The Mama Sutra

by Anne Cushman

  Monks think of incarnation as suffering, a trap. It’s better to free yourself from this cycle of birth and death, they say. Get off that spinning wheel of samsara. But this little life coming through—this is no trap! She is coming in full of enthusiasm. Despite all the suffering in the world, she is coming in bright with hope. She wants to be born. And I cannot embrace any spirituality that thinks of this as a bad thing. This tethering of spirit to incarnation is not a trap. It is a weaving into the divine dance. It is a celebration. It is a song.

  * * *

  —

  As you got bigger, my yoga practice changed. Everything in my practice had to be geared toward the marathon of labor that lay ahead.

  I focused on deep squats to open my hips and pelvis. I practiced mula bhanda—drawing in and releasing the muscles of my pelvic floor and perineum again and again. My attention returned again and again to that vessel of my pelvis where you were rolling—preparing to be born but already clearly, fully incarnate. I was preparing the great mobilization of energy in my lower chakras, what the Chinese call the tan tien and the Japanese the hara.

  Giving birth, I could feel, was not about drawing the energy upward, as in the classical yoga models developed by generations of men—the energy ascending up through the chakras to the third eye, out the crown of the head, and beyond. Rather, it was an organic inward drawing of the power downward and into the low belly. It was an awakening of that sweet inner source of power, of sensuality, of sexuality, of life itself.

  When I showered after yoga, I rubbed my nipples with a rough washcloth as Johanna had instructed, toughening them up to prepare for your mouth.

  * * *

  —

  A month before you were due, my mother—your Granny—sent me a care package containing a soft white chenille towel and washcloth with an embroidered pink flower. On the phone she told me that it had belonged to her own mother. “All through my childhood, these were hanging in our bathroom, so they are entwined with happy memories for me. I want you to use them to bathe your baby.”

  I made a list of the things I still needed: Diaper bag. Onesies. Booties. Diaper pail. It reminded me of the lists I’d made before an eight-month trip to India a few years earlier: Grapefruit seed extract for digestive disturbances. Inflatable meditation cushion. I remembered how prepared I had felt as I loaded my backpack and consulted my guidebook, clinging to the illusion that I knew what my trip would be like—and how, when I got to India, it felt as if the top of my head had been blown right off. As I wandered down an alley filled with cows and rickshaws, utterly lost, my grapefruit seed extract was no help at all.

  As we browsed the aisles at the baby store, I told myself how glad I would be, in a few weeks, that we had bought that blue gingham-checked diaper bag with the side flap that pulls out and makes a little clean surface to change your baby on. As I pondered the relative advantages of bureau-top versus shelf-top diaper tables, I told myself that we were preparing an altar—except that altars don’t have to be covered in fitted rubber sheets so the Buddha doesn’t poop on them.

  Your dad insisted on buying a small electric baby wipe warmer. “I don’t want her little bottom to be cold.”

  “Could we also use it for heating up tortillas?” I asked.

  He turned to his mother—your Grandma Joan—for support. “Is this ridiculous?”

  “Yes,” she said emphatically.

  But then, your Grandma Joan thought all this shopping was ridiculous. When she gave birth, apparently, everything was much simpler. “Caps?” she snorted as I lifted up a tiny pink knitted one. “I didn’t have any caps for my babies! What is this nonsense?”

  When I selected a cozy, glider-style rocking chair with a cheerful pattern of stars and moons, she told me that all that machinery underneath it made it look like a medical instrument.

  “It’s safer than the old style with wooden rockers,” your dad told her.

  “No one has ever gotten injured by a rocking chair,” she informed us. “In the whole history of the world.”

  * * *

  —

  Eight and a half months pregnant.

  I can feel that all systems are go—Sierra is full term and could arrive any time. It’s like waiting for a big date, or for Christmas when I was a child.

  I am aware that Sierra is done—like cookies that are done baking. Although she will not really be done until she is ready to emerge, she is viable, she is just below the surface of my skin, a fully formed baby. The impulse is so strong to take her out now and hold her in my arms!

  * * *

  —

  Ten days before my due date I went to see Johanna.

  We mainly just chatted—there was not much more to do at this point, she told me. My urine tests were normal. My blood pressure was normal. “The baby has dropped—her head is engaged in the pelvis. She’s a little baby—probably only six pounds now, probably no more than seven when she is born.”

  “Should I be eating more?”

  “No, there’s nothing to worry about.”

  There was so much squirming going on inside me I could hardly listen to Johanna. A foot jabbed out under my right rib; a lopsided dome rose to the right of my belly button. My belly hardened, then softened.

  “I don’t think you’ll go past your due date,” Johanna said. “You’re not that kind of person. Some people need a little extra time to do everything. You do things on deadline.”

  Afterward, as your dad was driving me home, a song came on the radio. “Unbreak my heart,” the singer wailed. “Uncry these tears…” He took my hand.

  “I feel like that is what we have done,” he told me.

  * * *

  —

  One week before due date.

  Sierra is asleep inside me now. Earlier she was squirming, poking uncomfortably—extending one foot, then another. Bursting with life. It is so mysterious—so utterly ordinary yet so completely incomprehensible—that this baby grew from one tiny sperm, one tiny egg.

  We walk around in the midst of this incredible, throbbing mystery—the huge Don’t-Know at the center of our lives—and act like it’s not even there, like we know what we’re doing here.

  I just opened Peter Matthiessen’s book Nine-Headed Dragon River and read the quote from the fourteenth-century Zen master Dogen: “This life of one day is a life to rejoice in. Because of this, even though you live for just one day, if you can be awakened to the truth, that one day is vastly superior to an eternal life.”

  * * *

  —

  Two days later, everything ended.

  * * *

  —

  Oh, Sierra. I thought we would have so much more time. But I want you to know this: You changed our lives. And the fact that yours was short does not make it less precious.

  Love,

  Mommy

  SUTRA 2

  Into the Heart of Sorrow

  • • • • •

  ON A COOL, brilliant summer morning, high thunderclouds just gathering over distant peaks, my husband and I hiked into the Desolation Wilderness to scatter our baby daughter’s ashes.

  His family owned a tiny cabin on Echo Lake, high in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where we had been going for vacations together for almost twenty years. His grandfather built the cabin as a refuge when he came back from World War I: no electricity, a woodstove for heat, propane for cooking, kerosene lamps. The only access was by boat. We had gone there for a week to grieve and heal: nights a requiem of stars and wind and woodsmoke; days of chilly sun and wildflowers.

  On our fourth day there, we tucked into my daypack the little urn of Sierra’s ashes, a ceramic jar painted with forget-me-nots that we had gotten for a wedding present. We rowed our canoe across Echo Lake and hiked for an hour into the pine forest. We climbed over a rocky ridge to a tiny, deserted lake set in a basin of mountains,
with snowy peaks and blue sky reflected in its dark waters. At one end, a waterfall rushed in, a ribbon of foaming white. This is where we wanted Sierra’s body to return to the earth.

  Sierra had died while she was still inside me, a few days before she was due to be born. Doctors induced labor, and I gave birth to her body early on the morning of Mother’s Day. My midwife washed her, dressed her, and brought her to me and my husband, wrapped in a soft blue blanket. She had a round face; dark brown hair; a sweet, sad mouth; the delicate, long-fingered hands of an artist. Her eyes were shut, as if she were taking a nap.

  No one could tell us why Sierra had died. Her body was in perfect condition, with no sign of any problem whatsoever. An autopsy revealed a healthy placenta, a healthy umbilical cord, a healthy baby. It was possible, the obstetrician said, that her umbilical cord had somehow become pinched as she dropped into position for birth, cutting off the flow of oxygen. But in the end, all anyone could offer us were statistics: that about one in 250 pregnancies ends in a full-term stillbirth. And that about half the time, no one can figure out what went wrong.

  * * *

  —

  In Buddhist teachings, the first noble truth is that life inevitably holds suffering. In a world where everything that exists is impermanent, there’s no way to escape the eventual loss of what we hold most dear.

  To remind themselves of this inexorable truth, yogis in India meditate in cremation grounds, covering their bodies with ashes as they watch corpses burn. Tibetan monks meditate in charnel grounds, watching bodies decay in front of them, vultures pecking out the eyes.

  Spiritual practice can also lull us into the illusion that we are safe from suffering: do your daily yoga, and you and those you love will never get sick; meditate every morning, and you will keep the dogs of grief at bay. When asked what the greatest mystery of all was, the god Krishna said this: That people see other people dying all around them, and yet no one believes that it will happen to them.

  But sooner or later loss will find you. You don’t have to go to a charnel ground to see impermanence. Just gaze at the faces of your friends and family.

  If you quarrel with your beloved, look into their eyes, I once heard Thich Nhat Hanh say. Picture both of you in a hundred and fifty years. Then you will know what to do.

  * * *

  —

  My husband had taken a picture of me doing yoga on our patio just two days before Sierra died. I’m sitting on my mat with my legs stretched wide, wearing maternity leggings and a purple T-shirt stretched snug over my bulging belly. I am reaching toward the camera, my arms wide as though I want to embrace the whole world. I am laughing. I look unbelievably happy.

  I had done yoga daily throughout my pregnancy. I’d had no morning sickness, no back pain, no swollen feet, no varicose veins. It felt natural to lift up into an elbow balance at five months or to flow through a modified sun salutation at eight and a half, legs spread wide to make room for my baby.

  I modified every pose to serve the child kicking and squirming inside me. My practice became softer, gentler, more meditative; my awareness spiraled deep inside, centering on the warm glow in my heart and belly. With every posture, I felt as if I were bowing down in awe before the mysterious power of life.

  In classic yogic thought, the only way to achieve lasting happiness is to break our attachment to the world of flesh and bones—to cease chasing after the taste of strawberries, the smell of roses, the touch of a lover’s mouth on the skin at the base of the neck. All these things will die and rot, the yogis remind us; the body is just a temporary vehicle, discarded like worn-out clothes when the spirit moves on. We should seek our refuge in a larger Self, beyond our personal identities, cravings, fears, and dreams.

  But as I sat in meditation, hands cupping my belly, I knew that once you’ve felt that hurricane of life swelling up from nowhere inside your womb, you can’t speak the same way about detachment from the world. Nor would you want to.

  Following an impulse I couldn’t quite name, I temporarily retired the Buddha statue from my altar. Driving home in the pouring rain from a daylong meditation retreat, I stopped at a garage sale in my neighborhood and spotted a statue of Kuan Yin, the graceful Buddhist goddess of compassion, her arms outstretched in blessing. Sierra wants this, I thought, and I took it home to her room, where it sat overlooking the car seat and bassinet that awaited her arrival.

  * * *

  —

  My husband and I spent the last day of Sierra’s life getting ready for her birth.

  I met with a pediatrician to discuss new-baby care. I stopped by a used baby store to select a secondhand crib. “You’re so full of energy!” the woman behind the counter said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you had your baby tonight.”

  I had already rounded up the home birth supplies my midwife had ordered: cord clamps, sterile gloves, plastic king-size sheets, hydrogen peroxide, hot water bottle, cotton balls, olive oil, sanitary pads, sitz-bath herbs. I planned to labor in our garden, attended by lavender, irises, hummingbirds, and quail. I planned to deliver in our bedroom, with the view of the giant eucalyptus through the window. “The room you give birth in,” my midwife told me, “will forever be a little piece of heaven.”

  When I came back from shopping, my husband and I lay on the bed and played our favorite game: Watch Anne’s Belly. My skin rippled and bulged like a sheet pulled over a kitten. Little knobs—feet? hands? knees?—cruised the surface. Wherever we pressed our hands, we were met with eager pokes of curiosity and greeting.

  We marveled at how much we already loved a person whose face we had never seen. We felt as if we knew her. Her rhythms were simple, predictable, unencumbered by intellect: she loved to play when her dad tapped my belly; she perked up when I ate a cookie; she fell asleep during yoga, rocked by the gentle sway of my body.

  As the day went on, I noticed that Sierra was not moving as much as she usually did. But I wasn’t worried. I’d heard that babies move less once their head is engaged in the pelvis. And I’d never heard of something going wrong this close to the birth.

  At home that night, I cooed over the new crib, which my husband had assembled in Sierra’s bedroom. Then I curled up in our bed and put my hands on my belly to talk to her. “Are you still sleeping, sweetheart?” I asked. “Say hello to mommy.” Under my hand, I felt a little hand lift and move against mine, in a feeble but unmistakable salutation.

  I thought it was a sleepy hello. It didn’t occur to me that she might be summoning the last bit of her energy to say goodbye.

  * * *

  —

  I was doing my morning yoga when I first suspected that something had gone wrong.

  I was lying on my side on my yoga mat on our patio, gently stretching in the pale gold sun. Just a few more days, I was thinking. Just a few more days until I can hold her in my arms.

  It wasn’t unusual for Sierra to sleep through my yoga practice. But it struck me that I hadn’t felt her move since I woke up. I put my hand on my belly, pressed gently on a little knee.

  It didn’t push back.

  An hour later, I was in the hospital, lying on an examining table, a lab technician sliding a transducer back and forth through the cold jelly on my abdomen. The doctor peered at the ultrasound screen.

  “There’s no evidence of movement,” he said. He looked at the screen, not at me. “I can’t find a heartbeat.” Through my fog of terror, it took me a while to understand what he was saying. I kept hoping he meant something else.

  I sat on the table and shuddered, silent, for the last minutes it took my husband to get to the hospital. He burst into the examining room, his face wrenched with fear and hope. That’s when I finally said it: “Our baby’s dead.”

  We clung to each other and wailed.

  * * *

  —

  A baby who is dead must still be born.

  The labor a
nd delivery room was on the fifteenth floor of the hospital. My husband told me it had a view of trees and the ocean; I couldn’t see them because I had cried my contact lenses out of my eyes.

  The doctor painted my cervix with misoprosotol to start it dilating. The induced contractions came on fast and hard, with a drugged intensity—every two minutes a deep convulsion of pain, a vice tightening in my belly.

  As soon as the epidural kicked in I went numb from the waist down. An IV in my arm dripped Pitocin to keep my contractions coming; fentanyl, to help me relax.

  I labored all night, drugged, in the dark, my legs numb weights on the table, the contractions faint sensations, a physical report from a distant country. A catheter tube dangled between my legs; a rubber cuff on my arm swelled to take my blood pressure automatically every fifteen minutes. My husband sat in the chair beside me, intermittently holding my hand.

  By dawn I was fully dilated. A nurse propped me up with my feet in stirrups, an electronic contraction monitor strapped to my belly. “I don’t know how I am going to get through this,” I told my midwife, Johanna. She said, “You will just have to gather up the pieces of your heart in your two hands and hold them.”

  “Push,” the nurse and the midwife chanted. “Push, push, push, push, push—stop. Now push. Push, push, push…” I held my breath, drew my belly in hard, reached my hands to the sky for strength, as in a yoga pose. I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t want to see what was happening.

  Afterward, my husband told me, “I watched her come out. She was covered in water and blood. The cord was amazing: thick and strong and dark and coiled. I kept hoping they would say they had made a mistake, it was a medical miracle, she’d just been in some sort of neonatal coma. I was still hoping that when she came out, she would start to cry.”