[Adventure] 19

[Adventure 169]

Nineteen years ago this amazing child made their entrance into the world on a diagonal. I should have known they weren't straight from the beginning.

Nineteen years ago I labored for three days before Austen finally decided it was time to make their way into the world. We loaded our nearly two year old and three year old into the car and off we went to the birth center. I must have stopped a half dozen times between the car and door into the hospital from the parking garage. One kind gentleman asked if we needed a wheelchair - or a doctor. I assured everyone that I was just in labor - and I was fine. We made our way into the building, into the elevator, and to the birth center. We got the kids settled in with my mom and Rachel in the lounge type room and I leaned against a counter and swayed through contractions. At one point the midwife asked if I'd like to get into the birth tub and I said no. After the next contraction I changed my mind and she began filling the tub. 

My husband hadn't slept much, so as I relaxed through contractions in the birth pool, he somehow managed to fall asleep sitting on a birth stool, head on his arms on the side of the birth pool.  At one point I remembered the CDs of music I'd planned to listen to, but didn't have the heart to wake him to get them out of the next room. Instead I listened to my mom and Rachel and my children singing "Little Bunny Foo Foo." 

When finally my body started pushing, the midwife was a bit concerned about the position of the baby. It seems they had decided to rotate themself just a bit so that their head was diagonal in my pelvis, complicating their entry into the world. As I switched positions in the tub for the second time, the twisting of my body got them into just the right position and they were born into the water and into my hands. Their grandmother cut their cord, and Daddy held them skin to skin while I moved to the bed to  be tended to. Just four hours after birth, we were headed home. 

At the time, I thought this was my third and final child. They are, in fact, the middle child. There were other assumptions made that day and in the time following. They were not, in fact, a daughter, but a nonbinary child. They would not have the life I'd pictured at the time - public school, boyfriend, etc. etc. etc. But I'm not at all upset. I'm overjoyed that they are who they are and they love who they love.

Austen turned eighteen in quarantine. At that time, we thought life would be pretty much back to normal a year later. We've come a long way, but not nearly as far as we'd imagined. We have a new President, the covid-19 vaccine, and mask mandates are being lifted. We can get together with friends a bit more safely, go to outdoor concerts and performances, and have returned to indoor worship. 

Austen and their girlfriend will soon be vacationing for two weeks at Camp Calumet. Hopefully in a month or so we will be celebrating Austen's birthday along with their cousin's and sister's birthdays and Austen's graduation (a year late) with family and friends. And they will start looking for a job. After a year seemingly on pause, they will begin to move forward with their adult life.

Not that their life was on pause for the past year. A few things happened...