By Katie Blackburn
@katiemblackburn

The midday sun was streaming in from the west facing window above my napping husband, and our fifth baby, just a few hours old, was curled up and sleeping in the small nook between my breasts. His dark brown hair was still covered with vernix and my hair still more or less looked like I had been dragged in by it. There we were, resting in the calm after the storm—three warriors exhausted in the aftermath of the battle of a hard, unmedicated labor. 

Still, it was the first truly peaceful moment of the—the nurses had all left, my wounds had all been stitched up and put on ice, and my brown-haired boy was already easing in to his new home outside my body. I sat myself up in the hospital bed to adjust my pillow, and that’s when I noticed it: my husband’s wallet lying open on the windowsill, all of its contents singularly beside it. His phone was on a tray nearby, turned off and facedown on a towel. I don’t remember if I drew any conclusions about this in the moment, I just remember seeing it. Then, with the pillow in a much better spot, I laid back down and tried to grab the first few minutes of sleep I’d had in 34 hours.

The next morning I asked Alex if he would go downstairs to the nice coffee shop and get me a decaf latte and a bagel, a request he was happy to honor as neither of us were loving the hospital food we’d been offered. He turned to the windowsill and started putting his cards and license back in his wallet, and again I did not even think to ask him about why they were lying out all over. But he collected his things and dutifully went to fulfill his wife’s craving, returning with breakfast just as our midwife came in to visit us.

“How’s everyone doing this morning?” she said with enthusiasm.

“We’re great!” I responded. And we really were. So tired, yes. But we had all fought hard for the unmedicated labor I wanted so badly and against many odds, we had done it. 

“Let me see this baby again,” she said as she lifted his white beanie up just enough to smile at the head of brown hair he came out with. “Oh, he’s even cuter 24 hours later. And how’s your pain mama?”

“Honestly I feel great. He’s nursing well, I’m peeing, what more can you ask for postpartum?” I said with a chuckle. 

“Well, you earned, you all earned it. How are you this morning dad?”

“Oh I’m doing great too,” he said with a mouthful of bagel and a smirk as he lifted his large coffee, “I’ve got food and coffee, what more can I ask for postpartum?”

Cyndie, our midwife, chuckled and asked him, “Did your phone turn back on?”

“Oh yeah,” he said, knowing exactly what she was talking about, “it came back on after it had dried for a few hours.”

“Oh good, I was hoping you wouldn’t have to worry about getting a new phone right when you bring your new baby home,” she said.

“What happened to your phone, babe?” I asked him. “Did it get wet?”

“Well, kind of,” he laughed back as he and Cyndie exchanged a knowing glance. “It actually got soaked.” 

“Seriously? How did that happen?”

“Well, when you got in the bath for the final time yesterday and I was standing behind you holding your arms, you started to lay back and I couldn’t stop and say ‘hang on babe, let me get my things out of my pocket first,’ so I just sat down with you.” 

My mind immediately went back to the scene the morning before. It was 5:45am, and we had been in active, hard labor since 9 p.m. It was my fourth pregnancy, and I made the dangerous assumption that because my second labor was faster than my first and my third labor was even faster than my second, my fourth would be quick and straightforward. But this sweet baby boy of mine got comfortable sunny-side up, and his head cozied in just to the left of the way out, meaning that as my labor progressed he wasn’t moving down so much as he was moving in to my hip. My midwife was confident he would flip over to face down and as soon as he did, he would be out in minutes. 

However, everyone’s confidence was waning after nine hours of being stuck at 6 centimeters dilated, and my body, having been slowed down by significant contractions for the better part of 15 hours, was reaching a delirium point. One last time in the bath was our desperate attempt at keeping me there, before I, for lack of a better term, lost my ever-loving mind. 

I remember Alex, who was so willing to help, standing in the bathtub behind me to push on my back, and my doula in front of me kneeling outside of it. The contractions were ripping through me, and both of their attempts at helping me breathe and encouraging me with their words were blocked out by the pain that was unbearable at this point. I do remember feeling like I just needed to fall backwards, and though I didn’t give any instructions about it, I knew Alex was there.

Of course he was there. He had been the entire time.

I let the weight of my entire body rest back on him and without hesitation, he sat gently down into the water with me. I said nothing, but I knew he would catch me. 

“Oh my goodness, well that explains the wallet on the windowsill.”

“Oh yeah, the wallet was a bit water-logged,” he laughed. 

“Katie, you had the best birth partner I’ve ever seen,” Cyndie said. “Truly, I wish Alex could come teach a class on how to be a supportive partner.”

Alex, ever the humble man that he is, just shrugged it off. “You did all the hard work babe.”

“Yes, she did,” Cyndie cut in. “But you weren’t relaxing in the background, Alex. Part of the reason I was so sure Katie could do it after all those hours was because of you.” 

Alex gave a nonchalant smile, accepting the affirmation but clearly uncomfortable taking any sort of recognition for his role in this baby’s birth. But Cyndie was exactly right: part of the reason I knew I could do it after all those hours was because of Alex and his gentle, steady presence. He had been there for every contraction, pushing on my back when he needed to, holding me under the arms when he needed to, rubbing my hair back off my forehead when he needed to. I wasn’t always conscious of it; I wasn’t moving about that hospital room making sure he followed me. My mind was in an entirely different place and focused on a different (very tiny) person, but I still knew he was right there.   

As I think about how our love has changed in the decade we’ve been together, how it has grown and stretched and made room for five children and all the beautiful complexities parenthood brings to a partnership, I realize now what a gift it is to believe someone will be there, committed to the same end goal and working at his unique role as hard as you are working at yours. Where our young love needed a bit more affirmation, over the years, an underlying trust has grown between us, a security with one another forged through the kind of hard things our new, enamored love couldn’t have possibly understood. Arguing and repenting will do that. Long nights and crying babies will do that. Unexpected diagnoses will do that. Stretching yourself to places only the grace of God could carry you will do that. 

We both believe in the importance of telling each other the ways we see the hard work we put in to holding a marriage and a family and a home together; to say out loud the things that we are thankful for in one another. But we have also both learned to be ok with doing a hundred unseen things every day, to recognize when we need each other to, metaphorically of course, “sit down in the water” right then and there, even if we won’t remember it. 

Love for one another grows in the unnoticed gestures as much as the grand ones, and while it may be true that seeing is believing, it’s also true that faith is the evidence of things not seen. 

It will take our young children a few decades to realize how their clothes were cleaned and put back in the drawer or how their lunches got in their backpack. They don’t see it, and they won’t have the words to understand it, but they trust us because the evidence that they are safe and provided for is all around them. Even “grown-up” trust can be a lot like that; we won’t ever actually see the people we love do a million things, but the evidence is still all around us. That’s faith, and it’s also love: believing in what we don’t see right now as much as in what we do, and knowing that one day, we’ll see everything.  

Photo by Ginny Taylor.