Maji: The Gift of Life

(Maji: Kiswahili = water)

by Kerrie Kurgat

Deep inside of me, a stirring. Undulations. I didn’t know who, just as I hadn’t known for my previous two births. We would embrace a son or a daughter: joys, challenges, idiosyncrasies and all.  

I had requested gender anonymity from the sonographer, who remained neutral, even in the ultrasound report which stated: “gender - normal.” Despite my protests, the test was requested by a midwife to confirm gestational age. It was more detailed due to my age (over 35 years), and I was grateful for the reassurance and levity that Dr. Wolfe proffered: “Can you believe they think you’re ‘old’?!”

            It was the evening of October 5, 2010, my due date. I had taught my ESL classes as usual until two in the afternoon. Our children were already asleep while my husband and I prepared for bed. The painful contractions I was experiencing were not new; they had been percolating for weeks – precursors of the intense pressure that would thrust my baby into, I hoped, the warm water of the birthing tub.

           

            I lay in bed and jotted down the intervals of the contractions on yellow post-it notes: 11:56pm, 12:17am... In the early morning hours on October 6, I contacted the on-call midwife. “I’m having contractions – nothing longer than 25 seconds. Just wanted to let someone know.” She listened dutifully as I recited my contraction frequencies. “Why don’t you drink some tea and take a bath? Then try to get some sleep,” she suggested. I took her advice about the tea, but skipped the bath. At long last I slept.

           

            For a stretch of over an hour I felt no tensing or tightening. Then, rogue contractions periodically. Back to sleep. Jolted by pain in my lower back, I called WBWC and spoke with Allison. Though the labor was prodromal in nature, she validated my labor contractions. I asked her opinion about whether or not I should teach that morning. She supported the idea of canceling classes. Since I tested GBS positive, she recommended I come in early for a round of antibiotics.

            At 11:45am, my husband and I were ushered into the blue room on the first floor. Sun streamed through slats in the blinds. Helen, the nurse, bustled about readying birthing equipment.

     Five years ago, my son Nicholas had been born in the same room to the cadence of a February rain shower. A swift, intense birth that began when I walked into the room at 11:30; I cradled him in my arms by 11:59am.  

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On that occasion, my labor had commenced around 8am. I had stoically gone to work enduring the ever-more-frequent pain by standing up and holding my chair in the privacy of my small office. I was of the mind then, as I am now, that there was no reason for me not to go to work up to the last moment. My colleague insisted on timing my contractions until they were five minutes apart.

Ironically, I worked with two OB/GYN’s who were in the office that day. I called the WBWC and spoke to Jan. I could come on over, she said. “Go and have a wonderful birth,” imparted one of the physicians with a warm embrace. I switched into high gear and started for the door. I happened to work a quarter mile down the street from WBWC and was actually intent on walking there. Just then my colleague bounded out of the elevator and into the parking lot (post knee-replacement surgery!) with her purse flying on her arm. “You’re not going to walk. Let me drive you,” she intervened with foresight. The difference between the blue room and the birth center parking lot!

I called my husband who met me at the WBWC. When we arrived, we were directed to the first floor. I knocked. Maureen opened the door with a swoosh. “Hi, I had a feeling we’d hear from you today, so I prepared this room for you.” Incredibly, she hadn’t spoken to the staff upstairs. I stumbled in and stripped down. No time for antibiotics despite my positive GBS status. The nurse sauntered in after about ten minutes.

“Hello everyone,” she greeted.

“Get dressed,” Maureen retorted.  
My husband inquired whether he should pick up our daughter from school. Maureen advised against that as a father had missed the birth of his child recently under similar circumstances.

Fifteen minutes and some oxygen later, Nicholas was nursing in my arms. Five years later I was in the same place - time, gray hairs, and experiences between the years.

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Helen mercifully rubbed my lower back and related engaging stories about her family, leavening my labor pains. Allison arrived at WBWC from the hospital at 1:30. She asked my permission to have a student midwife, Daniela, participate in my birth, and I consented.

I was a stranger to Lamaze and ignorant about the Bradley or any other method. I implicitly trusted my midwives and nurses for countenance and management. Both Allison and Daniela guided me through the grist and grit of labor.

Through an amalgam of thoughts, I focused intently on inhaling through my nose and exhaling through my mouth. Rhythm. Until a spasm rocked my uterus. Inertia propelled my baby down. “Ease this baby out. Relax,” chanted Daniela. As he crowned, my water finally broke. Through the plate tectonics of labor, my son transitioned from his protective sac into the water at 3:05pm.

As he suckled colostrum, his nectar of life for the next few days, I pondered over Jonathan’s journey: an answer to the ellipsis that lingered as Nicholas grew older. Vicariously, he had swum numerous times in the community pool. He was pummeled by rip current waves in Lake Michigan. His birth in the water, luminous and ephemeral, brought him full circle, and he was aptly named “Kimibei” of the East African Kipsigis people: “he was in the water" or "there was water.”