Warning: This is a tad long, but I'm hoping you'll indulge me since it's my birth story. Also, flagrant use of cuss words. Cuz... you know... it's my futhermucking birthstory, and sometimes it's not pretty.
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Just hours after writing my last post, lying in bed, I felt something… um…. Down there… and thought to myself: Damnit. I just got my period, how annoy… No you nitwit, you’re pregnant! No period. Your water just broke! This is it!
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Just hours after writing my last post, lying in bed, I felt something… um…. Down there… and thought to myself: Damnit. I just got my period, how annoy… No you nitwit, you’re pregnant! No period. Your water just broke! This is it!
“Um… Colin.. Wake up. My water just broke.”
Colin darted out of bed and we were in frantic motion. We stupidly packed a suitcase as if we were going on a 3 day holiday, woke up our very tolerant roommate so she could watch Caleb in the morning, called the hospital, and soon we were speeding off in the eerily empty Nairobi roads. Including a brief stop to vomit along the road, a trip that takes 2 hours in rush hour took us 15 minutes at 2:30 AM. So, point one for middle of the night labor.
Entering the hospital, I clutched my belly hoping to cut an empathetic figure, but the nurse on staff looked understandably unimpressed and even half-way annoyed to see us (take away that point for middle of the night labor), and pointed us to an open labor room.
And we were there. 2 weeks before our carefully planned out C-section, feeling a mix of panic and excitement.
Colin and I kept looking at each other in disbelief repeating as if in a trance, “We’re going to meet our baby soon. We’re going to meet our baby soon.”
As we waited, we were treated to heavily religious gospel music interspersed with bible stories narrated by someone with an uncanny likeness to James Earl Jones. I suppose if you’re religious (and Christian) this could give you a bit of comfort in such a momentous time. For the Jewish Bahai couple, it was perplexing, bordering on funny.
After some routine confirmation that I was in fact in labor, our doctor was called and the C-section was scheduled for 6 AM.
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Now, here is where you need a little background.
I’m not exactly the bravest of patients. Scratch that. I’m positively squeamish nearing phobic of all things medical. I cover my eyes when getting blood drawn. Even when it’s not my own. Even in the movies. I sit in the theater saying “tell me when it’s over Colin!” The very idea of being poked and prodded gives me a panic attack. I’m a total wimp. Or, if you prefer, a “delicate flower.”
If I’m being totally honest with myself, that was part of the reason we tried to use midwives with the first baby, and I remember being disappointed that they all wore lab coats and their office was so “medical” since I was foolishly expecting the more comforting ambiance of Tibetan wall hangings, the aroma of chamomile tea and lots of cranial-sacral massage.
And yes, I’d been through a C-section before. But, let’s just say I was eased into it after 30 hours of labor during which the poking and prodding was slowly introduced. First an IV, then a heart monitor, eventually an epidural, after a while that dreaded fucking catheter….
When they finally broke the news that I had no choice but to have a C-section, Colin scrubbed in and he and my angel of a midwife sat with me and held my hand through the weird but painless tugging and pulling in the operating theater, and I was fully awake when I heard Caleb’s first screams and saw his perfect little neotenous face.
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OK. Flash forward to Feb. 21, 2012.
Only 20 minutes before the C-section was scheduled, I sat in the waiting room with nothing but a hospital gown. We were then informed that Colin would not be allowed into the operating theater. For that perculiar request we would needed special dispensation from the hospital director.
Before I knew what was happening, I was placed on a meat tray of a gurney and very quickly whisked down the halls, barely stopping to wave what I’m sure was a very pathetic goodbye to Colin. The train had left the station.
I was then wheeled into a scarily large operating theater filled with intimidating medical equipment and that centerpiece operating table lit by blinding industrial bulbs, as if set for a macbre alien abduction probing scene.
Men started swirling around me busily. There were no women – not even the nurses – and even though they were exceedingly nurturing it somehow made me feel even more alone to be the only woman in the room.
Then, everything started happening to me with a quick efficiency that I’m sure is standard protocol, but only had me panic screaming in my head “Wait Wait STOP! I’m not ready. I don’t know if I can do this.”
Not hearing my brain screams they continued on at a brisk clip. First with the epidural, inserted as I sat hunched over on the gurney a ball of obvious and quivering tension, trying some yoga breaths to calm myself. When you know what’s coming next, “you’ll just feel a little prick” can be some the most frightening of phrases.
After the spine probe, then the vein probe (IV), then those pulse monitoring pads slapped all over my chest, then that fucking catheter again, then a mask placed over my nose and mouth. Did no one hear that I wasn’t ready for all of this???
My mouth immediately became unbearably almost painfully dry and I kept pulling the mask off my face to futily ask for water. My internal narrative had on a loop “I don’t think I can hold it together. I don’t think I can hold it together.” and the panic manifested physically as a pain winding its way up my body until I started twisting my head side to side and repeatedly pulling off my oxygen mask.
So people, clearly, I panicked.
Not my proudest moment.
They later told me that they had to sedate me, so I have no clear memories of Emmet’s first cries and I have a fuzzy dreamlike image of a very whitish baby being shoved in my face for my sedated inspection.
But soon enough it was over. I was back with Colin terrorizing him with my impressions of the experience. We were through. But something was missing…
The baby!
Where was the fucking baby?
After an hour we started asking the nurses. “He’s coming soon. Don’t worry.” Then another hour. “They’re just bathing him he’ll be right here.” Then ANOTHER hour. And my doctor came to see me.
“Yes yes doc. Everything is fine. We just want to see that baby. It’s been 3 hours. What are they doing with the baby??”
“Oh, don’t worry. They are not doing anything.”
WHAT? I suppose that was meant to be comforting. But NO!! If they are “not doing anything,” bring the little guy to his mother godfuckingdamnit!!
Hour 4. Still no baby.
We were making nuisance of ourselves and every nurse on call had already heard the message that the crazed wazungu couple in room 4 “wants to see their baby.”
Colin started pacing so fiercely he nearly wore a groove in the floor. Feeling totally helpless, I asked him to “pace harder. It think it’s working!”
Finally after 4.5 hours, we got to see the baby.
Emmet was absolutely perfect. Full sweet face with kissable lips and angelic little eyes, blissfully unaware of everything it took to get him here. Completely worth all the trials and then some to get him into my arms.
