With Owen’s birth, I had the most amazing midwife on the planet, Sandhano Danison. He was born in our bed in our home in Missoula, and the care that I received in the months before the birth, during the labor and birth, and for the weeks after was phenomenal. I was very aware of the fact that the care that I received was not at all the norm. I trusted my midwife with my life and my baby’s life and learned things from her that I never would’ve learned otherwise. She was and still is an angel and one of the most important people in my life that I’ve had the pleasure of knowing.

Mark and Owen in our bed shortly after his birth. 2/11/2008

4 1/2 months pregnant and still in Montana.

Saying goodbye to my in-laws in Montana.

So moving to Mexico while pregnant and imagining who might be helping me with my second birth was a little bit terrifying. The bar had been set so high. But on the other hand, my first experience had given me a lot of trust in the process of birth, so I didn’t feel like it was quite as mandatory to have the ‘perfect person’. Luckily, I did find a wonderful doctor who seemed to be able to offer me the chance to birth in a way that felt good to me even if it wasn’t in my home.

In the waiting room of Tony’s office with Owen.

Doctora Tony was so great with including Owen in the entire process and keeping him happy with suckers.

The only thing that bothered me was that I had to have an ultrasound at 38 weeks. It was mandatory. This might not sound like a big deal to most people, but it really bothered me that I had to do something that I didn’t feel was necessary. I’d had a basic ultrasound at 36 weeks (which I also didn’t want to have) and felt like that was sufficient. With Owen and my amazing Montana midwife, it’d been left up to me to decide if I wanted ultrasounds. I’d had one at 7 weeks to confirm the pregnancy and due date, and that was it.

But I didn’t want to ruin my best chance at a natural birth, so I had the ultrasound at 38 weeks. I should explain here that Mexico has an incredibly high rate of c-sections. It is way higher than in the U.S. I don’t have the stats, but during my pregnancy I asked a lot of moms about their births. 9 out of 10 women asked declared that they’d had a c-section, and there was always a reason: the doctor said that my pelvis was too small, the doctor said it was just time to have the baby, the doctor was worried about this, the doctor was worried about that. The more women I talked to, the more I felt like a warrior who would need to fight for a natural birth. So if that meant have an ultrasound that I didn’t want, then fine.

Christmas Day, 1 1/2 months before India’s arrival.

The woman who did my ultrasound met me in the hallway in super high heels. ‘We are not in Montana anymore,’ I thought. She was the ultrasound doctor and would give me my results that same day, right after the exam. We briefly discussed my first birth, and I enthusiastically described how my son had been born in our home. She was not impressed. I had this feeling that something wasn’t quite right. The exam took a lot longer than I’d expected. In the middle of it, she got a personal phone call. She continued to do the ultrasound with the wand in one hand and her phone in the other for about 5 minutes. Finally, it was finished, and she was all business and no smiles.

We went back to her desk and sat down. The first words out of her mouth were, “This baby is no good.” “What?!” I exclaimed, in disbelief. “What do you mean?” “Well, the cord is wrapped around her neck one time, and your placenta is old, and your amniotic fluid is low, and if you don’t have this baby in 1 week, well, you need to have this baby in 1 week.” My heart sank. I’d felt all along that everything was fine with my baby. I’d just lost a bit of my mucous plug the day before. I’d felt intensity and had experiences that made me feel sure that she was coming at any moment. This woman offered zero warmth, zero information, just reported her findings, like, take your natural birth and shove it. I really didn’t like her and had the feeling that she enjoyed her power in the situation a bit too much.

We left the office in a daze. I knew enough about birth that I knew that it was normal for these things to show up at the end of a pregnancy. I knew enough about technology and birth to know that the more technology is utilized, especially at the end, the less likely a woman is to have a natural birth. But still, it all really got under my skin, and I was incredibly worried. I would absolutely do whatever I needed to do if my baby’s life was in danger, but I would not be railroaded into a decision that didn’t seem necessary in a culture that doesn’t trust the birth process. I called my doctor right away. She was very reassuring, but I still worried that things would just suddenly slip out of my control. I called my midwife back in Montana, and she gave me great advice and reassured me as well.

Around 8 months pregnant in Sayulita.

The next day, we went out for breakfast. I was feeling really down and worried and also still carrying a lot of stress with me from my sister’s near-death, when a woman approached me and asked about my due date. I half-heartedly answered her questions and didn’t really want to talk about my pregnancy. My gracious husband engaged with her, though, and through the course of conversation we discovered that this woman had the exact same thing happen to her in Seattle. She shared her story, and she shared how she’d had her baby within a few days without any problems. It truly felt like an angel had been sent to me to ease my mind and relax my body. It worked.

On Saturday, February 8^th, 2014, I woke up and instantly thought, ‘Rollie’s. Pancakes.’ While still in bed, I announced those same words to my family. “Rollie’s! Pancakes!” I’d only had the pancakes at Rollie’s once, but there was no stopping the craving. While we were getting ready to go, I started having contractions. After realizing that they were 5 minutes apart and steady, we decided that we’d better pack for the birth center which was about an hour away in Puerto Vallarta.  It took around ½ an hour, and by that time my contractions had stopped from too much excitement. So we decided to go to Rollie’s anyway and get those pancakes. Instead of walking the few blocks, we drove just in case we needed to get going to Vallarta.

At Rollie’s, I ordered the magical, thin wonders with a side of cheesy potatoes. My body knew something that I didn’t. It knew that this would be my only meal for the day and that I needed carbs. They were so good! I could only fit about half of the food into my pregnant belly, so we got the rest to go. Still no contractions, so we decided to go on a little walk from the restaurant. We wandered up and over a hill and through the jungle to a little beach and then continued to the main beach of Sayulita. There, we ran into friends from Missoula who we’d been trying to connect with before their departure the next day. It was perfect timing. We chatted and told them that the baby was coming soon and settled into the sand. As a ‘cocos frios’ vendor wandered by, I snatched up a cold coconut and slurped it down. I fantasized out loud about taking a nap in the sand. That’s when Mark said that we should probably head home. We still needed to walk to the car and maybe drive to Vallarta.

Once we arrived back at our house, I took a shower and hopped into bed for a nap. When I awoke at around 3:30, I felt strange. I wondered why I wasn’t hungry and just had a feeling that we should get going. So we packed up again, this time rather easily. I quickly realized that I was feeling some urgency. Once in the car and pointing south, the contractions returned and stayed steady at five minutes apart for the entire drive. Winding through the jungle, we were stuck behind some slow-moving traffic, and I was relieved when we finally popped out onto the straight road for the second half of the drive. I called my mom, my sister and Mark’s parents and chatted in a very relaxed and excited way, even discussing baby names with Mark’s mom. I was relieved that the day had arrived and that our baby had cooperated with my wishes to arrive during the day and with plenty of time to spare.

We’d just arrived at the birth center, and Doctora Tony is hurrying up the sidewalk.

Things started to get intense once we were out of the car and waiting to go inside the birth center.

As we neared the birth center, I texted Doctora Tony to let her know that we were almost there. She said she’d be there in 5 minutes. I’m guessing that it was around 5:00 p.m. Something changed when I got out of the car. Things started to feel really intense, and I was overwhelmed with the urge to pee. Since the birth center was still locked, I had to just squat next to a tree in the boulevard. Luckily, the birth center wasn’t on a busy road, and I just hoped that any neighbors who might see me would forgive me for my transgression. Once my bladder was empty, things quickly became even more intense. Just as they did, I spotted Tony coming toward us and that allowed my body to relax even more. More intensity. But still jovial and in good spirits.

Once inside, we hurried to get our things ready. When asked, Owen had made it clear that he wanted to be with us for the birth but agreed that our friend, Chantel, would hang out with him during labor. For some crazy reason, we thought it necessary to also bring our dog. She’d been having serious separation anxiety issues from being a stray and had run away several times in the last few months. Given the chance to do it over, we would’ve left Rosie at home. Everyone was hustling to get ready, and I just knew that we didn’t have much time given that Owen had come in only 4 ½ hours. I asked Tony to fill the tub and spent a few contractions slow dancing with either her or Mark, whoever was free at the moment. At one point, I got onto the bed on all fours like I had with Owen, but it was just too intense. I got off the bed and asked if I could get into the water. It was ready, so Tony agreed. As soon as I stepped into the water and settled into position on my knees with my head on my arms on the side of the tub, I was instantly in a different world. It felt amazing.

Owen and Tia Chantel got right down to business.

I bought these roses the day before at the farmer’s market thinking that when they opened, so would I. The God’s eye was for India.

In the zone. Being in the water was amazing!

While in the tub, I started moaning with each contraction. I remembered that with Owen’s birth I’d moaned, “Hohhhhhhh, hohhhhhh, hohhhhhhh” the entire time. Then at the very end, my midwife had said “Pahhhhh”, and as soon as I’d switched to that sound and changing the shape of my mouth from a tight ‘O’ to a loose ‘ah’, I’d had the urge to push. So this time, I didn’t fight the intense feelings and moaned “Pahhhhh” the entire time. I was very conscious of going with the power of labor instead of fighting it. With each contraction, the moaning got longer and stronger. In my mind, I was thinking, ‘Let’s git ‘er done.’

With one of the last few moans, Tony exclaimed that she could see the head. I reached down and felt her head, and I was amazed by how small it felt and that it was actually there. I was also stoked that I felt so much more in touch with my body than I had during Owen’s birth. During his, my midwife had asked if I wanted to feel his head, and I said, “Nope!” A push or two more, and my most powerful moan yet was matched by the call of a peacock in the backyard. Then she was born. She slid out behind me, as I was still on one knee with one foot on the floor of the tub. She floated into Tony’s hands, and Tony graciously floated her back through my legs so that I could see her. I will never forget looking into her eyes, wide open and still under water, so calmly staring up at me. Our gaze was so powerful, and I took in her full head of hair floating in the water. Finally, I felt like it was time to lift her up into the ‘real world’, and I brought her up to my shoulder. She didn’t make a peep and was filled with so much peace and grace. Mark joined me in the pool along with Owen, and we spent a very long time just looking at our new baby and marveling at what a beautiful and peaceful birth it had been.

India Blue Wehri, born on 2/8/2014.

The relief and release that I felt during India’s birth was extraordinary. I’d had a lot of stress and anxiety on my plate during my pregnancy: first, making the decision to have the baby in Mexico and turn down Mark’s job offer, then physically moving to Mexico, then my sister’s terrible illness and lastly, the ultrasound from hell. I’ve never felt so much relief in a single moment as I did birthing my sweet baby, India. All of the crap was behind us now. We’d made it. All of us. My sister and her own baby included.

Tired papa the morning after. She’s here! We did it!

Our little peanut!

Tired big brother gets to know his new sister.

It is impossible to tell India’s birth story without first telling the story of my sister. They are and forever will be intertwined. They share a place on the shelf in the history of our lives: of India’s and my sister’s and her baby’s. Of all of our families and all of our friends and of acquaintances and strangers and hospital staff. And of mine.

But before telling this story, I need to explain that this is only my story. Given the circumstances, it feels selfish and self-centered to write about my own experience. But it’s all I have. Soooooo, here goes.

After Owen recovered from his staph infection and viral rash, we settled into our new routine: markets three days a week and making artwork to sell during the other work days. There were also doctor’s appointments, and it seemed like we were constantly driving the 45 minutes to Puerto Vallarta. We were busy as ever. Eventually, we dropped one of the markets that wasn’t working out for us to free up some precious time. Thanksgiving came and went without much notice, because American holidays can feel so damn weird in a foreign country. Next thing we knew it was almost Christmas.

Our little Christmas tree with shrinky dink ornaments.

As we put the finishing touches on our first Mexican Christmas, I got the message about my pregnant sister, Chris. She hadn’t been well for the last few weeks, and she’d gone to the ER for what she expected would be a breathing treatment for asthma. But instead of a breathing treatment, she was transferred in an ambulance to another hospital with a NICU and admitted to ICU with pneumonia. H1N1 was the culprit. There was talk about an emergency C-section. She was only 5 months pregnant, while I was 7 months along. My mom was flying down from Illinois to Oklahoma City to be with her. The news was sudden and crushing. I recalled that my sister had posted something on Facebook recently about being sick. I’d been scrolling through and hadn’t even said anything. No “Feel better, Sis!” I vowed to never make that mistake again.

Instantly and once again, I wondered what I was doing in Mexico. Our ‘adventure’ felt shallow, incredibly lonely and inconsequential. I longed to be with my family and to see my sister but knew that I didn’t belong in an ICU or on an airplane. “I don’t know what I’m DOING here,” I frantically told my mom, not thinking about how my own situation might add stress to everything else she had on her plate. Later, my other sister, Jenny, told me that she and my mom were worried about me. That was a huge wakeup call. Get it together, I thought. “I’m fine. Really. Please don’t worry about me. Tell Mom, please don’t worry about me. I’m not the one who anyone needs to worry about.” After that, I just accepted that I was going to feel incredibly uncomfortable but that Mexico was where I was supposed to be.

Making Peanut Butter Buckeyes with Owen.

On Christmas Eve, I decided to make Peanut Butter Buckeyes with Owen. Chris had posted something about them recently, and they were always a family favorite. We’d had a few invitations for Christmas, but nothing had felt quite right. Then my friend Leia invited us over, and it immediately felt right. Her entire family was in town since the birth of her baby a month prior, and they were preparing a proper Christmas feast. We arrived with Buckeyes and wine and a need to be around some serious family love. The combination of Leia’s thoughtful and peaceful spirit, her ‘real’ Christmas decorations, her amazing family and her delightful, foodie husband was perfect. We really needed some Christmas cheer and found it that night. Later, her husband, Keith, would give me his amazing bone broth when I was battling a cold, and Leia would give me a giant bag of chamomile tea to help ease my anxiety.

Best purchase ever: fresh flowers. I’ve never stared so hard at flowers. It helped.

The week of Christmas, our Internet was down. I couldn’t communicate without it—I’d been making calls using Wi-Fi but mostly used Facebook messaging to stay in touch with my family. So a few days after the initial message regarding my sister, I went to a coffee shop to check my messages and found out that she’d been put on a ventilator. She just couldn’t keep up with her breathing anymore. The staff had been holding off for as long as possible due to the complication of her being pregnant. I read the message over and over again with tears rolling down my cheeks and surrounded by tourists on Christmas vacation. Being put on a ventilator also meant being put on a paralytic, which meant that she was in a medically-induced coma. I think I might’ve muttered, “Fuck.” I kept reading the words, hoping that they’d rearrange themselves and change the outcome.

The rest is a blur of bad news and anxiety. Chris developed some blood clots. She also had an infection somewhere that was causing a fever. She then acquired ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome) which can happen when people are hospitalized with pneumonia. As soon as I heard the news about the ARDS, I Googled it with a lump in my throat. High mortality rate. Odds not in her favor. Long recovery if she did survive. I asked my mom if she’d Googled it. She hadn’t. Did they know how scary this was? They did. They were there with her and witnessing it firsthand. The anxiety was overwhelming, and my sister occupied my every waking thought. There were nights that I’d wake up and start breathing very deliberately, in and out, praying simultaneously, ‘Sister, I’m here, you’ve got this, I’m breathing for you.’ Then I’d talk to family the next day and find out that she’d had a hard night the night before, that they’d thought they were going to lose her. This happened several times. Jenny said, “You two have always had a strong connection.”

I emailed my midwife back ‘home’ in Missoula and explained what was happening. She reassured me that it’s normal for pregnant women to feel vulnerable and anxious even without the added stress of my sister’s illness. And even without the added stress of preparing to give birth in a foreign country. Oh, yeah. Right. I was also battling my own demons, because I adored my midwife back home. She’d been there for me throughout my pregnancy with Owen and had attended his birth in our home. She was a wise and incredible woman who I fully trusted. No one could compare to her in my mind. While I was incredibly relieved and happy to have found Doctora Tony in Puerto Vallarta, I found myself very much longing for the familiar.

A sign in the grocery store parking lot.

To treat the ARDS, they put Chris into a crazy contraption called a Rotoprone bed. She was now in a coma, paralyzed and strapped face-down into this thing that swayed her back and forth. It all just sounded so Frankenstein-like. I felt more and more like I was losing her. Where was she? How was her baby? How was her baby possibly going to be okay? I researched the drugs that she was on. ‘Grade D for pregnant women.’ After a bit, I asked Jenny, “Do I want to see the bed? I kind of do, but I also really don’t.” Eventually, she sent me a picture of it with my sister in it. It sort of helped and sort of made it worse.

I became addicted to staring at my Facebook messages, waiting for a reply from family and for some good news. I’d lurk on her home page, since extended family would tag her in updates. I noticed how utterly faithful her husband was throughout the entire ordeal and how his updates were often in stark contrast to my own families’ updates. I’m certain it wasn’t easy for him, but his faith never seemed to lag. I wondered what was wrong with us that we couldn’t be more faithful. I sought out and found immense comfort from friends and family who were all praying for my sister. While I was just beginning to establish my Mexican community, our online network rallied around all of us in an indescribable way. It was incredibly comforting. And since I couldn’t NOT talk about my sister’s sickness even in casual conversation, I found myself more and more surrounded by caring people in Mexico.

Throughout her hospital stay, there was a sort of tug-of-war happening. On the one hand, there was Chris and her medical team. On the other, there was the baby and the baby’s team. There were doctors who were caring for Chris and wanted what was best for her, and there were doctors who had to concern themselves with what was best for baby. This is awkward to admit, but my concern early on was primarily for my sister. My feelings toward her baby were incredibly complicated. I resented any doctor who might not opt for the very best care for my sister if it wasn’t in the interest of the baby. Tricky, right? It’s hard to even write about it, but it was how I felt—absolute concern for my sister and a sort of ambivalence toward the baby, who was quite possibly lowering her chances for survival. It’s not that I resented him. It was more that I resented the situation. Throughout her weeks in the ICU, there was always the possibility of an emergency c-section. I was often confused. Was the concern for the unborn baby who would be healthier on the outside? Or was it for my sister who would fare better without growing another being inside? Or was it best for both? It never felt like it was best for either. And so the baby stayed inside. But later on, when they’d leave the room for the night with a scalpel placed strategically next to my sister’s bed, just in case, I realized that there was another element. Just in case my sister coded, they would try to save the baby. The image of Chris in her room with an isolette warming in the corner and a scalpel nearby just in case was, well, horrifying.

A sign in Sayulita.

I began to worry about how the stress was affecting my own pregnancy. I had to get a grip. I had to find a place of peace somehow. I had to come to this utterly helpless place of accepting that my sister might die, and that if she did it was meant to be. That if her husband and three children were left behind, and if my baby lived and hers died, and if our family suddenly had three siblings instead of four… it was all meant to be. And even though no one ever wants to find themselves in that place, it is ultimately where I found peace. I finally had, as I remembered from a nursery school song at church long ago, a ‘peace that passes understanding down in my heart’. I could not control the situation, and I needed to stop trying to control it. I had to let go of my sister in order to free myself.

Owen’s countdown calendar. Lots of important dates: my sister’s birthday, Mark’s birthday, Owen’s birthday and my due date.

And then slowly, very slowly, she began showing signs of improvement. Relief. A step forward and then a step back. They weaned her off of the ventilator. More relief. Then she was put back on it. We danced for a while between joy and sadness. And then, eventually, she was finally ‘out of the woods’—just in time for her birthday, January 22nd. HUGE RELIEF!!! And I got to talk to her on the phone. While it was the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had with my sister in her coming-out-of-a-coma-state, it was incredibly comforting to hear her speak. “I had a dream that you died,” she said. Once I truly believed that she was on the mend, I turned my attention more fully to my own baby’s arrival. She was due on February 16th.

Jenny, Chris and my mom. Out of the woods.

Sister, there are no words. You made it. I love you. You are a miracle.

In the fall of 1997, I quit my first ‘real’ job at Planned Parenthood of Missoula, sold or gave away most of my belongings and hopped on a train bound for Chicago. I was going to meet up with one of my best college girlfriends, and we were going to drive to New York City to start fresh and live with her boyfriend. As I made my way from Missoula to the train station in Whitefish, I looked at the low-hanging, ominous, dark clouds shrouding the Mission Mountains and thought, “Thank, God.” I’d spent a little over a year in Montana, and I’d loved it. But it had also been really hard and really lonely. I jumped at the chance to reunite with my friend who’d spent the last year teaching English in Korea.

Our reunion was lovely, and we quickly got down to the business of driving to NYC. After a quick visit to my Mom’s in central Illinois, we were on our way. The plan was to drive straight through in one day, and that’s exactly what we did.

About midway through our drive, my friend started confiding in me that there was maybe another guy that she was interested in. I don’t remember if I hid my shock or just laid it all out, but I was horrified. I’d just quit a job and sold everything to go live with her boyfriend while we found jobs and eventually found a place of our own. The Boyfriend was the key piece to this move happening sanely. Things got a little tense. As we approached the city, I asked if she could take over the wheel as she’d promised, and she froze. So I drove us over that giant bridge and into Manhattan at something like 12:30 in the morning. The skyline was incredible and overwhelming in our bleary-eyed state.

About 2 days into our stay, the boyfriend announced that I could stay, but that my friend needed to move out. They were breaking up. My worst nightmare was coming true. We both stayed on while we sorted things out, and I knew immediately that for me, this was a deal-breaker. This was not what I’d signed up for. I frantically ran through a list of possibilities in my head, all of which led me back to Montana with my tail between my legs. “I just had a going-away party,” I thought. “How can I go back so soon?”

With my favorite cousin in town with his new wife, I did have some fun during those 1 ½ weeks. I called it my ‘1 ½ week-long really stressful vacation’. Somewhere in there, I remembered a woman I’d met at my job at Planned Parenthood. She’d written ‘Montana Conservation Corps’ as her employer on her intake form, and I’d asked her about it. She spoke of building trails in the wilderness, working outside and working with her body. It sounded pretty awesome from inside that windowless clinic. And a heck of a lot less stressful.

So there I was in NYC, dialing the number for the Missoula MCC office. When Keith, my future boss, answered the phone with his gravelly, laid-back, hippie/mountain man voice—the polar opposite of what I was experiencing in downtown Manhattan— I knew that my future was sealed. I couldn’t have been happier. I ran to the nearest Kinko’s and faxed him my resume. Within days, I was back on the train, tail tucked in my back pocket.

This story is on my mind right now, because my niece is on her way to NYC to attend school at the AMDA College and Conservatory of the Performing Arts. My niece who just yesterday was five and holding hands with me on Rock Creek, asking me how mosquitos can see in the dark. My niece who grew up in my small hometown and went to the same schools that I did and has virtually the same background is moving to the big city. And she’s never been there! And I am so proud of her. To the moon proud. It’s painful to not be with her as she sets her eyes on that skyline for the first time.

Her story will be different. Yes, it will. And I can’t wait to see how it unfolds.

PS—The Boyfriend and my friend did in fact break up that fall. They parted ways for a good 4 years or so. Then they reunited, got married, had two kids and moved to Copenhagen. And yes, we’re still friends. 😉

I’ve been back from Mexico for about 3 weeks, and I’m finally getting myself and my new business organized. It’s been a huge transition. I was going full throttle in Mexico with a brand-new business that was just taking off. I was fueled by my own excitement and the fact that I was suddenly an artist making money! I was also completely burned out, truth be told. Then we raced back home (where is home?) to Montana for Mark’s job, and suddenly I was just me/Mom/Missoulian instead of ‘Artist Making A Go Of It In Sayulita, Mexico. Holy shit!’ Poor me. 😉 So yeah, the transition has been tough. They always are for me. But it’s time to get cracking and get at it again from a different angle. Here we go!