The Birth of Dek*

*Child in Thai

The night before Dek was born, Sean arrived with his 3 oldest kids in tow, two 6 year olds and a 3 year old, and his new intern, Brady, who is a recent high school graduate, and going to the village for a month or more to help him and learn from him. (This is what Sean does here.)

"How are you?" He asked.

"Still pregnant." I replied, gesturing at my huge belly.

"That's why I called before," he said. "I figured if you were in labor I probably shouldn't come.

"Yeah, that would be an interesting situation." I agreed.

I had had a little more mucus making an appearance the past few days, as we drove to Burma and back. But I had that before and thought I was starting something and that turned out to be totally wrong.

I had only gotten 4 hours of sleep the night we got back from the border, and between that, and a whole day in the car, my feet were ginormous. I was feeling a little worried about how swollen they had become and that they hadn't gone down at all during the night as they usually do.

So right after dinner I told Aaron that I was going to take a walk to try and get some blood circulating and see if the swelling wouldn't go down. There were some moments during the walk when I felt like I might be having contractions. There was some pressure on my cervix that wasn't exactly like a baby head just kicking, and my uterus felt hard when I touched it. But they were so mild that I told myself that I was just finally having some Braxton Hicks warm up action and they would stop once I sat down to rest.

Which they did. By the time I went to bed there were no contractions and I fell asleep very easily.

But, when I had my shower there had been a tiny bit of mucus that was a different color and I started to think that maybe, maybe, we were getting near the end, finally, and this baby would come soon. So I asked Aaron to work on my feet for me, both because he can always get the swelling to subside a lot, and because he's really good with pressure points that strengthen contractions and I thought it would be worth a try to get some pressure point action in to keep things from subsiding again into nothing. Aaron promised to do so when he came to bed. He had a late conference call with someone back in the US, and then he and Sean had plans to hang out and talk before he came into bed.

Sometime in the night I woke up and Aaron was rubbing my feet, as promised. He said it was after 2am later on. Whenever he hit a pressure point I started having a really strong contraction, which was awesome, because I hadn't had any before then. So he kept up the pressure point work for a while longer. Just as I was falling asleep again, Bam Bam woke up and needed things. Mostly he needed to pee, but it still takes him a while to figure that part out and he asks for other things in the meantime.

When I took him to the bathroom, I went too, because I was needing to pee very frequently at this point and I was thinking, "That head is even lower than usual."

I think the rest of my mucus plug came out that time on the toilet, but it didn't quite register because I was so tired by that point.

I thought, "I'd better call the midwife first thing in the morning, it looks like it could be tomorrow."

But it took another half hour or more to get Bam Bam back to sleep after that, and so sometime around 4 in the morning, while I waited for him to settle, I quickly emailed my parents and Aaron's to let them know that maybe tomorrow something might happen. I was having mild, intermittent, contractions.

Then I tried to go back to sleep. Which I managed for the most part, except for these contractions that would wake me up from time to time and were strong enough that I had to quietly breath through them and occasionally put my hand against my back. But I was determined to get some sleep, since I needed to rest if I was going to be in labor in the morning, so I lay as still as possible and fell deeply asleep in between each contraction as it came. I have no idea how many there were, it didn't feel like they were all that frequent.

Toward sunrise, I started to feel hungry at the end of each contraction, but didn't want to get up yet, but worried that if I didn't eat something soon I'd end up nauseous. So I ignored the hungry feeling as long as I could, and slept as much as I could, until the feeling that I needed to vomit, now, had me jumping out of bed and running to get a bowl.

I went all out this year for a father's day present.

I grabbed a bowl on the back porch, chugged all the water in my bottle and braced myself to throw up. Only, I didn't throw up. Instead, one contraction after another started to happen and they weren't gentle anymore. I paced back and forth through them, trying to figure out what to do. There was a house full of people, some on the couch, little kids just waking, my room was pretty untidy and I still needed to bleach the birth pool.

Still not realizing how close I actually was, I did realize that I was not going to be able to prepare everything as I had hoped to, and had thought I would have the time to do.

Then I had to go the bathroom, like now, number 2. I decided I really didn't like having contractions on the toilet.

Then my face was so sweaty all I could think of was getting my hair up and off of it and my neck. I took my puke bowl and water with me and moved to the bedroom, where, in between killer contractions I pulled my hair up. This is when Aaron woke up and I told him I was having contractions.

My nausea had turned out to be hunger. So I asked Aaron to get me some muesli while I texted the midwife. I have a clunker of a phone for Thai phone calls, so texting takes longer than usual. It took at least 5 contractions, alternating between eating as fast as I could between them and trying to write a text.

I started out trying to say, "Contractions, not super close together but getting strong," and realized as I typed that that wasn't true so I concluded it with, "NVM that was pretty close. I wonder if you'll make it?"

She texted back to say it would take her about 4 hours. I wasn't sure I had that long. These texts were at 6:20 and she called to ask if I needed her to try and get on the 7:55 plane. By this time part of me was finally cluing in that this was going way too fast for that, and I said I thought it would be too late. She listened to me as I went through yet another contraction and said, "That was really strong. I think you're right, I'm not going to make it. What are you going to do?"

Just last week a friend had put me in touch with D, who is a midwife in training, who asked if she could observe my home birth while she's in Thailand, because it's part of her course requirements. I was to be the second home birth she'd ever attended. She's staying nearby so I said I'd call her.

"Ok. I'll keep my phone close. Call if you need me to talk you through anything." Then she hung up and I called D.

"I think I'm doing this one solo," I told her. "If you'd like to come you should get here now, it's going to be super fast."

"I'm on my way", she said and hung up.

This whole time Aaron was trying to get the birth pool ready. He washed it and bleached it and was clearing a corner of our room to set it up. I was obsessing about things being put away properly and was telling him where it all went.

After hanging up with D, I realized that I'd been standing and pacing through every single contraction since waking up and I thought to myself, "If I lie down these may slow down again, and I'll get a bit of a break."

So I lay down.

As soon as the next contraction hit I realized that I had an urge to push and heard myself grunting, as one does when pushing. I thought, "No, not yet, not on Prang's bed. I'm not ready! I need the pool."

But there's not much you can do to stop yourself from pushing once the urge hits, though I tried, and a second later I told Aaron, "My water just broke, hand me that towel."

He laughed in disbelief. I tucked the towel under me as well as I could to catch everything and braced myself for the next contraction, because the contraction after your water breaks is usually a lot harder.

Except, instead of a regular contraction I had to push again, hard!

"I'm pushing!" I announced. "And I'm pooping! I don't know where to go."

By this point the birth pool was just not happening, but it took three more contractions, and pushes, for me to decide what to do. I didn't want to be on the bed and get blood and poo all over it. I didn't want to kneel on the floor either. I kept thinking, "I can't push a baby out, I'm still wearing underwear."

Fortunately, I had put a pad on in the middle of the night after I saw the mucus plug loosening, so some of the fluid and all of the poo was at least contained.

"Help me get to the shower." I decided.

And in the space between contractions we got to the bathroom, I stripped down and knelt on the tile floor, holding onto Aaron for support. Next contraction, as I bore down I realized a huge problem. I had no traction. My knees were slipping. And it hurt to try and stabilize with my leg muscles as I knelt there. There were no towels in the bathroom, Aaron couldn't leave because I needed him for support. The only other people awake in the house were little kids, and maybe Brady. How was I going to get something stable to kneel on?

That's when I heard D's voice asking where I was.

"I'm in the bathroom. I'm pushing. Please bring me a towel."

And she did. And then she brought everything else as we needed it as well. Which was awesome.

For some reason I felt the need to narrate this one as it was happening. Maybe because I needed others to know how fast it was going too. So as D came in I announced, "Ring of fire, already to ring of fire."

She of course could see pretty well, she's attended at least 70 births since her training started, so she didn't really need me to tell her on the next contraction when I reached down that there was already a head between my legs and he was crowning. But I told her anyway.

I don't remember exactly, but it seems like it was 8-10 contractions between getting to the shower and delivering his head. In between I was telling D where to find the stack of sterile towels and the rest of the birth kit, which was somewhat less organized than it had once been since I tossed much of it in a bag to take along to Burma with us. Just in case.

I had my hand under his head, I didn't want him landing on the floor, and it felt very long waiting for his body to turn and deliver the rest of the way. Especially because he kicked out and squirmed twice while halfway out, and that was uncomfortable, to say the least. But then his body eased out and he was all blue and floppy and that's when D was really, really amazing.

I was too dazed those first few seconds to really notice his condition much and she, very calmly, suggested I stimulate him.

I started to, but not very aggressively, as he made little tiny noises, and then she came into the shower, gently trading places with Aaron, and rubbed his body until his color started to turn pink and he started to cry in earnest, and take deep breaths. She said something about not being able to suction him and I remembered I had a bulb syringe in the kit too, so she found that and suctioned him as well.

And then I tried to get comfortable on the floor as we waited for the cord to stop pulsing and the placenta to deliver. Our kids had heard him crying, and they each peeked a head in to look for a moment while we waited. Except Bam Bam, he stayed sleeping until the end.

I was really uncomfortable on that floor very quickly, and tired, and so we got started on figuring out what to do about the cord.

With a lot of help from D, we tied it off with some clean thread, used rubbing alcohol to sterilize the site, and Aaron's super sharp knife. Aaron cut the cord and he and I were separate. Aaron wrapped him in a clean towel and took him out while I knelt again to push out the placenta. It came right away and I realized that part of why I was so uncomfortable was that it was sitting there on my perineum waiting to come out.

Then I showered, and D stayed with me to make sure I was ok. It had gone so quickly that I wasn't nearly as shaky standing as I have been in the past. In keeping with the OCD tendencies I had been displaying for the last hour or so, I not only showered but rinsed out the whole shower and all the blood and poo off the towels "so they would be easier to wash later." Had I the energy I think I would have also cleaned and organized my whole bedroom and swept it out. I may have had some adrenaline coursing through me just then. But by the time I finished showering and walked to the bedroom I was ready to lay down. All the kids were on the bed, which had been cleaned up a bit, and the Boy was holding his new baby brother. So I laid down with them to enjoy our new baby.

By this time the kids had told everyone on the property that our baby was born and Cindy came over to see. She and Adam were great. They fed our kids all day, and watched them for much of it, and Sean watched them when we went into the hospital later. I laid in bed and slept a lot. And updated facebook.

Cindy made him a birthday cake.

D checked his heart rate and vitals, making sure all was well, and then checked me as well, making sure I could pee and that my uterus was contracting properly. She brought me food, and I finally finished breakfast and was lovely and competent the whole time. I'm so glad she asked if she could come and watch. She ended up being very, very helpful.

Birthday party

It was 6:30am when I called D. He was born at 6:56am. I had been fully awake approximately one hour.

Looking back I realize that I had been in active labor since at least 4 am, but had been too much in denial/too tired to realize it. So to me it felt like he was born in less than an hour, though it was more like 3 or 4, which is still super fast, but not as fast as it felt to me.

He's not impressed.

 And that's how my two week overdue boy made his lightening fast entrance at 8lbs 13oz, on his great grandpa's birthday.

Road trip to Burma

We have the kind of visa right now that makes it necessary to leave and reenter the country every 90 days. This is something people assumed I knew and so no one told me until 2 days ago. It will be this way until Aaron's work permit gets properly sorted and such.

On the bridge.

 We kind of thought that 90 days would be plenty of time to have a baby, get documents for that baby, and get the Boy a surgery he needs, whole other story, before needing to renew our visas. This was before I knew that renewing our visas involved a 4 hour drive to the nearest border crossing and a short trip to Burma.

However, there is still no baby, the Boy's surgery date is for the 21st, because I kept putting off scheduling it, not wanting to be in labor when he's in the hospital, and our visas expired on the 24th. This is one of those moments when my brain melts down and I think to myself, "There is no way." And then I cry.

You see, even if we have the baby in the next few days, the odds of getting all the documentation for said baby, including a passport, before crossing into Burma, of all places, in less than 10 days are pretty low.  Plus there's the part about the Boy recovering from what is pretty major surgery and driving for 4 hours in each direction 3 days after.

It didn't even occur to me that we didn't have to wait until the 24th to go and renew until Aaron said something. So we talked about it and decided the best thing to do was to make a run for it as soon as we could. Which is why yesterday found us once again in a rental car, this time headed for the border.

More than 8 hours back there and they did it without complaining or fighting.

You don't need any paperwork to take an unborn baby across borders, after all.

I really like getting out of the city and driving through Thailand. It's beautiful, and interesting, and Aaron and I used to spend hours together in a car during our courtship/early married days and I still really like doing that with him. We go into full on adventure mode.

The kids were great, despite being crowded in to a small little backseat together, and we had a memorable day.

Looking at Burma from the Thai side.

The border between the 2 countries at the northern most point of Thailand is marked by a narrow, muddy, little river. There's a street market on both sides of this river, in what looks like a big network of back alleys that cross under the "Friendship Bridge". You have to cross the bridge to get to Burma and back. Buildings cling to the river bank and pile up several stories high on both sides, and you could play a decent game of catch with someone on the other side from your apartment balcony to theirs, as long as you never missed.

We haven't gone very many places yet, all of us together, since we got here. After all,  given the option of taking all 4 kids to the store withe me or going alone, what sane mama is going to vote for taking all 4? I've usually taken one child along with me in turns so they can have some one on one time and get a chance to get out of the muban and see some things, just not all together. Whenever we do go somewhere though we are a spectacle. People count out loud as we all parade past, culminating in a dramatic exclamation of 5! as they see my belly, usually bringing up the rear. (Five in Thai sounds like Hah, as in hahaha. So that's always fun to hear.)

See? Spectacle. Look at that giant belly.

They point, they giggle, they wave. They reach out to try and touch BamBam, who usually grins at them slyly and tries to hide behind me, or swings a fist out at them, which they think is funny. Some people ask me if they can take a family photo. Some people don't bother asking, they just point and shoot and then come and stand beside us, or one of the kids, regardless of what they are doing and smile and wave for their friends to take a picture. The Girl and Boy are mostly safe from people trying to touch them, they are old enough it seems to be seen as autonomous persons. But Little, well, she's so tiny people think she's very young, and they always want to make friends with her, and often want to hug her, and this makes her pretty uncomfortable sometimes.

They are super cute.

To cross, first we went into Thai immigration and they removed our old visas. We had to fill out some papers and Bam Bam played with the fountain and I think 100 or more photos of myself and the kids now live on 10 different people's cell phones.

Then we walked across the bridge, and I smelled something delicious from a food cart that I went back for later, and went into Burmese immigration. Here's where things got weird.

Imagine if you will a very smoky little office, filled with a bunch of guys in bright white polyester uniforms, with all sorts of medals and stuff on them. A rather portly man, also in uniform, waved us inside from the chair he sits on facing the street. The kids all found chairs and sat quietly, they are getting good at this government office stuff. BamBam was his regular charming 2 year old self, not so quiet, but adored by everyone he saw. Aaron brought US currency, because the last time he crossed this border they charged him US dollars to enter. Yes, you pay a fee to enter Burma. They wanted Thai baht, but we didn't have enough on us to cover the cost in baht. Finally they let us pay them in US dollars. Meantime, everyone smiled and laughed at the kids, one man made bird sounds with his mouth, they all said hello and did the regular trying to make friends with my kids who shrank back and clustered close to me as a result.

I was doing something for BamBam when I heard, "Mama!" and looked up to see that one of the men in the white uniforms had come out from behind his desk, picked up Little and was sitting with her in his lap. Talk about disconcerting. Fortunately, Little is a bit Thai in the way she will smile and laugh when she's uncomfortable and get a little silly as a way to get out of it. Suppressing my initial urge to stand up and scoop her out of this strange soldier's lap and run away, which would teach her to be afraid and not go over well in this strange place, I instead smiled and said, "I think he wants to be friends with you."

She reached for my hand giggling, and he tried to hold her close, all very friendly I might add, not sinister on his part, and somehow she and I managed to reach hands and make it silly that she wriggled away from him and over beside me as quickly as she possibly could.

Then he tried to make friends with Bam Bam, who was his usual self and rebuffed all advances with his usual good humor. We were almost done and Bam Bam tripped over the door step and fell on his face on the floor, setting up a nice loud wail. When they saw me trying to help him by putting my, not really cold anymore, water bottle against his cheek, one of the officers brought over a cold can of mango juice and gave it to him to drink and hold. It was really very kind. Though Bam Bam kept yelling until we left the office, and then finally wanted to try and drink his juice while hugging it to his chest and walking.

So we left our passports with them and entered into Burma. I know!!! They keep your passports and give you a card with your photo on it instead, and you pick up your passports on your way back out. So not comfortable.

There were way fewer people smiling on the Burmese side than the Thai side. I've gotten used to the always smiling Thai greeting, and by contrast many of the Burmese looked downright surly, or sad, or both. But they still pointed at us, and counted, and laughed at BamBam as he walked by and looked right back at all of them.

At the tea house.

We stopped at a tea house, just a block away from the bridge. Aaron and his brother spent all night in the exact same one 3 years ago when they went to Burma together. As soon as you sit down they put an assortment of food in front of you, and hot pots of tea. You pay for what you eat/open. Burmese milk tea is very tasty.

The bathrooms were, well, Thai bathrooms look palatial in comparison. And the flush/rinse water was the same color as the muddy river we had just crossed. Poor Little actually slipped and fell right on top of the toilet she had just finished peeing in. Poor girl. We cleaned her up as well as we could. I always carry toilet paper so I could wipe her muddy legs, and found some cleaner water a bit later to rinse her off.

After that we were eager to get back to the Thai side and begin the long drive home again. It was already much later than we had planned, and we had 4 hours of driving still ahead.

But that didn't stop us from buying some Burmese pastries on the bridge, and these amazing sort of breaded fried onion cakes, kind of like a Burmese onion ring, as well as giant grapes, lychees, shoes for Bam Bam, and Chinese Oolong tea.

The night air was warm, but cool enough to have the windows down, and we stared at the limestone mountains with their crazy shapes as the sun went down behind them.

The dinner stop was in Chiang Rai, at bed time, in the food court of a big, beautiful mall, and all rejoiced to be back in civilization again, with clean toilets, and soap, and well, clean everything.

We've gone full Asian tourist. Look at us, at a mall!

Daddy, it's covered in light up flowers! You're the best!

And then we drove for hours and hours and got home without incident just after midnight, except for a very low gas gauge at one point and passing many stations that were closed before we found one we could fill up at. That caused some nervousness. They close up at night here in northern Thailand. Things really shut down.

It was actually a really fun day, though exhausting, and we have another 90 days before we have to do that again, even if this baby is the latest baby ever in the history of the whole world, that should give us enough time to figure out the passport and stuff. And still, no labor yet.

Patience

Move to Thailand - Check

Buy a truck -

Have a baby -

Find a place to live -

Get to work -

So, one out of 5 isn't bad, right?

We found a truck, at a great price, because it needed some work. But work here is cheap, and usually done decently, so it seemed a good trade off. Here though, they don't start the work unless you pay them first. So they give you a work order, saying what they will do, ask you to pay, and then they get to work.

Well, we've been told the delay was because they were trying to find a part. Then they said they found the part, and charged us for it. Then they said it would be ready to test drive this past Saturday. But when Aaron arrived to do so, no one was there, and the engine was still laying in pieces all over the garage. A less than promising sign.

Have a baby. Well, that isn't going so well either. I'm now 9 days past due, and no sign of anything changing anytime soon. I am so not in control of that one, without seeking invasive medical intervention, so I'm just going to have to wait to check that one off the list.

Find a place to live. We thought we had. But then the owners of the house came back after we agreed on a price and asked for more money. Aaron has no intention of any further dealings with someone who will say one thing and then change their mind, even if we could afford the higher price. So we're back at square one again in that regard also.

Get to work. Aaron has some somewhat urgent business to attend to up on the mountain at the orphanage. He's waiting for this baby to come so he can go and take care of things there without being at risk of being a several hour ride away when I go into labor. There are many things to do here, online, and with meetings and stuff, but it does feel substantially stalled, this forced confinement in Chaing Mai.

The lesson of Thailand so far seems to be patience. And then more patience. And then just a little more after that, for good measure.