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December 19th, 2023
Lately I have been experiencing so many sensations with such regularity, and I’ve “called it” so many times now, that our eldest has wryly observed that I’m becoming “the woman who cried birth.” Ha.
It’s beyond disorienting to think that the longer I remain pregnant, the more inevitable it is that one of these days, I will indeed give birth. Once again, the adventure of a lifetime.
In the interim, the mundane rolls on: the dishes need to be done, the shortbread needs to be baked, all the big kids are getting more and more excited about Christmas, and I am using all the discipline available to me to relax and enjoy this sweet time—a tropical Advent and maybe a Christmastime baby, although I feel increasingly torn between the practical concerns of the everyday and the celestial, and during the past few days, especially, my patience is utterly shot.
The night before, Lee dares to step over someone’s discarded t-shirt on the floor and I lose my sh*t. Really, how dare he. Then sweet, wonderful, innocent 4-year old Ignatius (for whom I normally have endless patience) absent-mindedly bites off one of the little rubber “feet” from the underside of one of my coasters (I know—a coaster, one of those round things used to protect the table from mug-stains—what could be less relevant? I’m ridiculous) and to my immense shame, I yell at him, then we both burst into tears. I apologize immediately and repair as best I can, but still.
I can’t remember feeling less tolerant of noises and messes and sloth and disorganization, but Lee assures me that actually, I become a little bit monstrous in exactly this way at the end of each of my pregnancies. But, he affirms philosophically, all of this is a sign that the baby will be here soon… as though “soon” is some sort of consolation.
It’s immensely humbling to have gone through this so many times and to still be so impatient, grumpy, and unenlightened. Sigh. It’s not all irritation and frayed nerves and hyper-sensitivity, though, I promise. I can, of course, choose to access gratitude too, and mostly I do.
My predominant emotion is actually the heart-bursting love I feel for our older children, for Lee, and for the configuration of our family as it is right now—all of us perfectly ourselves, and finding our way and loving each other mostly pretty well.
We are all so eager to meet this new person who has chosen us, here, now, and this precious world as their own. Where are you, baby?
December 21, 2023
Treva and I finally do our border run to Costa Rica and back.
I have travelled so much this past year that I haven’t needed to cross the border on foot in months, and I’m dreading the trip, not only because I’ve been on the verge of having a baby for weeks but mostly because I have such a bullheaded resistance to bureaucracy and false authority that I create the very misery that inevitably awaits me when I finally submit to it.
It has been recommended to me that we attempt to cross in the early afternoon, after the buses and tourists moved through, and sure enough, when we arrive at Peñas Blancas, the atmosphere is pretty chill—yes, chaos, like every border town, with cops and military personnel laconically patrolling amid the starving dogs trawling for scraps and the drifters and grifters, money-changers, and fruit-sellers, the smoke from the open grills permeating the air—but in relative terms, things are quiet.
Lee is here with us, thank goodness. He doesn’t have to cross seeing as he had taken the younger kids a few weeks ago, but he insists on gallantly waiting for us at the car, on standby with his phone at the ready in case I start to give birth in no man’s land between the two countries.
I’m a bit nervous, honestly, because at this point I’m having constant sensations. I consider reconsidering, but when a well-intentioned acquaintance suggests that the wisest course of action would be to ask for a wheelchair…I’m suddenly determined to walk the entire bloody gauntlet on my own two feet, thank you very much.
Afternoon is, in fact, the perfect time of day to be here—no lines at any of the various offices we have to pass through, and no problems with any of our documents, including the proof of onward travel which is always a topic of conversation among the gringos and extranjeros. Treva is sullen the entire time, but subdued at least, preoccupied as she is with her book.
On the way back into Nicaragua, the tightenings in my womb increase, and at one point, while trudging across the tarmac for that final stretch, an opulent blob of mucous starts to slide down my inner thigh, but I’m wearing a long linen dress and we we’re almost there, and in the end, the entire rigamarole only takes an hour, in and out, and, mucous aside, proceeds with very little drama.
December 22, 2023
This is our fourth Christmas in the tropics. In past years, I’ve struggled with feeling nostalgic for my family’s English Christmas traditions (and even for the real cold, which in truth I actually hate except for the week before and after Xmas). But since seriously toying with the possibility this past year of leaving Nicaragua and moving to Mexico (going so far as to visit Central Mexico to find a house to rent and almost immediately realizing how lucky we are to be in Nicaragua), I have a shiny new perspective on every part of our lives here, to the point that I even feel quite festive and excited about the holidays this year.
That said, I was absolutely sure I would have a tiny baby in my arms by the 20th at least—what kind of exhibitionist needs to be born within a day or two of Christmas anyway?—and it was really only yesterday that I remembered that none of the kids’ presents have been wrapped, and that if we didn’t get on with it, I would likely be very freshly postpartum and trying to wrangle Christmas after the fact, so Lee and I went to my office in town where I’ve stashed all the gifts, except for the last shipment of various goodies and presents which, at the last minute, I ended up asking one of our regular drivers, Tony, to pick up from Managua, including five budgerigars and a massive aviary from Catarina, a town on the way to Managua where there is a concentration of viveros (plant nurseries) artisans, and animal traders.
The kids have been begging for budgies for months—I kept budgies as a kid myself and I even bred them, which, in Vancouver was a very different story than the option of keeping an aviary outside here, and possibly even safely releasing the budgies into the warm wild if necessary. I hate the thought of caging birds, generally, but I also think budgies tend to be quite happily domesticated, especially with a massive home and lots of attention, so we’ll see how this goes…
My sensations begin to ramp up as soon as Lee comes home with the kids from skateboarding. After dropping everyone off, Lee heads out to meet Tony at our house that’s being renovated, where he hides the birds and bird-paraphernalia from the kids, and then brings back the last of the imported boxes back to our rental house, where, in a state of agitation, my belly hardening every 5 minutes, I sit in our mud room, excavating and triaging the enormous packages full of books I had forgotten I’d ordered, and more of the incandescent light bulbs that I hoard, and the remainder of the presents that made a mockery (once again) of the promise I had made to myself that this years’ gifting would be decidedly minimalist…
I really do think the baby is coming right now, I say to Lee about one hundred and forty times, while I unpack everything and periodically send him out with boxes of this and that to hide in the car. His response is always, sounds good or something equally supportive, yet non-committal. This isn’t his first time around.
But now the kids are starting to get squirrelly, as children do when they’re being strategically ignored—hollering and squabbling and attempting to sneak into the mud-room where I am to catch a glimpse of the booty—so we decide to order pizza as a distraction.
It’s at this point that our 15-year old Horus and his friend arrive. They eat most of the pizza and then proceed to antagonize Treva so much that a fight breaks out. I waddle in to keep the peace, but then Horus behaves even more abominably, and the night ends with him stating in response to my suggestion that behaving this way especially right before Christmas and the birth of his new sibling is unwelcome, with “I don’t give a shit about your f*cking baby,” to which Lee responds with a quiet, foreboding, don’t you dare speak to your mother that way, and promptly escorts our miserable, pompous, entitled little so-and-so of a teenage son out of the house. It’s not all roses, no. Ebb and flow.
My sensations continue throughout the evening, and I have no doubt I’ll be meeting my baby within hours…and then I fall asleep.
I wake up this morning at 4am again, feeling intense pressure in my yoni along with watery discharge, pooping continuously, and it’s December 23rd. Our beloved housekeeper arrives and Lee and I ask her if she would mind hanging out with the kids instead of cleaning so he and I can go to the farmer’s market just the two of us.
We buy groceries, and all our friends ask us to remind them of how many weeks I am, and everyone makes guesses as to when our little one will arrive. Outside the market, Elvin, one of the itinerant pottery-sellers chases me down, so I pick out a cream-coloured carved bowl for our baby’s placenta, and a pot for Treva’s paintbrushes, and then Lee and I go back to my office in town to continue wrapping presents and working on our project.
When does birth begin? Who can say? The only definitive answer is at conception. There is no clearly demarcated “onset” of birth, for any of us. Every phase of motherhood unfolds on the grand continuum, with its own tempo and modulation, and there are countless “stages” within stages, each one revealing yet another iteration of the Self for us to discover.
I have had the privilege of experiencing a full palette of what birth can be—a bounteous array of variations on the dawning of a child’s arrival, from my first birth which was punctuated only, it seemed, by my waters releasing dramatically (prior to which I had not perceived much of any sensations in my womb at all), followed by a 12-hour pause, and then a 30-hour birth process, (including seven hours of arduous pushing). My second baby came after weeks of preliminary sensations. By the time he was ready to emerge, I had to be convinced by my attendees that this was indeed “the real thing” and my waters broke only at the very moment he swam into the world.
Our first daughter came in just over an hour during which I screamed in agony continuously. Our third baby’s birth was a party with all the siblings present and delighted to bear witness. My ninth baby, Helio’s birth was a long and languid journey into the wilderness after my waters broke, shockingly early (for me) at 39 weeks, and then poured from my body throughout the four subsequent days of heavy, slow sensations, with twenty pauses in between. Now, pregnant with my tenth, I have been drifting in and out of birth each day for weeks.
December 24th, 2023
The final season of pregnancy is liminal magic—uncomfortable, yes, ponderous, yes, primal, animalistic, awkward and disquieting; all of this, and also glorious. My body has been purging for days and days—I poop and pee constantly, I feel the hot irritation of heartburn after eating anything, and the nerve, tendon, or muscle under my ribs that has occasionally spasmed if I roll or turn the wrong way, now regularly offers a sharp, searing stab through my abdomen. I know my cervix is open, because I feel the keen pull of its expansion, and my yoni is leaking all the time—mucous and cervical fluid, and occasionally pee. Although my amniotic waters are intact as yet, I have a sense that this birth will be swift once it’s propulsive energy builds.
So far, however, the exhaustion I feel is otherworldly, and I spend a significant amount of time slumbering fitfully, preparing for the voyage ahead. But I love this, too. The softness, the intensity, the sweet queenliness of my state, now: so open, yet so cloistered and unknowable. My baby and I are a galaxy unto ourselves—sun and star. Earth mother and ocean pearl.
I haven’t really been able to work in earnest for over a month, or engage with the world in a “normal” way. I have no capacity to focus on anything less meaningful that all of creation. Except for heading out to the gym as often as possible (which has been my sanctuary during this pregnancy), my life is almost entirely inclined towards home and Lee and the kids and the quietude of my inner thoughts. The practicalities evade me—I can’t bring myself to wear “clothes” here in our Nicaraguan beach town even when I’m not pregnant, but recently I’ve succumbed to a uniform of hot pants and a bikini, my enormous belly protruding bawdily, inspiring disapproving glances from all the Catholic abuelitas in their plastic lawn chairs keeping watch from their verandahs and peering from every colonial doorway.
A few days ago, I find myself at Ocean Mart, the grocery store in town, and the young ripped checkout guy says Whoa, how pregnant are you? and even if I hadn’t been overcome in that moment with a series of tightenings so powerful they stop my breath, I would have ignored the impertinent question, but my evidently heightened state makes my brush-off seem less impolite than it might have otherwise. When he then asks, concerned, if he can help me carry my groceries to the car, I accept with genuine gratitude, and assume I will be going home to have a baby…but the next morning, yet again, I wake up ripe, luscious, dripping with nectar, and still pregnant.
On Saturday afternoon, Lee and I wrap up our time in my office early, and head home to see the kids. He and I have been working on a project together for new fathers, and somehow, despite the fact that I have, in a way, been in the midst of giving birth for ages, we have managed to fit in a few recording sessions recently. Especially because I know that I will, surely, be giving birth soon (someday) the ability to capture how both Lee and I are feeling at this tender time is a gift.
The kids are delighted to have us back home in good time, and seeing as the sun is still shining brightly even as it begins its traverse, I decide to lie by the pool and bask in the nourishing brilliance of its luminous afternoon rays and in the brilliance of our children just as they are, in this momentary frame of time before our family is reconstructed once again.
The wind is high, ruffling through the palms and hibiscus blooms that fringe the pool. The older boys are upstairs playing and reading, but under my watch, Helio and Iggy jump in to swim in the shallow end. Xanthe comes out to join me, and we chat and sing Christmas songs before Lee appears too, to swim with the little ones. Iggy is his usual joyous exuberant self, and we all exclaim over Helio’s prowess as he kicks, ducks, and dives, a little minnow, fearless as always. Soon enough, the sun sets with a stunning display of colour, and I am suddenly so very tired.
My intention is to join everyone for dinner, but once I’ve wriggled into the cocoon of our deliciously cozy bed, I can’t seem to move, and as I lie there, wavering on the verge of sleep, listening to the clangor and cacophony of the kids in the kitchen, I feel a wave of fear.
I am 43 weeks pregnant now. As my sweet baby wriggles and writhes, burrowing their head into the left side of my pelvis (the angle they have been favouring for some time now), it occurs to me that maybe I’ve been wrong all along, and perhaps the “reason” I have yet to give birth really is—this time— that this baby just isn’t in the “correct” position. I push gently against their head to see if that does anything…and then as swiftly as the thought has arisen, it passes. I remember who and what I am, I remember my body, I remember my baby, and I reorient myself to the North Star: the song of my cells is the only authority, and I have no need for others’ fears or make-believe, and I finally fall asleep.
I wake up in the early morning dark, wind chimes ringing, distended womb tightening, needing to pee. Lee is in the bathroom already though, so I lie there and wait for him to return, our baby churning the sea inside me. It’s 2am.
Baby kicks again, and without further warning, I feel a distinct rupture before my body is wracked with gush after gush of water pouring out of me like a tidal wave, so powerful that it feels like a convulsion, a tropical storm, and I find myself crying out from the shock of it, calling for Lee, and talking to God—Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God. God is here, and Lee rushes in. The bed is soaking wet, and I am panting and crawling and quivering, alive with the primal electric thrill of origination.
Immediately, the focus of my attention turns inward, and, exactly in the manner that I have chronicled in my book, PORTAL: The Art of Choosing Orgasmic, Pain-Free, Blissful Birth, I make myself a channel of love and surrender as the waves begin to build and break.
Yes yes yes, is my mantra once again, and my ever-familiar intonation of Thank you God, Thank you God, as I undulate and open in ecstasy, rolling my shoulders, hips, head, pelvis in a continuous fluid motion. I prowl to the bathroom and back to the bed, shitting and dry-heaving, welcoming it all, quietly repeating my catechism: I love you baby, Thank you God. Brought to my knees on the bathroom floor, I hold there for a moment, Thank you, I love you, before stumbling back to the bed. I make the tour once more—to the toilet, then the bathroom floor, and back to the bed, allowing each sensation to wash over me, submitting absolutely to the rapture and ease of it—beautiful, tranquil, melting.
Here, kneeling on the bed, I know that my baby is swimming closer, and it’s my turn to dive into the great vast ethereal blue vastness of now and forever, so thankful, so grateful, so moved by the serene simplicity of—Dear God Thank you So Much, Baby I Love you—my baby’s beautiful head, blooming between my thighs.
There is another splash, and we give birth to each other at 3am, moving through the penumbra and into the new: You in my arms, my girl. My tiny black-haired baby girl, I love you.
Welcome, Margaret Emmanuelle Violet Louise Norris Clark Clark, we all love you so very much.
Margaret’s Emergence in (Intimate) Pictures: