Five Hours

by Lucinda Weatherby

  “You know me, darling, I can’t keep track of which of my three daughters I’ve told. And at my age, you have to allow for a little memory loss. Oh, that reminds me,” he says with breathless glee, and proceeds to tell me about the time his aunt forgot her son somewhere. I know this one too, but I don’t interrupt, because I happen to like it, and besides, I can’t quite remember how it ends.

  I laugh at the punch line, then quickly excuse myself to go do a little yoga before he can start the next story.

  “Oh, can I join you?” Dad asks.

  This is a first.

  “Sure, why not?” I say. “Funny, I didn’t think you believed in anything so New Age.”

  “It’s not that I believe in anything, I just need to stretch more. My doctor said it would be good for my blood pressure. So you see, it’s purely self-interest that motivates me.”

  I skip the prayers and breathing exercises in my routine, bashful about acknowledging that side of myself in front of my father. Dad is a willing, if somewhat comical, student.

  *

  All that week, I don’t mind missing the late-night revelry with the siblings and cousins, realizing that even if I weren’t pregnant I’d almost always prefer an early bed with book and husband to a party.

  One night, I get up from bed to pee, and as I stand in the chilly bathroom I’m suddenly seized by violent chills. They run up and down my spine in painful spasms for about a minute. I flash to childbirth—the closest experience to this I can recall, a feeling of being out of control, at the mercy of a strong sensation originating in my body and taking over for seconds that seem endless. I almost cry out, but don’t want to wake any of the sleeping people nearby, so I grimace through the pains. They stop, and I dash back into bed. I don’t think any more about them until a month or so later.

  The next day, we catch an early flight back to England, then fly home to Oregon. After the long journey, I flop into our big, soft bed for the first time in four months. You’re halfway through this pregnancy, done with traveling for a long, long time.

  CHAPTER 11

  September 2005

  If we’d chosen to go with an OB/GYN for our prenatal care, as do the vast majority of American women with access to health care, this is about the time I would have an ultrasound. The technician would look for a number of things, including the thickness of the skin behind the baby’s neck. This marker, known as the nuchal fold, is often thicker in fetuses with chromosomal abnormalities. If this had been found in our case, which is likely, a more detailed ultrasound and other prenatal testing, such as amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling (CVS), would be recommended. Both amnio and CVS involve penetrating the uterus with a sharp tool such as a needle and removing either amniotic fluid or a tiny piece of the placenta, which is then tested for DNA abnormalities. Both are associated with a risk of miscarriage.

  We would have waited about two weeks for the results of an amnio or CVS. These would have come back with the news that our fetus had trisomy 13, and we would have been faced with two choices: abort the pregnancy or carry on, knowing the chances of the fetus surviving to birth were limited, and beyond birth, almost nil. Of the 2 to 5 percent of trisomy 13 cases not miscarried before the twentieth week of gestation, the vast majority are aborted after testing reveals the grim diagnosis. Of the few who make it past the twentieth week, 60 percent are stillborn. Of those born alive, 50 percent die within the first month, and most of the rest die before their first birthday.

  Looking back at how sick I felt, I am fairly certain I would have opted for an abortion. But you never know how you will react to such an intense situation until you’re in it, as I will learn nearly five months later at the birth.

  *

  Four and a half months along, I’m certainly more functional than I was during the first trimester, but I’m still nauseous, very finicky about food, and discouraged. I feel like a complete wreck: irritable, easily tired, my sacrum and pelvic bones creaky and sore, my head aching much of the time. When the scale reads 154 pounds, a record for me, I go back to skimpy eating, hoping to avoid gaining more weight than is necessary.

  October 2005

  By the sixth month, with no new improvement in the nausea and irritability, I give up trying to make myself feel better. Supplements, tinctures, and food scheduling don’t help at all.

  I tell Dicken, “I think I’m just meant to be sick for the duration.”

  “Maybe you’re right. I just hate to see you suffer. It’s heart-wrenching.”

  “If one more person asks me a question about the state of my health or how I feel with a certain supplement, remedy, food, whatever, I’ll punch them. I’m fed up with it. I’ve accepted that I feel like shit and will until the birth. Now why the hell can’t they?”

  “So what should I tell people who offer an idea?”

  “Tell them to leave me alone and stop trying to rescue me. Rub my back, rub my feet, tell me a joke, take my kids, but don’t suggest ginger tea or ask me how I felt when I started or stopped the last thing you suggested.”

  *

  A few days later, I spend the night at Mom’s house because I have an early appointment the next morning with my therapist in town. Before heading to Mom’s, I stop by the co-op to pick up a few items I’ve been craving: a cinnamon raisin bagel, some seaweed salad. I run into one of Dicken’s men’s group members, a family friend.

  “You still look small,” he tells me. “How far along are you?”

  “I’m six months,” I say, pulling up my bulky fleece jacket so he can see my shape a little better. I only mean to pull back one layer, but all three come up, and here I am in the dairy section with my midriff exposed.

  Our friend gasps and says, “Your belly is so beautiful!”

  I feel a little bashful, and also touched. “Thanks,” I say. “I should get back to shopping. I need to keep this baby fed, even though I hate eating.”

  He frowns and says, “Yeah, I hear you’re still feeling pretty sick. Have you tried ginger tea?”

  I take in a big breath to stem the tide of irritation rising in my chest, hoping to muster a polite response, but then I see that he’s laughing.

  “Dicken told you, didn’t he?” I ask, a smile forming on my face.

  “Yeah, he said, Whatever you do, do not mention ginger tea.”

  *

  That night, in the guest room at my mom’s house, I wake from an intense dream and find my whole body shivering violently. I get up to go to the bathroom and can barely walk because of the forceful spasms. I manage to grab another blanket from the closet on my way back to bed and bundle myself up tightly, but I can’t stop the shaking for quite some time. I wonder if I’m coming down with something.

  The next morning I see my therapist. We meditate for a few minutes together, then I settle into the couch and she asks how I’m doing.

  “I had a bad night,” I begin. “My head has been aching, my stomach sick as always. I’ve been feeling negative through and through. I wonder if my state will ever shift. Will the sun come out after all this darkness, will I have energy and enthusiasm for life again?”

  “It’s hard to stay with what’s happening.”

  “Yeah, it’s hard to be so blah for so long. I mean, I can see that there are plenty of positive things happening in my life, but I can’t feel them. They bring me solace at best, but not joy. I can’t remember the last time I felt joy. Even the sweet moments like the kids trying to make me feel better after a crying spell or Maud rubbing my back don’t really reach me.”

  “What comes up for you as you talk about this?”

  “I can feel how much I hate my body. Even Dicken hates it right now, for making me feel this sick. And he’s not interested in sex at all.”

  “That must be really hard.”

  “Yeah, it makes me mad. Frustrated with my body.”

  “What happens when you sense in?”

  I close my eyes. “Well, I feel burning in my stomach.”

  “C
an you let that be there?”

  “No. I can feel myself tensing up all around it, willing it to go away.”

  “Huh, that’s curious. Why would you want it to go away so badly?”

  “Gosh, it seems obvious. Who wants to feel sick?”

  “I know, but you see, you’re tensing up in the face of a sensation, making it into a much bigger thing than just a burning stomach, and you’re not giving yourself any space to be with what’s happening, because you’re fighting it so hard. It would be interesting to find out why you’re so eager to avoid this feeling.”

  “Hmm,” I say, thinking about this. “I just find this constant nausea and burning pain unbearable. Well, not unbearable, but super irritating. And I’m afraid it’s going to get worse, and be here forever, and ruin my life.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot of scary stories you’re telling yourself. Is what’s going on in you right now really that hard to bear? Is it really that overwhelming?”

  “Well, no, I guess it’s not. It just makes me mad because it keeps me from being able to concentrate on anything, to escape into one of my imaginary worlds.”

  “So it keeps you very much in the physical here and now.”

  “Yes, and I would rather be anywhere else. I’d rather be thinking about some lovely memory, or composing a story in my imagination, or planning an exciting future event, or exercising, or accomplishing something that needs accomplishing. But I can’t do any of that with this physical discomfort.”

  “So what’s happening in your body doesn’t count.”

  “No, I guess I don’t really consider that life. Anything that’s physically distracting is keeping me from my real life.” I can feel how badly I want this pregnancy to be over, how much I want my life to start again.

  “Interesting,” she says. “This reminds me of how you describe your mother in your childhood.”

  “Really?” I say, not seeing her point at all.

  “Well, you’ve talked about how busy your mom was, how you always wished she would slow down and join you in the quiet things you did.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And it seems like your body, and maybe this baby, are asking you to slow down and just be, the way you longed for your mom to just slow down and be with you.”

  Wow. I never would have connected that. She’s good.

  “What would it be like,” she asks, “to let everything else go and just experience what’s happening for you this very moment?”

  For the rest of the session I stay with myself quietly, closing my eyes and occasionally commenting on what I’m feeling and noticing. The slowed moments are calmer, always shifting and changing subtly. When I inhale deeply, I can feel expansion throughout my body, and this lessens the intensity of the nausea, creating some room to explore. I feel like a deep-sea diver, plunging down inside my cells, atmosphere by atmosphere, until I can almost sense being on the cellular level. I run my consciousness over the contours of my abdomen and up through my esophagus, into my mouth, over my tongue, and the pain no longer feels solid and homogenous. I find places that feel bitter, others that feel sour, some that feel numb and tingly, and even places where the pain is close to pleasure, almost exquisite.

  I leave taking bigger breaths, feeling less panicked about making my physical symptoms go away, and with a distinct tenderness for the little one calling me home to this moment.

  *

  After my appointment, I meet a couple of other women from the Threshold Choir, which I’ve been part of for over a year and have recently become active in again. We will sing at the bedside of a dying woman in her eighties. We debrief outside the house and hear that this woman has hours, maybe a few days at the most.

  We walk quietly into the house, which is her son’s home, and are shown into a room off the hallway. The woman is lying prone in a hospital bed, her face partially covered by the mouthpiece of a respirator, a loud, thrumming machine that helps move air in and out of her lungs with a dramatic shudder every ten seconds or so. Her eyes are closed; she looks unconscious. Her son, who is probably around fifty, is lying next to her on the edge of the bed, leaning his whole body as close to her as he can get. He’s holding her limp hands in his, looking into her face almost eagerly, talking to her constantly, his eyes concerned, loving. He does not acknowledge us or the nurse and hospice volunteer standing by. His entire attention is on his mother.

  We get out our song folders. The Threshold Choir has a large repertory derived from almost every spiritual and religious tradition. Songs are selected by talking with family members beforehand. We try to find out which music will be soothing, asking about favorites and especially songs that might evoke the person’s childhood.

  I begin to sing the hymn “Abide with Me,” but choke up almost immediately. The sight of the man trying hard to connect to his mother as she slips away from him is almost unbearably poignant. I try singing again, “Abide with me … swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day …” I can feel my throat closing as tears well up in my eyes. I look away from the woman and her son, but the words and melody of the hymn convey the emotion of the scene as powerfully as the images in the room. Fortunately, my singing partners have strong voices and carry along fine without me. I’m actually not a very good singer at all; I just like meaningful songs and the challenge of being with dying people. I sometimes feel extremely emotional at bedsides, but this is the first time I haven’t been able to force myself to sober up and get back to at least mouthing the words and looking somewhat composed. It must be my hormones.

  I put a hand on my belly, wondering what mother-child scenes will play out between me and this baby in our distant future. Will this child, or Jasper, or both, whisper to me as I prepare to leave the world, and them? It breaks my heart to think of saying a final goodbye to my children, or to my own mother, only fifteen years shy of eighty herself. Yet what a beautiful way to go, on the wings of the children we once welcomed over the threshold into life.

  On my drive home from town, I’m still emotional and don’t feel quite ready to face the noise and needs of the kids. I stop at Sterlingville Cemetery, a historic site not far from where we live, home to over a hundred graves from the pioneer gold-rush days. It’s set in a lovely wooded spot. No one else is here today, and I savor the solitude. It’s cold and overcast. I can see my breath, but my progesterone-fueled body is warm. I wander around reading markers and monuments, noticing how peaceful I feel here, not scared or disturbed by the irrefutable evidence of death all around me. I calculate people’s ages by the dates on their markers, finding few over fifty. Ah, here is a woman of eighty-two, like the woman I just saw in town who will soon leave her body and life and have a marker like this in a graveyard.

  I’m always fascinated and horrified by the number of deaths in infancy and early childhood. I see that one family, the Saltmarshes, has two grave markers, both white marble columns that look like mini Washington Monuments. One is simply marked, Joseph B. Saltmarsh, with his birth and death dates, 1825 to 1906. The other is marked, The wife and children of Joseph B. Saltmarsh. Under that, the script carving reads, Mary, wife of Joseph Saltmarsh, died 1878, forty-three years. Another side of the same marker lists four children, Ann, Charles, Birt, and Lyman, with death dates and exact ages noted: Ann, 9 years, 10 mo 2 days, March 29, 1864, Charles M., 7 mo 11 days, November 19, 1856, and so on. The opposite side of the same marker reads, Infants, born and died, and lists the years: 1870, 1872, 1874, 1876, and 1878. Under that is another child’s name, Sornoria, 3 years, 4 mo 1 day, 1868. I note that the last infant’s death year is the same as their mother’s and wonder if she died in childbirth. I also calculate that her first listed child was born when she was twenty-one. From then on, and possibly before, this woman had at least one pregnancy about every other year, or probably more than that, assuming there were surviving children not listed on this marker. And ten of her babies and young children died, in the years 1856, ’58, ’64, ’64, ’68, ’70, ’72, ’74, ’76, and ’78.


  Standing there, I cannot imagine what this woman went through, so many pregnancies and losses. It is dreadful to think of losing a baby after the months of sickness, the pain of labor. And then to start all over with another pregnancy, knowing it very well might happen again. I tell myself to be grateful I live in these modern times.

  *

  Late that night, I rise to go to the bathroom, but before I get there, I am again seized by intense, painful shivers rhythmically shooting up my spine. I can’t stand by myself. I feel completely out of control as the spasms take over, making me tremble uncontrollably. I’m freezing. I call over to Dicken for help. He leaps out of bed and holds me up as the next wave rushes through—it reminds me of labor. Even Dicken’s warm body doesn’t help. I can’t make it to the bathroom; I crawl back into bed. Dicken wraps the duvet around me and fetches a heating pad. By this point I’m screaming when the spasms overtake me, my teeth chattering. Thoughts of various diseases flash through my mind: cancer, shingles, Lou Gehrig’s, MS, epilepsy.

  “I have some terrible disease, I know it,” I say between bouts of shivers.

  “Don’t let your mind make this into anything more than it is,” Dicken says.

  I still have to pee, but moving the slightest bit starts a tremor—it’s like a force standing behind me waiting to pounce. I imagine the Grim Reaper and think I might be dying. Finally, I make myself get up and go to the bathroom. Dicken brings me warm pajamas. I get back under the covers, feeling bewildered and shaky. This has happened twice before during this pregnancy, once in Ireland the night before we left, and last night at Mom’s. But never as powerful as tonight, which makes me fear that whatever I have is getting worse. At some point in the night, I wonder if this pregnancy will cripple me or even kill me. I seriously consider getting an OB, having tests on me and the baby, and planning a hospital birth.

  From a web investigation the next morning, I come up with two hypotheses. The first is vague, an inadequate explanation for the force of the sensations: lying on my back does something either to the nerves or the blood flow (related to the venae cavae). The second, while certainly more out there, resonates the most: I’m having what are known as Kundalini experiences, which are considered a sort of spiritual awakening that affects the body as well as the mind and soul. The material on the web describes the two sides of Kundalini energy as fire, which can be so strong it kills, or ice, which is powerful but less dangerous. I certainly felt like I’d been iced, out of the blue. Strange, because my normal pregnant state is to be on the overheated side.