A healthy baby and an operating room full of love

On Sept. 9, Avery Jack Knox-Broyles was born at 8:13 a.m., less than three hours after we arrived at St. David’s South. 

I was fully awake and aware of my surroundings: The radio station playing Hall and Oates, the fact that there were far more women in the room than men (Ian and the anesthesiologist were the only two there), the beautiful reddish white pixelized squares on the overhead light above me, the tiny white oval pattern on the blue sheet that separated my head and shoulders from the crazy procedure happening on my abdomen, the exact details of which I’m still not sure I want to know.

But the most interesting part of it all is that even though the C-section definitely carried the emotional and physical effects of major surgery, I left that sterile, cold (brr! it must have been 60 degrees in there) operating room feeling more love and care than I did after so many miserable hours of laboring at the birthing center.

 It hit me when I was in the recovery room, waiting for them to bring Avery to me so I could nurse him for the first time. Denny, the sweet smiling anesthesiologist, was there, asking me how I felt and if I was still nauseated from the medication that had made me throw up during the surgery but after Avery was born. “How are you feeling?” was a question he’d gently asked me dozens of times during the past hour, but now that the drugs he’d given to make me as comfortable as possible had done their job, it was time for him to leave. “Will I see you again?” I asked him. “No, my job here is done.” I’d only met the man an hour before, but his bedside manner was so kind and supportive that I started to cry as I thanked him for his help. “You were such a comforting presence in there,” I said as he left. My lovely nurse Annabelle was there by my side and she noticed the tears streaming faster down my face. The hormones were definitely pumping, but I was acutely aware of what was really making me cry. 

 This was just such a different experience than before, I told her. There were so many people there tending to my needs. Even though I was in an operating room in the hospital, totally drugged up and “detached” from Avery leaving my body, every single person’s attention was focused on the health and well-being of me and my newborn son. Yes, they were, with the exception of my OB, complete strangers using a totally artificial method of delivering him, but they were doing it with such compassion that I could feel the love despite the drugs that were making me wonky.


I hadn’t felt that kind of affection and care at the birthing center. The midwives made me feel like a burden whose body just wasn’t doing what it was supposed to. Labor made me totally delirious and incapable of making decisions. Even with my mom and Ian by my side and despite months of birthing classes and prenatal care with the midwives, I felt totally alone and helpless. The midwives couldn’t get enough hot water to fill the tub and limited the number of towels I could use in the birthing room. They had a limited repertoire of medications, herbs and tools to help ease the wrenching pains I was experiencing and acted totally clueless when they’d run out of tricks up their sleeve. Who knows how long they would have let me labor in that strip center; my mom and Ian were the ones who finally took control of the situation and said, “You know what, this isn’t working. She needs to go to the hospital.”

The massive ego of the birthing center director, who kept popping in and out of the birthing room on a whim and whose precious success rate would go down if I ended up in the hospital, seemed paramount to my needs as a patient. In fact, I felt like I was treated more like a wishy washy customer whose demands were greater than what she’d paid for than a patient whose life — and the life of the child she was trying to birth — were at risk.

I’d felt an enormous sense of relief that I would finally be taken care of when I entered the hospital as an emergency case the last time, and I felt that same relief last week when they brought my squawking new little baby to my face so I could kiss him and whisper sweet “I love yous.”

Like Julian, he was born on a Thursday, but unlike Julian, I didn’t go into it with preconceived judgments about labor and delivery.

When I was pregnant with Jules, I was so firmly in the natural childbirth camp that I could spew a nasty diatribe about the national C-section rate and how horrible pitocin, epidurals and those pesky obstetricians were for what should be a powerful, intuitive, almost tribal experience. Luckily for me, I was able to psychologically accept that I had become what I was against without any feelings of guilt or failure. Going through such a treacherous labor made things very clear to me: A healthy baby and mother are the only things that matter, and how you get there is of little importance. 

Just like with breastfeeding or any other aspect of parenthood, judgment shouldn’t be part of that equation. Every body is different. Every baby is different. Every family is different. Every midwife is different. Every doctor is different. (I wish everyone could have as wonderful an OB-GYN as I do — her name is Dr. Belt, she’s with ARC and she’s hands-down the best physician I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.)

It's been a week since we came home from the hospital with Avery, and we're all adjusting quite well to this new normal. Julian is starting to get more comfortable with physically interacting with this fragile new life form. Ian's collarbone has healed enough that he can hold and cradle his sweet tiny son. I'm slowly starting to get around better. I don't have to take as many pain killers, but the oh-so-familiar shoulder pain that comes with nursing and holding a newborn has returned. Thank the breast goddesses, I have more breastmilk than Avery knows what to do with. He's only had two fussy nights, but other than that, he's only waking up a few times for quiet nursing sessions. 

I'm starting to get a little stir crazy and can't wait until I'm fully able to leave the house. (I can't drive until at least Thursday, which is a day after my mom leaves.) But maternity leave rocks. I'll be blogging once a week on Relish Austin, and I've got some fun Feminist Kitchen posts rolling around in my head. 

With the new baby, learning how to unplug

So much has changed since Julian was born, which is what prompted me to start La Vie Dansante in the first place.

Having a personal blog was my only outlet for writing and then, as I started taking more digital pictures, photography as well.

But now, almost four years later, so much of my life takes place online. There are days where it seems like all I do is cultivate my virtual presence. With Facebook, Twitter and blogging, sharing is the name of a game I've gotten quite good at since the early days of this blog. I still see La Vie Dansante as a scrapbook for my life outside work, and as much as I've enjoyed putting everything out there over the past few years, I think it's finally time to set up some boundaries between what I share with the entire universe and what I share with people I know.

After talking it over with Ian, I've decided to make La Vie Dansante a private project that Blogger will let me share with 100 readers. This weekend, I'll get around to posting more about the birth of our beautiful new little boy, and if you'd like access, please e-mail me at broylesa at gmail dot com so I can include your e-mail address in the list of friends and family who can access the blog. I think it'll require you to log in with a password, but hopefully you'll only have to do that once.

Thanks for understanding. I know it's a hassle, but it's the right decision for our family.

Getting ready to meet our new little elf

It's hard to believe I'm delivering a small child tomorrow.


I could attempt to write some "'Twas the night before baby" poem, but that would be a tad overachieving, even for me.


But, in case you were wondering what goes through the mind of a pregnant woman less than 12 hours before she gives birth for the second and last time, here are some thoughts:

I didn't even bother to look up the name we've picked out until just now. We'd settled on the name Avery Jack a few months ago, and barring some look on the kid's face that just says, "I ain't no Avery Jack," that's what we'll call him. Are you ready for this? It means "elf," "ruler of the elves," "magical counsel" or some deviation of "wee wise person." I find this very funny, but come to think of it, I didn't know Julian's name means "youthful, downy bearded" until just now and that hasn't had much effect on the person he has become.


Our little elf has been pretty quiet on this last day inside my belly. We've known about him since the very beginning, when he was just a cluster of cells. A striking difference from pregnancy No. 1, when Julian was a 4-month-old fetus before we caught on. I don't feel like I "know" this kid any more than I "knew" Julian when he was coming out, but I can speak for both Ian and me that we're not nearly as apprehensive about being responsible for a new life. That's one thing being a parent will teach you: Everything eventually works out, even when there are offspring involved.

Having been a pregnant woman on both sides of the increasingly political debate about medicalized birth practices, I am totally at peace with having a scheduled C-section. I could rehash the two-day labor experience from way back in 2007 that ended in an emergency C-section, but the details really aren't that important. Julian came out healthy and that's all that matters. Another hour or two at the birthing center, where the midwives weren't advocating for what was best for the health of me and my baby (having me push for three hours at 8 cm dilated, for instance), and things could have turned out very differently for both of us. Healthy baby and healthy mama is the goal. How you get there really doesn't matter.

So, at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow, I'll stroll through the doors of the hospital near our house and within a few hours, we'll greet the little guy who has been incubating inside my uterus for the past 39 weeks. The doctors think he's about 7 1/2 or 8 pounds, and if the heartburn I've had is any indication, he'll have a full head of hair.



Julian will come to the hospital mid-morning to meet his baby brother, a moment I've been anticipating since before we even got pregnant. There's no denying that choosing to have another child has a lot to do with providing a sibling for the one we already have. I have a sibling whom I wouldn't trade for anything in the world. I can't imagine having grown up without her, and because of that bond, I can't imagine raising Julian as an only child.



It's past 10 p.m., so I really should be going to bed, but I don't feel that tired and in a way, I kind of want to stay up and stroke my big round belly that will be gone (or at least nice and flabby and not so taut) by this time tomorrow. I've said it before, but it's worth saying again: I really, really enjoy being pregnant. It's a beautiful thing to experience, despite all the waking up to go pee in the middle of the night, the pelvis pain, the heartburn, the restricted diet, the swollen feet and extra 40 pounds. I know carrying a baby isn't so pleasant for other women, but for me, it's something I'm really going to miss. (Not enough to have more babies, I promise. I'm so not interested in having more than two children that the doctor will be fiddling with my tubes tomorrow after the C-section to ensure that I'm done.)



It's fun to experience it with the people you see every day, the friends who tentatively rub your belly and say that they've never felt a pregnant woman's stomach before, the strangers in the store who ask whether you're having a boy or a girl, your partner who so patiently adjusts to all the physical changes you experience while still saying that — and treating you like — you're the sexiest woman in the world.



Off we go! A big day for the Knox-Broyles family awaits us in the morning...