Stephanie Farrar
Last year about this time, in the three weeks leading up to my daughter’s birth, I spent a lot of time upside down.
The point was to turn the tide of the sea inside and flip this breach baby. I did so, again and again.
credit: Leslie Duffy
I was also having contractions every 3-4 minutes, for three weeks. All I could do was take very short walks, sit, and stand on my head. I knew from my previous experience I had a good chance of having life threatening complications that endangered both me and the baby, and I had spent a lot of time thinking about this. Because of my experience, because of my research, I had a stark birth plan: “Everybody Lives.” Nobody wants to hear a pregnant woman talk like this. Nobody is supposed to admit they might die, someday, or possibly soon.
It is so impolite to talk about death, so crass to talk about illness. Nobody is supposed to glimpse mortality as a fact. But this year, all any of us can do is take short walks, sit, and hold the world upside down, patiently for a few weeks.
So, hold it. Hold it, upside down, to turn this tide. Hold this blue pulsing world upside down in your hands because the best birth plan for the new world we will make is just: “Everybody Lives.”
Stephanie Farrar is a writer and professor at UW-Eau Claire, as well the co-editor of Dickinson In Her Own Time.