I’m drinking my coffee left-handed this morning. The dog in labor is making small circles in
the living room alternately with sitting at the kitchen table at my knee
panting her brains out. The waiting is
not easy when it gets to this point. At
4:30 am I was standing outside watching her sit and stare up at the morning
stars, again, panting. After two days of
NOT panting like this, I recognize this as progress. My mantra all along has been, “We sell no
wine before its time.” But the reality
is, my heart has been ready for this litter for a while.
I can’t explain why I long for this series of events, and
yet when it comes, I am sometimes “sore afraid.” The one place I do not want this journey to
take us today is the veterinary office.
It seems that when a dog in labor gets to the veterinary office
something has gone awry and it ends up in a caesarean section. It’s not that it is pricey, which it is, that
takes my breath away at the thought of it.
It’s that the dog looks like HELL when the surgery is done and they give
her zero pain killers and then pop a bunch of puppies in my willow basket with
the heating disk and tell me, “call us,” or the equivalent thereof. I’ve seen that movie twice and didn’t enjoy
it either time. It takes a dramatic
labor and turns it into a medical event.
The dog has to nurse her puppies to get them to stay with us – or they
won’t make it because I absolutely stink at hand-feeding anything. I’m lucky I am able to feed my ownself.
This particular labor has been an exercise in patience no
more than the rest. The one thing that is
different is I feel older and due to lack of sufficient Vitamin D in me, I
started this game exhausted. Two days
before today, when I thought the original due date was, I was lying on the
futon I had made up for myself downstairs near the whelping room trying to take
a nap. My whole body hurt. Not like flu-ish. Like my arms particularly were just tired of being
arms. Thankfully at late morning the
temperature that day was moving up towards a beautiful mid-day 70 degrees. I put my sneakers on, clipped a lead on
Madeline Grace and headed out to walk the track at the farm next door. The next day (which was yesterday but feels
like last year somehow, again courtesy of my Vitamin D level being in the
toilet) it was in the 40’s with a cold, biting wind driving across the pastures
and paddocks. I put on my fleece lined
winter coat and brought Madeline on a Labor March again. In my right pocket was the cell phone in case
of emergency…. But I’m not sure who I would call on a work day. In my left pocket was a sock. Not just any sock. This is an extra soft, something like terry
cloth sock, with a loose-fitting band.
It is not a lucky sock; that’s not why it was in my pocket. It just bears the distinction of being the
perfect size to pop a 7-ounce newborn puppy into should she decide to drop one
on the track as we walked. And, no, that
wouldn’t alarm me.
I like dogs. Dogs
tend to like me. But I draw the line at
letting the dog birth puppies on the futon WHILE I’m sleeping in it. I snuggled with Madeline Grace and helped her
feel more comfortable, giving her a back massage and stroking her face. She has done this labor-thing before and clearly
doesn’t remember the doula mantra of “pain-with-a-purpose.” She only knows in her sweet dog brain that
she is uncomfortable and something is pushing inside her that feels out-of-sorts. Actually, this time it will be a few
somethings, or rather, someones. This
time, she is clingy like Velcro-dog to me.
But getting her OFF the futon, where she finds it comfortable isn’t
something I can convince her to do. I
have given myself over to the idea – which is essential for dog breeders – that
there is a lot of laundry in my near future.
So, I leave my place of rest and go upstairs to proceed to get dressed
for this day. The time of that maneuver
was 4:30 am or thereabouts. This is a
time frame I am completely unfamiliar with, except for cases where I needed to
go to the airport. I am surprisingly
un-tired now, despite watching an episode of Bull and one of Blue Bloods last
night back-to-back until maybe 11 pm.
I moved my activity upstairs toward the goal of getting
dressed for the day at this prehistoric hour.
Then knowing that where this day would take me was uncertain, I toasted
two slices of apple strudel bread and booted-up the Keurig with a cup of
Hazelnut coffee. Tiny bits of dry dog
food are littered around the dishes of the three dogs. Apparently when I fed them rice and scrambled
eggs last night, they were less interested in the kibble so they just sorted it
out on my floor. I knelt with a dustpan
in hand to begin the clean-up. Even I am
surprised at how un-stiff I am today at this time of the morning. My brain, typically close to comatose on any other
day at this hour, wants to write.
Madeline Grace is making small circles on my living room floor. She meanders into the dining room area and
begins walking lonnnnngggggg until she has stretched out her body to the
floor. It must be hard to get comfortable
lying on your belly when it’s the size of a typical summer watermelon. She repositions herself again. I am almost running out of words and it is
5:33 am. All I hear is the steady
panting of an amazing dog in labor. I
swig the coffee that is now rapidly approaching room temperature. Its bitterness makes me wonder how I was too
lazy to open the new container of creamer with amaretto in the
refrigerator. Then I remember what time
it is and how foreign operating this side of daylight is to me.
She has moved back to the dining room table area just to be
near me. The other two dogs are not far
away from us. She rises again to begin
the pacing. She now sits at my
knee. Valor has woken up and stands for
a moment with two front paws on my knee. He has learned to talk this year. As he yawns, he makes the distinct sound of “hellll-oooooo.” I get
up and look at the low-lying horizontal stretch of clouds over the house diagonally
across the street from mine. It is
breaking and the sun is rising a purple-pinkish color in streaks of glory and I
am grateful. Madeline begins up and
pacing in the living room, I don’t have the heart to move this downstairs. She is ready and soon she will drop a sweet
little bundle of fur on my floor. All
the clean up will be mine, but so will all of the love. My stomach feels nervous for these last few
moments. My eyes have tears stinging at
the corners – I live for this – and she continues the relentless panting.
I realize that a breath of fresh, crisp morning air would do
us all good. The three dogs and I bound
down the basement steps and out the door.
Madeline circles and circles and I wait.
I find myself clenching my jaw a bit.
At 5:55 am the sun may be rising on the one side of the house, but on
this the back side facing south, the moon hangs boldly in the center sky. It is sliced decisively in half against a
soft blue backdrop. Madeline sits to
watch the moon. I observe my breath, her
breath, Valor’s huffings of mist from our lungs into the cool air. We sit.
We wait. I drag her inside
because my nose is cold.
We return to circling and pacing. It is now 6:35 am and she sits at the door
giving me, her Village Idiot, the message – let’s go out again. I rise, the slave of her morning activities.
An unproductive hour passes outside. I attempt blowing “smoke rings” with my
breath. It does not work. Her efforts buy her more time in the process. I wonder what is the hold up inside her.? At
one point I thought she was minutes away from just pushing the next Lion King
out her back door. The next minute she
is sitting to provide herself counter-pressure.
Inside only a few minutes, she is sitting by the door asking to go out
again. I am reluctant to step back into
the chilled air with her. Other dogs it
seems do their business in the whelping box and all is right with the
world. My dogs seem to need to pace
throughout the house like an expectant mother in the maternity ward
hallway.
I relent; we return outside.
The morning has warmed up and I go inside to snag a cup of vanilla ice
cream for her … which she politely refuses.
Don’t lose your faith in me, I took a spoonful for myself before I offered
her a portion. I got the bright idea of
putting a lawn chair outside and sat there sunning my face as she … did very
little. So more time elapsed with little
visible progress. But birthing, like all
other mysteries, involves interior work that can go on for an extended period
of time before the fruit of labor is born.
I brought her inside to narrow our area of work a bit. And we wait.
Still. 10:45 am.
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