Five Hours

by Lucinda Weatherby

  January 8

  Dix is busy organizing our whole house. I’m not too scared about labor; I’m mainly nervous about the baby. The suspense is what’s hard. We’ve only told Maud and the midwives about the bloody show. We don’t want to feel that everyone is on edge, expectant.

  Grace comes to me in bed with her wool and knitting needles, determined to teach me how to knit. She spends a lot of time these days making the baby little gifts and writing love notes.

  Two-and-a-half-year-old Sam, Grace’s brother, calls my belly “Buddy” and loves to snuggle and climb all over me. He talks to the baby through my bellybutton and asks me to open my mouth so he can look down my throat and try to see the baby.

  January 9

  In the morning, we go to have my fluid levels checked at the hospital in Grants Pass. Same ultrasonographer, Debbie. She is very alarmed, first saying, “I can’t find any pockets of fluid,” and then asking if we’ve done a fetal stress test. Then she tries to get the baby to move, and when it doesn’t, she becomes more distressed—“I need to see some movement!” Then she leaves the room to consult the radiologist.

  While Debbie’s gone, my terror grows. I imagine an emergency C-section on the spot. My lip starts to quiver, but I don’t want to cry. I feel small and vulnerable, like a young child, not a powerful woman getting ready to give birth.

  Rhione and Dicken are looking fairly calm, both of them muttering about the ultrasonographer “trying to play doctor.” Debbie comes back, grim-faced and not saying much. She examines the baby for ten more minutes, finding a little fluid here and there, visibly relieved when the baby moves and takes a practice breath. The fluid reading is slightly higher than Dr. Katz’s the week before, which according to him was okay, as long as it didn’t drop.

  On our way out, Debbie runs down the hall after us. She stops me and asks, “Are you really having a home birth? Where do you live, close to town?”

  I feel insulted. Dicken looks at me sternly and says, “Please don’t take that on.”

  We go to Rhione’s office nearby. She feels the baby and measures my belly. My fundal height has grown, and she thinks I have as much fluid as before, if not more—she’s not too worried. She also thinks the baby feels bigger. I am reassured, trusting her hands and experience, almost wishing I’d never had an ultrasound to begin with. It’s created so much fear in me. But I have to admit, it has probably made me drink and rest more than I would have. And I’ve fallen more deeply in love with this baby than I imagined possible. It looked so adorable on the screen, its little nose and mouth.

  I don’t have any more mucus secretions; I seem to have dried up at the hospital. I wonder if I stalled the labor process by going into flight-or-fight mode. The medical world is very scary; I’m astounded at how disempowered I felt on that table, immersed in fear and completely cut off from any sense of intuition or wisdom.

  January 12

  Ten days to due date

  At a home visit with the midwife team, including Karen, the homeopath we’ve asked to be at the birth, Rhione admits some concern. “To be perfectly honest, if it were any other client, I would suggest being closer to town. I just know how much a home birth means to you and have been holding back.”

  I look out the window at the gray drizzle and wish I could stay here in the warm house for a very long time. But deep inside, I know Rhione is right. I nod, and Dicken reaches for my hand.

  “Let’s go,” I say.

  So even though it feels like an upheaval, we repack all the birth supplies and take Jasper with us to town, leaving Maud to pick up Kevin after school.

  Maud calls about an hour after we arrive at Mom’s house. “I’m worried about Kevin,” she says. “I picked him up from school and when I told him you were in town, he burst out crying and said he felt strange.” She goes on to say that he went to his room to lie down, and she later convinced him to come to the main house so she could keep a close eye on him. She asked if he wanted to hear some music, and he said he’d like to listen to Bob Marley sing, “Every little thing is gonna be alright.” Maud said he seemed calmer but still not himself.

  “Can I talk to him?” I ask.

  Kevin comes on the phone and says, “I feel kind of weird. I’ve been hearing voices.”

  I start reeling and sit down, trying to stay present. Mom sees my distressed face and takes over.

  “Oh, I see,” I hear her say, “the voices have been telling you things about the baby.” I feel a deep sense of shock. I remember how, back in the early days of the pregnancy, Kevin knew I was having a baby before I took the test. Now these voices are telling him I’m going to have the baby this weekend. According to Kevin, they say his name and he doesn’t like the way they say it. They speak English to him. It started in England but hasn’t happened again until now.

  Mom goes to pick him up and bring him here. I feel completely overwhelmed, wondering how I will ever be able to relax and have this baby. We’re going to end up with a Down’s baby and a schizophrenic child. My life is fucked up.

  I meditate awhile, telling myself, Remember what the mystics say, life is all an illusion anyway, a temporary dream. But my life feels more like a nightmare than a dream right now.

  I go to Mom’s computer and look online under children hearing voices. I feel reassured as I read that it’s quite common and usually passes, especially if adults don’t make it a big deal. It often happens because of stress around major life changes.

  Mom arrives and says she’s been telling Kevin about Paul, who had his first “seeing” experience at the same age. She told him that Paul says many of the most amazing people can see or hear things others don’t; that the universe is filled with mysteries, things that would love to get our attention.

  “I told him he’s safe and can ask the voices to go away,” Mom tells me. “He said he wasn’t sure he wanted them to go away because it was kind of neat to know things before they happen.”

  Kevin comes into the room, looking a little shell-shocked, vulnerable. I try to act nonchalant. Then he says to me, “Mom, I hope the baby doesn’t die. Sometimes babies die, and if ours does, I’m going to cry a lot.”

  I freeze up. Kevin does not know about the ultrasounds, or my web searches, unless he has overheard something. I will myself to forget what he has just said about the baby dying. It’s too much for me to take in right now. I eject it from my mind. The main thing that concerns me is the possibility that Kevin is psychologically disturbed in some way, that this might progress into something that needs treatment.

  January 13

  Nine days to due date

  The next morning, my friend Mary comes over. I immediately tell her about Kevin hearing the voices.

  “Wow, that’s interesting.” She seems genuinely curious, for which I am very grateful. “You know, if he does have some kind of strange energy preying on him, we should send him to this healer I know in town. I sent my grandson to have an entity removed and it worked great. I’d be happy to take Kevin for you. You have enough on your plate right now.”

  I love Mary’s unfazed, helpful approach to what seemed so heavy and unmanageable a few minutes ago. I think about Paul and other energy workers we know and realize how fortunate we are to be here in Ashland, where people don’t immediately assume kids hearing voices necessitates psychiatric care.

  *

  Courtney comes over and I tell her about Kevin’s voices. She looks intrigued, and says, “I have a hunch Kevin has a strong psychic connection to this baby, especially since the voices came around the time of the conception, and now the birth.”

  “It is pretty striking,” I say.

  “I wonder if Kevin and the baby are karmically linked, that maybe they agreed to be adopted siblings and lined everything up.”

  I love that my Harvard-educated friend talks about these things as if they were as widely accepted as the law of gravity.

  Another of my closest friends, Gabriella, calls to tell me she’s been dreaming about the
baby every night. “In a dream last night,” she says, “the totem animal of the baby became clear to me—the black panther.”

  “That’s funny,” I say. “That’s the animal Kevin is obsessed with. He talked to me all about it a few months ago, how he saw one once, in the jungle in Costa Rica.”

  “Well, I’m convinced that’s the baby’s totem. I even knew I was dreaming, and I asked myself in the dream, Is this real or is this just a projection of my own stuff? I was told to go see a shaman in the dream, and he confirmed that yes, this is the baby’s totem.”

  “Wow,” I reply, grateful for the attention she’s paying to my baby, though not interested enough in totems to think about this much right now.

  Meanwhile, it rains again, as it has for weeks now. It seems that all my labors to bring forth children happen in inclement weather—driving rain the night Jasper arrived; the flooding last year in Costa Rica that washed out the roads and kept Kevin and his mom from getting their blood tests. Even Grace was born in a fluke of an early-December snowstorm, and Dicken in a March snowstorm. I’m getting ready for whatever the skies might deliver.

  CHAPTER 14

  Eight days to due date

  Saturday, January 14, brings more rain and dark-gray skies. I spend the morning taking a hot bath and resting. At lunchtime I eat a piece of toast in the kitchen. Dicken sits with me, reading a magazine.

  “Look at this,” he says, showing me one of the magazine’s glossy pages. It’s a photograph of a boy with a badly deformed mouth.

  “It’s an ad for a charity that does cleft surgeries in third world countries. They do each operation for two hundred and fifty dollars.”

  I don’t want to hear about birth defects; it’s too close to home right now. But I am reluctant to admit that, afraid Dicken will think I’m being melodramatic. I look down at my plate, hoping he’ll change the subject.

  “Isn’t it crazy?” he goes on. “The surgery is that cheap and a boy his age hasn’t had it. He must be, what, eight or nine years old?”

  I grunt.

  “Hey, what’s the name of that actor in the movie we rented the other night, the one who has a scar on his lip?”

  “I don’t know,” I say quickly. “Can we talk about something else?”

  *

  We watch the Redskins lose their playoff game in the afternoon. During the game, I notice less movement in the baby and try to ignore it. But by nightfall I am worried and mention it to Dicken.

  “Eat something,” he suggests. “The baby’s probably just low on energy.”

  I eat a bunch of carob chips, hoping the sugar will have an effect, but nothing changes. My mouth tastes sour and metallic.

  At around nine o’clock, I ask Dicken to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. The fetoscope feels cold on my belly.

  “It’s a little bit higher than it’s been.”

  I start to get panicky. Dicken calls Rhione, who suggests we think about going to the hospital to have a tracing. They’ll induce me, I’m sure, I think, feeling my fear of getting caught in the medical system. But my anxiety about the baby is stronger.

  We decide to go in.

  We tell Mom our plan, and she jumps into action. “Don’t worry, I’ll put the boys to bed. Call us when you know something.”

  I say goodbye to the boys, wondering if the next time I see them will be their introduction to the baby. As we buckle our seatbelts, Dicken tells me Rhione and the other midwives are on their way and will meet us at the hospital.

  “I’d hate to be a midwife,” Dicken says.

  I nod, noticing the cold, dark evening, feeling guilty that the midwives have to drive an hour for what might turn out to be a false alarm.

  The rest of the short drive to Ashland Hospital, Dicken and I are quiet. I think about the surly ultrasound technician from the hospital in Grants Pass and pray for a gentle, friendly practitioner.

  *

  We park and head into the emergency room, where a man on duty interviews us, then sends us to the birthing ward, a short walk down the hall. We see hardly anyone. The hospital corridors are bright with fluorescent lights but feel deserted.

  The birth center is empty except for Sage, the young nurse at the desk. She gives us a warm smile, telling us, “You’re the only ones here so far tonight. It’s unusually quiet.” She looks nervous when I explain that the baby has slowed down, and quickly settles me into a bed and hooks me up to a fetal monitor.

  “Ah, a steady heartbeat,” she says, smiling. “That’s a relief. I’ll go get in touch with the doctor who’s on call.”

  Meanwhile, the three midwives arrive. Karen tells me a song came to her while she was driving to the hospital, and she begins to sing quietly, “Don’t worry about a thing, ’cause every little thing is gonna be alright.” It’s the Bob Marley song Kevin asked Maud to play for him the day before, when he reported hearing voices talking to him about the baby.

  Dr. Moreno, the on-call obstetrician, arrives and looks at the tracing. She frowns and asks Sage, “Is that the baby’s heartbeat or hers?”

  There is an anxious discussion about the slow heartbeat the machine is reporting, but no one can tell if it’s mine or the baby’s. Dr. Moreno decides to do an ultrasound. After a few minutes of looking at the screen, she tells us the baby appears to be in distress. She also mentions the small size, her expression grim as she says, “Looks like fetal growth retardation.”

  She recommends a C-section, then leaves the room so we can decide.

  Rhione expresses some puzzlement at the doctor’s urgency, wondering why she wouldn’t suggest trying to induce labor first. I am shaking hard, and know what I want to do.

  “Let’s go with the C-section. I can’t take any more of this not knowing.” I look at the clock. It is eleven thirty. I figure the baby will be born after midnight, making its birthday January 15. Martin Luther King’s birthday.

  The doctor nods when we tell her our decision, and one of the nurses describes what will happen in the rush to get me to surgery. The next ten minutes are spent in a flurry of activity—a nurse hooking me up to an IV, beginning to administer antibiotics and fluids. Someone asking me about my last meal. “I ate about two hours ago. A whole bunch of carob chips. I was trying to get the baby to be more active.”

  A very pregnant woman comes in. “I’m Jennifer Theone, the family doctor. I’ll be in charge of the baby when it’s born.” She looks at the chart, then says to me, “I’ve seen lots of small babies, and there’s never been a problem. So don’t worry too much.”

  Relief floods me for a moment. Everything’s going to be fine. Let’s just get this baby out. Meanwhile, my whole body is shaking.

  Someone explains that I will get a low, horizontal incision, “so you can wear a bikini.” I can hardly comprehend the words, they seem so irrelevant. I nod automatically, thinking, Why in the world would anyone mention a bathing suit at a time like this? How could it ever matter what I look like again?

  The anesthesiologist enters, wearing street clothes. She smiles at me. “I wanted to introduce myself before the surgery,” she says. “I’m Kathy.” I notice her chic coat, her New York accent. She describes the process I will go through shortly. She calls me “honey,” and I like her warmth.

  “How many people can go into the OR with her?” Dicken asks.

  “Just one.”

  I look at Dicken and he nods. “Don’t worry, I’ll be right there with you.”

  My clothes are removed and I’m put in a papery gown and cap. The nurse tells me to take off my jewelry, so Dicken unclasps my necklace and then struggles to wrest my engagement and wedding bands from my swollen ring finger.

  “I can’t get these off,” he says, a little breathless.

  “Don’t worry about the rings,” the nurse says.

  Somehow I am lifted onto a gurney and wheeled into the hall. Dicken tells me he’ll get his scrubs on and meet me in the operating room. “I’m going to give your mum a call and let her know what’s happening,
” he adds.

  “You’re going to be holding your baby soon,” someone says to me as I am being wheeled down to the operating room.

  “Remember to use your hypnobirthing!” one of the midwives calls after me.

  I keep taking long, deep breaths as best I can.

  “I’m Jani, the assisting physician,” a young woman says, smiling warmly. “You look familiar to me.”

  I don’t recognize her but I nod my head.

  “Do you have a child at Willow Wind?”

  “Yes,” I say. “My son Jasper goes there.”

  “So does my son,” she says.

  I smile. I like that so far, the growing team of four doctors and at least as many nurses are all women.

  The anesthesiologist, now in her scrubs, greets me again and tells me how to sit on the edge of the table with my back hunched over so she can get a big needle in my spine.

  I try to hold myself steady yet I’m still shaking all over. I feel the needle go in but don’t flinch or make a sound. I just want this over.

  “You’re doing so great, sweetheart! I hope it’s not hurting you.”

  “I don’t care about any pain,” I struggle to say through my chattering teeth. “I just want the baby to be okay.”

  They have me lie back on the table as my legs and abdomen go numb. Dr. Moreno keeps testing me by poking different places with a sharp tool. One or two of the nurses are constructing a paper tent around me to keep me from seeing the surgery. Dicken is by me with his blue cap on. He takes one of my hands in his. I can hear the doctors getting ready to open me up.

  “Well, we’ve brought children into our lives in three different ways,” Dicken tells me. “A home birth, an adoption, and now a C-section.”

  For some reason this makes me smile, and I relax a little. “Keep talking to me,” I tell him.