This isn’t a story about giving birth; it’s a story about
temporary insanity.
Everyone knows that birth is not exactly the most
comfortable of tasks. Archie Bunker,
Peter Griffin’s philosophical mentor, once quoted the bible as saying: “In pain shall yooz bring forth children.” I was once afraid of having children because
of the promise of the pain. But Nature
is a devious beast; one day, my fear of pain was replaced by the sincere desire
to have children.
About three days before the due date of my first child, I was awakened by
persistent contractions. They did not
seem to be that bad, but they were coming every 5 minutes. I called the doctor’s office and was told,
“Call back when you can no longer talk through them.” Twenty-four hours later, the contractions were
still pacing at 5 minute intervals, but now I had gone an entire night without
any sleep. Bereft of ideas, I decided to
paint our new stairwell—the last piece of the pre-baby renovation.
The “nesting instinct” is one of the more amazing forces of
Nature. I was physically compromised in
so many ways. I walked like a duck. I could no longer pull the seat of my car
forward enough to reach the gas pedal.
My wrists were afflicted with “DeQuervain’s Tenosynovitis”—not uncommon
among women around the time of birth.
Yet there was no limit to the number of physical chores I could
undertake. You could eat off my floors,
find anything in the closet according to color, and see your reflection in the polished
doorknobs!
That particularly day, Tom arrived home to find me crouched
on the floor at the base of the stairs, carefully applying the contrasting grey
paint to the last and bottommost riser.
I was wearing my favorite maternity overalls, looking very much like I
had tried to smuggle a basketball through customs. Utterly exhausted, we agreed that it was a
good night for a hot shower and a pepperoni pizza. In fact, it was the pizza that set the ball
into motion, so to speak, provoking the first “real” contraction. I knew instantly that I no longer had to ask
if it was real.
It is important to this tale to mention that we were living
in San Francisco at the time.
Californians, it seems, have their own brand of maternity culture—like
California Cuisine for childbirth. Over
nine months of doctors’ visits, birthing classes, seminars, and hospital tours,
I was indoctrinated with one clear message:
good mothers don’t use drugs.
According to them, Nature is better than medicine. A woman needs to be “alert and present” to
experience fully the wonders of bringing forth a child into this world. At each doctor visit, I was asked to initial
a form that outlined my personal birthing instructions, one that displayed
prominently across the top proof that I had drunk the Kool-Aid, thus falling in
line with the prescribed protocol. I am woman;
hear me roar. I can create life. And I can deliver said life into this world
with nothing but my wits, my focal point, and a whole bunch of panting.
There was only one crimp in this plan: I was not in this alone. My son had his own ideas. He presented “sunny side up,” which, in the
birthing business, is a little like trying to carry a massive antique armoire
up a steep and narrow staircase. Rigid physical
dimensions do not yield. The result is
a nasty phenomenon called “back labor.”
Add Pitocin to the mix—a potent medical cocktail used to induce labor—and
the movers are now banging the precious armoire against the plaster walls again
and again, hoping that a miracle will occur.
Let’s recap: 40 hours
since I had last slept. Contractions
fast and furious. Back labor. No drugs. A nurse standing over me saying “Don’t be a
cop out! Find your focal point!”
This is when my sanity and I parted company. I looked at my husband with vacant eyes and
said, “I’m done. You stay here and have
the baby. I am going home.” I managed to get myself out of bed and across
the room, fully intending to crawl out the window. Fortunately for all involved, the hospital’s
windows did not open. I was pulled back
and replaced on the bed—a hapless lab rat caught in a bizarre experiment in
which pain stimulus was randomly and rhythmically pumped into my body. It
stopped for a few seconds, enough to lull me into relaxation, and then cranked
up again. The experience of one jolt was
not sufficient to prepare me for the next.
Each was fresh and raw to the Nth degree; each left me a little more
broken and desperate.
People came and went.
I could no longer identify the assembled cast of characters. They had distorted faces with beady eyes and
sinister smiles. Their words blended
into a cacophony of growls and moans. Finally,
a woman I recognized as my doctor came into focus before my face. She uttered the dreaded word: epidural. I lashed out, afraid of the next wave of pain
but even more afraid to fail in this, my most important test as a woman. Nine months of expectations, of preparation, of
admonishment. Was I to prove myself inadequate
for all to see? Was I already unfit before
ascending to motherhood?
In my head, I begged to let me go the distance, to prove
myself worthy of the ultimate prize. Outwardly,
I do not think I possessed the strength to form the words. There was an ominous change in tone
throughout the room. The zeal for
natural childbirth had given way to an alternate reality, one reserved for
emergencies and losers like me. I went
limp as a new player introduced himself.
I gave myself up to him while he counted down the bumps on my spine,
doing something I could not even feel between the intensity of the relentless
contractions.
A minute later—or so it seemed—a perceptible change occurred
in the abdominal wrenching I had been experiencing for the last 12 hours, or 40
hours, depending on where you want to start counting. Little by little, the pain subsided, as if a
cartoonist were erasing this feature from my character an inch at a time. My vision began to refocus as I searched for
my faculties. Before long, I felt no
pain; in fact, I felt nothing at all from the ribs down. The anesthesiologist had assumed I was bound
for a C-Section and prepped me accordingly.
My doctor—a fellow member of the female species—was not so
convinced. Despite my shortcomings and abject failures, she
returned to me my maternal dignity.
Offering an able assist, she flipped my son until he was “over easy.”
And so he was.
Tomorrow's blog: Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made Of
No comments:
Post a Comment