The Rural Diaries

by Hilarie Burton

  As we neared February, she told me, “The head is very low. I can feel it.”

  “She’s coming soon, right?”

  “It seems that way.” Shit. Jeff had killed himself over the past year, working crazy hours and coming home from Georgia every chance he got. It was a heroic show of endurance and commitment to our family and farm, but we’d decided that once George was born, he’d take some time off. That meant knocking out as much work as possible before her arrival. He was headed on a cruise for The Walking Dead, a convention that thousands of fans were attending partly based on the assurance that he would be there. Right after that he was booked for another convention on the other side of the planet in Australia. “Honey, I’ll be home by the sixth,” he told me. “Baby isn’t coming till the eleventh.”

  “You know that’s not written in stone, right?” I countered. “She could come any day! I can feel her head now!” I was antsy and worried. I wanted to move around like the cows do out in the field when they’re getting ready to go into labor.

  Throwing on my boots and an old military surplus coat, I walked the perimeter of the farm. I labored under my own weight and against the eight or so inches of snow I trudged through. It felt good. Be like a cow was my mantra.

  Only this cow overdid it and twisted her ankle.

  When Jeff came home from the cruise, we had to have a serious talk about the Australia trip. “Babe, she’s coming early,” I fretted. “I’m dilating already.”

  “But I’ll be there and back days before the due date.”

  “I. Am. Freaking. Out.” There was no other way to say it. I needed him. In the last days of what I knew would be my last pregnancy ever, I needed him to lie in bed with me and make me feel safe, and no other person on the planet could fill that role.

  He stayed.

  The weekend of the Australia trip flew by. I was having continual contractions, but nothing was kicking into high gear. My mother had come up weeks before, stocking the fridge and freezer with food. My dad had taken the week of the eleventh off work so he could drive up and be here for the birth. Each day, Gus, my parents, and Jeffrey sat around staring at me.

  “Today?” They’d ask.

  “Maybe.”

  This kid had been killing me. She clearly wanted out. But she was toying with me.

  My mom’s birthday, February 7, came and went. I was big as a house, but we took her to dinner at Le Petit Bistro in town. That place is the Cheers of Rhinebeck. Everyone we know goes there, so of course we ran into various friends, who all noted, “You haven’t given birth yet?”

  No. Not yet.

  The eleventh came and went. Nancey continued to check me out. “She’s still just hanging out. Very low. And you’re still 2 centimeters dilated. I can’t believe you can walk!”

  I took a peek at the journal Gus had started keeping. Day after day he wrote the same thing: “Still Prignit.” Yep, still pregnant.

  The week dragged on. On Valentine’s Day, Jeff presented me with beautiful amethyst earrings, a ring, and a necklace. I was dripping in our daughter’s birthstone. Bruce over at the jewelry store had outdone himself. “It was gonna be a baby present,” he said. “But she’s taking her sweet time.”

  I was mortified. I’d been so convinced that our girl was coming early. She was clearly as bullheaded as her mother.

  My dad was going to have to leave that weekend, and I was so sad at the idea of his missing George’s birth. Lord knows he wanted nothing to do with the delivery room. But my dad loves his grandbabies, and a twelve-hour drive to the farm and back was nothing to him—but so very much to me.

  Five days after my due date, I lay in bed with Gus and Jeff. In the quiet of the morning, the rising sun caught the snow on the ground and filled our bedroom with bright white light. My boys glowed. I turned to throw an arm over the both of them, and felt an odd sensation. Like I had to pee, but different.

  Tossing off the covers, I stood up, took two steps, and my water broke.

  “Oh my gosh!” I yelled. My water hadn’t broken with Gus. This was alien territory. I grabbed towels and started cleaning up the mess, but every time I moved it just kept coming—like an oily saline solution. I was doused and needed help.

  “You okay?” Jeff mumbled from bed.

  “Um, I might need your help.”

  I called Nancey. “Are you having contractions?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Okay. Meet me at 11 at the hospital, okay? I’ll bring some homeopathic aides.”

  Jeffrey loaded my bag into the truck and drove my mother and me over to the Neugarten Family Birth Center at the hospital. It was a cheery space, dedicated to bringing life into the world. I marched in with a huge smile on my face. The ladies at reception said, “How can we help you today, ma’am?”

  “I’m here to have a baby,” I declared.

  Far from the wide open pastures where our creatures just drop their babies in fields, the hospital had all sorts of implements to help get you through labor. Nancey set me rocking on a large exercise ball and had little homeopathic tablets that she told me to put on my tongue every so many minutes.

  “Why? What is it?”

  “They’ll make your contractions successful.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, but they kicked in very quickly. Every single contraction was doing a lot of work. I rocked and rocked and rocked, and when the rocking didn’t help anymore, I moved over to the shower, where hot water pounded onto my lower back and I rocked standing up. Be a cow.

  Jeffrey was in his Carhartt farming gear, snow boots, and a baseball cap. He played music with his phone that he knew our girl would like. I braced myself on his arm as Stevie Nicks and Journey powered through the speakers. Then something shifted deep down in my guts and I just knew. I yelled out, “She’s coming!”

  All hands on deck, I was led to the bed. Back at Christmastime my mother and sisters-in-law had conducted a blessing ceremony for my pregnancy, gifting me with a necklace they had made of various stones to empower me during delivery. My mother stood next to me holding it and patting my back. Focusing on those stones, I prepped myself to push. But Nancey coached me to avoid the pain I’d felt with Gus. “Let the contraction do its job. And then bear down in between the contractions to push her down the canal.” Well that went against everything I’d ever heard, but I trusted her and listened. She held warm towels against me to protect my body and give it a point to push against.

  “I’d like a time estimate!” I yelled. “How long do you think?” There was a clock directly across from me. It was 4:50 p.m.

  “Soon,” the nurse up by my head said.

  “But like five minutes soon or thirty? I gotta know how to pace myself.”

  My mother looked over at her and said, “She’s very goal oriented.”

  Nancey and the nurse took a look. “By 5 o’clock” the nurse said. Ten more minutes. I could do that.

  Any woman who has ever had a baby will tell you that those last few minutes are outrageous. The thoughts racing through your mind are insane. Why am I doing this without drugs? Who is this person inside of me? Did I put the clothes in the dryer?

  Jeffrey kept up the encouragement. “You’re so pretty. You’re doing so good babe!” This time he had fully committed to being down where the action was, excited to catch our daughter. At 4:58, I had the contraction that set our girl free—she gently popped her head out, and Jeff gasped as he took her into his hands.

  Cradling her head, he kept saying, “She’s so beautiful, mama. She’s so, so beautiful.” Then he brought her up to meet me. She was dark, with full lips and a head of thick black hair. She was perfect. After all those months, I could finally breathe.

  My dad and Gus arrived to meet our new family member, and I was literally up and walking around minutes after giving birth. I felt no pain.

  George arrived on February 16, five days past her due date. She shares a birthday with my brother Billy and with Meg, my manager.

  Jeff le
ft after a while to get me a proper dinner. He must have made a parade around Rhinebeck, because everyone in town knew George had arrived. He bought a huge bouquet at the grocery store and picked up sushi at Osaka, spreading the word. Everyone at Samuel’s heard the good news. Bruce. Ed. Mari Bird. All our Astor friends. Other shop owners in town. The outpouring of support and congratulations from this community of people who had allowed us in moved me.

  After I gave birth to Gus, I’d been so lonely. All these years later, to bring a child into this circle of warmth and kindness was everything I had ever wanted. A snowstorm kicked up, guests left our room, and Jeffrey settled in to sleep in a reclining chair. In the wee hours of the morning, a young nurse started her rotation.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “You know what? It’s weird. I feel perfectly fine. Like I didn’t even have a baby.” It was true. There was no swelling. No pain. I felt perfectly normal for the first time in months.

  “Did you have Nancey?” she asked.

  I nodded. “How’d you know?”

  “Her nickname around here is the Vagina Whisperer. She’s the best.”

  The Vagina Whisperer? Nancey had been underselling herself. She needed to lead with that in her sales pitch! She’s certainly earned the moniker.

  * * *

  George was a power baby. From the moment she was born, she held her head up. Everyone commented on it, asking, “Is she old enough to be doing that?”

  “She’s a product of the Me Too movement,” I’d say, half kidding. But as brassy or tough as I ever thought I was, my daughter showed me up. She took to alligator rolling, showing off her strength at an early age. She’d grab her sweet brother with such a tight grip, he wouldn’t quite know what to do.

  Our second Astor renovation was scheduled to happen a month after George was born. With her attached to me in her carrier, we created magic with the same team we’d worked with before. Every single one of them had shown back up, inspired by the kids.

  The boys in the unit were ecstatic. They made me paintings and thank-you cards and all worked together to make a big card to welcome George into the world. As we revealed the space to them, all their barriers disappeared. They came up to George and examined her little hands and chubby cheeks. I was so grateful to everyone at Astor for helping see Jeffrey and me through this journey.

  Spring came early. The next thing we knew, the farm had gone into full effect. The creeks were flooded with melting snow, and the flowers were pushing themselves up. Jeff was headed to a press tour for his film Rampage, and he knew he was going to be asked about George. He texted me from the airport.

  I’m scared I’m gonna slip up and say the wrong thing.

  I knew what he was feeling. When I was pregnant and we were trying to keep everything very hush hush, he’d been on a panel at a convention where he accidentally used the pronoun “she” when referring to the baby, and the entire crowd gasped. He dropped the mic and covered his face with his hands. Moments later he called me. “Babe, I messed up.” I wasn’t mad; I thought it was funny. News outlets ran the story: “Jeffrey Dean Morgan Accidentally Reveals Baby’s Gender!”

  He didn’t want to make another mistake, and I appreciated the concern. How people would find out about George had been weighing heavily on my mind. All those years of loss and failure and pain had been compounded by the constant barrage of celebrity babies. The capitalization of this holy moment hurt me deeply as a woman who had difficulty staying pregnant. I was jealous of the women who found it so easy that they could put it all out there for the whole world to see.

  “Let me write something, okay?”

  “I think that’s our best bet,” he said.

  It took me a while. George lay in my lap, lips all smooshed up and arms dangling off my leg. She was real. She had weight. She brought out the best in me and her dad and her brother. She made us laugh. She wore us out. I wanted to celebrate her, but not at the expense of another woman’s heartache. I sent Jeffrey a draft of the letter.

  As some of you know, @jeffreydeanmorgan is off in Europe getting ready to do some big conventions. And he’s self-aware enough to know that his track record for “spilling the beans” isn’t so great (bless his heart!). So before he starts tripping up in an attempt to maintain our privacy, he asked that I go ahead and post something about our little girl’s birth.

  But before I do that, there’s something I really want to say to all the women out there who are trying . . .

  It took a long time for Jeffrey and me to have this baby. The first time I got pregnant, it took a year and a half. I surprised him on Christmas with baby Seahawk booties. We cried. We celebrated. We picked out names. And we lost that baby.

  More losses followed, and as so many couples know, it was heartbreaking. It still is heartbreaking.

  And every morning of the five years it took us, I’d open my computer at the kitchen table and see the news and I’d grow bitter over the endless parade of celebrities showing off their bumps and babies. I’d weep out of jealousy for how easy it was for them. Didn’t they know something could go wrong? Didn’t they know that there were other women out there struggling? It pained me to see the corporate-sponsored baby showers and magazine covers capitalizing on this human miracle that wasn’t happening for us.

  So when this pregnancy started, we were cautious. I didn’t want to celebrate for fear of jinxing it. I didn’t want a baby shower. I checked her heartbeat every day, up until the day she was born. And now that she is here, I just stare at her in wonder all day. I see her in her daddy’s arms and I don’t take any of it for granted. She screams bloody murder and I smile because she is so wildly alive.

  So now that folks know she’s here, I don’t want her birth to cause any other woman to weep at her kitchen table. If anything, my wish is that she would restore hope for others. Fertility is a fickle thing. And for the other couples out there who have had dark days, we want to introduce our miracle baby to you and send you our love and support in finding yours.

  Please meet George Virginia Morgan. She was born February 16th. Her daddy delivered her. We love her very much.

  “Ah babe,” he responded. “I’m crying. It’s a lot to share. But yes. Post that. I love you.”

  I sent the message out into the ether, not quite knowing what to expect.

  The avalanche of compassion and women confessing their own struggles completely caught me off guard. Thousands and thousands of broken hearts reached out, each with their own stories. I cried as I read their responses, hoping they, too, would find something to share their love with—whether it be a baby or a labor of love like Astor, or a town like Rhinebeck. Or a place like Mischief Farm.

  I hadn’t dyed my hair in ages, and looking in the mirror I was confronted by a sea of gray. The previous ten years had changed me, aged me, prepared me.

  Mischief Farm had been the game changer. We’d tell people where we lived and they’d say things like, “Oh, that’s our retirement dream,” or “We wanna do that someday.” But with all of the loss we’d known, I wanted to scream, No! Do it now. Don’t you realize we only get one chance? New people we met assumed that Jeff and I could handle this lifestyle because we came from agricultural upbringings. No! We just wanted it, so we reinvented ourselves. I’m not a farmer. I’m a Burton. We’re liars.

  It was true. If we could pull this off, anyone could.

  “I think we should share the farm with people,” I said to Jeff one day while George rocked in her swing.

  “Like how?”

  “Like all the things we’ve discovered that we love about this place. The plants we love. The honey. The local artisans. Your knives and axes. We love those things. We should share them.” We pulled out a scrap of paper. Going all the way back to our Lonesome Dove beginnings, Jeff started fiddling with the idea of a cattle brand. To share the farm, we needed a logo. Something edgy enough for him but wholesome enough for me. We settled on a combined M and F with a circle around it.


  MF. Mother Fucker for my dearest. Mama Farmer for me.

  And Mischief Farm for everyone else.

  All the lessons we’d gathered from living here, from buying Samuel’s, from engaging with our neighbors and celebrating their talents—we wanted to share that.

  The same way I had been inspired by other people’s stories when I was low, I wanted to pay it forward and continue the message: Try. The want-to creates the how-to. And if all else fails, just fake it. But for God’s sake, at least try.

  * * *

  Our anniversary rolled up again in early May. Jeff was home, and, with George attached to me in her carrier and Gus running ahead, we took a family stroll down to the barn. Paxton jumped all over Jeffrey, Gus started his new favorite chore of brushing the girls, and Princess came up to inspect the baby. I hadn’t been down to the barn in a long while. My pregnancy had been a paranoid one, and I hadn’t wanted to take any chances. Gus brushed and brushed Ally, and I started really looking at her. “Jeff, she’s super fat.”

  “Yeah, she’s not doing so good, but I don’t know how to keep her from eating. You know, she’s in a field all day, you can’t really do portion control.”

  Then I got a good look at her from behind, and it dawned on me that she was 100 percent pregnant. Donkeys have an eleven-month pregnancy, and I’d gotten these donkeys exactly eleven months earlier. This girl must have gotten pregnant the day before we got her, and we just thought she was a fatty!

  “No,” Jeff insisted. “She’s just a chub.”

  The next day I ran out to the supermarket. No baby. I pulled back up the drive and peered in the pasture as I drove by.

  BABY!!!

  Jeff came tearing out of the house, yelling “No way!” Some farmers we were!

  We looked the baby over and brought Gus down to see it. “Is it a boy or girl?” he wanted to know. Jeff bent his head this way and that, trying to get a closer look.

  “I think it’s a girl,” he said. I seconded the motion.