because I’ve never done anything so strange and difficult, because I’ve loved him for so long, since even before he was conceived. Motherhood is a powerful thing, to turn my oft-solemn self into a pool of laughing tears. Far from taking anything from me, I believe it’s enhanced my perspective, and will continue to sharpen what’s good in me for the rest of my life.

11 Psalm 34:11-14 

Come, my children, listen to me;
    I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
12 Whoever of you loves life
    and desires to see many good days,
13 keep your tongue from evil
    and your lips from telling lies.
14 Turn from evil and do good;
    seek peace and pursue it.