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This is a one-of-a-kind, exclusive––mint condition––newsletter valued at $4 billion. Present this email at literally any establishment and just sort of, like, see what happens. Please report back (email only, as you know I love to chit-chat in long-form now).

Topics covered this month: Ida, her birth, my baby, more Ida, and finally… Ida.

If this newsletter ever arrives on a regular cadence instead of at random, you’ll know something has gone very wrong.

This week(?) month(?) day(?), I’m writing all about my second daughter, Ida, and how she came to be. I had realistic, hopeful plans for a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean). The Netherlands is very pro-VBAC,  my physiology, my history, my pregnancyβ€”all signs pointed to a likely, successful vaginal birth. Spoiler alert! T’isnt what transpired. 

The Story of Ida

My labor and delivery with Odette taught me that birth cannot be controlled. Ida’s entrance into the world reaffirmed this––radically––but with a sparkling caveat: Proper care changes everything.

Like Odette, Ida stayed in well past 40 weeks. When labor started, we called a taxi and loaded in our bags and our cooler––for the placenta, to encapsulate and eat, you know how it is––to take us to Amstelveen. The next 16 hours were ~pretty normal~ by labor standards: I listened to podcasts, Michael and I vocally, brashly hoped for a girl, we talked about names, and the intensity gradually increased. Once I reached transition, the final phase, I started feeling an unyielding, otherworldly pain. Anticipation and excitement, too. But as the pressure stacked on top of itself, I could feel that something was not right. My 9-pound baby was trying to get out, but she couldn’t. Her heart rate was dropping. I had been pushing for a couple of hours, but now, in the middle of full-force contractions, I needed to pivot to an emergency C-section. I was asked to stay very still. This was impossible, so two women had to physically restrain my shaking body in the operating room while another inserted the epidural into my spine. 

 

I’m pausing here to set––or elaborate––the stage. The women who administered the epidural were two of six women in the operating room. Besides Michael, it was all women. Amid the fear, I’ve never felt so calm. The women in the room knew exactly what to do. They were taking care of me. I felt my body numb. I felt the dull tug of the baby coming out and heard everyone exclaim she was a girl. I saw her beautiful, chubby face. But then I saw Michael’s pained expression. I heard him say β€œunresponsive.” I couldn’t see him leave with Ida but I knew they were gone. And then I was alone with the women; organs being replaced, skin, muscle, and tissue stitched back together, wheeled to another room. And then, I was truly alone. 

This was a first. The birth was over and I didn’t know where my baby was. The impression of the women’s faces, and their certain, pragmatic reassurance sustained me. Now and then, one would stop by to see me: β€œThe most important thing is to reunite you with your baby. You will be with her soon.” Michael came to check on me and let me know that Ida had contracted an infection in the fraught but brief passage between my body and the world. She had to be intubated to get oxygen. I couldn’t see her until we were transferred to another hospital with a NICU, in separate ambulances. The calm of the delivery room remained with me, still. Every step of the way, I felt the impact of the care I was given. The midwives and doctors continued to quietly remind me, β€œYou worked so hard, you got her here.” The nurses and EMTs said gently, β€œNo one could have known this would happen. We are with you. We’re taking you to your baby.” And when I finally got to her, I knew this care had saved Ida, too. 

I cannot describe how it felt to see my child this way. I cannot describe it and I actually refuse to try. The tenuous matter of time between the safety of the inside and the chaos on the outside is too strange and too precious to explain, even to myself. But feeling her warmth on my chest re-synced us both to each other. Even at this unexpected, impossibly raw start, I began to feel the grace of doing things the second time around. The regular encouragement of the medical staff thawed my shame and replaced it with a soothing sense of peace. My residual calmness soaked into Ida’s skin, made its way into the milk, and filled her up. She healed rapidly. 24 hours after arriving in the NICU, Ida was discharged and we were sent back to the original hospital to complete her 7-day round of antibiotics. 

On our first night, Michael and I heard a knock at the door. When I opened it, I saw the face of one of the nurses who had stood at the side of the bed while I sobbed and pushed, pain infiltrating all parts of my body. She had tracked me from the delivery room, to the NICU in Amsterdam, and back to Amstelveen. She had come at the end of her shift, late at night to tell me how happy she was to see me, how concerned she had been when things started to go awry. β€œEveryone was so surprised, so shocked when it happened like this––you did everything you were supposed to do.” Her kindness was a cure-all to my guilt. I really had tried as hard as possible to get her out safely. I gave it everything, and that was enough. It just wasn’t what we planned. Over the next week, most of the women who had been with me during active labor came and found me. Every time, they patiently let me go over the events, crying and crying as I recounted the physical pain, the emotional anguish of watching my baby start her life this way. 

Michael and I aren’t sure what would have happened had I given birth under these emergency circumstances in the US. I had an unplanned, but straightforward, cesarean with Odette and the care I received in the hospital was nothing like the Netherlands. It was cold. It was impatient. They discouraged breastfeeding. They demanded actions for Odette that my midwives, Michael, and I knew were unnecessary. This time, even wading through the trauma of my birth with Ida felt more like floating. I was supported on all sides––the care I received saved our daughter’s life and it transformed mine.


Being a mother means more than everything else to me. A priority beyond measure. Giving all of myself to each child looks different day to day, but it is always the goal. When my dad passed away so soon after Ida’s birth, it immediately made me want more kids. More parts of my dad that could live on, more family to solidify me, more people, more children. But wanting this betrayed the reason I chose motherhood––I need to be able to provide endless, joyful, sensitive, Dutch-pre-and-post-natal-level care to my daughters. And I can do that now, for each girl. Ida completed our family. She arrived pressed up against the thin, gauzy sheet separating life and death, close enough to see both sides, before planting her cherubic, determined feet on earth.

A Running List of Why I Included Fewer Sections in This Newsletter

Ida

My daughter

Chonk baby deserves spotlight

My second child

See above

…Ida

Top 3 reasons I miss my friend Julia right now:

  • Ida’s birth coincided with another major event: The post-Scandoval Vanderpump Rules reunion. With no way to watch it, Julia recorded it for me (and Michael) and uploaded it to Google Drive so we could enjoy it in the hospital.

  • She came to visit me 3 months after Ida was born and deftly, compassionately navigated my postpartum haze + newfound anxiety over my dad’s health for a fun-as-hell week in Amsterdam that felt like I was on vacation from both.

  • If I ever want to find something second-hand, I can text her, β€œWhat eBay keywords and parameters do I need to find x, y, or z?” Some of my favorite closet staples have been found this way.

Next month (?) I plan to write about what it feels like to be back at work, re-watching Law & Order SVU (deranged), finally watching Dune II (obsessed), and a vlog on Michael’s vasectomy (jk can you imagine).

 

Thank you for reading xoxo

Piet Gijzenbrugstraat
Amsterdam 1059XE
Netherlands

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