Soapbox

So I’ve got this kid…. and it was no easy thing, let me tell you!

Being pregnant in the summer, with no air conditioning, and on your feet 8+ hours a day as a nurse is no picnic for anyone. (Hey- no lectures about prairie women chopping wood all day, delivering a baby and then boiling the laundry in a tub, OK?) After being too nauseated to eat for over a month I managed not to go too crazy with the food cravings, but put on a good bit of weight anyway at the end, mostly from fluid. Swollen up like a watermelon, I informed my doctor in early June that clearly he mis-calculated my due date because I could not possibly go another month getting bigger or I would split wide open.
He laughed. I considered changing doctors.
The first thing I did every morning was put on my support hose and I soaked my feet in cold water every night when I got home from work. My fingers were so swollen I was afraid I would have to have my wedding ring cut off before it got gangrenous. What’s that crap you always hear about pregnant women glowing? I was just getting through each day.

Right on my due date, I went into labor, and not a moment too soon! We spent the entire day before walking around and around at the zoo, trying to shake the baby loose. If that hadn’t worked, I was prepared to try jumping-jacks! My mom’s labors were all pretty quick, so when I felt the first contractions at 3 AM I turned off Ted’s alarm clock and scooted downstairs to clean house and get ready to head out the door. I was pretty sure this wouldn’t take long at all. After all- what’s the point of having these “child-bearing hips” if not to have quick deliveries!

finally, at 5 Pm I finally went to the hospital, because I was tired of being in labor, and I guess I had this idea that once I was there, things would start really moving. Hey, I wasn’t thinking rationally- I’d been walking around in circles in the apartment for hours (it was raining). At 9 PM the delivery team decided I was “arrested” (a lovely term) and gave me pitocin to speed things up. Holy crap! What had been unpleasant but tolerable labor pains became hideous. After an hour of feeling like someone was ramming hot pokers into my abdomen I was almost weeping and Miss “Natural Childbirth” asked for, and received, an injection.
About 2 minutes later I turned to my frazzled but unwavering husband and said in a dreamy voice, “Honey…Right now… I can’t remember one single thing you’ve ever done in our lives that wasn’t perfect.” He looked at the nurse, who shrugged, and he reached for his wallet. “Can I buy a case of that stuff, by any chance?” the pain was gone and I was really happy!

Yeah, well, it wore off. Back to feeling like I had burning pokers in my sides, and no end in sight. Finally I called for the big gun: the epidural. I was just so damn tired, and Ted wasn’t having an easy time of it either, I’m sure.
Now to give an epidural anesthetic they sit you up on the side of the bed, leaning forward with your arms around your partner, so that your back is rounded and your vertebrae separate, so they can get the needle in. I have seen this done a time or two in nursing school and knew what to expect ,but poor Ted was a neophyte. So before I leaned over him I looked in his eyes and said “Ted: I want you to know that nothing they are about to do to me will hurt as much as what I have gone through in just the last contraction. Got it?” He nodded, I leaned forward…and heard him gasp as he caught sight of the needle the size of a drinking straw they were about to stab into my spinal column!

But of course even that didn’t go as planned: they couldn’t get the catheter threaded into my spine to keep the joy juice coming. So the anesthesiologist announced that we had about an hour to deliver before the epidural wore off and the burning hot pokers returned. The race was on! I pushed… and the baby moved down…. and I stopped for breath…and the baby slid back up. No lie! Over and over he crowned, and then un-crowned. Gaaah! And so, as the end of the hour was approaching, the doctor called for the "salad spoons"- the forceps. Wait a minute- I had this all planned, and it was not like this! I read the books, I took the vitamins, I did the exercises, I practiced the breathing…this was not the fast, easy, natural, earth-momma delivery I thought I was signing up for! I have the feeling God was up there, giggling at me.

But all good things come to an end- and fortunately, the bad ones do to. After 21 hours of fun, Stephen Andrew Meisky , the child with the largest head on earth, arrived. Sometimes now I call him “Reddy Kilowatt” because his head is shaped like a lightbulb, but it was pretty squished when he arrived- or rather, was dragged into the world. Despite his forced entry, he was calm and serene- in fact, the doctor had to reassure me that he was fine because he never cried. They handed me this sticky bundle and I looked (exhaustedly) into the face of not a newborn, as I had expected, but an incredibly wise old man, who stared at me calmly as if he remembered me from another life. It was a deeply spiritual experience. I fell instantly in love, as the super nova of motherhood exploded in my life.

But once again, things did not go quite as expected. As I was dressing my little one the next day to take him home the nurse looked him over and said "Hmmm, he looks a bit yellow…" and that was that. I was sent home from the hospital without my son, who had mild jaundice caused by ABO incompatability and had to stay under special lights to treat it.
After all I went through to bring him into the world, I did not deal well with this development. I seem to have experienced just a wee touch of the post-partum psychosis , which left me hearing phantom babies everywhere when I was alone and ready to hack off the hand of anyone who tried to take him away from me once he did come home. Ha ha ha- Isn’t mother nature funny?
But of course, eventually he did come home, and now there are all the feedings to wake up for and "what does this kind of crying mean?" questions that somehow I am supposed to know the answers to, and I’m not sure how well I’ll do at this motherhood thing. Frankly, I have no business being in charge of another life when I’m so lousy at managing my own, but here we go. At least I haven’t yet dropped him on that big head.