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IT'S A BOY!
Luc Hudson Mercury LeCroy
traveled from the infinite to life, the finite.
He was born at home on
May 28th 2007 at 1:10am,
weighing 9lbs. 11oz.
Luc Hudson Mercury LeCroy's Birth Story
Luc Hudson Mercury LeCroy’s birth story has been articulating itself in my mind for months. Ever since the first moments of his life, in the front trench of his motherhood, I have been searching for the words to tell this story. The front trench being the bed, soaked in its collection of blood, milk, pee, amniotic fluid, spit-up, saliva, sweat, tears, and meconium; it’s not a pretty picture but things are not always simply what they appear to be. The mere image deceives us. Birth may look like a horror show in a snapshot, but it’s actually a beautiful magic. Mother Nature spells out the intense story and it’s only in the complete context that the beauty can reveal itself in all its powerful form. Birth is like lightening; awesome, ancient, everyday and extraordinary, beautiful and scary, creative and destructive. No matter how many times we see the flash and hear the boom, it gives us chills and humbles us. Luc Hudson’s story has been tapping inside of me. I have been wanting to write it but it has been difficult to carve out of words, maybe because it was the scariest birth of mine, maybe because my father was dying, maybe because I have 3 kids now, and just moved, and I have many excuses.... but finally I shape it out of words. Now I let it come to be recorded.
Us LeCroys were a family of 4 living in a one-bedroom, Manhattan apartment when Luc’s pregnancy pleasantly surprised us. He is a wonderful souvenir from our August 2006 vacation in Santa Cruz CA. Alice and Laszlo had been begging for a new baby, maybe their wish just came true. My sister-in-law announced her pregnancy while we were away on vacation and maybe her little one somehow inspired my body to be super fertile beyond the limitations of our birth control. Maybe it was those things, combined with our lingerie shopping spree downtown Santa-Cruz, however the way- Luc was on the way.
We had already grown out of our small apartment and it was on the market. Since the pregnancy we were more desperate to sell than ever, it was a kind of emergency and I was going crazy from the powerlessness of NEEDING a buyer. Finally in late April 2007, a little over a month from when Luc was born, a full year after our apartment was put on the market, we sold our place! Very happily, for the asking price, and it enabled us to move into a dream apartment in our most desired neighborhood. I was 8.5 months pregnant, packing up our old apartment and putting everything we owned into storage. We “camped-out” in our empty apartment for a week while some last minute repairs were done on it to fulfill the sale contract. Next, we stayed for 2 weeks at a life-saving friend’s, empty, lower-east-side apartment while the sale of our old place went through and the purchase of our new place could ensue. THANK YOU MARYA & RENE!!!! I was HUGE, 60 pounds over my normal weight, unable to lay down on account of my terrible constant acid reflux, my body ached and I was often out of breath. I spent the last month of my pregnancy on a blow-up mattress on a floor. It was a kind of torture I will never forget.
My whole pregnancy I was obsessed with homes- searching, seeing and wishing. I planned a homebirth, like with my first two, but this time I had no home. That final month we were carting around our birth pool and birth supplies with us everywhere. I kept making jokes that I was going to pull a Nativity Scene like Mary and that we were looking for mangers in case our sale/purchase didn’t go through.
I had this intense nesting instinct but no nest. Luc’s due date was May 27th. We closed on our new apartment May 15th. I was hoping to hold on to the baby until we moved to our new place. It needed much cosmetic work, painting and extensive cleaning. My wonderful father-in-law, Maurice, came to help and he and my husband with the help of some hired painters, finished the place so that we actually moved in on Monday May 21st. All the nesting instincts finally were able to express themselves and I was unstoppable. Box after box until exhaustion- each day I worked asking the baby to just hold on until I settled us in. I worked furiously for days: scrubbing, cleaning, organizing, unpacking and decorating. I stayed in the apartment from the day we moved in and did not leave once. Not for a walk. Not for a change. I was obsessed.
My father and my brother Gary and sister-in-law Alethea came to visit us on May 27th, Luc’s due date, with my nephew, 5 week old baby Fritz. Since Gary & Alethea lived in Syracuse this was our first time meeting my nephew. It was nice of them to bring my father who was dying of pancreatic cancer. While they were visiting I unpacked the last box and the house looked like we had been living there for months. Many empty and crushed boxes filled our entrance hallway, waiting for Wednesday when the recycling truck would come take them away. The apartment looked so finished, except for those awful boxes, they bothered me. I also still had a lot of clothes to put away in drawers.
It was evening. Baby Fritz was beautiful! I felt contractions coming on but excused them, thinking they were only my impressionable imagination being inspired by my wonderful infant nephew. Fritz must have had some connection with his cousin, I feel he brought him twice; the first time with Luc’s Santa Cruz conception coinciding with the revelation that Fritz was on the way, and then upon our first meeting with Fritz he somehow called out his baby cousin. The contractions built throughout the visit, I was embarrassed, I felt like a gullible hypochondriac. I tried to hide the fact that I was having contractions. I resisted believing they were real. I struggled to seem normal, to chat with my family and put clothes into drawers, the last detail. At one point a contraction made me collapse over my bed and my sister-in-law said, “You are having contractions.” My dad commented that my eyes looked glassy and I seemed spaced out. My brother packed everyone up to leave around 6pm and right after they all left, Dorian, my husband, packed up my 5 year old Alice Luna & 4 year old Laszlo Mars to be taken by Maurice to a sleep-over at my mother’s. I had asked my kids if they wanted to be part of the birth but they did not want to see it. I told them what birth is like and had showed them clips from birthing movies, but they were sure they didn’t want to “hear the sounds”. Alice said that she wanted to be at the part when the baby got in me. Oh well honey, that part happened more than 9 months ago. Kids are not invited to that anyway.
By 8pm the contractions were very strong and 5 minutes apart. My labor with Alice was 6 hours, my labor with Laszlo was 3 hours, I was expecting to have baby number 3 pretty quick! It was Memorial Day weekend and I knew my midwife, Linda, was at a picnic. I tried to hold off calling her as long as possible so she could enjoy her evening. Dorian didn’t want to take a chance and convinced me to call her just to let her know what was happening. I told her not to rush over but she left her party and headed home to get her supplies and came over. Dorian inflated the birth pool in the art room of our apartment, rinsed it and started filling it with water, it seemed to take forever. I wanted badly to get in it. I remembered how much it eased the intensity of the contractions with my previous births. I walked around the apartment and kept collapsing onto my knees to take contractions, I used my big birth/exercise ball and also got a lot of relief pushing down on the bed. I got into the trance of managing contractions, feeling them come and letting them pass through me. I drank as much water as I could and was thankful I had a really big late lunch.
Linda arrived with her assistant around 9pm and the pool still filled. Finally I got in and relaxed. Linda left me & Dorian alone and I floated around, he took some pictures and the contractions grew steadily more powerful. It seemed a million years passed but it was only like an hour. I was excited but super relaxed. I was blissed out, scared, and reserving energy. I got out of the water and walked around some more. The contractions were really powerful and took my breath away. The pool brought so much relief, I got back in and rode the waves of contractions. Each one that came on I chanted, “One less, one less, one less,” I focused on how every contraction brought my baby closer and each contraction was one less I’d have to go through before I met my new child. My body ached and ached, I felt it was time to get out of the water and maybe start pushing. Out of the water the contractions were even more intense, I squatted, I leaned, I walked, I rocked. I looked out at the Hudson River. I felt the baby coming through me. I was excited and nervous. I went into the bedroom and on all fours started feeling like I needed to push. I was afraid that I would just poop. It was so embarrassing. Linda encouraged me to do it and I was right. Dorian got the wipes and took care of cleaning me up- I joked that it was good practice for the time we had ahead of us. The contractions we so strong. I experimented with positions, side lying, curled up, that didn’t work and then I found myself squatting next to the bed with my arms on it, the way I gave birth to Laszlo. I felt my body really working to get the baby out. Huge contractions swept through me and I felt the build to push happen but instead of pushing this weird low sob came out of me, heaving like a kind of whine and moan. The sound was so strange that at first I wondered where it was coming from- then I realized it was me.
It was so strange, this sob/moan that replaced the pushing. It was as if my body knew the push could not work and so did not want to waste the energy and instead released the push through the strange sob. The building of the pushes hurt so much, I wanted to cry but couldn’t spare the effort. I mentioned aloud myself that I didn’t sound too convincing. It was so crazy to feel all this intense emotion and power but have my voice betray the feeling and my body just feel sort of stuck, unable to express what was going on inside of me. The assistant encouraged me, she said, “Jane you are doing great!” I told her, “no.” No, something was wrong. I wasn’t doing something that I needed to do. What was it? I was so frustrated. I could tell the baby was so close. It was really stuck and it was so scary. Linda kept checking the heart rate with the Doppler and everything was fine. There was no emergency. I was drinking water throughout and though I was tired I was not exhausted. Worry just started to set in. How would this baby come out? Linda suggested I walk around a little more. I left the bedroom and made it down the hallway to the living room. A contraction swelled and I collapsed onto the floor into a squat and I could feel how big and how stuck the baby was. I said, “It’s so big!” I begged, “Help me little baby, help me, help get you out into the world.” Linda got behind me and looked and saw the baby right there. She said, “Jane, the baby is right here, I see its bald head.” We have to talk about another position. The heart rate was continually fine. The whole pregnancy the heart rate was so very consistent, it was reassuring that it was the same- oh the sweet sound of that little heart beat! It was my beacon of hope, my wish, my anchor. Linda watched me and then helped me up. She explained I had tried all the positions I had imagined and that now it was time to try something new. I was at a loss. I could not imagine anything else. I had sadness in my voice and I asked her what I should do. We walked back into the bedroom and she explained that he baby seemed to be stuck behind my pelvis bone. She demonstrated with her hands how the head was stuck and modeled what had to be done to let the baby out. I told her I didn’t know how and I felt like crying but didn’t have the energy. She told me to sit on the bed. I just couldn’t imagine that so I asked, “What?” Linda had to say it 3 or 4 times before I comprehended the instruction. Sit on the bed. It seemed impossible to sit. I just did it though. I sat on the bed and it was awkward. I couldn’t really sit, the baby’s head was right there. The dresser across from my bed had a mirror on it with pictures of Alice and Laszlo, and pictures and notes they had drawn for me. Their little images gave me so much strength! It was hard to have faith that I could get the baby out but I did it, I let go of my doubt.
Linda was at the foot of the bed. I was sitting/kind of leaning back on the bed with my legs dangling over the edge. I was leaning on my arms that were behind my hips, my hands pushing into the bed because I couldn’t take pressure on my perineum. I couldn’t let my butt or hips on the bed, I just positioned myself to hover. Linda put my feet up onto the bed. Dorian was kneeling on the bed behind me. He put his hands under my armpits to give me support. I felt a huge contraction, I threw my hips up, pretty much into table pose from yoga using Dorian to support the full weight of my hoisted up body, I heard Dorian let out a big moan as he supported my hefty weight, I put lots of weight onto him before he was fully prepared. Right then Luc appeared. I didn’t even feel him come out but there he was in Linda’s arms. It was 1:10am, Oh I was so happy! He was so calm. Peaceful, limp, relaxed, he melted in my arms. I checked the sex and he was a boy. I put his face close to mine and our first kiss was slow and sweet. His skin was very dark and he had so much dark hair! He wasn’t bald at all. Linda realized that he had been presenting face first- so the “bald head” she saw was really his forehead. His face was totally dark because he was bruised from his face getting crushed by my pelvis on his way out. He was still totally beautiful. My body worked, no tears no intervention, Luc came to Earth! I am a rocket ship!
About 30 minutes after Luc was born I birthed the placenta after encouragement. It looked totally healthy which is always reassuring. Once again Linda gave me a few bites of the placenta, and totally blissed out it is easy to swallow. After our initial meeting and gushes of love we weighed and measured him, 9 pounds 11 ounces, 22.25 inches. Luc latched on and was able to nurse. I bleed a lot after birth and this time was no different, so once that was under control Linda and her assistant went home. Luc was all lovable and snuggable and Dorian, Luc & I all fell asleep in the bed together. Sweet sleep. Dreams do come true.
Late morning Alice and Laszlo arrived with my mother and Maurice. Alice and Laszlo were so proud! With beaming smiles they glowed when they held their new brother for the first time. We hadn’t decided on Luc’s name yet but were pretty sure it would be Leif. Dorian felt strongly that our new baby was not Leif, but Luc. The kids and I protested a bit, the kids had made WELCOME LEIF signs, but Dorian’s stubbornness won. We named him Hudson on my mother’s suggestion, because he was born while that river filled my eyes and brought so much encouragement. I also grew up on the Hudson and it is where Dorian & I were married. We named him Mercury because he is a Gemini and Dorian’s mother is an astrologer and we love astronomy and all our kids have their celestial body of their astrological sign in their name. I am convinced that Luc’s delivery was so difficult because the boxes from unpacking that were clogging our hallway- that was bad Feng Shui for birth, to have the entrance blocked like that. We surpassed it though.
Grandpa Maurice had prophetic dreams during the pregnancies of each of his grandbabies. Luc’s dream did not reveal the sex, as his others had revealed. Luc appeared as a pure ball of light, the light of love. It was a kinesthetic dream and that baby was off the charts. Maurice said, “Oh what a lover he will be! Pure love!” It has been so! Luc Hudson Mercury LeCroy, welcome to the world. You are deeply loved already, forever and always. Thank you for coming to us!!!!!!
LUC HUDSON MERCURY LECROY
pictures coming soon!