Birth & Mt Kilimanjaro: what they have in common

My son was born a year ago today! Yay us! I'd like to thank my little man for helping remind me about some of the most important lessons I've learned, re-learned, and still need to fully embody. Sound mysterious? Read on!

We went the total hippie way- water birth at home- and it was awesome. What great memories! Besides my husband, two midwives and a friend who was a new doula tended to us from set-up to clean-up, so all we had to do was focus on the labor and then the baby. I'll spare you the details, but it was amazingly natural. There is too much hype around birth, so many fears, and then it was just so simple. I'm still stunned by that.

We human creatures are so incredibly capable, if we can just let go of our neurotic minds long enough to permit ourselves to do things. And, of course, we have to overcome other people's fears/society's dogma as well. We can do so much more than we have convinced ourselves of! My son's home-birth helped prove that to me on a very real, physical level.

It ranks up there with another test of mind and body that I'd experienced in 2001:

My husband and I climbed Mt Kilimanjaro for our honeymoon. I had this crazy idea, and he was excited to do it (he's much more fit than I) so we planned it, and then realized I had never even climbed a Fourteener (14 thousand foot peak here in Colorado). So I scrambled up three of those the month before we left to climb the 19,500-plus foot volcano in Tanzania.

Things were going well, until the alpine desert. I got separated from my water (my husband had it and hikes really fast) so I got dehydrated, and was hot, so I took off my shell while trying to catch up. When I caught him, I was so intent on drinking water that I didn't put the shell back on immediately. A freezing wind hit me and I started to shake, never to warm back up.

That night, I still couldn't recover. I threw up everything I tried to eat and became weak and had a terrible headache. Probably partial altitude sickness. After a few uncomfortable hours, we all got up at midnight to hike the remaining portion by night so that we could watch the sunrise from the summit. I was unable to stand without support from my hiking poles. I expected I would not make it, but after traveling halfway around the globe, I wasn't going to give up without a fight.

I warned my husband of my condition, and he said he would go as far as I could, and help carry me down to camp if I had to stop. I told him the only way I would stop was if I passed out. He nodded thoughtfully. Someone gave me a piece of chewing gum, and I didn't have the strength to chew it. It just lay there in my mouth. I put one foot in front of the other in the darkness, with just the little spot directly in front of me lit by my headlamp to stare at. Hour after hour in the freezing dark, I methodically moved my poles forward, then one foot, then shifted my weight. Then I'd do it again.

I had to occupy my mind with something other than the acute awareness of my physical misery, but my thoughts were pretty well monopolized. So I started reciting anything and everything that would come to mind, and tried to fit things to a rhythm that would match my slow hiking movements. Strange things I'd memorized and recited in elementary school, from school plays, passages from books, poetry, all floated through my head, but the best one was "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their nation!" that we chanted in theatre as an acting exercise. I must have recited that for hours.

My headlamp froze and died. My husband and I had to share one headlamp. The universe shrank to a tiny spot of light and life became surreal. My husband walked behind me, memorizing where to step based on what he glimpsed through the headlamp shining at my feet. Snot froze to my nose in an icicle (the infamous snotcicle!). I couldn't feel my hands, feet or thighs.

We stopped for hot tea, which mercifully stayed in me, and I began to have hope that I'd make it. I felt horrible, but I hadn't passed out yet! I went from having to take one deep breath for every step I took, to having to take two breaths for each step. But I also began to notice the stars, and the new moon was a brightly visible brown orb above us through the very thin atmosphere. We saw the most amazing shooting star that created a rainbow streak across the sky as it burned through the atmosphere.

The sky began to lighten, and we found ourselves on the saddle top, the lip of the caldera that makes up the peak of the volcano. We hugged and cried, and celebrated with a bit more tea and cookies. By this time, my head and kidneys were in pain, but I was again able to keep the food down. It was freakin' cold! My camera froze so I didn't get to take pictures. My water was frozen even though I had it against my body to keep it warm. We made it to the summit, celebrated, and had to head back down to camp immediately.

It was almost as excruciating to go down, except it was faster- we slid down talus most of the way. Do you want to know something else amazing? Not only did I make it to the top and back when I was sure my body wouldn't make it, but so did my mother-in-law, at age 55. And she had one less Fourteener under her belt than I did! My husband and his dad are a couple of mountain goats, so there was no doubt for them, but what my mother-in-law and I did defied expectations, and is a testament to the mix of stubborn resolve, stupidity, discipline, and romanticism we both clung to.

We made it. What else can we achieve? Why not make big plans and hold up a sign that says "Adventure X or bust!" We really are capable of much more than we permit. My goal is to learn how to permit myself to dream big, flail at times, and live big. That's what the UFC race is all about for me: continuing to challenge the perceptions of what us 'normal' people can really do if we put our minds to something.