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| Isaiah--March 23, 2010 |
Waddling down the hospital hall, I feel the muscles round my protuberant belly tighten, squeeze until the pressure wraps round my back and I think the baby will just pop through my white, blue-veined skin—“hee, hee, hoo . . . hee, hee, hoo . . . hee, hee, hoo . . . .” The squeezing lessens, fades, and I straighten, waddle towards room 119, the birthing room—the get-this-baby-OUT-NOW room.
And this baby’s been floating too long, 40 weeks and 8 days too long, just like his brothers, and I want to see if he’s brown like Josiah, like me, or blonde and blue-eyed like Micah, like Jon.
I hear light, athletic steps in hall behind me, Jon running in from parking red mini-van. Knowing better than to touch me he says, “which room?” I point to 119 and he walks beside me the last couple steps. Inside 119, I lean against the cool, metal bed-arm, breathing through another contraction squeezing that baby down. A blur of blue enters room, walks to bed and says,
“When you finish this one, Hun, get in bed and I’ll check you.” I nod between hee, hee, hoos and focus on nurse’s fingers as she slips on rubber gloves, one pencil-finger at a time. Then as I roll my whale-ish self into hard, slanted bed, nurse moves to check baby’s progress into this world. Nurse’s head pops up quickly from bed end, walks to door, yells down hall:
“We’re complete in here! Get the doctor!” And nurse asks me, “Were you planning on an epidural?” I shake my head “no.”
Jon relaxed-laughs: “She was at the gym an hour ago, just had to finish that work out! We almost didn’t make it in time!”
And my belly tightens, and it’s all a rainbow of colors and voices. Doc is in surgery and can’t make it. Nurse velcro’s a monitor on my arm, feels arm for a vein--I’ve got plenty, big and blue, just like my mother’s. But there’s no time to poke needle in vein. Baby’s coming. I’m gonna push. I’m gonna push. A doctor comes, not my doctor, and I push and push and it hurts, the ring of fire, the curse of Eve—why did she eat that apple!? Fire and burn, and tingling in my face, arms, legs, and the thump, thump of baby’s heart pounding in my brain. Then a scream, not my scream. And he’s on my belly, all white and slippery and rooting, and he’s blondish and big, like Jon, like Micah.
“What’s his name?” says nurse in blue.
“Isaiah.”
Isaiah, his name, and it means “the Lord is salvation.”
As I caress white-ish skin, slick with birth-water, I wonder: Will he live his name? Will he know the Lord’s salvation? Isaiah.
And in the dim light of birthing room, naming happens, like Adam naming in the garden, we name our son.
And with the naming, the becoming begins.
