Episode 7: The Best Birthday

When Sunday got pregnant, she got serious about it.

So the biggest I have ever seen Sunday—Emma’s birthday. I don’t mean Emma’s fifteenth birthday. The first one. The one that started the rest.  During this pregnancy, Sunday had gained a quick 60 pounds, and her waist was fifty inches around.  With just one kid.  With just Emma.  And I loved it.  Sunday hated it, but I was annoyingly attentive. I was curious about how she was doing, how she was sleeping, how she could eat so much (two burgers at a time—it was awesome). 

When we found out we were pregnant eight months before (and, yes, ‘we’ were pregnant), I had no insurance, I was writing a dissertation that I just wanted to be done with, and we could barely afford living with three of us, much less four.   Then, I got a job. With insurance. I didn’t have a degree, yet, but someone left in the middle of the year, and I got a job. 

We were relieved, beyond what I thought we’d be.  It was like someone had cleaned off the dust and dirt from a filter—the clean air flowed through.

And when we pulled into the Virginia Baptist Hospital parking area, Sunday’s breathing was nearly audible.  Everything was packed into her abdomen so tightly, her lungs fought for space.  I helped her out of the car, and when we walked into the building, we were so early, no one was there to greet us.

“It’s like going to the dentist or something,” she would say later. 

Like, an appointment to get a tooth pulled.  Jonah’s birth lasted over 24 hours, ending in an emergency C-section.  He came in the world, fighting for his life. 

Emma’s, well, it was still major surgery, but we found our way through the maze of Virginia Baptist (if you know, you know), and before I knew it, I was wearing scrubs, standing beside the anesthesiologist, trying to watch Emma be born.

A C-section is tough to describe, like most things that are miraculous.  The doctor cut her open. Scooped all her insides out. Put them on Sunday’s belly, and reached inside and pulled out Emma. Delivery, they call it.

The shock of that entire procedure is like standing at the Grand Canyon, with your toes hanging over the edge. And just when you try your best to look down, down, down to the basin of that Canyon, someone puts a gentle hand on your back.  The thrill is a cold electricity that could power the eastern seaboard.

And Emma.  She came out alive, like not just surviving or hanging on.  Squirming and well.  It was like she was born to dance.  With relief and life and joy.