In The Fourth Trimester, we ask parents: What meal nourished you after welcoming your baby? This month it’s a soothing porridge from Eating at Home author Trinity Mouzon Wofford.
Our first daughter, Ruby Natsuko, arrived on a Tuesday afternoon in late July. Her name is Japanese for Summer Child. She was born at home, caught by my midwife and warmly welcomed by her newly minted father and grandmother, who were there alongside me.
I hadn’t intended a homebirth when I received the welcome surprise of a positive pregnancy test. I have always considered myself risk-averse, pain-intolerant, and skeeved out by the sort of spiritual mumbo-jumbo that seemed to accompany an unmedicated birth.
I dutifully signed on with a traditional OB practice, but halfway through my pregnancy, I’d reached a breaking point. The practice had misread a test result of mine on the assumption I was Caucasian, leading to a flag that the baby might have a fatal birth defect. During the week between that phone call and my scheduled Level II ultrasound, I repeatedly cursed myself for being so nonchalant with my prenatal vitamins.
The ultrasound tech encouraged me to switch practices, citing other horror stories from my current group, and offered a list of other local OBs. I took the list, but remembered a good friend who had delivered her son with a home birth a few years earlier. I’d been reading Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth to better understand the mechanics of delivery, and had been unwittingly exposed to all the potential upsides of an unmedicated labor at home. It’s a real ’70s-commune-era book, filled with firsthand tales of ecstatic births. These days, many a houseguest has recoiled from the pages as I’ve displayed the full-frontal imagery with delighted gusto.
From the first phone call with my midwife, my decision sat with surprising ease. She heard about my experience and listened. She offered pragmatic responses to all of my antsy questions: What happens if there’s a complication in delivery? Simple, she said: We call it early and head to the hospital—the same as if you’d planned on that all along. Working with my midwife changed everything. She spent up to an hour with me at every visit, and my husband, Issey, was always welcomed to join. We only had a few months before my due date, but in that time we built a trust that gave me total confidence in my body, my baby, and her practice.
Early labor started overnight, but began in earnest the following morning. Issey, his mom, and my midwife’s assistant were there. I accepted back rubs and blew “horse lips” like I’d read about in May’s book. My entire goal was to stay as relaxed as possible and let the contractions keep doing the work—an extremely challenging task as the intensity continued to build.
My midwife didn’t come to the house until maybe an hour before Ruby was born. (First-time moms are notoriously slow to get through the early stages of labor, so she figured I still had a while to go.) I can remember so vividly the moment she walked into our home and placed her cool hand gently on my forehead. I was in the birthing pool we’d set up in our yellow music room, and as the waves of contractions pulled back, offering me maybe 30-second breaks between intensity, I experienced a dream-like bliss that placed me inside of another reality altogether.
On Ruby’s first morning, Issey made a big pot of okayu, the Japanese-style rice porridge served in his family whenever comfort and care were the highest priority. We sat around the kitchen table, me still in pajamas, and Issey gently cradling the tiniest set of fingers and toes I’d ever seen. It was one of those endless summer days, when the sun seems like it’s always been up and its warmth never quite fades. The recipe calls for plenty of seaweed, rich in nourishing minerals, and is deeply soothing and hydrating.
We still reach for okayu now, sometimes because we’re all recovering from flu symptoms or simply for want of comfort in the depths of an upstate New York winter. And every time I get the chance to enjoy it, I’m reminded of that fleeting sweetness of our first days together as a family of three.
Make the recipe:
Known as okayu, this Japanese comfort food will warm you from the inside out.
For more recipes from Trinity, check out her cookbook, 'Eating at Home':
Eating at Home: The Nourishing Practice of Everyday Cooking