How Not to Calm a Child on a Plane

by Johanna Stein

  After a few minutes, a woman floated into the room, dressed in a flowing muumuu-esque outfit that had no clear beginning or end. This was our instructor, Linneah, and as she pulled out a bunch of sage and then set it on fire, wafting the smoke around the room “to remove the negative energies and unwanted spirits,” for a moment I wondered if she was talking about us.

  There were phrases to chant (“Innnn . . . Ouuuuut . . . Gentle waaaaaves of waaaaterrrrr”) and breathing techniques to help “breathe your baby out of your vagina.” There were videos to watch and diaries to keep. And there were relaxation tapes, voiced by Linneah herself, which we were instructed to listen to every night, despite the fact that Linneah’s speaking voice sounded like Fran Drescher on tranquilizers.

  And although the five-week course challenged every bone in my immature (SHE SAID “BONE!” HAW! HAW!) body, and every week I came down with a stress headache from struggling not to giggle every time Linneah spoke, lit incense, or cupped my cheek in her hand while recommending a brand of olive oil to rub on my perineum,* we persevered because we both felt that, considering we were about to be parents, it was important that we rise above our juvenile tendencies. Also, Linneah had a strict no-refunds policy.

  During the fifth and final class, we learned that one of our classmates had gone into labor early. Linneah reported that, not only had she done it all without medication and in near silence, but her attending nurses had been so impressed they’d dubbed her a “Hero Warrior Goddess.”

  I couldn’t wait to be a Hero Warrior Goddess.

  During the final class, after a little in-class potluck celebration that featured six varieties of lentil salad (and one box of Fig Newtons hastily thrown into a Tupperware bowl in an attempt to appear homemade—thanks, us!), Linneah showed us one more movie, the pièce of vidéo de résistance.

  The documentary subject was a woman in labor awaiting the arrival of her midwife for what was to be a simple, sweet home birth with her husband and toddler by her side. But just as her contractions began to build, she learned that the midwife was having car trouble and would not likely make it in time.

  I leaned forward on my yoga ball and watched through my fingers as the woman on the screen squatted on her bathroom floor. From behind the camera, a shaky male voice asked, “W-what do you want me to do?” The now-panting and mostly nude woman looked into the lens and answered, “Oh, just hold the camera.” And then she proceeded to reach down and deliver the first baby.

  Oh, did I fail to mention that she was giving birth to TWINS?

  After handing off the first* baby to the father/cameraman, she then REACHED BACK UP INTO HERSELF and uttered a quiet but emphatic, “Ah, shit. She’s breech” (i.e., upside down; i.e., not optimal; i.e., HOLY CRAP-CAKES).

  This naked-from-the-waist-down Hero Warrior Goddess then delivered her second baby, single-handedly, deftly and ably, and, aside from a few well-placed grunts, without complaint. By the time the midwife (who really should be chewed out for not getting her oil checked before heading out to deliver a G.D. baby or two) showed up, there was nothing left for her to do, aside from enjoy a spot of tea along with a play-by-play of the missed event.

  Aside from the fact that it was more dramatic than anything Michael Bay could pull out of his own vagina, watching that movie in Linneah’s classroom that night instilled in me a powerful combination of confidence and self-assurance in my own ability to handle my impending labor. If this woman could self-deliver twins in her bathroom (and not a very big bathroom at that), surely I could deliver one baby in the comfort of a well-lit hospital with medical help, plenty of ice chips, a yoga ball, and Austin Powers* playing in the background.

  My due date came and went with not a contraction in sight, at which point a number of homeopathic “labor-inducing” tricks were employed. They included, but were not limited to:

  •Some vigorous nonsexual massaging of my perineum (again, sorry), mostly by me, but occasionally by husband, on days that he could be persuaded with the aid of beer, ice cream, and/or the promise of sexual activity at some later date, TBD.

  •The eating of a particular salad at a particular café in the San Fernando Valley said to guarantee labor within twenty-four hours. If “guaranteed labor” means uncontrollable gas for two days straight, then the salad was successful. Otherwise, it was not.

  •“Uneven walking”: the act of walking along a curb with one foot on the curb, the other on the street, in the style of a drunken sorority sister.

  •“Cervical sweeps,” an ob-gyn procedure/medieval torture by which one’s doctor sweeps a gloved finger around the inside of one’s bajingo, with the intention of “softening” or “ripening” the cervix, which, despite being a “natural,” homeopathic technique, leaves one feeling as though one is a ventriloquist dummy and that someone is reaching up into one’s soul by way of one’s vagina.

  •Sex. Lots and lots of it. Some good, some bad. Most of it very, very ugly.

  •Yelling “COME ON ALREADY!!!” directly at my navel.

  Unfortunately, none of these methods seemed to work, and after two more noncontraction-filled weeks passed, my doctor recommended induction with Pitocin.

  “Marvelous,” I said. “Let’s get this party started so I can breathe this mo-fo out” (or words to that effect).

  My doctor cautioned, “You should know that induction can be a little ‘intense.’”

  “Yeah?” I interrupted. “Well, so can I. LET’S DO THIS!!!”

  The doctor interrupted my interruption, “You should also know that most induced women,” 95 percent was the number he floated, “end up requesting an epidural* to control the pain.” Sure, I thought. That’s because 95 percent of women didn’t spend five weeks listening to hypnosis tapes, learning how to breathe out their pain like wisps of multicolored smoke, or visualizing their babies rolling out of them like gentle waves of water.

  I just smiled and said, “I’m not going to need the epidural. I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine.” And then I patted his arm in my most confident, bordering-on-condescending way.

  Induction Day.

  We are in the labor room. I am feeling confident, alert, alive. Like a quarterback ready to run, catch, and spike my team to victory. This is a great day to have a baby, and I mean that in the most crunchy-granola way possible.

  The doctor fills my IV with induction sauce, breaks my water, and informs me that the contractions should start any minute.

  I stick my headphones in my ears, sit on my yoga ball, and begin to bounce while I wait for the first one, wondering whether it will feel like a wave or a surge, or maybe a strong splash? Luckily, I don’t have to wait very long, because within thirty seconds the first contraction arrives, less like a surge or a wave and more like a canoe paddle being swung full force at the side of my head. My knees buckle, and I hit the deck with an all-over body sensation that is so intense the word pain does not do it justice; it requires a word that has not been invented yet, like blundikad or krevdentious. That’s how beyond pain it is. It is krevdentious.

  Sweat—not merely beads, but actual spigots of it—springs from every one of my pores, even as the contraction ebbs. From my mouth comes a yowl-y moan/scream, “EPIDUH-EPIDUH-EPIDUHHHHH,” and my husband, whose face now looks like that of a scared rabbit says, “The epidural team is coming. Please let go of my arm.”

  But then, after I’ve had a few minutes to recover, in a startling turn of events that shocks even me, I tell my husband that no, I will not be needing the epidural. I just hadn’t been prepared for that first one . . . Now that I knew what a contraction felt like, I was sure I could handle it.

  I sit down on the yoga ball and brace myself for the next contraction that I am going to manage with the breathing and visualization exercises I’ve learned from Linneah.

  In . . . Out . . . Gentle waves of water.

  In . . . Out . . . Gentle waves of water.

  In . . . Out . . . Gentle waves of water.

  . . . And then the nex
t canoe paddle wallops me upside the head and knocks me twenty thousand leagues under the sea, and that’s when I reach for my husband with the strength of a rabid chimpanzee and instruct him to bring the epidural team to me within the next five minutes or I am going to tear the linoleum off the delivery-room floor and eat it.

  Within minutes the team (there are two of them, and they work on me in tandem like a pair of circus acrobats) has me intubated, and they send the invisible canoe paddler on his way. From this point on, the delivery is a friggin party (the kind of party where people cheer when you poop on the table, anyway) and that’s when the camera comes out.

  Watching the video now, I feel so disconnected from those people on the screen. I don’t remember any of it, even though consciously I know it happened, and there’s plenty of proof—i.e., a small dictatorial human living in our house—to support that conclusion.

  As I look at the image of my poor, poor crotch, so unaware of what is about to unfold . . . from its folds . . . I experience a level of discomfort probably not unlike what men must feel when witnessing other men being kicked in their baby-makers. I can’t watch without wincing and squinting through one barely open eye, the way I might watch the outtakes of a Jackass movie or scenes from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

  A blurry figure steps in front of the camera; I recognize it as my mother. My father, on the other hand, is not in attendance. This is probably for the best, as between the two of us, there has been no acknowledgment that I am, in fact, female.

  My husband comments, “I forgot that part! Your mom stepped right in front of the camera—we almost missed the whole thing!” But to be honest, I am grateful to her backside for giving me even a brief reprieve from this Salvador-Dalí-melting-vulva horror show, the sight of which is now making me lightheaded.

  “Okay, now I want you to push,” says the doctor.

  I am straining and pushing as hard as I can, so intensely that I feel something is bound to pop out of me, if not this kid, then possibly one of my eyeballs, or my spleen through my now-cartoonishly stretched-out belly button.

  I can see the doctor, distorted through the edges of my oxygen mask, framed between the V of my shaking legs. He is talking to the husband, gesturing toward the surface underneath my butt. They are both nodding approvingly. It’s difficult to make out exactly what the doctor is saying, though I can just hear the words good sign, large amount, and rectum.

  Several hours of fecal/fetal pushing go by, and still the not-so-tiny human stuck in my undercarriage refuses to come out. Nothing changes.

  Until it does.

  Now some serious-type drama is going down.

  1.The baby’s heartbeat starts to drop. Quickly. Which causes:

  2.The machines to beep insistently and:

  3.The room to flood with doctors and nurses. In all the panic:

  4.The grandma-to-be leaves the room. As she passes the camera, it is clear that she is crying.

  5.And in the most clear indication that the shit is hitting the fan, the Austin Powers dvd is turned off.

  The doctor says loudly and quite clearly that this baby has to come out now and that he is going to insert some sort of vacuum device inside my vagina to help ease her out. I say, “Okay,” but when I see the size of the device, it seems as doable as trying to fit a frisbee into a jar of mustard.

  More pushing and grunting and pushing and grunting, and then in an instant I feel the heat of a thousand suns in my nethers. And that’s the moment that I become fully educated as to the precision of an epidural, i.e., it dulls sensation completely—but only up to a point. One millimeter beyond that, there is absolute, total, full-blown feeling. I have just gone, sensation-wise, from zero to YAAAAARRRGHHHHH !!!

  (Much has been said about the noises that emanate/emerge/pour forth from a woman in labor. Having been raised on the Canadian prairies, I can say with authority that what I most sounded like in that moment was an angry moose about to crap a full-grown bear.)

  And FLOP! out comes the kid, like a flying fish jumping into a rowboat. And in an instant, watching that video, I know exactly why we taped it. Because that moment is pure magic. She wasn’t there . . . and then, she was. It didn’t matter how it happened, whether naturally or with drugs or by hypnosis or silent chanting or with a set of pneumatic vacuum tubes like the ones they used to have at drive-thrus in the ’70s. The only thing that matters is she’s here.

  That moment was—and still is, as pictured here on my computer screen—pure, breathtaking magic.

  And then some more gross stuff comes out, and suddenly it’s a party all over again. The grandma is laughing, the in-laws barge in, cameras start flashing . . .

  In the video, the husband is rubbing my arm and kissing me. I am smiling and crying. He leans over and says over and over again, “She’s perfect . . . She’s perfect . . .”

  Just watching it on my computer makes me tear up. I look at my husband sitting next to me, glassy-eyed and beaming at the video screen. I smile at him and say the only thing that makes sense:

  “YOU SAPPY BASTARD!!”

  *I accidentally clicked on it while searching my computer for a video of a penguin shoving another penguin into an ice hole. The screen grabs were eerily similar.

  *Also, if I’m being totally honest, I’m pretty sure I went along with the whole thing just to impress that one guy in English class who could really work a pair of Hammer pants. Though why I thought that shuffling across the stage like a chicken would impress a thirteen-year-old guy—your guess is as good as mine.

  *And if you know what that is, then I apologize for putting that visual in your brain.

  *FIRST(!)

  *One of several comedy movies packed into our “birthing bag”; other movies included Napoleon Dynamite, Anchorman, and Raising Arizona, just in case it’s true that, as Linneah said, “laughter is conducive to a painless labor.” Other packed items included: one yoga ball upon which to bounce/relax/roll around to help ease contractions and to serve as a conversation starter with hospital staff (“Why, yes, I do yoga. I pretty much kill at Tree Pose”); one pair of flannel pajamas featuring an ironic cartoon skull pattern to indicate that even though I’m now a mom, I’m still hip and relevant; an iPod loaded with ten-plus hours of hypnobirthing audio tracks; and a selection of books and magazines to enjoy during all that “downtime” I was sure to have.

  *“Vagisthesia.” You’re welcome.

  three

  SPOILED MILK

  My breasts* have always been my best quality.

  I’m not bragging when I say that; they’re just great relative to the rest of my body, which is a gallery of horrors in comparison. There are so many problems with what’s below my belly button there’s not time enough to list it all (although if you’re familiar with the myth of Medusa, then you’ve got a pretty good idea of what it looks like inside my underwear). By default, my breasts were my best girls, and historically the first things to be revealed on a blind date, a game of strip poker, or during a sale at The Home Depot.

  There was no reason to believe that my breasts wouldn’t be up to the task of nourishing the new human that I (with a little help from the husband) had created. And oh, they were! Because after the epidural worked its rubber- legged magic, and after I took a breath and squeezed out that nine-pound, ten-ounce baby like I’d squeeze a watermelon seed through my fingers, the kid latched onto my nipple and nursed like she’d been doing it all her life (which, if you do the math, she had).

  I’m not sure if there does exist an actual “Mother of the Year” award-giving body, but if there is, I was well on my way to winning, if not a Lifetime Achievement Award, then at least a sweet Runner-Up Plaque.

  That is, until our one-week pediatrician appointment revealed that our perfect baby had lost 20 percent of her birth weight—double what was acceptable. “Failure to thrive,” he called it. Even though she was nursing every three hours, she was literally starving.

  My breasts were a bust.*

 
; The pediatrician suggested we switch to formula right way.

  Whoa, Dr. Cowboy! This is not my beautiful motherhood experience. I know what happens to children who don’t breast-feed. They become drug addicts, serial killers, and socialites. I know that Michael Jordan was breast-fed until he was three and that Charles Manson was not breast-fed at all. But since I was two hundred years too late to locate a wet nurse, I conceded to give the child formula, but only until she had gained the requisite amount of weight. After that I was determined to breast-feed my baby for one year, minimum.

  It was suggested that I visit a lactation consultant by the name of Binky. If Binky wasn’t available, I was to see Corky. Those names are so real I don’t even have a joke worthy of them.

  We drove to Binky’s office in the San Fernando Valley, whereupon she proceeded to examine my breast-feeding technique. Her findings? What was coming out of my nipples was something closer to puffs of milk-scented air than actual milk. My supply “sucked.” That was the bad news. The good news is that it was the baby’s fault, not mine.

  The baby had a bad latch, which led to my breasts being engorged, which led to my milk supply drying up, which led to my sitting in a small windowless office while a grown woman named Binky milked me.

  That’s right. I was milked by a Binky.

  Binky grabbed my nipple and pinched it hard—I realize this sounds like porn for Teletubbies, but it was about as sexy as back acne, (i.e., not at all*) .

  She grabbed my nipple and jammed it about twelve inches into the baby’s mouth. At that moment, the moment of my first proper latch, it became clear to me that my baby was part piranha. I’m not sure how I managed to conceive a child with the genes of a carnivorous freshwater fish from South America, but it seemed the only way to explain the excruciating pain.