We’re Having a Book-Baby

This is the tenth in a series of guest blog posts by up-and-coming author, Suzanne Hersey. Her first book, Faith, Food, Family, will be available from Iaconagraphy Press in Spring of 2019!

I am in labor and so is my editor. There was a time, centuries ago, when a midwife would stand, like a living chair, behind a birthing mother and they would bring a child into the world, wrapped in each other’s embrace. Childbirth is natural, painful, and takes a few weeks to recover, and then you have that little life, depending on you. Giving birth to a book is a lot like that….

My first child was born in a room full of women who loved me. They all were there, helping me push. My Mother was by my side for two solid days. My Father was back at my little rented cottage, cleaning all of my furniture. My sisters in friendship Lisa, Brandi, Pauline, Elaine, my beautiful doctor with the deep soothing accent, and a very large and powerful, soft and gentle nurse, named Mary. My body was breaking; they took up my legs, my Mother clutching my hand and soothing me, and they helped me push my son into the world. He was perfect. He got sick a few weeks later and was in the hospital; I was terrified I would lose him. I would give my life for my boy; he is my light.

My second child was born in Salem. It was Friday the 13^th, and my doctor, my friend Maura, begged me not to go into labor on her one day off, as she had four boys and no sitter. Her children sat outside the room while she pushed me through an hour and a half of fast and excruciating labor. The room was cold: it was my now ex-husband, a nurse I cannot even remember, and Maura, staring at me from between my legs,telling me to push and keeping my now ex down on her end because I had already threatened to slit his throat if he touched me again. My princess came quietly into the world and her father held her before I could. She is my center. He asked Maura to toss in a “courtesy stitch”; she also threatened to slit his throat. She kissed me gently, left, and gathered her children. Speed doesn’t matter. It hurts to push a 22 centimeter object through a 10 centimeter hole, no matter how long it takes. My daughter was perfect. My Mom came and held her, but there was always this thing, hanging there; this part of us that knew I had wanted her by my side again, and that she was not allowed in.

There was another baby that never happened. I was 17 and lost my virginity, became pregnant, and quickly miscarried. It was ugly, bloody, and painful, and I did it all on my own. No one was there to say goodbye with me to the little soul I never got to know. I know he is out there somewhere, as someone else’s baby, and that he is loved, and maybe he will find me one day in passing, and maybe we will “know”, and maybe he already has.

The book-baby is coming. Michelle and I are clutching each other, screaming in pain and fear. We are standing on a precipice together, birthing what we love. This has been an elephant-like gestation, fraught with delays, mishaps, chaos, tears, and joy. There is no one else I would want on this journey except my Mommy. I know she is here, in those pages with her recipes that I have kept the same and the ones I have made my own. She is here in the smiles of my grown children, when they listen and tell me they are proud of me. I know she is there with Michelle, pushing her forward, when her eyes are giving out and her head pounding from a full day of formatting and inserting commas where I so often leave them out.

I have the same love and terror for this baby as I did my others. What if someone takes it from me, hurts it, kills it, and bullies it? What if this book-baby is so amazingly powerful that she goes off to live on her own and doesn’t need me anymore? What if I work on the next book and the book siblings do not get along? What if Kathleen the Amazon Review Bully comes after me or Michelle? Will my village stand by me, as they did when my son was in the hospital or my daughter was traumatized by our home being robbed? I don’t know if they will, but I know Michelle will. She is my editor-midwife, my best friend, my sister, and I trust her as I trusted that band of women in the delivery room the first time and lone Maura the second time.

So I ask you, my friends and family, to love and accept this child, though she may not be just like you. She is unique. She is special. Maybe she will not change the whole world but, like my other babies, she will change someone’s world, and that is perfectly fine with this Momma.