My First Mother's Day

It should not have been a surprise to my husband.  Early in September, on the day after Labor Day, the due date for our first child was set at May 14^th.  For a full eight months we anticipated the event that would “make me a mother on Mother’s Day.”

Over the many gestational months there was much to occupy us.  We had just closed on our very first home (an event marked in conspicuous proximity to the Labor Day news).  Soon after, I celebrated my thirtieth birthday—a day that would have depressed me had I not been so excited about my growing circumstances.   Then there was the sobering gift of the State of California: a mandate for a PKU test that resulted in the need for additional genetic screening.  I was really pissed; I had never failed a test before!  Fortunately, after a harrowing six week wait—five days for the chromosomes to present themselves to the lab and five weeks for the bureaucratic mess that surrounded it—we were finally cleared with the news of a happy, healthy little boy.

Previously, my aunt—who is a radiologist—had performed an ultrasound on the little guy and declared him a girl.  This provided a great anecdote in later years, particularly one night when my pre-teen son was getting ready for his bath and danced around the house with a Post-It Note "fig leaf."  Boy do I wish I had thought to take a picture of that!

There was a lot to do to get ready for the new baby.  From our landlord, we purchased the house in which we had been renting a flat for the four years since moving to San Francisco.  It was a cute one-hundred-year-old Victorian that the landlord had renovated himself, creating a second rental flat in the walk-out basement.  Our plan was to connect the two levels into a single family two-bedroom home with the bedrooms and laundry downstairs, keeping the original Victorian parlor, with beautiful wood and tile fireplace, for the main living room.  While working full-time and travelling constantly, I also hired contractors and oversee the process of cutting a hole in the upstairs floor in order to construct a flight of stairs into the lower level.   We stripped out the smaller downstairs kitchen, refitting the space into a convenient laundry room.

I had not been prepared for the power of a woman’s nesting instinct.  I had created life, so it seemed I could also move mountains.   I wonder how I was able to lift and move the things I did.   In retrospect, I should not have been around the fumes and particulates of construction while pregnant.  Even more frightening is the amount of painting I undertook personally—long before anyone considered the dangers of volatile organic compounds.  I was just completing the paint on the new stair risers when the first hard contractions of labor began.  I called the hospital and was told to call back when I could no longer speak through a contraction.  That bought me another few hours to finish my painting and clean the brushes in noxious chemicals.

Going into labor was surreal.  All at once, the razor-sharp precision of my mind turned to dull shapeless forms of cytoplasm glopping and swishing around.  Everything moved in slow motion.  There was an echo.  The bass on the world’s graphic equalizer was turned way passed eleven.   I became detached from everything and everyone.  All I was, all I had ever been, was a giant womb, now controlled by some relentless engine that inexplicably and periodically would pump a bolus of pain through me, too large and shocking to be processed by the human mind.  All around me, well-meaning nurses egged me on, pulling me out of my self-hypnosis, urging me to find my focal point, and taunting me not to cop out with drugs.  I came unglued; I tried to go home, delegating them to stay and deal with this nightmare.

Babies are in birth as they are in life; thus, my son had a big head and was looking the wrong way.  Suddenly on deck, a grey-haired anesthesiologist suggested paternalistically that a C-section was in order; the young, female obstetrician thought otherwise.  With a great deal of finesse, she reached in and grabbed the baby by his shoulders, flipping him over.  It may have taken sixteen hours of hard labor and a little assist, but we managed to get that baby out the way he got in. 

Despite their projections, my son was born two days early, on a Friday.  I spent most of Saturday alone in the hospital, as my husband felt that he had earned the right to sleep in.  The following day, Sunday, was Mother’s Day.   I was so excited to bring my new baby home on this particular day, fulfilling my longing to start a family.  My husband picked us up at the hospital and drove us home, saying very little.  I put my son in his new crib, and then walked around our new home looking for some token gesture of the day and my new status as a mother.  Nothing.  One of my husband’s residents stopped by and brought me a bouquet of flowers.  Still my husband said nothing.  The significance of the day was lost on him.

Over the years, I have celebrated many lovely Mother’s Days—courtesy of a newly enlightened husband.  In fact, since my son’s birthday falls on or near this day every year, it is an especially joyous day in our family.  Like a guilty prisoner anticipating a life sentence, my husband has come to dread my bringing up his particular transgressions on that first Mother’s Day.  He has attempted a few lame explanations like “You’re not my mother” or “I gave you the best gift of all”.  Seriously, do men really think we fall for that kind of nonsense? 

By any standard, there is nothing a man can do that will even the score against a woman who has given birth to his children.  What is painful for us is not the act of birth itself; it is that we have to tell you this.   Men know that they are not capable of doing what we do, but they also know that they would not go there even if they could.  I have come to believe that men are humbled by the latent strength that we women brandish in the face of adversity.  A real man does not hide from it or ignore it, but learns to celebrate it.

Tomorrow's blog:  Learning 2 txt & LMFAO