the drawback of 坐月子

I'm starting to feel a bit stir-crazy staying in the apartment while the sun shines in the crisp cold air outside. The scientific reasons for the Chinese tradition of women needing to stay indoors/home for a whole month postpartum are lost to me... I see pictures of people hiking the Carmel National Park (10 minutes bus ride on the 37 aleph) and Tu Bishvat parties going on tonight, among other things, on Facebook and I feel even more trapped. Not that I really want people to see me... Every time I look into the mirror lately, I cringe.

This kind of quiet life, so jarring to me during Declan's newborn days, is a bit more palatable the second time around. I wonder why. Not that I'm complaining...too much. I'm glad Petra sleeps most of the night, lying on my chest while I nap on the living room couch. I'm even able to finish the book for an upcoming book club meeting on February 20 without dozing off due to baby fatigue.

Still waiting for my body to recover. Wondering if I'll ever be able to really run again. Or participate in ultimate frisbee games on Fridays at the Technion. Or climbing for free on Sunday nights.

a tale of two births, part שנים

Two days before my 40^th week of being pregnant with Petra, I slowly waddled over to Vardiya, a neighborhood of Haifa, to attend the usual Mommy & Me class with Declan. Towards the end of our time together with the other moms and kids, I went into the bathroom because I felt the usual pregnancy-induced leakiness…and saw, as I sat on the toilet, that there’s blood on my underwear.

Not wanting to make a fuss, but feeling slightly fazed by the unexpected sight, I mentioned seeing blood quietly to one of the moms as I sat back down next to her on the couch. She exclaimed with some excitement that it could be the beginning of my labor, and passed on the information in Hebrew to the other moms and the person running the class. They all told me to notify my midwife, but of course that’s the one day I forgot my phone at home. I told them that it’s no big deal, and I’ll call when I get home. They insisted on using their iPhones to search for Mindy’s number and declared that I catch a ride with one of them instead of taking my usual uphill trek home.

For a bunch of Israelis, for whom bombs and gas masks are just part of growing up, these moms got surprisingly worked up about my condition. One of them said that they could even drive me to the hospital; I said I doubted I needed medical care right then and there. Their reactions made me feel kind of funny, like “Maybe I am going into labor?” If I had been on my own, I would have just shrugged it off. As it happened, more blood came out later that day, and I was pretty sure at one point that it was in fact the mucous plug. Sometime in the late afternoon, I also started, well, leaking fluid. It wasn’t anything dramatic—no pops or gushes like with Declan. It was so subtle that I wonder if I’m just peeing a little due to being so pregnant. Daniel made me call our midwife and doula to update them on the situation, then he proceeded to go on a wild goose chase around the city trying to find a particular kind of sanitary pad that our midwife said could detect amniotic fluid. It turned out that everyone thought the pharmacies here sell them but actually they’ve stopped to do so a while ago. By the time Daniel returned home via bus, I was leaking so much that I was fairly certain that the baby’s amniotic sac had broken.

Here is where the differences between Declan’s birth and Petra’s really started to grow… Due to the distance between where my doula lives to me (40 minutes by car south of my city) and where I live to my midwife (40 minutes by car west of her city), my midwife told us to start heading over to her place as soon as I called to say I’m 90% sure I’m leaking amniotic fluid. Still, in my mind, I didn’t really believe I’m starting to go into labor. Mainly because, with Declan, I had already gone through a rather uncomfortable night of regular contractions before my water broke fairly obviously. With Petra, I didn’t even know if I was really having any contractions at all. This continued the whole car ride to Beit Lechem HaGlilit, where my midwife lives. It turned out later that I had in fact been having fairly strong and regular contractions that were actually visible to everyone else as Mindy swept the Doppler over my belly. The odd thing was these contractions didn’t hurt at all. Petra reacted so strongly to each contraction that it all just felt like a jumble of movements and tension. In retrospect, that was a great blessing given the bumpiness of our car ride.

After we arrived at the midwife’s, and everyone’s basically settled down in preparation for the event that brought us together, I felt a little sheepish that we’re all awake in the middle of the night (our doula picked us up around 8pm and we finished tea time at our midwife’s around 11pm) for my sake. I basically told everyone to go sleep until further notice. I spent the rest of the night listening to Les Miserables, Norah Jones, Adele, Bethany Dillon, and Gretchen Lieberum. By the last artist, I started getting contractions that actually hurt (heading into 5am). The sun came out around 6am and it was a beautiful, sunny day—like a Pittsburgh autumn day, exactly like the last good sunny (with cold, crisp air) day before the plunge into raininess, when Declan was born. Everyone else started waking up around 7am. Daniel, Offra (our doula), and I went for a walk around Mindy’s property on the moshav. There were orange trees, grapefruit trees, and pecan trees with pecans all over the ground due to the huge storm about two weeks ago. We cracked pecans and ate them, then Offra took an orange for me to scrape the rind continuously and sniff on; Orange scent was supposed to help the cervix open.

Daniel and Offra had planned to walk me over to the moshav’s market, but I cut our trip short and returned to Mindy’s because it was getting too uncomfortable for me to walk much. It’s odd but, around then, I was still feeling some doubt of truly being in labor and that at some point soon really giving birth. With Declan, I was surrounded by really close friends—Daniel and I had visited Julia and my god-daughter early in the morning just as they were waking up for the day, then we had breakfast with Jess and Taylor at Eat N Park. After that, we had headed over to Jason’s and Andrea’s house and sang praise songs together in the living room before my then-doula arrived. I basically had an entourage of good friends with me as we went to lunch. So the difference with Petra’s birth was that, while I was still fairly coherent despite the increasingly strong and painful contractions, I felt less at ease because I didn’t have the irreverent familiarity of my friends’ relationships to fall back on. As opposed to joking away the pain, I still felt constrained in my respect and high regard towards my doula and midwife. Maybe that made a difference in why I felt the pain to be so much more intense during this labor.

As we chatted about our families, and how the day also happened to be Mindy’s father’s 100^th birthday anniversary, I was slightly worried in the back of my mind of how social I was still feeling despite the magnitude of the pain during contractions. By the time I was starting to close off and feel irritated by other people talking towards the end of lunch during labor with Declan, my pain level was on par with how things are around 9:30am. Since Petra was officially born at 1:55pm, understand that from this point onwards at 9:30am, I was starting to realize that this second labor was not in fact going to be easier than the first, despite what so many people say about the nature of subsequent labors.

At least I no longer wondered about whether I was in fact in labor. The painful contractions became so frequent and intense that it was all I could do not to scream every time I started feeling the telltale tightening starting from below. The surge of pain would grow until it reached my utmost pain threshold—and then keep growing. During the height of each contraction, I thought I was going to be driven out of my mind by the intensity. I think for the last three hours of labor, I had my eyes closed the whole time as I leaned onto either Daniel or Offra during the worst moments. It helped for me to visualize whomever I was hanging onto as the physical personification of the pain I was bearing, so that I could actually grasp and move it as I swayed with either Daniel or Offra. At various points in time, I broke down in tears and started praying really loudly—in Hebrew, no less, mostly “Father, please.” (“Abba, bervakasha.”) I didn’t cry once during Declan’s labor, even towards the very end when I was pushing without the helpful force of any contractions. But this labor was so different. Singing, unlike during labor with Declan, didn’t help. Being submerged in water, unlike during labor with Declan, didn’t help. My original plan to have a water birth fell to the wayside as I realized that I needed a whole new bag of tricks for this particular birth. In a way, as I was praying in puzzlement as to why this was the case, I felt God was making a point to me, that He’s reminding me that I need to be relying on Him alone, not just on dear friends He’s blessed me with, not just on techniques and knowledge that’s proven useful in the past for me to carry on the task at hand. That I truly need to trust entirely in Him alone and not my own understanding or circumstances.

So this time, I listened to Mindy’s and Offra’s advice and gave up on comparing my two different labors with two different children. Strangely, the more I try to shy away from the pain—turning rigid as I wait for the contraction to surge and diminish—the less helpful. Still, I got so tired and started to panic a little as my resolve to just focus on surviving one contraction at a time started being undermined by the fact that they were coming in so close to each other that I wasn’t getting any time to regather my strength for the next one. This time, when I broke down crying (yet again), I told Daniel that I really need an epidural. Or maybe a c-section, since we’re not that far from the hospital. Nobody confirmed or denied my appeal; they just listened as I repeated my request for an epidural.

I’m not exactly sure what happened after that. It was a blur of my saying suddenly, “I feel like pushing” and the midwife checking my dilation rate and then telling me that she’s calling a second midwife and setting up for delivery. I remember stripping completely naked because I started sweating profusely. I remember dropping on all four and grunting as my whole consciousness centered around what felt like a ring of fire, the size of a universe. Burning, piercing flames that I needed to move towards in order for my daughter to come out of me.

I know now what the urge to push is, and how powerful and useful it is. It was tempting to just push blindly until the baby comes out in order to get everything over with. It’s what I did when birthing Declan and post-labor recovery was simply awful. I tore a great deal, got stitched up a great deal, and bled for days and days more than the usual amount. I also got 25 US dollars for becoming eligible in a study on bad post-partum tears. With that in mind, I slowed down and waited for the partnership of the contractions. I calmed down as I recited the Lord’s Prayer. While breath-shatteringly painful, the contractions made my pushes more effective, like I can track actual movements of the baby going outwards. At some point, I feel my limbs giving away in strength and both the midwife and I thought at the same time to put me on a birthing stool so gravity could help.  My own recollection was basically a lot of the same as detailed above, except now I’m sitting instead of on all fours. The ring of fire expanded and burned and I kept pushing through the cognitive dissonance I still have about the concept of a human being coming out a small hole of another human being.

That’s why when those around me encouraged me to touch the head as Petra was crowning, I adamantly refused. Just like when Declan was coming out and the hospital staff told me to look up in the mirror to see our progress. It’s just too freaky to me. It’s enough to hear people say that they could see the head, that they could see her hair. It’s also why I couldn’t bear holding Declan right after he was born and they placed him on my stomach, and why I needed to focus on pushing the placenta out after Petra was offered to me when she came out completely and I see her dangling in front of me, still attached to my insides by a really short umbilical cord.

Petra cried soon after she was born, according to the video Daniel took right after her birth, a lot more than I remembered from my own memory. Then she got really mellow for the rest of the time at Mindy’s. Unlike Declan, who screamed bloody murder when he was on the scale, Petra just looked around while she kicked her feet and compromised the integrity of the scale. (She was 3.9kg… heavier than Declan by about 0.6 pounds. Mindy doesn’t measure babies, so we don’t have that information.) I bled about half a liter of blood in all and basically lied down for two hours immediately after the birth until Mindy needed me to move around to check the bleeding situation. One of my biggest concerns about this labor—how Declan would fare with his mother and father absent—led to our decision to return home as soon as possible. Our good friend Or came and drove us home to Haifa while Kirsten’s babysitting Declan for the last day and a half drew to a close.

Home births are…amazing. No fighting with nurses about IV, blood tests, etc. No waiting in the reception area for a labor room to open up as the TV blared in the background (like when laboring with Declan). I basically did whatever I wanted. In a way, it was kind of scary how much freedom I had. Praise God for all that He did through this whole experience—not just the labor and delivery, but starting all the way back at the beginning with my having no clue about the health and prenatal/birthing system in Israel. With my breaking down into angry and disappointed tears after my first (and only) prenatal consultation with the ob-gyn doctor my Israeli health insurance assigned me. With my posting a query on an Israeli FB group about prenatal care and getting a three-page-long email plus personal visit from one of the moms who replied my query. With my coming to know Mindy and then Offra and Daniel’s support in my birth plan decisions. With a fairly healthy pregnancy all the way past week 37 and getting that onerous blood test finally done after multiple unfruitful clinic visits.

Just so many things. I was amazed, as I received well-wishes from Taiwan and the U.S., at the number of people here in Israel who’re just as warm in their congratulations and prayer support during my labor. My family had essentially started with nothing in terms of personal relationships when we arrived at 3am in Haifa exactly five months ago from Petra’s birth. Then, starting with Kirsten and Or’s generous friendship, here we are now. I am—my family is—richly blessed indeed.

a tale of two births, part אחד

January 17 was the estimated due date of child 2.0. After December 27, I was all ready to give birth immediately since it's safe (read: legal) to give birth at home instead of a hospital. But, as the days go by with nothing happening except my face suddenly and very quickly swelling up so that I look more and more like a bloated hippo, I resigned myself to giving birth much later after the due date as was the case with Declan.

Well, now we know that child 2.0 came two days before the doctors predicted. Yay! The best part of being pregnant and then delivering is all the answers one finally gets to know after much speculation and anticipation.

Petra Lilia Spector's birth is coupled in my mind as a study in contrasts with that of her brother, Declan Mikha'el Spector. Since I didn't really record Declan's birth on my blog (as it came into being after he did), it's nice to reminisce a little about him as I recount Petra's birth.

Declan was scheduled to be born in a hospital, with a midwife. I was referred to a friend of a friend as a doula very last-minutely. Since we were already paying for marital counseling at the time, I only became decided about having a doula when she said she'll help me free of charge.

Petra was scheduled to be born in my midwife's house, specifically her house's basement level. It's furnished as a cozy apartment, with a kitchen equipped with a hot plate and fridge, a large bathroom with a jacuzzi and a shower, a living room area, and a "dry birth" room with bed-on-the-floor and birthing stool. I was referred to my midwife through one of my best friends in Pittsburgh who had worked with an Israeli-Palestinian midwifery NGO. It turned out that she's an extremely well-known midwife who's often fully booked and therefore hard to get. I didn't know this until after we'd signed the contract. My doula this time was referred to me by an Israeli mom with similar parenting philosophy.

Whenever I imagined Petra's birth during this pregnancy, I kept returning to the template of Declan's timing... A bloody poop the afternoon before, uncomfortable contractions for that whole night, then a very audible popping sound as my water breaks, followed by progressively more intense contractions as the day wears on, the pain to be alleviated by counter-pressures (my Pittsburgh doula had amazingly strong hands) and eventually water immersion with bubbles until it's time to push as the medical personnels tell me to do. I had felt an urge to push while in the Magee jacuzzi during my labor with Declan, but since water births are illegal in Pennsylvania, they told me to resist the urge until they drained the tub and moved me onto the bed. By then, my contractions had left and I had pushed out of fear of the alternative (c-section). So this is one part --the part where you push -- in the labor phases I read about that I still feel really unclear about while waiting to give birth to Petra.

one thing at a time...

I've been trying to complete writing Petra's birth story, but it feels kind of drag-y...just going on and on. At this rate, I should just give a military minute-by-minute memo of what happened.

Also, part of the reason why I'm letting the story sit for now is because I came to some new realizations after my midwife and I talked about it some more during her last visit. Basically, I had felt that the second labor (compared to with Declan) was much harder. And I had speculated why. I think these conjectures still hold true, but Mindy's talk with me made me realize that part of it was also that I was so much more engaged and fully present during Petra's birth. With full presence comes fuller awareness of all the sensations. Naturally, that made the labor feel harder. But was it really in the objective sense? Feelings being subjective, I would say labor with Petra was in fact harder--if we focus purely on how much feelings I register. But, objectively, if we focus on pain as units of measurement, I would say that labor with Petra was in fact 100x easier as I "paid" the full price upfront instead of accruing any debts to be faced with later.

This takes some explaining, and I hope to do so at a later time. Right now, I want to catch up on quality "alone" (with a newborn) time with Daniel while Declan is away at a train park near Petra's birth town with Kirsten and Or, who are graciously baby-sitting him for the day since they get a day off from work due to Israel's Election Day.

currently...

I'm jotting down Petra's birth story in bits and pieces as I make rest -> nursing the baby -> spending time with Declan (in that order) a priority right now. So just a quick note on what's going on right now:

- Afterbirth pains are no joke. I'm so glad I didn't have to experience it as a first-time mom because I had such bad tears after Declan's birth that it was an already traumatic enough recovery. Today is the second day after labor, and my midwife says afterpains usually lasts 2-3 days. I'm looking forward to them going away for good.

- My body feels like such a wasteland right now. It's really hard to imagine ever being able to be an athlete again. Or even just playing with my son while keeping the house in order while taking care of a baby by myself. It all seems in my mind right now like climbing Mt. Everest.

- For some reason, I feel so much more different about having a new baby this time than when Declan was born. I think I was more...petrified the last time around. I remember being driven home two days after his birth and feeling so surreal that the world has not come to an end or changed drastically in other people's perspectives. Now, as I lay in bed and occasionally side nurse (! -- something I didn't know one could do with a newborn) a mostly dozing Petra, I'm really enjoying the peace and wishing that I wasn't so restless during Declan's newborn days.

rain, rain...

Well, I couldn't very well say "go away," because rain is a very good thing for Israel.

But apparently this is the wettest winter in Israel's history, only topped by the winter 25 years ago.

And the scary storm that rendered me an insomniac from 2am until 6:30am Monday night also tore a piece of wood off the table placed in the balcony. The piece of wood has now disappeared, and we'll have to tell our landlord.

Also, I finally insisted that we turn on our central heating already instead "waiting until the baby arrives." No reason to add another point of motivation why I want this baby out of me bloody now dammit. But then we discovered that the central heating system in our apartment blows the fuse about five minutes in whenever we turned it on. Even with just the two space heaters confined to our living room, the fuse blows every now and then.

Winter in Israel, without proper heating and well-fitted rain boots (which I'll like to get after I'm no longer pregnant and can actually bend down to put on my hopefully non-swollen feet), is absolutely miserable.

I hope the newborn won't get sick from having to live in a really cold place. This is also putting a damper on Declan's potty training as I can't let him run around butt naked for as long since it's too cold.

A silver lining: I snipped off the end of a pair of socks that always make Declan fall when he wore them. Now they serve very well as his leg warmers. Hooray!

at the beginning of the new year

What did I do to welcome the first moments of the new year 2013? I stayed up, waiting for Daniel to wake up from putting Declan to bed, and spent the time watching a documentary on the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei, called Ai Wei Wei: Never Sorry. It brought back a lot of memories of our time in China, and why we left it. That the only reason why I hail from Taiwan and not China is due to the circumstances of my grandparents often makes me wonder if I would care more about the future of China or care more about the reform of the PROC government if I had grown up in the mainland instead of its better parallel universe. Maybe? Probably? I don't really know. I've met enough Chinese people who just want to get the hell out of their country that I couldn't honestly say I would be brave and selfless like Ai Weiwei and his counterparts.

There were some fireworks at the stroke of midnight, but other than that, it is as my friend Mark said: "Israelis are confused about the new year; there are no countdowns and plenty of Santa hats." New year's eve is just another ordinary day here, although I noticed lots of retail stores at the Grand Canyon on new year's eve had 50% sales. Daniel's mom bought a summer shirt for me at American Eagle that could potentially help me breastfeed more discreetly even in the anticipated Israeli heat.

Still pregnant. I had been so nervous about giving birth prematurely i.e. before December 27 i.e. would have needed to birth at a hospital instead of the home birth I'd planned that making it to December 27 had been my only real concern up to that point. This mentality leads now to an adjusted new mentality that, oh, I'm not actually going to give birth right away. Oh, there's a possibility that I might in fact be "late" again. With Declan, I finally gave birth at 41.5 gestation weeks, after feeling like I would be pregnant forever. With this baby, I once again have absolutely no clue. I'm getting used to the idea of giving birth even as late as January 31st, though. And now that I've accepted this state of hip and lower region pain, physical immobility, and uncomfortable nights of broken sleep as something I may have to endure for another month, tops, I am for the most part okay with waiting some more.

It might have to do with the fact that I'm pretty sure this will be my last pregnancy, God willing. I'm content with having a son and a daughter and four people in my immediate family. Maybe one adoption later on down the road... but truthfully, I'm pretty certain I want a career outside of the home while at the same time not wanting to put my kids in daycare. Which means that any attempt for further professional work is contingent upon the burgeoning independence of my children. Which means that if I have yet another child, that's at least three more years where I stay at home, glad for the opportunity to nurture my own children yet feeling really restless and disconnected from the world at large as well.