One Is One

you + me + small talk city

Feb 15, 2025

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A special edition of LOL today. In honor of my youngest daughter Lisette’s 1st birthday I am sharing a bit of my birth story and the birth of my newest creation, in partnership with the insanely talented and unbelievably stylish Amber Leigh —

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ONE IS ONE

by Tasha Tudor

Tasha Tudor, a children’s book illustrator whose nostalgic throwback lifestyle (she lived in a replica of a late 18th-century New England farmhouse) included spinning flax into linen to make her own clothes, milking goats and sleeping in a featherbed “with her nose pointing north”

Tudor was obsessed with a back to basics rural lifestyle and supported four children with her books and illustrations while running a 500-acre farm alone.

she raised her four kids in what must have been an idyllic rural lifestyle, putting on elaborate marionette shows and floating cakes down the river – without modern conveniences like television or even a radio (or even electricity, for a long time).

but it couldn’t have been very happy since

she ended up disinheriting 3 of her children and didn’t acknowledge 5 of her grandchildren.

We only know this because after her death there was a messy legal battle between the siblings who fought over her estate.

which makes the following photographs sad. featuring a young Tasha and her children as photographed by Nell Dorr for her book Mother and Child.

-Miss Moss

I wonder what childbirth and postpartum was like for her all alone in the country with nothing but her fantasies.

MOTHERHOOD

by One is One

If you love Ina May, stop reading. If you ever hired a birth doula stop reading. If you have a preference or judgment that vaginal birth is "natural," stop reading. If you're spending your pregnancy doing "spinning babies," stop reading.

If you have already read Ina May, did spinning babies, exercised religiously during pregnancy just as you did before, wished on a series of stars, turned your body into a temple, had the fortune of cooperative genetics, labored for five hours, and welcomed your child in a bed of roses, you will wonder why I was so sure I needed a planned cesarean with my eldest.

when there was no medical reason to have it.

and it’s not just you. everyone asked why. demanded!

"I'm a survivor of trauma; I don't want to be further traumatized when my child comes into the world."

selfish they hissed

but jokes on them because my oldest daughter's planned cesarean was the most joyful, meaningful, and powerful day of my life. so conscious. true and present.

Maybe it was selfish driving to the hospital at 5am, bringing her into the world with the first quiet sunlight.

now,

if you have read Ina May you'll understand the pressure I put on myself to vaginally deliver with you, my second.

Here's the thing — there are so many evil stepmothers in fairytales for a reason.

Child rearing is dangerous, and I thank g-d every day for the modern medicine that has allowed you and me our lives.

…

For one year, I've avoided talking about this. Or thinking about it.

To this day, when I visit my OB nurses, they whisper as if in the presence of a sideshow—they touch me light.

But I think about you, darling Lisette. It's your first birthday, and I just know that as my daughter, you will ask.

You'll want to know how you came into consciousness. How you survived your birth. How we fell so deep in love.

I'll tell you now, dear. While you bounce, learning to walk across the room so brave. As you find your first sounds. Communicate most in smiles. Chomp pretzels with your minted front teeth you cut night after night. I eat your cheeks and you and me we are us.

You are so brave.

a survivor from birth.

I'm deeply in love with you. More than I've been in my life with anyone.

But it wasn't always this way.

For a time, I wasn't even sure you were mine. Yes, you were born out of my body, but let me explain.

…

i labored on and off for one month before your arrival. i was sure you would be born any moment but medical professionals and witches alike told me no — i must wait.

but the pain incapacitated me for hours on end daily.

"Prodromal labor," they called it. Modern-day science for hysteria. i wept in pain, and mid-wives said things like, "The last month is hard."

I bounced us on a rubber ball night and night and night to "get things going."

At some point, in a haze of dates, acupuncture, and castor oil, I broke out in a full-body rash and was finally admitted to the hospital. My blood pressure shot up.

He set up a galaxy on the ceiling. Someone finally found my vein.

The machines said i was contracting. Dilated but not really.

i knew you had to get out so i sucked in poison that made the midwife sound like charlie brown as she attempted to break you out

it didn’t work. i left like scarcrow from the terrible batman.

Your dad was muddled. He couldn't help.

Doctors couldn't either. They just pointed to monitors.

practicing medicine on us.

Midwives advised a cesarean. The birth doula blinked and said she needed sleep. Nurses changed shifts again and again. i walked the halls alone with you, dragging my IV of Pitocin for us.

A meeting was called at 3am on my third night in the hospital.

No one could agree on why you weren’t making your debut.

then

like a wildfire, you got loud in me, and we threw everyone out, ripped the machines from my arms, and insisted on surgery first thing in the morning.

Back to life.

We stopped drinking. Stopped eating. Stopped dreaming.

The surgery was quiet. Somber. Different than the first time.

I didn’t know then, but this decision saved our lives.

…

and you were here

But I was gone.

You sucked at my chest. I was out of my mind with rags on my head and no sense of how much blood I was losing.

Did I die?

Doctor Liz came to our side.

She wanted me to know

there was a window.

When they looked inside me, everyone could see you floating a millimeter by death.

Uterine dehiscence can produce a uterine window—a thinning of the uterine wall that may allow the fetus to be seen through the myometrium. Often, uterine dehiscence is an occult finding in an asymptomatic patient.

and every moment of my month-long “labor,” when I thought I was having contractions, it was my uterus trying to rupture.

Uterine rupture is rare, happening in less than 1% of women who attempt a trial of labor after cesarean.

still, now, i couldn’t feel myself hemorrhaging on the recovery table.

i thought i knew myself, but I was lost.

and you came out blonde and foreign. not me.

nurse Mel carried stacks of my blood away from us, horrified. she didn’t notice her shift had ended hours ago, but I did.

she thought I was going to die, I think.

at least you were saved from the house I didn’t build you. Whoever you were.

…

the letting stopped, and repair started with iron sprinkled on frozen yogurt.

thank g-d postpartum education is a thing. and i could see my madness stirring.

are you mine? who are you?

your g-d mother helped me write you this song in a haze of sleep deprivation and PTSD

“star baby, you’ve got stars in your eyes.

star baby, what a surprise.

star baby, you’re too good to be true.

star baby, I love you.”

what a surprise. i was fighting my own confusion.

then your grandmother on your father’s side first held you — and you offered your first smile — and she knew you right away and everyone called you “girl Scott” and “happy baby” and i understand now by the depths of my love for you that you are your beautiful father.

he cut you from his bones, and I rented you my soul.

and when you met your sister, a girl cut of my bones,

she brought you a silly snail, and you gave her a cozy bunny

and you had mama’s magic milk, and she had french fries

and life is the greatest moment of my life watching you two together just