While We’re All Still Being Birthed
Do you think the name selected for you at birth can set the tone for your life? Sometimes I wonder if I’d have been a little less weird had I been given the sensible trending name of my generation. Maybe. Or maybe names are irrelevant. Either way, we had such a hard time agreeing on a name for our baby girl, Helena. It’s a huge responsibility selecting the right name. High stakes.
My parents gave me Marion Janina. Marion was my maternal Great Grandmother who passed away when my Grandmother was a very young woman, and, Marion was also the stillborn baby my Grandmother delivered full term in the 60s. My mom always knew she’d name her first daughter Marion and I think it was a beautiful tribute to her mother after all of the grief she endured. Janina, pronounced Yanina, was my Polish Granny, my dad’s mommy. I grew up pronouncing it with the J-JAnina, but when I became an adult I realized that name was not intended to be Americanized. I was named after a woman who grew up in Warsaw, Poland and nobody would have called her JAnina, so I use the Polish pronunciation. I’m very thankful for the name my parents gave me. There aren’t a ton of Marions my age. I was set up to be into antiques and vintage clothes, born an old lady with a name perfectly suited.
Namesakes from Left to Right: Marion, my Great Grandmother. Janina, my Paternal Grandmother. Gloria, my Maternal Grandmother.
It was important to me to have uncommon, but familiar names for my girls. How millennial of me. I wanted something elegant, a name strong enough and clever enough to accompany them through their lives and match any profession; a name that would suit the President or an artist. Not trendy, not cutesy, something lovely but serious. Gloria Dawson and Helena Alexander fit the criteria for us. Gloria came easy, it was my Grandmother’s name and I always wanted my first daughter to be Gloria. It helped that Alex also loved the name. We didn’t even have to discuss it, we found out she was a girl, and she was certainly Gloria. It was easy. But we felt like we used up the greatest name on our first and didn’t LOVE anything else for our new baby. We spent just about the entire pregnancy trying to figure out what her name would be.
One day at work, someone suggested Helen, knowing how much I love a good Granny name. I was reminded of a beautiful friend I had in Nashville, Helena Johansson from Sweden. I always thought her name was so elegant and I started to imagine having a Helena baby. It’s melodious, like Gloria, and it got stuck deeply into my heart, but Alex wasn’t immediately captured. We had been going back and forth for MONTHS when we finally took an evening to go through every blessed name the internet could find. Over a thousand at least. We didn’t agree on a single one, but one thing we did agree on was how few names we liked! In the weeks following, he started to concede to Helena. Little Leni. It just started to make sense.
And, look! There she is! And isn’t she a lovely Helena? Isn’t she so perfectly Helena? I can’t imagine her being anything else. Helena Alexander, after her daddy. If you’ve been wondering, it’s pronounced HEL-uh-na. I think I overestimated how many people knew the capital of Montana, or had heard of the actress Helena Bonham-Carter. It’s not HaLEENA, not HelAYNA. Emphasis is on the HEL, though she is anything but. I’m afraid we made quite a drama for her as she’ll have to correct people constantly, but I survived being Marion Janina Brzezanski for 29 years, so I’m sure she’ll make do.
We have daughters. There are a whole lot of daughters in our families. I love being my parents’ daughter. I love that all their daughters had daughters.
My mother is a Susan Jane, she was given the trending name of her generation. She is anything but ordinary, though, so maybe names are irrelevant after all. The daughter of Gloria, Granddaughter of Marion. My beautiful mother. I’m her equal but opposite reaction. We’re so much alike and so different. She grew up an athlete with her four brothers and one sister, all on the swim team. She competed in the butterfly stroke through college. Have you ever learned how to do the butterfly stroke? It’s bonkers. Nothing about it feels natural. Her butterfly stroke is so elegant and athletic! I always admired my mom’s competitive spirit and wished I had inherited it. I decidedly did not. Her father was an anesthesiologist and she would tag along to the hospital with him. Blood and guts do nothing to my mom, she could watch a surgery and her stomach contents would be unshaken. She has a proper pain tolerance and doesn’t wince at needles. She’s just tough.
Her Marion daughter came out fluffy. Scared of everything. Known to her family as the Princess of Pout and the Duchess of Snit. Not at all competitive or athletic. A total cheeseball, but a friendly one! Susan loves watching sports, the Olympics, Wimbledon, always a staple in our home, and we just simply didn’t share this in common. I learned the swim strokes, but it must have been pretty obvious from a young age that her Marion daughter wasn’t going to be following in any of her sportsteps.
Though I was not, am not, athletic or competitive, I think we share a physical intelligence. I do have a natural physical sensibility; dancing came easily to me. I was pretty good at dancing from a young age. I never needed to win anything, but I NEEDED to express, and I was encouraged to do so! Dancing was very physical and I pursued it for most of my young life. I’ve always felt very connected to my body, the way to move it and push it, and how to use it. You can’t be a dancer without that instinctual sense, it’d be too disjointed. I tap danced mostly. Each part of my foot is so familiar and separate. I’m always aware of the negative space on my feet, particularly that space between where your toes and the ball of your foot meet. My brilliant tap teacher growing up used to always talk about the ‘air’ there, and that’s lived with me all these years. And the tips of my toes flow right to the tips of my fingers. Everything has its job, but it feels so natural bringing them all together. This is my inheritance from my mother!
Baby Marion and lovely Susan
When I found out I was pregnant with Gloria, I remember feeling the dread of what childbirth would be like for me. I grew up hearing about the beauty of childbirth from my mom, knowing this was one area where I needed to follow in her footsteps. I’m not sure why I felt so strongly about this, the need to experience unmedicated childbirth, as she did, but it felt instinctual. I don’t have a tangible reason for you, there was no pressure from anyone, and I have no philosophy on how one should give birth…how dreadful that people have opinions on other people’s choices, UGH. I just knew that it was right for me.
You rarely hear about the experience of childbirth in a positive way. Movies didn’t portray it as anything other than chaos and horror and screaming and waters breaking in one big crazy splash. A lot of times you hear about it in a neutral, means-to-an-end kind of way. And then, of course, there is so much trauma around childbirth that leaves so many women feeling like their experience was stolen from them. All of this impacts our ideas and views about birth. It’s incredibly complicated. But at home with my mom, childbirth was a topic of magic, and it was a privilege, indeed. Her beautiful, spiritual words around birth served as my guide into womanhood. Motherhood. She set me up for the choice I would eventually make to have unmedicated births myself. She was always open to talking about childbirth in any detail appropriate for our age, and every year on our birthdays she’d go through the events of the days we were born. Still to this day, I’ll get a text on my birthday that will say “I’m calling the doctor now!” Or “Going to the hospital!” It’s so special that after all of these years, she is still connected to these very pivotal events that shaped her womanhood. Now that I’ve done it twice, I can understand! A piece of you is born when you have your children, no matter how you deliver, and I love tracing the footsteps of that time, too.
I have two very different birth experiences, and I realize that memory is not always accurate. I’m thankful I wrote everything down when it was fresh because when I read back Gloria’s birth story, I was amazed at how my brain softened to it through the years. It was hard, ‘lowercase t’ trauma. I had issues after I gave birth to her, big issues. I remember pulling up to the birth center the following week after her delivery, shaking at the red light, anxiety overtaking me. I was terrified of even looking at the building where I labored with her. I had PTSD. But after about 18 months or so, when my bones mostly went back to normal and my milk had dried up, my memory accepted it. I felt pride for getting through it and I benefitted from the knowledge that I was tougher than I realized. I used that sense to heal mentally. The acceptance of what I experienced tainted my memory, and I wonder how frequently we do this through life with everything hard we go through! Don’t we all laugh at the heartbreak we experienced with long ago breakups when we’re far on the other side of it? But remember how all-consuming it was when you were in it? Our brains take care of us.
Going into childbirth with your first is the most blissfully ignorant space you could enter. I remember thinking "But it’s what women have done all through human existence, there’s no way I can’t handle this." And then you go through the transition stage of childbirth when the baby is traveling down your pelvis, you scream into your husband’s face, and you are an entirely different version of yourself; unrecognizable, self-conscious of being seen in that state by people who don’t know you, and utterly terrified. With Gloria, I pushed for HOURS at the birth center. My water had broken 24 hours prior and I was laboring under a time limit knowing if the baby didn’t arrive by a certain time, I’d have to transfer to the hospital. Which is exactly what happened. Hours of pushing led to stalled labor, and my contractions started spreading out-which isn’t supposed to happen at the end, they’re supposed to get stronger and closer together. A very very frustrating and discouraging place to be when you’ve already arrived at the pushing phase. I felt like a failure. I felt embarrassed, telling myself “I know I’m pushing as hard as I can.” I wondered if my team was disappointed in me. They weren’t, but your mind is everywhere and so vulnerable. “What is happening to my body?” All of that insecurity surely played into my labor stalling.
We transferred across the street to Vanderbilt, a midwife in our car with us. I got into the wheelchair fully in the pushing phase of labor, with strangers seeing me in that state and congratulating me. It was a nightmare. I felt on display during my most vulnerable moment. Additionally, Vanderbilt has brick pavers in their lobby and when you have a 9-pound baby’s whole body so low inside yours, being wheeled around those bumpy bricks is agony. I won’t forget that. But I got into the room and something had been watching over me knowing exactly the people I needed to get me to the finish line. I had my doula, Heather, who was also our birth educator; an actual angel. I had a nurse there who lives in my heart as a Dolly Parton-caliber celebrity. She held me, she advocated for me to the monotone anesthesiologist trying to talk to me while I was in my most fragile state, desperate to have no man around but my husband. I learned later that she sent him off on my behalf. And then we got Ms. Mavis, the head of the Vanderbilt Nurse Midwives. She’s probably my mom’s age. She checked me and said, "Your baby’s coming!" She gave me such confidence, she believed in me, she was tough, she was EXACTLY the personality I needed to get through it. I pushed two more hours there, but it felt like 30 minutes.
And there she was. My perfect Gloria. All 9 delicious pounds of her.
Because of how hectic it was being transferred, we ended up having my mom in the delivery room with us. I felt so out of control, part of me wanted her there, and the other part of me was just so out of my mind that I couldn’t direct. I wasn’t feeling very powerful. It wasn’t exactly what I thought it’d be, what I’d heard my mom talk about, and here I was doing this in front of her. I felt a little defeated, a little proud, a lot out of my mind. Gloria was on my chest and everything completely disappeared around me, I was elated. There is nothing like the grueling experience of pushing someone out of you, the pain, the fear, and having everything completely wash away when you meet eyes with the literal fruits of your labor. This isn’t everyone’s experience, but it was mine. I forgot everything, I forgot that I had to use the bathroom, and I even forgot that I was responsible for feeding my baby! A nurse came in and asked if I had fed her yet, and it genuinely hadn’t occurred to me. I could not sleep and didn’t want, or need to. I was wide awake for three entire days and I didn’t feel tired.
It was crazy. I was not normal. I needed help but had no idea and I only understood that after I gave birth to Helena. And so for all the years after having Gloria, I thought, "Well, I’m thankful I experienced it, I’m proud I got through it, but I didn’t feel a beautiful, spiritual connection to birth the way my mom always explained it." The memory softened over time, I got on antidepressants, and the trauma responses subsided, but I couldn’t feel the beautiful connection to birth.
My pregnancy with Helena was almost identical to Gloria’s. I gained 65 pounds (only 5 pounds less than my pregnancy with Gloria) and that’s a lot of weight to gain-almost double the average pregnancy weight gain. I wasn’t going crazy at meals, I’d indulge from time to time, but I think my body just needs to hang onto more weight while pregnant. I had the same pelvic pain as I did in my first pregnancy but with the knowledge this time that it goes away when I finish breastfeeding. Experience and wisdom guided me through and Helena benefitted from this! She is cool and calm to Gloria’s independent and feisty, maybe because she had a much calmer journey to Earth.
Gloria was 8 days late, some folks aren’t comfortable with that, but I did have an induction scheduled and was monitored closely throughout those days after my due date. Helena was only 2 days late. On December 11, 2022, I had a feeling something was happening, but I couldn’t say for certain it was labor. With Gloria almost 5 years prior, my water had broken so long before labor started, so I didn’t know what true spontaneous labor would feel like. I felt like I might have begun early labor, but it just wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be; I thought I’d just know and be so certain, but it was still a mystery.
I took it easy throughout the day, but during a little snuggle rest time with Glo, the wave began. It wasn’t strong enough to say “I’m in labor, it’s time”, but it was enough to ask Alex to take Gloria to be with his parents while we rode it out. Looking back, it’s so funny that I doubted so much when I was 2 days past my due date! The wave turned to high tide over a few hours. We timed the contractions, they weren’t consistent, but they were becoming stronger. Around 10 pm, I had an intense contraction and decided it was time to go to the hospital.
Sweet Glo resting on my great big contracting baby bump.
We got everything ready. I could feel Alex’s excited nerves, he was so attentive and so gentle. We have a 15-minute drive to the hospital with no traffic and we took back roads so he could drive slowly. It was a foggy night, a magical kind of mist surrounded us the whole drive. It calmed me. Alex was driving so carefully to not cause extra bumps. If you’ve ever driven during contractions, you know how uncomfortable that can be. I had about 3 or 4 contractions on the way, and then they chilled out while getting set up at the hospital. I wasn’t as far along as I thought I was when we got there which was so disappointing, and we were left to progress in this awful space…fluorescent lighting with only curtain dividers between other nervous women in different stages of labor or false labor. I hated it. But through those two hours, I progressed enough to be admitted.
Alexander getting me through!
I had a great nurse, her name was Hannah. Well, I’m sure it still is. She was maybe in her mid to late 20s, very thick southern accent, with long dark straight hair, and was very pretty, kind of like my little sister. She had a tough nurse vibe, and that is what I needed. I am so fluffy that often I feel like I need a tougher personality to get me through something. Even my friends mimic this, they are all very strong personalities who have guided me through my best and worst times in life, and perhaps I've served as their gentler counterpart. Hannah gave me the gift of trusting me to trust myself. This gave me such confidence. She gave me SPACE, which said to me “I see that you’re more than capable.” Space was the factor in Gloria’s birth that I didn’t know I needed. It was Alex and me this time. Just us. And I can be any version of myself in front of Alex, so we were just there getting through each phase of labor. From the time we got to the hospital to the time Helena arrived, it was about 6 hours, and it went quickly. With each contraction, I’d want to hold Alex’s hand, close my eyes and retreat into my most focused self, and breathe through it. I'd take a break as the contraction subsided and hear Coach Alex, a real saint say “You never have to do that contraction again” or “That was great." He is so calming in a stressful situation. Nurse Hannah would pop in occasionally just to check on me and see if I needed anything, and then she’d give us our privacy again.
And then transition. If you’re reading this and haven’t given birth or witnessed someone giving birth, bless you for getting this far. Transition is the part of labor that lets you know that your baby is almost here, but it is the most indescribable and intense feeling. It’s so hard. It hurts. It’s 8 pounds of person in your pelvis, their head, their shoulders, all the way down. It’s the time you start to get SCARED. I called Hannah in and she checked me, it was go-time. I felt ready to do it but was terrified. I looked to her eyes for comfort, searching for the expression that would say "You are safe. You can do this." Then Helena’s head…she called the doctor in. This wasn’t my doctor, I’d never met her before, but I rejoiced in the simple fact that it wasn’t a man on call. For me, this is something I need to do around women. My mom had a man OB, lots of people have man OBs, some might prefer a man OB, but a man OB is just not for me.
Everyone was dressed up in blue surgical looking garments and y’all, that’s the thing about hospital births, it feels so scary seeing people who look like they’re about to perform major surgery, all covered and the plastic mask covering their face and the gloves to their elbows, it’s not a comforting sight. And the end of childbirth is that traditional “pain” sensation, unlike the waves of contractions that are their own brand of ‘pain’, this is genuine hurt, burning, and tearing. I know at some point while she was crowning I asked loudly “WHO IS HATTIESBURG’S BEST VASECTOMY DOCTOR?” I never wanted to feel that again. I still don’t. I told myself to remember that feeling because I realized I had completely forgotten it since having Gloria. It's now seared into my brain. You know when you’re on a plane and you hit really bad turbulence and you study the faces of the flight attendants to gauge whether the plane is going down or if it’s just extra bumpy? You realize how insane it is that you’re in a 200-ton metal machine flying in the sky, why would you do something so crazy? That’s what I was doing at this crucial time. I looked for smiling, encouraging eyebrows above the masks to tell me I was ok because I didn’t feel ok. But the whole room, the doctor, her tech, the baby’s nurse, and my two nurses were all happy and excited around me, and I knew everything was alright.
And there she was, screaming on my chest! EVERYTHING around me disappeared, I completely forgot what I’d just been through. She was perfect! I could tell she was smaller than Gloria was. It turns out she was exactly 1 pound and 1 inch smaller! She was just right. I was the luckiest woman on the planet!
If you’ve never heard of the “newborn breast crawl”, pause now and YouTube it. It is the most miraculous thing I’ll ever witness, and both of my girls did it. When a baby is placed on your chest, within minutes, they crawl down your chest to find milk. It’s otherworldly. Breastfeeding both girls was two different versions of excruciating hell, but I’ll spare you those details.
Birthing Helena was redeeming. It was textbook. I was so lucky. I know this is not everyone’s experience with childbirth, nor is it everyone’s preference. That’s ok. It’s downright bizarre for anybody to have an opinion on people's personal choices with their bodies. I don’t think people who choose the unmedicated route are superior, that is embarrassing, and it's also equally shitty to make snippy comments about people who do make this choice. Women have got to chill with this stuff. The thing that’s tricky about sharing my story is that it seems that people feel like my choice is a comment on theirs. It’s not. It’s hard to remember sometimes that….pretty much nothing about other people has anything to do with us. Almost ever.
All I care about is that we are all educated in all of our choices and that our choices are then supported by highly qualified professionals.
And there you have it. A couple of birth stories you never asked for, but somehow stuck around to read. I feel so thankful to have these very difficult experiences, I go back to them in every moment that I need a reminder of how tough I am.
I am, it turns out, a wild animal, capable of being taken to the atom’s edge of my entire existence. I wonder how I’ll talk about it with my girls as they grow up. I don’t know if they’ll hear of the magical experiences that I grew up hearing. I didn’t inherit my mom’s pain tolerance. But maybe it’ll be such a distant memory by then; my memory has softened to many hard things in life. We’re constantly growing. So many stories in life are a variety of birth. We’re always birthing new versions of ourselves and observing the birth of who our children are becoming. I don’t think I’m at the point in my evolution to say my birth experiences were beautiful, in that hippie kind of way, but they were certainly beautiful in the holy shit I can do anything kind of way. In my guts, I want to protect my girls from anything that painful, but it will be their choice, or their circumstance that dictates their experiences. I’m glad I don’t need to worry about that for many years. There’s no easy way to do it. It’s hard to make ‘em, it’s hard to grow ‘em, it’s hard to bring 'em to the world, it’s hard to care for ‘em, and it only gets harder the older they get because their problems become harder. The best we can do is see each other getting through it, with or without children, while we're are all still being birthed.