Reznet

Birthday

By Christie Cooke

At 2 a.m., July 17, 2007, I held a cell phone in my hand, opening and closing the phone, out of nervousness and desperation.

My daughter lay next to me asleep.

“Is this it?” I asked myself.

I cried for hours to myself. I didn’t know what to do. Although I have been through this before, I was lost and scared of the pain that I felt so strong in my back.

The tinge in my abdomen reminded me of my daughter’s birth—12 hours of grueling pain! And this time my mother would not be by my side.

By 5 a.m. I decided what I was feeling was indeed labor.

I took a shower and tried to prepare myself for my son’s arrival.

In much discomfort, I put on a white t-shirt, grey sweatpants, and sneakers.

I walked out of the door of the house I stayed in, looked around, and inhaled the warm and humid air. That morning I prayed and made my offering to the Holy People because I knew I was alone. I prayed for a safe arrival of my son. A pinch of the golden pollen settled on my tongue. In the sweetness of the pollen, I found some reassurance.

After I swallowed the pollen, the pain became so immediate and severe that I nearly collapsed. As I waited for the person to drive me to the hospital, I slumped over on the car for support and groaned with every contraction.

Finally, I got into the car, unable to sit, and very aware that nature was in full control of my labor, and the pain I could only endure.

I couldn’t sit for the pressure of my son’s head and his decent down into the birth canal was too great. I felt I was going smash him.

The nearest hospital was five minutes away. The small town facility didn’t have a nursery, available rooms, even doctors or midwives, available only by on-call status, to deliver my son.

Those facts unknown to me and my son ready to come into this world, my car pulled up to the Emergency Room doors, an EMT, whose shift was just about to end, casually strolled a wheelchair down the handicap ramp.

I was in so much pain. I opened the door of the car, stood up, and my son gushed into my right pant leg!

The EMT told me to sit.

“I can’t! He’s in my pants!” I said.

“You have to sit!” she screamed back.

I carefully sat myself down in the wheelchair, held myself up on the arms of the wheelchair with whatever strength I had left in me. My son’s warm, soft body rubbed on my leg. I tried to listen for his cry, a grunt—nothing!

“Please get him! Please get him!” I pleaded with the EMT.

After he was taken out of my sweatpants, he was still connected me. I felt the tugs of the umbilical cord inside of me as they cleaned his body.

In a daze, I crawled on the hospital bed.

In my peripheral vision, I saw the EMT working on my son.

She finally cut the umbilical cord.

“He’s ok” she said to me.

She put him in my arms. He was purple but turning red with each breath he took. He took small breaths, and at the end of each of one, he gurgled. Then he started to nurse, out of instinct, and it seemed, as a way to find comfort after his hectic morning.

Edward was born in my pants at 6:32 a.m. or so. He weighed 6 pounds and 6 ounces and measured 19 inches in length.

Christie Cooke, Navajo, has a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from the University of Arizona. She is a graduate of the Freedom Forum's 2007 American Indian Journalism Institute.