Meet Mira: Birth in the Time of Corona
By: Paris Semansky
Tags: Birth, Pandemic Diaries, Covid 19, Miscarriage, Pandemic Babies

Meet Mira: Birth in the Time of Corona

She was blue before she was pink. Quiet before she moved. Umbilical cord wrapped twice. Christie clamped the cord, ready for Mike to cut it. But seeing Esther with the blue, still baby, changed course in seconds. "There's no time. I'll do it." Esther flipped the baby around, back and forth, like a football, like pizza dough. Unflappable and calm, but laser-focused, serious. On her way to the infant resuscitation kit - set-up on the dresser where Mike's watches and pocket squares usually sit - the baby finally screamed all on her own, colour filling her 8 pound, 6 oz body like a glass of water.

Meet Mira. Born eleven days into a global pandemic. In Toronto, in a 100 year old East York semi, in our bed, just before 9pm on a Sunday.

Meet us. Eleven days into a global pandemic. Scared, excited, alone. With a hell of a year ahead of us.

The Before-times

The weekend of March 1st Grandpa came down to Toronto to watch our three and a half-year old daughter, Anna, so Mike and I could have a night of a mini-moon, a staycation. There was talk of covid-19 but so few cases in Toronto and as long as you weren't sick, actively symptomatic you'd be fine. We went to the Old Mill Inn, dated and perfect. Got massages, ate at a buffet, happily spent some time apart. All things that would be impossible for the next year but we didn't know that yet.

The next day, an ultrasound confirmed our baby was breech. She'd flipped at 36 weeks. Not rare but unusual and tricky to flip back. I wasn't due for a month and had plans to visit friends, to get my nails done, to do frivolous things. Instead I was setting up chiro appointments and getting moxibustion treatments and laying upside down. And anyway some friends didn't really want to meet up: "my kid has a runny nose so we're just playing it safe."

We spent a lot of time at the local hospital over the course of those two weeks in early March as we tried to get the baby to flip. Two seperate ECV procedures - the second one worked - and hours of waiting after to make sure labour wasn't triggered. Public health wasn't confirming community spread yet. But we knew it was already all over and that there were cases at our local hospital.

We'd talked about a home birth earlier in the pregnancy and ruled it out. Now we started to plan for one.

Mira was a rainbow baby, already born of grief. When we decided to start trying for a second baby, we got pregnant right away. We were so happy and felt ready. Then on Father's Day weekend, right after a video call where Anna announced, "Gruwmpa, I'm gonna be a big sister!" I started to bleed. And kept bleeding. The doctor confirmed with a blood test that I was no longer pregnant. I was physically lucky as far as miscarriages go - no DnC, no transvaginal ultrasound. Sometimes the physical is the easy part. It had been early but we knew this baby, it was ours and now it was gone.

We decided to try one more time because we'd heard fertility could spike right after a miscarriage. Then we were going to stop for a while - months at least - while we swam through the grief. But I got pregnant right away. A miracle, a promise, a weight. It didn't yet feel safe to love, to hope, to plan.

The 40 weeks that gets counted in a pregnancy includes the first day of your last period. The bleeding included in her 40 weeks was the loss, the miscarriage. Day 1 for Mira was the last day for the baby before her.

I've always imagined them crossing paths somehow, sharing space, making room.

Grief is a many-splendored thing

Born of grief, grown in grief. Maybe being born in a global pandemic, the grief of all we'd lose collectively and individually was already written for her. It's probably a lot of pressure to be a rainbow after the storm, after the hard.

Rainbows used to be ephemera to me - light, pretty and fleeting. Now I need them to be more permanent, they're more necessary. They are Mira, this pandemic baby who didn't ask for any of this. Who demands our presence, a break from the doomscrolling because she exists, vulnerable and beautiful and loud. We've seen rainbows drawn with sidewalk chalk, in windows as part of neighbourhood "treasure hunts," as part of messages thanking essential workers for keeping the rest of us healthy and safe.

On the day Mira was born, Anna and Mike drew one by our front stairs, a welcome to our midwives, an early celebration, a marking of what was to come.

I was 26 when I got pregnant for the first time. An accident, unplanned, and quickly ended. It was a right decision that never felt easy or regretted.

By 36 years old, I'd had the trifecta of womanhood - an abortion, a baby, and now a miscarriage. That we're only supposed to talk about the one didn't make it easier. I found a book and articles about miscarriage, grateful for the women who shared their pain and sadness and healing. It took months of crying in therapy and crying in yoga and crying in massages and crying because it was Tuesday to connect with the pregnancy I was having and to find a place to put the grief that didn't feel like hiding it.

Different grief arrived in the weeks and months after Mira was born. And is still here, a new low-level kind of grieving-normal.

On mat leave the first time, Anna was two weeks old when we went to our first mom meet-up at a coffee shop. Windows steamy from the cold outside and warm inside. Strollers and carriers, bodies and laughter, babies crying and gentle prodding from someone you just met, but really, how are you?

From coffee shops to making our way in snow and rain to the community centre for a class with a public health nurse and each other. Where we found advice and sang songs and asked out loud and silently, am I doing this right? Will I be okay? Will this get easier?

Then to breweries and libraries and drop-ins and each other's living rooms. Where inside there was shelter from the elements, shelter from our isolation, a short reprieve from our worries and frustrations. Where a cranky baby could be held by someone else while a hot coffee was sipped. Where your little newborn turned into a real baby with a personality and you turned into a mother and all of it could be witnessed directly, intimately, lovingly.

This time around the days are longer and slower and quieter. And we're alone. No one is holding Mira outside these four walls. There's checking in, of course, and food drop-offs, video chats, and for a few months there distanced porch visits and clandestine Prosecco in the park. But it's not the same. It's too quiet and slow. The witnessing too distant, not enough.

Mira, once blue and still, is now always moving, making up for those first 30 seconds every day with dino noises and refusing sleep. When she does sleep, she wakes up slowly, full of cuddles and smelling like fresh bread. She is a full-mouth smiler, revealing crooked and wonderful teeth; a food-thrower and a stage-5 clinger.

When your family stretches and makes room for a new baby. When your 4 year-old grows into a gentle big sister, dance moves and fart sounds perfected to make her sister giggle. When your baby turns into a whole person who throws books at you because she just can't wait to hear them. When it's all harder than you ever imagined it could be, you want to really be seen, to be supported, and it's just not possible. It's just not safe.

There will be the after, the other side. Vaccines. Visits with grandparents, sleepovers with friends. There will be more people and more noise and more presence and support.

But we'll never get back what we lost. There's no making up for the distance and space, the fear and burnout.

And yet.

There's this pandemic baby, born in grief and loss, yes. But also born into love and making her own light. A dramatic entrance, followed by deep slow and quiet. This full life tangled up with loss, even before she was born. Maybe it's the both/ and, the ambivalence, the hard and the joy that is there for us to embrace. To accept. To sit with. To meet.