Now I love you. I love you like in committee or times I'm Dan Jones and I'd merely this is the modern love podcast. Today's essay comes to us from writer, Katy Christie, and this I say actually made me gas when I got to the end- and I note gasped very often it's a fabulous story that feels like fiction and feels like fantasy, but it's real dear say is called. I met my husband on maternity wards. It's written. By keeping Christie and read by China. Small. My birth story,

which is also my love story, began forty years ago, in the mountain town of Spalding Jamaica. It is. told me time and again Two women who were there that April day, my mother Lorna and a stranger lurlene, who was giving birth in the same open ward. My mother in law, Lean lived in different towns far from each other in a tree what separately to the hospital in Spalding at the time. men had no place in the maternity ward, so my father Vivian a farm worker and learning. Has been Geral, a pastor were not there for the deliveries Laurie and low lean were expected to handle labour alone with help of nurses and doctors. These young women were the first generation even to have the option of giving birth in a hospital

had been born at home in crude conditions Percy, Junior Hospital and Spalding boasted no modern amenities, patient Let them bring their own food or have it brought? in thermoses if they wanted it to be hot. Fucking. Mothers also had to bring their own gowns bedsheets, even cloth diapers for their newborns. Was no privacy and learn lean lay nervously in their adjacent beds, while curtains separated them. They were connect it by their fear of childbirth, and it was that fear that let them to start talking my mother was the first to go into labor, which began with the piercing pain that only intensified.

As learn lean tells it. My mother began to moan and groan and quickly escalated to her mouthing unintelligible words in agony. Le Lien was overdue and believed that she should have been the one to be in labor. shifting in her bed. She maneuvered her swollen and wobbly feet to the floor and cradling her protruding abdomen water to Lorna's bedside.

with her past, her husband Earlene was a religious woman, a praying woman. She in general that a small church and cask aid, so she prayed for my mother at her bedside. She later told me that witnessing my mother's agony was akin to watching a body being split in two by mother, moaned and thrashed as if possessed Berlin was seeing childbirth for the first time and truly terrified her. She not only pray for her new friend, but also for herself, for what she would soon have to endure, as she held my mother's hand through each contraction and breathe with her in unison.

these women had grown up in a time when subjects like sexuality and childbirth were not discussed nodding. Between mothers and daughters, the nurse This did not take pity. On first time, mothers and offered Oh comfort, the nurses, failed to realize, however, my mother was in grave danger She was a hemorrhaging and growing the far Jack her legs shaking LE told me that the brown of my mother's irises even rolled over to review pure white and her mind, seemed to ebb and flow from awareness to oblivion. my mother's body, went still the nurses finally aware of the danger themselves around her as night fell. It would many hours before my mother would hear her babies cry cry for the.

on Monday April 13th, one thousand nine hundred and eighty one, my mother, awoke to the sight of me being placed in her arms by safe arrival with enough to calm the fear that it brought her to the brink. But she was desperately week the nurses decided she would need to remain in the hospital and extra for nights for observation. But my mother's happiness knew no bounds. Now it was low, leans turn and the weight of her pregnancy was starting to drain her. She, thought she was emotionally prepare to deliver. Her baby But seeing what my mother endured made her real at the thought of pushing life from her own body, then the doktor, with bad news, her baby was breech Need to be surgically extracted.

Merlin Haddan anticipated this, but Doctor explained that her life and the baby's life or endanger she might even have to choose between them. The word Your life or babies terrorized her Darlene wrestled with this choice at the doctor's warning rattle through her mind, She thought the two mulch was yet tender days of her marriage alive. Blossoming within her In the moment, she expected that she finally would hold the physical manifestation of her and Gerald's love Happen now.

As her mind veered between visions of life and death. She turned to her only source of solace prayer. she came to a decision. The baby's life Be saved early You suffered alone with the gravity of this decision. Despite her husband's absence at the hospital, they managed life together started building a home for the family, they were creating they maintained a farm and a church. General had made the long journey to the hospital when it was For his wife to deliver their child, but he was not allowed to stay so he had returned home. as low lean lay in bed

She worried about how Geral would react if he were to come to take his family home and learn Only his child had survived. She pictured his face perplexed by Doctor's words she saw his hands reaching for her in desperation and denial. To confirm that his wife was in fact absent from her body. Marlene Lean, hailed, the present her church, her husband and the life inside her then she exhaled as if letting go of all that might have been long, marriage, parenthood, their rightful future. Placing her hand on her bible, she glimpsed her wedding ring. She had removed it since general, had slid it onto her finger years before but she decided to remove it now.

The great effort as her fingers had swollen once it was off. She whimpered at the side of her bible and wedding ring. in life. They were her identity, but in death. It would be a memory yeah. If she were to die burly needed Gerald to know what had happened during her last moments, she approached my mother holding her Bible in wedding ring. She felt guilty, encroaching on such happiness, but she had no other choice. She didn't to cry. Upon seeing my mother holding me his eyes filled with tears. She put the in an Bible and my mother's hands, but the request that general received them. If she did not Make it out of surgery alive.

These symbols of love and commitment felt like cement and my mother's hands. She took a deep breath And nodded yes,. Even if my mother didn't quite realize the extent of learning trouble, she knew deeply. She had come to appreciate their newfound friendship. Their lean had one more request from my mother which was to have her read her favorite scripture song. thirty five. As the anesthesia deja through ruler liens body, my mother's words filtered through lanes consciousness. Plead my cause, o Lord. On Wednesday April, fifteenth two days after my mother had given birth to me. A new life safely emerged by caesarean section. a boy named Antonio

fourteen pounds. Antonio, was the talk of the ward, No one had ever seen a baby of such great weight wound up with stitches aching from her surgery and unable to sit up or move about Earlene and beside her new friend Lorna Leans delivery had been so dramatic and physically taxing that she would need time to heal, and so it happened that the nurse took on Tony or from his mother and handed him to mine. my mother dropped cuddled and sang to us both me a dean and their liens baby boy and time. Although we live two hours apart, that baby boy become my occasional childhood playmate

teenage Lover and now husband of fifteen years the together Antonio and I entered this world. And together for decades later, Three children of our own: we can new to level and its mysteries. you cops the. the. The. Katyn Christie lives in Fairhope Alabama with her family. Her husband is an artist and administer Katy it shares more of her story in her memoir. I am at home within myself,

The the. yeah, break a tiny love story about another baby and another. Unexpected coincidence.

I love spelling bee my boyfriend and I often play spelling bee together by together I mean sitting next to each other playing individually and not cheating. Sometimes when I open up spelling bee- and I see that you have completed a few words on your own, I feel a little betrayed in sorry. It may have happened again today. I have one friend who I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words that I always get nervous that I sent it to my parents or something like that when my dad was like the first party together- and I wish her out- I think I got it see it J, a c k, p o g jack, but we hit the jackpot panicked, yeah, Elrond, nice, I'm same as earth's sky. The digital pulses editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee in all our games at N Y Times, dot com, slash games.

I swear I do I need to put headphones on totally. I only have my little boys so. Hmm. I'm Sarah Reynolds Western and I live in Anchorage Alaska and I wrote the tiny love story and unexpected sign. I, thirty and knew I couldn't have a baby. Accompanied my pregnant friends shopping one day. I pie Over a striped one see with the crab sewn on the back side,. I told her. If I ever had a son, I would want him to wear it. eight days later, I went to church and saw an infant snuggled in his grandmother's arms.

She was wearing the same ones who, at the end of that day service. The reverend announced that the baby was in need of an immediate home. Two days later, he moved into mine now his eight and my son, was it, Painful for you to go shopping for baby clothes with your friend was pregnant That you can have biological children Painful in some ways she was my best friend and she found out. She was pregnant right around the time that I found that I couldn't have children and

I think I tried to comfort myself by supporting her through her pregnancy. I threw her baby shower. I actually made all of the body and for her child, so she has like a quilt and a little ruffle for the credits and curtains. and you had been trying to have a child for some time at that point. Yes, they had so I had to go through a series of fertility tests I'd have reason to believe that I couldn't children. That was just hard to digest and sit with happening deep depression, my husband, It has had Good qualities, but there are a lot of traumas and I don't think he responded very supporting Lee and so is early painful set of time. For For a lot of different reasons: Soder,

this time? Were you thinking of adopting I was I had not relinquished the idea of being able to have a child to bring a child into the home, and my husband had not Firmly said no, but he did not really want to go through the adoption process, and so I think we were a little bit at odds about it, so When I was in the store- and I saw the outfit, you know why I had these matter. the feeling maternal desires, but it just caught my eye. Yes, the for once. He. What did it look like you just describe it a little bit it was his gray and white striped and butter. the front it had read, readin around like the front buttons and like right, where the baby's bottom is. There's this little red crowd. That is like smiling kind of goofy, It is just like this little red, smiling browsers to think like right over there.

It just seemed cute, aha so you didn't get the ones onesie but I told my husband about it that night and then essentially a week later, days later, you're in church and you spot the ones he again what happened. Next, yes, So at the end of the service, the reverend would come up and skip these announcements and he was standing there and the woman came up and joined him and said what you might not know is this baby, it's a home and he needs it. I first day, and so, if there is anyone here who is interested in, you know fostering him to adopt. Please let us know and sets incredibly unconventional the family, had not wanted to go through the standard process. If they could avoid it because they didn't want the child to have to bounce around between foster care homes and

they were having a hard time. Just how do you go around town and find someone to take a baby. And I'm not a crier Here again poured out my cheeks. And I had all kinds of Russia's of feelings and emotions and thoughts, Instant Lee, And I didn't think my husband would go for it. Yeah and I felt a hand on my lap Dover and he whispered. Are you thinking what I'm thinking and flabbergasted sake, yeah, so they wrapped up the service and we kind of hung back for a minute and we slowly made her way to the front of the crowd and

they took her name and phone number. It happened really quickly. I mean possible that my world turned upside down in the matter of like two days. I can't make sense of it but what I do know really believe is that we were all meant to be together that we were linked. That is the great honor to be able to be his mom and try to help him navigate. From a very young age The complexities of files and family and boss- And success: what's he like? He has more energy than anyone. I've ever met ever Yeah he is Tall and skinny, like his mom, he is going to tower over me and a matter of years. he tries everything I mean,

if he is outside and can move and jump over it or climate what is doing amazing I'll? Thank you so much. I really appreciate you guys inviting me to show the story. Take care by Modern love is produced by Julio Taro with help from HANS Buteux. Daniel key met an illicit dudley this week, so was edited by Sarris Harrison

our executive producer is Wendy Door. This episode was mixed by Korea shrapnel and this week's essay was written by Katie and Kristi and read by Shane a small special things, dictating Christie and Lorna Howl, and also to Julia Simon Mahima, to Bonnie Bonnie Wartime. On yesterday me and SAM Dolnick, LISA Tobin, Corey, Seca and Ryan Wagner at autumn.

I'm Dan Jones. I merely will be back next week with more stories from modern love. Thanks for listening.