The
Horrific Beauty of Childbirth
There wasn’t a book I could have
read or a video I could have watched that would have prepared me for the
horrific beauty of childbirth. After nine
months of carrying around a well known stranger wherever I went; I spent
thirty-six hours on a physical and emotional rollercoaster that resulted in the
birth if my oldest child. And I must say
that after birthing four of my five children I am not only a veteran of the
process but absolutely convinced; women got shafted in the whole bringing forth
scenario.
My journey into motherhood started
at a craft store where I was assaulted by a sudden sharp pain that almost
dropped me to one knee. My first
husband, Orin, grabbed me, stood me up and said. “Oh no, you can’t do this now. I have a huge presentation on Monday. So this weekend is not good. I can do next weekend, but not this
weekend. Besides it’s properly just a
hunger pain.” And considering I had
already been to the hospital twice before for false labor I figured he was
properly right. So, we headed to our
favorite Chinese restaurant instead of the hospital.
Everything was going great until
the end of dinner; when I learned the hard way the difference between a stomach
pain and a labor pain. As we waited for
the waitress to return with the credit card receipt Orin inquired as to why I
wasn’t eating my fortune cookie. In a voice loud enough for the whole
restaurant to hear I explained to him I didn’t give a damn about my fortune
cookie I just wanted to go home. After apologizing to the people who were
staring at us I loosen the white knuckled Kung foo grip I had on the
table. Just as I was pulling myself
together the owner’s mother came running from the back with a glass of water
insisting that I drink it. When I refused the water, her insistence became
greater and we proceeded to engage in a twisted version of no take backs
sliding the glass back and forth on the table.
Even though home was where I
insisted Orin take me; being at our apartment didn’t help any. The pains were getting increasingly stronger,
but far from the required five minutes apart.
Once the contractions reached twenty minutes apart I couldn’t take it any
more. I demanded that Orin call the
hospital and let them know we were on the way.
When he refused because it was too soon.
I explained to Orin is a calm voice loud enough for our neighbors to
hear. “If you don’t call, I’ll kill you!”
Thankfully, Orin decided it was better to call than to have our son grow up
fatherless. I could say my threatening
to take Orin’s life was an isolated incident but that would be a lie. It would happen several more times during our
thirty-six hour adventure into parenthood.
After a torturous twenty-minute car
ride where I felt every bump, crack, and cricket in the street; I was rushed to
the maternity ward floor. My stomach was as hard as a basketball and my back
was strained beyond belief. I remember
lying in the hospital bed trying to find some level of comfort when all of the
sudden I felt wet, very wet. I laughed
out of shock and nervousness because I hadn’t wet the bed since I was a little
kid. Orin found the incident extremely
entertaining; so much so that when he called for the nurse he didn’t say I
think my wife’s water broke. He said through the laughter “My wife just peed
the bed.” The nurse checked the pad I
was lying on and explained the wetness was amniotic fluid. Orin was disappointed it was amniotic fluid
because he thought urine would have been funnier. “Are you sure, she didn’t pee her pants? Because I think she peed the bed.” The nurse had to reassure him several times
it was not urine. The mixture of
laughter and disappointment on his face was quite amusing. What most women would have found horrifying I
found unbelievably comical.
And then as if on cue if happened,
nothing, absolutely nothing no contractions no pain, no pressure. This “Nothing” went on for over twelve hours.
I paced up and down the halls of the
maternity ward so many times, I was able to identify all of the age spots,
nicks and scratches in the walls and floor.
As if being confined to the maternity floor wasn’t bad enough my doctor placed
me on a liquid only diet because once your water breaks there are no solid
foods until you deliver. So, I was stuck
alternating between chicken broth and beef broth for meals. Yum.
At eight o’clock Sunday night when my nothing still hadn’t turned into
something a decision was made for me to be given a morphine pill. I was told two things would happen; either I
would wake up in labor or I would get a good night sleep and be induced in the
morning. Orin decided he would stay with
me until I fell asleep. I tried as hard
as I could to stay awake because this was my first pregnancy, I was only
twenty-one and I didn’t want to be let alone.
But the morphine clutched me so strongly I couldn’t ask him to stay when
I saw him walk out the door. My mouth
was too heavy to form the word “stay” thankfully before I could feel lonely or
scared I fell into a deep sleep.
I am the type of person who doesn’t
like to ask for help so when I woke up and needed to use the bathroom I decided
against asking the nurse. With nothing
but an IV pole for support I stumbled and fumbled my way to the lavatory. As I stood in the bathroom I found myself
faced with a perplexing problem. I
looked down and saw three toilets; courtesy of my morphine-induced state. Subsequently I did the only thing I could do.
I paused, took a breath and remembered a line from the movie Rocky IV “hit the
one in the middle”. I’m happy to say
that everything turned out great. My
real problem came when I found myself leaning on my IV pole in the middle of
the room unable to take another step and desperate to get back in bed. Somehow and I can’t remember how I made my
way back to bed.
Unable to fall back asleep due to my mouth and
throat feeling like sandpaper I had no other choice but the break down and hit
the call button. While firmly locked in
the thresholds of cottonmouth I managed to fumble out a few coherent sentences
about thirst. I was pleasantly surprised when the nurse entered my room with a
Sprite. I took several sips; much
faster than I should have but the cool bubbles felt so good dancing in my mouth
and running down my throat. I just couldn’t
help myself. It only took a few seconds
for me to realize that I had made a terrible decision. And before I could correct it; I projectile
vomited my drink across the room. I
called the nurse back in and explained I had gotten sick. She looked puzzled and asked where, that’s
when I pointed across the room.
From that moment on things kicked
into high gear. I was in active labor. My room flooded with nurses and doors to
a room I had never paid attention to until now were flung open and things
started coming out. Most I have never seen before. I panicked and started to cry. One of the nurses came over to inquire about
why I was crying. I blurted out “I’m not
into that freaky stuff I just came here to have a baby.” Her attempt to hold back her laughter was
sweet. She explained to me it wasn’t as bad as it looked and most of the things
wouldn’t be used.
It shocked me how fast my
contractions started coming now. They
were faster and harder than the ones before the twenty-four hours of “Nothing”. My anxiety and fear grew momentously during
this time. And then it hit a mind numbing contraction that was so strong I
though I would split in half. Unable to
bear it I grabbed the closest nurse to me and screamed in her face. “This is the most unnatural thing I have ever
done! The female body was not meant for
this and women who do this more than once are masochistic and should be taken
into a field and beaten! Get my husband now!”
They tried to comfort me but nothing was working. Just when I though it couldn’t get any worse
it did. The nurses called off my epidural because they felt I was too far
along. When Orin called to check on me I
screamed into the phone “I’m dying, I’m dying and no one will help me!” This sent him into a total panic. The nurse took the phone and calmly explained
I wasn’t dying I only felt like I was dying.
Orin arrived not long after the phone incident and that’s when I
proceeded to call him every name in the book.
I think I even invented new ones.
Then as my luck would have it
things went from painful to just painfully wrong. There was a woman who had delivered the
night before and believed childbirth was so natural and beautiful she had no
problem with her, what looked to be eight-year-old son, running in and out of
my room and the rooms of other women in labor.
On the third time he ran in my room I asked the little boy if he wanted
to play with the nice lady with the IV pole.
I was in a lot of pain and completely fed up; so I decided the next time
he ran in my room I would hit him with the pole. What the little boy and his mother failed to
understand was I had a plethora of people in my crotch I didn’t need nor want a
little kid there as well. Thankfully
Orin, who had nodded off, woke up and rushed him out the room before I could
make nice.
I could hear the boy’s mother
saying she was going to give me a piece of her mind. In response I proceeded to yell an overabundance
of insults down the hall; I used extremely colorfully and descriptive words to
describe her feminine parts. I would have said them to her face but Orin
wouldn’t let me out of the room. Fortunately
for all of us the nurses intervened and convinced the woman to keep her son
with her. After that fiasco, I tried as
hard as I could to be nice to Orin but I couldn’t with every contraction I
hated him more and more. I found myself
looking around the room for something to bludgeon him to death with. Unable to follow through with the death plot
I settled for telling everyone who came in the room his mother didn’t know who
his father was and she was engaged in a three way with the mailman and the UPS
guy. Pain can make you say and do crazy
things.
It only took three more hours of
pain and insanity for the doctor to see things my way. He ordered my epidural even though I was well
over seven centimeters. His decision came after a series of peculiar events
that were beyond my control and left him with only two options epidural or
restraints both of which were discussed outside my room with my husband. The events are as follows I tried to leave
with my car keys and wearing only a hospital gown, twice. I almost hit the doctor’s assistant who
instead on opening the curtains in my room and turning down the heat. I tried to leave my room again this time to
fight the woman with the boy because she didn’t approve of me cussing. My
pain came so close to driving me insane.
My motherhood journey has made me a
firm believer in epidurals. It’s not just
a wonderfully beautiful drug; but also a gift from God to childbirth. One needle strategically placed in my back not
only made the rest of my labor doable but also saved my marriage. After what seemed like an eternity of pushing
and shoving an amazing screaming goopy new life was placed on my chest. All of the hate that I felt towards Orin
vanished and I learned what it meant to love someone more than you love
yourself. Savon’s beautifully horrific birth made the
events preceding his arrival trivial in comparison to him.
