Poppy's Birth Story

I was insatiable. I ate six slices of pizza. Sal was counting because I hadn’t eaten in three days, and he thought for sure I’d be sick. But I wasn’t. I was starving, delighting in the thin crust of Sienna's margarita pie.

My Aunt Chris and Uncle Charlie were in town and we had been invited to my parent’s house for pizza. Because I was forty weeks pregnant I had the unwritten social option of skipping any family get-togethers. But that night I was overcome with an unexpected burst of energy.

On our way home from dinner, the snow started to fall and we saw something dart in front of the car. A big red fox was crossing the street right in front of us!

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Three days earlier I spoke to my PMAD therapist. During my pregnancy, we’d met on Zoom to make sure I was feeling mentally healthy. After having debilitating postpartum depression with my first, it was important for me to have a safe place to land and talk through any anxiety or challenges that came up from this pregnancy.

During our session we talked about my fear of giving birth and how hard the first time had been. It was excruciatingly long and painful, and the entire time I felt completely out of control. We talked about how after Ginny was born she was jaundiced and had to be taken away from me for eight heartbreakingly long hours to get treatment. The hospital didn’t have running water due to a legionella outbreak, so I couldn’t shower or wash my hands in the sink. And on and on – we talked about it all.

My therapist helped me work through some of the emotional weight I had been feeling around doing it again. And she gave me some breathing exercises I could practice to ground me this time around.

Reflecting on our conversation, and the unknown birth ahead, I made myself a promise that no matter what happened I wanted to be present. To breathe deeply through whatever came.

After the drive home, I pulled out my oracle deck and searched for the fox card. It read - “Fox guides you to clever thinking and discernment while adapting to your surroundings. Allow the spirit of the fox to guide you around challenges quickly instead of facing them head on.”

At midnight I woke up to pee, like I had done hundreds of times before during this pregnancy. I walked to the bathroom but before I sat down I started peeing. Shit, I thought, I had peed myself. I cleaned my legs off with a wet wipe, walked into the bedroom and it happened again- warm water was trickling down my legs. Wait a minute, did my water just break?

I threw on a pair of disposable underwear I bought for postpartum and laid back in bed. Oh my god. It’s happening.

I sat for a while wondering what to do next. Should I wake Sal? I wasn’t having any contractions yet. I sat in my bed and took ten deep breaths, then I woke Sal. We called the OBGYN hotline and they told me to head into the hospital. I called my mom to meet me there, and my dad to come to our house to stay with Ginny. By the time I put on my leggings and packed the last few items for my hospital bag, my contractions were strong and steady.

While driving to the hospital I had to grip the seat handle in the car and breathe through the contractions. I tried to ride every wave calmly and with confidence. I recited my mantra through every breath- “good vibes in” (breathing in) before the contraction then “healthy baby out” (breathing out through the rumbling of the pain). I did this every contraction for the next six hours.

Once we were admitted to the hospital everything moved fast and slow. I was already dilated enough to get into a birth room, and my mom and Sal stayed by my side taking turns holding my hand while I remembered to breathe. We all wore our masks, and listened to Lana Del Ray, Andrew Bird, and The Fleet Foxes.

After a few hours my contractions started to escalate and I was exhausted from riding the wave of pain. I got an epidural and just like that the pain eased. For the first time since midnight, everything felt quiet and experience taught me it was now time to rest before pushing.

After what felt like forty-five minutes, the doctor declared it was time to start pushing. But before I could push we discovered the baby’s head was facing up. The doctor reached inside of me and she turned my baby, and I started to cry. Not because it was painful but because I knew this was it- I was finally going to meet her. We paused the music and my mom and Sal held my hands while I pushed for twenty minutes through the last of the contractions. And even though it was physically exhausting, thanks to the epidural it didn’t feel painful. I felt grounded and grateful. I felt truly present in the moment.

Poppy James Bagwell-Mastrocola entered the world at 6:09am, and once she was out the doctor put her on top of me. The little blonde looked just like her sister. She quietly and calmly entered the world, and didn’t make a peep until the attendants took her away to clean her off. Outside, it started to snow again.

One month later Sal, Ginny, Poppy and I have been adjusting to life as a family of four. The days have been slow and cold. We decided to pull Ginny out of school and daycare to keep Poppy safe from COVID-19 so we’ve been quarantining as a family. I’ve never been happier not to live in a small one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment, but I also mourn the freedom I had with Ginny. The long walks in Park Slope, the monkey bread pit stops at Du Jour cafe, the meetups with moms whose names I didn’t know yet.

The zero degree weather and the pandemic have kept us quite literally trapped indoors. Sal asked me today what my favorite day of the past month has been and I couldn’t tell him. All the days and nights inside have run together as one. That being said, we've made the best of our time together. Being second-time parents has awarded us with so many insights and moments of relief. The stress of sleepless nights and endless breastfeeding holds less weight when you know it’s truly temporary.

So we’ve fallen into a little routine. Ginny is always at Sal’s side, while the baby is on my chest. We take turns holding, consoling, and entertaining the girls. Sal does all the cooking, I do all the breastfeeding.

At night, Poppy likes to be held, either in my arms or nestled against my body in a sling. She’s quiet and affectionate until she’s not, then we call her “Poppy Drama” because even the nurses looked at us through their masks when she cried in the hospital. She lets it be known, her discontent so to keep my baby happy I strap her to my body and sway back and forth for hours. I watch The Housewives. I read a book. I look out the window at the piles of snow. I love the way the snow looks at night, the glistening powder illuminated by streetlights and decorated with paw prints.

I think about the paw prints and wonder if our fox is nearby. If she’s wandering the woods behind our house or snuggling her own babies in a den. Does she live in our neighborhood or was she just passing by?

Was she a red blur, a lumination, or an unexpected symbol of hope only to be seen the night Poppy was born.

Xx,

Erin