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Hi all. With the July 4th holiday coming up, there’s no getting around the memories this time of year brings up for me. While I fully intend to spend my weekend eating barbecue and splashing with my kids in the pool like every other American, this part of the story was ready to be told… For those who missed Part 1, it’s here. Aaand for those who are curious about the Most Amazing Banana Bread in the Universe, recipe is here. 🙂
In my opinion, there is no such thing as a “birth story” that is truly interesting to other people. Does anyone else really want to hear about your contractions, your water breaking all over your kitchen floor (eww), how sweet/ridiculous your husband was acting, how badly you wanted an epidural, how long you pushed, etc., etc.??
And I’ll be the first to admit that laboring then delivering a baby that you already know is dead is probably only enjoyable for the kind of people who enjoy Victorian gothic horror stories.
But I did make a promise at one point to tell you about the time I baked most amazing banana bread in the universe, which just so happened to coincide with the labor of my stillborn baby, so I promise to do my best to make it both worth reading and totally un-gory.
Before going into labor for the first time, I think most people have these little fantasies about how it will go. I’ll go for a walk with my husband in the park. We’ll hold hands and take deep breaths together. I’ll watch silly movies while I wait for the contractions to get closer together. I’ll take a bath and try to relax.
Then you go into labor and you realize that this thing doesn’t just take over your body. It also takes over your mind. One minute you’re watching Back to the Future 2, realizing you’re too damn addle-brained to understand a movie that a four-year-old can follow. The next moment, you’re really, really… focused. Often on something that might seem incredibly trivial to a normal person.
In my case, I became fanatically focused on bananas. There were a bunch of them in the fruit bowl. And they were going bad. And I absolutely had to do something about this. Right. Now.
It was around 1:00 in the afternoon and I’d been in labor for approximately ten hours when I approached my husband with a copy of the recipe I’d printed off of the Internet. He’d been asking all morning if there was anything he could do for me… And for ten hours, the answer had been a sweet, demurring “No.” Now the answer was a four-alarm fire “Yes!” I desperately needed him to get off the couch, race to the store, and get me baking powder and macadamia nuts.
While he was gone, I measured out the ingredients we did have… flour, sugar, shortening. Yuck. I discovered that our little-used shortening had gone rancid. My poor husband dripped in from the summer heat, waving a bag proudly. “I had to go to three different places before I found macadamia nuts… but I got ‘em!”
That’s great, I replied. Now go out and get me more shortening.
If you’re a baker, you might have wondered why I needed baking powder to make banana bread. A quick scan of the 276 recipes for banana bread on allrecipes.com reveal that none of them need baking powder. Yeah, mine didn’t either. What I needed was baking soda. My husband, upon returning with the shortening, accepted this revelation with a sigh and went back out to face the blistering city sidewalks.
When the banana bread finally came out of the oven, we waited twenty minutes or so to let it cool before diving in. Wiping crumbs from his lips, he said, “I can’t believe how good this is… I don’t even care about banana bread, but this is amazing.” I nibbled a corner of my slice and nodded (as it turns out, eating is not too high on your priority list when you’re in labor), “I know.”
The thing is, it was amazing. It was moist, and not too sweet, and the toasted macadamias gave it a nuttiness that perfectly balanced with the bananas. I’m not very good at writing about food, but just use your imagination to conjure the most perfect banana bread in flavor, texture, and temperature (go ahead, spread it with that generous glob of butter if you want)—and this was it.
Later that evening, when I had somehow flipped into transitional labor in the space of 15 minutes and we were rushing to get out the door to the hospital, I stopped short in the hallway, screaming, “The bread!! The banana bread!!”
My husband turned, hospital bag in one hand, front door swung open with the other, and said (quite eloquently) something to the effect of, “Huh?”
I paused (not quietly) for a crazy contraction. Then continued. “Wrap. It. Up… Put half of it in the freezer.” I’m sure he wanted to argue. We had to get to the hospital now. But he’s also a pragmatist, and realized arguing with a crazy lady would take more time than just putting the damn banana bread in the freezer, so he did it.
The next day, I came home with no baby and sore boobs and endless miles of grief ahead of me. There was a big chunk of banana bread under saran wrap on my kitchen table, and another half in the freezer.
I’m sure there’s some significance to be found here. Maybe it’s the weird way we human beings are programmed to soldier on taking care of basic needs even when everything else is going to shit. Or maybe it’s how I needed something to control, to care about, at the moment the thing I cared about most was stolen from me.
Either way, there’s no tidy ending to wrap up this birth story. There was no baby, and there wouldn’t be one, not for quite some time. It sucked so hard, and it was so intensely sad, and it was and still is hard to talk about to other people without completely bumming them out. So on the few occasions my husband and I have told this story, we end with the banana bread. “But that bread was amazing,” we’ll repeat to each other, shaking our heads, and smiling (just a bit) at the memory.
Kathleen said:
Wow. I am sitting here, quite stunned, quite inarticulately saying, “wow”. I read your other posts that were linked and then this post and the way you told your tale is just amazing to me. What a nightmare. I have 2 children but it took some doing to get pregnant with my first child and I lived in fear of something going wrong the whole pregnancy. To be 36 weeks and lose your baby…..what a heartbreak. I am so sorry the doctor was so callous. Your banana bread part of the story is just so captivating- the things we hold onto in the face of grief. I wonder sometimes how people find the strength to get through such painful, unimaginable tragedies. You managed to tell this story in a way that drew me right into your experience and you didn’t get lost in the sadness while telling the story but I felt it all the same. I wish I had better words to say how powerful this piece was but I can tell you I will never forget it.
luckygurl said:
Thank you so much. The “things we hold onto in the face of grief”, indeed! Thanks for reading.
Marjorie Martinelli said:
a story well told…thank you for sharing it.
luckygurl said:
Thanks, Marjorie. Hugs from the West Coast!
janeedna said:
Brilliant and beautiful and brave, just like you. And among many other things, this post is also a testament to your remarkable marriage.
Am proud to know you both, and am knocked sideways by this post.
And then there’s what it must have taken to write it. I trust you are savoring every bite of the “holy shit, I DID that” feeling that you’ve more than earned by bringing this piece of writing and of your heart into the world so fully formed, unique, heart wrenching, and perfect.
I hug you and cry with you and applaud you from the Rocky Mountain West, and I promise not to faint.
In other news. I think you should submit it to Vogue and to the NYT magazine. This is a prize winner.
Xoxo
luckygurl said:
I mean, “Holy shit, I did that,” could apply to so many aspects here… 🙂 Thanks for the encouragement and love. And, honestly, fainting was probably a MUCH more appropriate response…
Erika Victor said:
As others have said, this is a really powerful piece of writing. You really crafted each word so carefully and paced it so well. What a horrible time for you and your husband, it is amazing that you can write so clearly about an event that many of us can not imagine without your words.
luckygurl said:
Thank you so much for reading!
Lisa said:
I think this piece shows a lot of bravery too. I agree that listening to birth stories isn’t very interesting (except to the teller of the story, and the pregnant people hearing it…everyone else doesn’t care!) but you made this one interesting. It’s funny how our brains seem to protect themselves from terrible things by focusing on the mundane. Thanks for sharing!
luckygurl said:
Yes, exactly. The human brain (and heart) are wondrous. Thanks for reading!
Tara Smith said:
You wrote this with such great pacing and humor – although the subtext was a deep grief. Beautifully done!
luckygurl said:
Thanks so much, Tara!
writekimwrite said:
I have so missed your voice! The intensity of this story explains why it has taken you time to complete. Our words matter and our lives matter, what is beautiful and what is hard. Thank you for trusting us with this story, so raw, messy and in ways incomprehensible! I am so sorry for your loss. Your bravery helps me face what has been hard in my life, though different, and to try to coax my story into the healing light of words.
luckygurl said:
Oh, Kim. Just… thanks. And courage, courage on your own journey.
Andrea Payan (@payanar) said:
This is a beautiful piece of writing. It is so brave to put this story out there for the world and it must have been incredibly difficult to write it. I cannot imagine what it must have been for you at that time in your life. Thank you for trusting us with this story.
luckygurl said:
Thank you so much Andrea. It’s a piece I’ve been working on for over a year on and off. By the end I wasn’t sure I was “happy” with it… I’m just glad to have it published now!
mrsclark6 said:
I HATE that you had to go through this. But I loved your writing and I loved the piece. I’ll be reading more of your work. Thank you so much for sharing this with us.
luckygurl said:
Thank you so much for reading!
eduk8te said:
Marika, this is beautiful and so are you. I didn’t know, and now I do. Thank you for sharing.
luckygurl said:
Oh, Kate, thank you so much. I’m sending you a big hug from the city!
erinbakerreadwrite said:
What a painful story to tell, and yet you told it so beautifully. My heart breaks at the loss you and your husband had to endure. Thank you for trusting us with your words
luckygurl said:
Thank you so much for reading… and leaving a comment!
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