I stood in the kitchen, peeling knife in hand, scraping the wrinkled beetroot skin, staining my hands purple. Not the violet purple, the bloody purple. The kind that looks like an accident – like it was meant to be purple but slipped into red on your cream colored hands.
I sat in a sociology class in college, 'Theories’ people called it, as my professor addressed my comment of the dislike of beetroot staining my hands. She called it wonderful – a beautiful creation of the earth to stain the skin of the one holding it. Years later, I saw it: the unearthing experience to be stained bloody purple – the shade of something so tender, full of joy and yet, somehow, tinted with gleams of sorrow: unearthed & rooted.
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I stood in the shower as the warmth of the trickling water quickly faded to cool – the earthy breeze in the rainy season and the damp air greeted my moistened skin. The small water heater attached to the wall above had emptied. My hair continued to gather at the drain, handfuls of hair freed from the head. The house was quiet. Alone. Almost six months postpartum and the first time my babe was far from me. He accompanied his taata for a quick trip to the bank on a full and happy stomach, diaper bag, baby carrier, and a few toys in tow. The water washed over and took me back.
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Eight months rounded, knees bent slightly, standing in the bathroom of blue tile and no barrier between shower, toilet and sink. The bright blue flowers on the floor; the baby blue squares on the walls. I leaned and arched with my hands on the sink, fingers curved along the edge, head down, back flat, belly toward the flowering blues. Breathe. Rock. It had become a simple melody for my welling body; the cold water a refuge in the December heat south of the equator.
Nine months and I jumped in the deep blue of a lavish pool. 39 weeks and counting, my body heavy but weightless in the water.
We laid poolside, side by side, greeted by a gentleman – a pilot from England, an expat in Uganda with his two twins, Rio and Paris. Appropriate names for the children of a pilot from England.
We made friendly conversation, and he asked my mom, ever so naive, “So what are you doing in Uganda?”
She replied with a pointed finger, “Well, I am here to be with my daughter for the birth.”
His eyes met mine, “So when are you due?”
The day was a Wednesday and I laughed, still dripping wet from my few laps in the lengthy pool, “Friday” I said with a smile.
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I was 25, a few weeks to turn 26.
We had traveled the country, walked miles off cliff edges and around zebras, sang and danced with village children, ate cake for birthday celebrations. Bladder full and squished, I peed in front of giraffes, 39 weeks pregnant and giddy. We laughed, we wondered, we anticipated. We were ambitious, and what a pleasant way to be as you await the gift of life brought earthside.
We returned from our ventures and fell ill. Headaches, neck aches, sore throats, fevers, congestion. 39 weeks and 4 days. Our days were nap and tea filled, caring for one another in the aches of illness. The day we had enough energy to move, we moved. We took a spa day lounging by the pool – swimming, nails, massages.
39 weeks and 5 days. Wednesday.
We sat together in the evening, the three of us, under dim lights on the edge of Lake Victoria. We shared rice biriyani. I began breathing through the cramps coming ever so slightly. In the car, I focused my intention on the waves. In the night, the waves grew.
The grey tiles, cool in color and cool on the soles of my feet, met me that night: the tiled floors, the tiled walls, the toilet directly in front of the shower nozzle. I stared down at 1:50 am to see the fresh rosy taint on the toilet paper like the newness of skin healing from a wound. It was the beginning: unplugged. 39 weeks and 6 days. Thursday.
Uterus contracting, excitement groaning, I packed my hospital bag – a few blankets and swaddles of orange and teal, baby clothes with cars in highlights of blues, my periwinkle pink scrunchy.
I moved, I arched, I laid, I breathed, I labored.
By morning we departed for the hospital, a few curves and bends in the road and we arrived.
Not long after I stood in the pasty shower, small as if standing in a closet, with the curved edges of white plastic coating the floor base. I wept. As blood coated my hands I tried to gather my composure. Top dressed, bottom undressed, I prepared for the water to take me away, to regain my strength. Regain my dignity. Reclaim what was stolen from me.
Before I could undress, they called to me – the doctor had arrived. I returned bedside and he knelt before me. His tone kind and gentle, he asked how I was. I asked raggedly, “truthfully?”
I wept as I told him – victimized at the hands of medical professionals authorized to care for laboring women. The midwife swept my membranes – separating the lining of my uterus wall from the amniotic sac swaddling my babe. She did not ask me; she did not tell me.
After my unutterable shrieks settled in the halls of the hospital, only then did she say, “Things should progress faster now, I did a membrane sweep.”
There are no words for the feeling of helplessness when someone steals from you; when someone steals a piece of you - your dignity, your ownership, your sense of self. Stealing – the action of taking without asking. Laboring – an action that held so much joy and expectation, tainted blood-stained red.
The waves had stopped. Abruptly. Completely.
I begged to leave.
We returned home a few hours after we had arrived at the hospital. Tear-filled, I undressed a body that felt far from my own, looked down at the swollen belly which held my babe – waiting for me, waiting for him. I stared at the cold grey tiles, the coldness filled my body as the warmth of the water stroked my skin – weary, marred, foreign.
I arched. I sat. I breathed.
Surrounded by love, flash cards with notes of encouragement, prayer, and some comfort pizza for lunch, I continued laboring. The waves returned and I rode them as they came – grateful again for the opportunity to breathe in, to breathe out, and to wait expectantly for the first breath of my babe.
The evening came, the tides rose, and we returned around the bends and curves to the hospital. I closed my eyes and released my fears, but my body held the wounds of the day.
Fully effaced and 3 centimeters dilated, the same as I had been hours earlier, we felt encouraged and courageous. My doctor optimistic that I would progress through the night ahead – only remaining with my cervix to fully dilate and birth my babe.
Black comb in hand, I moaned through surges; slept between rushes; squeezed my mothers’ hands, mimicked her breathing; walked the halls tied with a bedsheet around my body; held by and leaning on my husband; praying on the balcony.
The waves increased in intensity and duration, but the time between became longer. Five minutes. Seven minutes. The longest they had been in the 30 hours of labor thus far.
The sunlight careened: morning had arrived.
The doctor returned: fully effaced and 3 centimeters. No progress.
The words lingered the air; the options made available.
36 hours and fading, we decided.
I crawled on the gurney, removed my jewelry, held my husband's hand. They pushed me to pre-op. We were greeted with warmth by the anesthesiologist who remarked as I breathed through the contractions after 36 hours, “It looks like you’ve done this before – breathing like that through this pain”
I smiled in response, unable to respond as I continued my routine of laborious breathing.
We took selfies: a family of two no longer, an almost family of three to arrive.
I entered the coldness of the operating room alone; they lifted my body off the gurney onto the operating table. They asked what music I would like. Maurice Kirya: the melody I swayed my inborn babe to months before on the floors of Serena hotel. The raspy voice of the Mwooyo singer filled the room: soul.
My body melted into the table as the morphine soothed the waves to calm: stillness.
My husband arrived, head side. Our doctor prayed over the room, over the operation, over my body, over his hands, over our babe.
At 9:01 am on Friday, February 9th, 2024: 40 weeks to the day, Uriah James Katongole was born. He was birthed at the hands of grace. We cried and smiled lovingly at one another as we heard the voice of our babe. The hoarse cries of new life. We waited to meet him. Crying and pink, he was placed on my chest: silenced by his mama’s heartbeat. We caressed our freshly born babe, commented on his cheeks and his nose: joy tender to the touch.
They took him away, Taata Uriah in tow. He met his Oma as I laid on the table, in and out of consciousness, dazed from the exhaustion of three days’ labor. I slept on the operating table. I slept in post-op. When I awoke, I awoke to the internal question: “I just had a baby. Where is my baby?”
And at that moment, he was brought to me. Swaddled and nuzzling, looking for the thick cream of colostrum from the circle of dark brown. The nurses maneuvered as my lower body was motionless. He suckled, I awed. I begged my eyes awake, pleaded for awareness.
I called the nurses over and asked for my husband: where is my husband?
He waited outside the door and as they rolled me out, he met me, and we met each other. We had arrived: a family of three.
Two nights side by side on a reclined hospital gurney. My heart had grown, doubled in size, gripped by petite hands.
I was discharged on Sunday morning, the morning the water glistened his skin: the warmth of elbow-approved tap, gentle strokes, eyes reddened.
Through the bends and curves, we made our way to the house of sky blue.
Monday arrived abruptly with breasts engorged and a babe unable to suckle the swollenness. 7:00 am and the house finally quiet, sleeping, I struggled awake for a solution. By 8:00 we were on our way through the morning mist to the far end of the city. The day was filled with appointments. At the hands of those gracious and kind, we received advice, suggestions, and expertise. We returned home and were welcomed by aromas of chicken and potato stew and cinnamon streusel.
The grey tiles met me again. Five days later: stomach deflated, breasts enlarged, heart overflowing, and joy, despite hardship, radiating.
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It was unearthing to birth my mama heart: to be stained bright, bloody purple with joy beaming and tender sorrow lingering.
His name means “God is my light” or better yet, “Flame of God”. For he is the fire burning within me, and He is the flame, the Light of the World.
In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5:16
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