her birth story

we had a water bed then. i did not care for it. after becoming pregnant with my second child, i despised that awful bed more with each passing day. it became quite a challenge to heave myself out of that thing. we sold it to our friends. then they got pregnant. scary, scary bed!

she was conceived around the time of the FIRST space shuttle disaster. an odd frame of reference, but useless facts are a specialty of mine. we lived high-on-a-hill in southern santa cruz county, overlooking nisene marks state park, which happens to be where a major earthquake fault runs right through.

the pregnancy was a breeze, like my first one was. i know how lucky i am, that this was the case. i saw june and roxanne throughout the pregnancy. june/midwife #1 was my care provider the first time, and this time around she was training a woman named roxanne who lived not far from us.


june lived in lovely la honda, which was about an hour and a half away from santa cruz. i went to see her with my firstborn because we were living in pescadero at the time. that is until the big storms and mudslides of 1981-82 forced our move to aptos.


so there we were in a big old house in aptos, which was built from the salvaged old-growth redwood lumber from an ancient train station in firebaugh, i believe that is somewhere near fresno, in the middle of the san joaquin valley. a one-of-a-kind place. idyllic days, then.


about 6 days before her birth-date, i had taken a ride over the hill to do a bit of shopping with a neighbor/friend. we had a nice day together. that night i made dinner and went upstairs to read to my four-year old son. we both fell asleep reading. i awoke an hour or so later, and realized that the time had arrived, ready-or-not. downstairs i went, to let husband know. he woke up on the couch with such a start that he rolled off onto the floor. that was a classic moment.


he called the midwife, roxanne. she offered to pick anything up i might need from the store. i asked for cranberry juice and some banannas. to this day, she doesn't make stops on the way to a birth, thanks to me. by the time she got to our place about 30 minutes later, i was upstairs in full-on labor. she rushed upstairs and checked me. ten centimeters. that baby girl was coming, full-speed ahead. about an hour later, my divine miss m arrived. the total labor time was about 2.5 hours.


when she was placed on my tummy, she was so serene, not screaming, like her older brother did. just looking all around, and she seemed content to be with us. absolutely gorgeous, with the hugest,roundest eyes, and a patch of dark brown hair on her head. after she was she was sleeping sweetly, her brother sat down beside her and started telling her all about dinosaurs, from his favorite book. "have you ever heard of an a pterodactyl?", he asked her.



when my friend called later that day, i said "guess what happened last night?" then i told her. she screamed, and rushed right over. we still laugh about that one.
this kid is in life as she was in birth---fearless, wise, funny, and sweet-as-pie. a
college student already, and such a loving big sister to q. a fine daughter indeed.
miss m has a nurturing spirit that endears her to many.

she is nineteen today. and i can't possibly imagine what my life was without her in it.

i love you, my sweet one. happy birthday.