Pat + Sierra + David

Living with Pat through the nine months of her pregnancy felt like bearing witness to the unfolding of a new world. Our household – Mary, Bob, and I – watched her grow, becoming gravid, big-bellied with child. We were aware of other changes to her body – lower back pain and leg cramps, ankles swelling and breasts swelling. Pat never did anything halfway: her normally short temper sometimes became microscopic, her sudden mood swings could catch us off-guard. She developed quirky cravings. At her request, I smuggled chocolate malts from the Pearson’s Drug Store soda fountain and hamburgers and fries from McDonald’s into our vegetarian and no-processed-sugar household.

She was determined to have a home birth. A mainstay in our household was a heavily annotated and dog-eared copy of Ina May Gaskin’s book Spiritual Midwifery. Home births and the midwives who attended to them, widespread till the end of the nineteenth century, had become nearly extinct by the 1950s. Hospitals and their primarily male obstetricians[1] had taken control of the birthing process, and women were adversely affected by practices such as unneeded epidurals and episiotomies, general anesthesia during childbirth, and forceps deliveries. But even though they weren’t legally sanctioned in Iowa,[2]a midwife and her trainee were working out of the Emma Goldman Clinic for Women, founded in 1973 and operating out of a roomy Craftsman house on North Dodge Street.

There was a kink in this plan. Pat’s irregularly shaped uterus had raised the risk of childbirth complications. The growing fetus was in transverse, or breech, presentation, that is, its backside was facing the birth canal, not an ideal way to enter the world. Not only would a home birth be extremely difficult, a cesarean section might be required. In the weeks leading up to the due date, the midwives visited Pat regularly and massaged her belly, using manual pressure to encourage the fetus to roll into the ideal head-down position. It took several visits, but they were finally successful. The child was aligned, the stars were aligned, and Pat was more than ready to deliver.

Her contractions began on a Wednesday in mid-February, infinitesimally building in intensity. In an attempt to distract herself from the discouragingly slow progress, Pat and Zap, the father of her child, went to the Englert Theatre on Friday evening to see Close Encounters of a Third Kind. Richard Dreyfuss’s sleepless night feverishly creating the mountainous shape he was envisioning perhaps helped prepare Pat for her own sleepless night of intense labor bringing a human being into the world.

On Saturday evening, the midwives arrived. Pat allowed only select people into her second-floor bedroom: Mary, who was a pre-med student; Sharon and Amy, the two midwives; and Zap. In truth, Pat wasn’t sure she wanted Zap there, but felt he ought to be. Bob and I stayed close by, ready to help in whatever way we could. It was a frigidly cold night. Early that morning, the temperature had dipped to a low of -9℉, and would plummet to -12℉ the following morning. The furnace kicked on frequently, forcing hot air through the drafty American Foursquare house. For the first half hour, until they were confident Pat’s labor was proceeding well, the midwives left their car parked and idling in front of the house, ready for a sudden trip to the hospital.

The active stage of her labor was both long and intense. We were suspended in a bubble of nervous excitement and anticipation. The sound of Sierra’s first cries at 3:44 that Sunday morning felt like a miracle and, for me, a turning point. At the age of twenty-three, I sensed a new responsibility resting on my shoulders. I had played a small role in beginning the next generation, and began to look at the world in different ways. According to the final stanza of a poem I wrote that day: “I swear an allegiance/ to every moment, every detail/ filling the vessel of my body.”[3]

Later that morning, sleepless and bleary-eyed but high on the experience of welcoming Sierra after he emerged from the darkness of his mother’s womb and gasped his first breaths, I went out into a new world. After locating a pair of ice skates and walking the two miles to City Park, I skated one ecstatic figure-eight after another on the frozen pond, pondering the infinite as I scored the ice.

Pat had suffered a perineal tear during the birth, so after the placenta was expelled and Pat had recovered some strength, Mary took her to Mercy Hospital for medical care. The doctor sternly chastised them both, but stitched Pat up and sent her home. Seven months later, she finally filed the certificate of live birth with the Iowa Department of Health, making Sierra Soleil (his full name) an officially recognized person and forever identifying him as the offspring of hippies. She listed the father as “unknown.”

Six-month-old Sierra (GD was very protective of him)

Those first six months, I lived with Pat and Sierra at the Governor Street House. Zap was a full-time student, unavailable during the day. Little Sierra was often colicky, a handful. Some twenty years later, conversing with a work colleague, we realized that the year Sierra was born, she was living in an apartment in the neighboring house. She said, “I remember wondering about that baby next door who would cry at all hours.” When Pat would reach her wit’s end and need a break from her full-time job as a mother, I was ready to help out.

The oldest of the ten kids, I was always around babies and always felt comfortable with them. I watched my mother change diapers, placing her left index finger between the diaper and the baby as she stuck a diaper pin into the cloth, ensuring that she didn’t prick the baby. I watched her warm the bottle of baby formula (most pediatricians advised against breastfeeding in those days[4]) and then test its temperature by squirting a bit on the inside of her wrist before feeding the baby. I watched her hug the baby to her chest, its head resting on her shoulder, heartbeat to heartbeat, while she gently patted the baby’s back till it burped. I watched her rocking the baby, softly crooning “Rockabye Baby” until the child fell asleep, and then gently laying it in the crib.

I was in seventh grade when the twins, John and Johanne, were born, and a sophomore in high school when my youngest sister, Christina, was born. Although my mother relied on my two younger sisters to help out, especially with the twins, I also lent a hand, playing with the babies, changing their diapers, feeding and burping them, and putting them to sleep.

When the weather got warmer, I would take Sierra for walks down the long block of South Governor to Bowery Street, past “the world’s smallest grotto,” pointing out the windmill, the wishing well, the fountains, all the seashells and broken pottery embedded in the masonry. His upset tummy would sometimes be soothed by the gentle jouncing of our walk or by my rubbing his back. During those long strolls, I made up a lullaby for him, sung to the tune of “Old Paint”:

Settle down, babilee

Lay your head upon my chest

The night is gettin’ lonely

Let’s forget about the rest

You’re my choc’late-eyed darling

I’m your everlastin’ friend

A soft bed’s waitin’ for ya

Time to sleep, time to pretend

Chorus: Oh, it’s only heat lightnin’

Not for you to fear

The days will grow longer

And stretch into years

Goodnight, Sierra

Goodnight, Soleil

The late summer breeze

Is gonna carry us away

Lead us down to the depot

To the trains without a home

I’ll wrap you in this darkness

Sing a song of how to roam

Chorus

When the sun rises

Little baby, I’ll see you

Ridin’ on the sky trail

Kissin’ sweet summer dew

On the shoulders of the mountains

That’ll take you where they will

To the wispy cirrus clouds

From the lowest foothills

Chorus twice

As I helped Pat care for Sierra, our friendship grew deeper, but then hit a snag. Upon graduating from the University of Iowa that December, Zap decided to move to the West Coast to pursue a career as a musician. Pat felt caught between staying in Iowa City and following him. She wasn’t sure she wanted to spend her life with him, or even live with him – in his commitment to his music, Zap could be self-absorbed – but she decided to go for Sierra’s sake. She knew how it felt to be separated from one’s father at an early age, and was counting on the benefits for Sierra of preserving their tenuous two-parent arrangement.

Although the three of them flew to Santa Cruz together, they decided to live separately. For Pat, it was a long lonely winter. On warm days, she’d take Sierra to the beach, and read novels while he played in the sand. Zap helped with the rent and child care but was growing increasingly critical of her parenting style. By June, Pat had had enough. She missed the friendships she’d formed in Iowa City and the support of that community.

When Pat and Sierra returned, I was delighted by the news. Seeing them again, I realized how much I’d missed them both. I’d bike out to their new home in the Lakeside Apartments complex on the southeastern outskirts of the city, and chat with Pat while we watched Sierra play with his blocks and toy trucks. I’ve been reflecting lately on how close I grew to Sierra during his first six months, that we were imprinted on each other. Zap was no longer in the picture, but all I was thinking about was how happy I was to see the two of them again. Mary told me recently that Pat had asked her for advice: “David’s been coming around a lot. I don't know – what do you think I should do?” According to Mary, her response was “You should go for it!”

Pat and 22-month-old Sierra , weeks before I left for Mexico

It’s true I was starting to fall in love with Pat, but I now realize that part of what I loved about her was Sierra. And yet, as close as I felt to them, I was still itching for the adventures of traveling. Seven months later, I took off for a four-month trip through Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. And a year after that, I wandered around Europe for another four months. I would never describe Pat as a patient person, but she was uncharacteristically patient with me, gambling that this sweet guy would eventually be ready to settle down. I like to think her gamble paid off.

Footnotes

[1] In 1975, according to the American Medical Association, only 16 percent of obstetricians and gynecologists were female. By 2015, 85 percent of obstetricians and gynecologists were female.

[2] In 2023, a state law finally allowed certified professional midwives to practice and perform home births in Iowa.

[3] To read the entire poem and hear more about Sierra’s birth and living at the Governor Street House, please go to my blog post Finding My Place #2: Communal Life.

[4] “Breastfeeding in the Western world declined significantly from the late 1800s to the 1960s. One of the causes was an increased reliance on pasteurized milk and baby formula products…. By the 1950s, the predominant attitude to breastfeeding was that it was something practiced by the uneducated and those of lower classes. The practice was considered old-fashioned and ‘a little disgusting’ … and discouraged by medical practitioners and media of the time.” –Wikipedia

Coming Back to Pat, March 1977