Grin and Bear It

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