by Mary F. Pols
“No inducement,” I said. “Yes to the epidural. I’m totally fine with the drugs. But a firm no to a C-section.”
I was vehement on this point. The literature I’d been reading, including a very politically correct book that had come in the Amazon package from Sara—the cover featured a woman cradling her baby in what looked like a hemp sling—espoused natural childbirth all the way. I wasn’t looking for the full pain experience, but I didn’t want to be sliced open either. The current statistics on C-sections seemed to reflect an eagerness on the parts of doctors to cut to the chase, so to speak. True, a whole host of risk factors were eliminated by taking the cervix and vaginal canal out of the equation. But you also robbed a woman’s body of the thing it instinctively knew how to do and created a wound that sliced through the abdominal muscles. Recovery time for women who had C-sections was usually about two weeks longer. If you had another child, most doctors were loath to let you try it naturally the second time; they preferred to open up the old incision again.
There was also something, I thought, to be gained from pushing that baby out the natural way. Maybe it was just curiosity. But it was something I’d been wondering about ever since I’d been disabused of the notion that babies emerged from their mothers’ belly buttons. Even when you knew how it was supposed to work, part of the mystique remained; how could that get out of that?
I remembered a guy, one of Benet’s friends, who had written in his high school yearbook entry that his ambition was to “experience death.” Presumably he was just being provocative. But I was fifteen and I thought he was so deep. When it came time to write my own yearbook entry three years later, I recalled that bleak pair of words and realized what I really wanted to experience was life, giving birth, feeling a baby emerge from my body. But I wasn’t about to write that in my yearbook; I’d just sound like a cheese ball. I went with a Pink Floyd quote instead.
“No one particularly wants a C-section,” my doctor said. “But it happens. Birthing plans are not set in stone. Don’t be too wedded to yours. Do you have someone to take care of you when you first get home?”
“My sister,” I said. “She’s coming from Massachusetts tomorrow. Two days before the due date, to get her situated, and then she’ll stay for two weeks. Does that seem like a good strategy?”
“Sure,” she said. “But don’t count on having him on the due date. That would be unusual.”
Early on, I’d started asking people to be in the delivery room. Anticipating that Matt might not be enough of a support system, I wanted to be surrounded by friends. But it had gotten out of hand, like one of my dinner parties where I’d invite too many people and then start to worry about their compatibility. I could picture the disapproving look on the other faces if Liza stepped outside to smoke a cigarette halfway through my labor. So the guest list had been pared down to Matt, Wib, and Sara, one of my oldest friends and the giver of the politically correct birthing books. Sara lived in Los Angeles, but it just so happened she’d be in the Bay Area that spring. She was going to function as my doula, which is kind of like a labor coach. She had just had her second child, a boy who was ten pounds, thirteen ounces, and earned the respect of every nurse at Cedars Sinai by delivering him vaginally. She would stick up for me if any of my doctors started talking C-section.
Wib felt like the life preserver I’d been waiting for. When I pulled up to the Oakland airport and there she was, all five feet of her, so cute, with her suitcase at her feet, her hair wild in the wind, beaming at me, I finally felt ready to have this baby. We clutched at each other. No one in the family had seen me since that summer, when I just looked like a woman with a gut. Now, two days before my due date, I had a veritable prow, looming out in front of me.
In Maine, my mother was probably asleep in the nursing home, having dutifully eaten her dinner, watched a musical on the big-screen television, and then allowed herself to be lifted out of her wheelchair and into her bed. She had no awareness of what was about to happen to me, but maybe some younger version of me was in her dreams, playing in the backyard, wondering what was for dessert, asking if I could brush her hair. I had been longing for her, pointlessly, against all logic, but now here was Wib, ready to do for me what our mother had done for her sixteen years before, on the day Matthew was born: hold her hand, be steady, and help usher her baby boy into the world.
I tried to be patient, but the days ticked by without any sign of impending birth. We ate spicy food, which was supposed to induce labor but just increased my heartburn, took slow walks downtown for ice cream, planted flowers in my front yard, and looked at family pictures. Wib went into a cooking frenzy. There was Chicken Marbella in my freezer, along with enough soup to last me a month. We took practice runs to the hospital. We went to the movies and I sat sideways in my chair, trying to get comfortable, wondering if I’d go into labor during The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Everything seemed like a portent, but nothing happened. Every night I cried myself to sleep, wanting desperately to no longer be pregnant, wanting to meet my baby.
One by one, the items on the birthing plan fell by the wayside.
“Yes, by all means, strip my membranes,” I told the doctor four days after the due date. I was barely dilated at all, and this painless trick she was going to do, separating the amniotic membranes from the lower part of the uterine wall, was supposed to make my body start producing prostaglandins. In theory, that can start labor. (Sperm contains prostaglandins too, which is why people recommend sex to get labor going. But I had finally lost interest in sex.)
Three days later, my feet were back in the stirrups. Still nothing happening. “Let’s induce,” I said. “My sister has got to leave on the twelfth.”
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll check you into the hospital tomorrow night, get you on some Pitocin, and by morning, you’ll be in labor.”
A SMART WOMAN would have gone home and sat on the couch watching old movies. But Matt and I had some unfinished business to discuss. Not content to let sleeping dogs lie, I wanted to know if we would keep on behaving as a couple after the baby was born. He was at my apartment all the time in those last weeks, sharing my bed, but what happened next? With poor Wib reading in the baby’s room, I summoned Matt into my room and asked him point-blank about our relationship. He stared at the ground and took his time answering.
“I feel the same as I always have,” he said. “I told you from the beginning that I wanted us to be friends who co-parent. I want us to get along. That’s important for him.”
“So nothing that has happened in the last few months has changed that?” I asked him.
He looked into my eyes and shook his head.
“Nothing?” I said, incredulous. “Not sleeping with me every night, not spending all this time together, none of this has any impact on you at all?”
“It’s been nice,” he said. “Really nice. It’s important that we be friends. But I don’t want there to be confusion for him later on.”
“So you’re okay with us never sleeping together again?” I asked. My tone was getting bitter. “You can do that?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Was this mercy fucking?” I asked. “Taking care of the pregnant woman’s needs? You felt nothing at all?”
“Of course I felt something,” he said. “I just don’t want things to be weird with us. If we keep sleeping together, they will be.”
I couldn’t fathom how he could give it up. All my cravings; did he feel none of that in return? No desperate desire? I suppose I’d seen no evidence of it, beyond a cock that sprang to life whenever I approached it. I was crying now.
“Well, I have started to have feelings for you,” I told him. “I didn’t think I would, but we’ve been getting along so well and I love having you here and being with you, and I can’t believe you don’t want that to continue. My feelings have evolved for you, but here you are, saying that you haven’t changed your opinion of us since the day I told you I was pregnant? How can you
know this for sure?”
“I just do,” he said, spreading his hands out, as if to show me how empty they were for me.
“You know that you will never be in love with me?” I said. Tears were streaming down my face now.
“Yes,” he said.
“You know that?”
“Yes,” he said, wearily now. “I can’t give you what you need, Mary. I’m sorry.”
I ought to be able to recognize an emotionally unavailable man at twenty paces by now. I badgered this one for a little longer, accused him of having no heart, a cold heart, a dead heart, and eventually told him to go home for the night. He’d spoken the most important words of our entire relationship, but instead of hearing “I can’t give you what you need,” what I heard was “I don’t want you and therefore I won’t give you what you need.” One sentence is an admission, the other, a rejection. I chose to be rejected, to believe that there must be something wrong with me, something that Matt could see but I could not. I was back on the Bowdoin campus, listening to Peter tell my twenty-seven-year-old self that he didn’t want to end up with me. I was back in a Los Angeles apartment, clutching a phone, hearing Michel saying much the same thing. No future. I got into my bed, a beached whale on a deserted shore. I was too embarrassed to share my rage and sorrow with Wib; my life seemed so messy and dramatic and stupid compared with her nearly thirty years of marriage. What had I been doing with Matt? Why had I given myself so easily, yet again, to someone who didn’t really want me? All this was so familiar. I felt as if my love life was like some long-running Broadway play. The lead actress stayed the same; she was typecast and couldn’t break out of the role. Only the actors playing the male lead kept changing. Some would quit; the actress would fire others. But damned if they weren’t all good at saying the same lines.
I’d have fired the new actor, if I could have. But there were scenes ahead of me that I couldn’t play without him.
“I’M GOING TO RECOMMEND A C-SECTION,” said Doctor #1. It was 11 A.M. Despite the Pitocin, my cervix had crept open only one more centimeter in the night.
“No,” I said.
So everything I’d read about the eagerness of doctors to slash women open was true. I’d barely begun trying, for God’s sake. Go away, I thought. I embraced my so-called birthing ball (it’s really just one of those giant exercise balls you see in yoga studios) and rolled around on it.
He sighed. “I’ll break your water if you’d like.”
Two hours later, he was back in the room, looking disappointed by my unbudging cervix.
“I’m going to recommend a C-section,” he said again, tapping his pen on his clipboard.
“No,” I said.
“Let’s get going with the epidural,” he said. “That might relax you, and then these contractions can do their work. Because they’re strong right now, but unproductive.”
I’d wanted to hold off on the epidural until I was more dilated, because I’d read it can slow down your progress. Here was the doctor saying it could help, just another example of how contrary information about labor and delivery is. The pain of the contractions was more widespread than I’d imagined, but also duller. I could have lived with it, but use the word “unproductive” around an overachiever and she’ll toss another item on the birthing plan out the window. I was grateful to have Matt’s arms to hold while they put the needle in my spine. My mood improved considerably once the drugs started flowing.
At dinnertime, a new doctor showed up. She was petite and so young I thought she was a candy striper with the wrong outfit on. She poked around my pelvis and then took a look at her clipboard.
“I’m going to recommend a C-section,” she said.
“I’m at eight centimeters,” I protested. “I’m almost there. Leave me alone.”
She was back a few hours later, trying to put a monitor on the baby’s head. Her tiny hands fumbling inside me like a football player with sweaty palms hurt more than anything else had all day. I was up to nine centimeters.
“I’m going to recommend…”
“No,” I said. I turned to Wib and muttered. “I wish she’d just beat it.” When she left, I turned to Sara. “She’s awful, isn’t she?”
“I don’t think she’s awful,” Sara said gently. “I think she’s just trying to do her job. You’ve been at this awhile and I think they are getting worried that you’re going to be too tired to push.”
“I’m going to get to ten,” I said. “I’ve just got to get to ten.” I felt like Nigel in Spinal Tap. I’ll get to eleven, you bitch, I thought, channeling all my rage toward the tiny doctor.
I looked over and saw Matt snoring on the couch, sleeping sitting up.
“Matt,” I snapped. “Wake up!” He jumped. “Jesus!” Yawning during sex, now sleeping during contractions.
The Lamaze instructors tell you to bring a focus point, some object or photo that might help you concentrate during contractions. I had an old photograph of my mother with the four older kids, taken in 1957. They are sitting on a bridge in Venice, in front of the Bridge of Sighs. Skinny Adrian, not yet a teenager, looks into the camera from the far left, Cynthia cocks her head next to him, her hair a dark puff around a small, pale face. Alison is clutched to my mother’s breast, looking round and contented. You see only Wib’s forehead and eyes peeking out of the far right corner of the photo, squinting in the family manner. Mum did this six times, I kept telling myself, looking at the photo. No C-sections for her.
Just before dawn, I hit the magic number, ten, and started to push. It was peculiar. I wanted to squat, but because of the epidural, I was told I had to stay on my back. Sara and Matt and Wib took turns holding my legs up. It all felt so ungainly. I thanked God I’d decided not to have five people in there with me. I almost wanted to be alone. But the pushing was good; it felt as if I was finally getting somewhere. I had them bring a mirror, and in there, inside all that strange mess, I saw the top of his head. He was coming. “Hi, baby boy,” I said, certain I’d have him in my arms in minutes.
Two hours later that head didn’t seem to be moving at all. I felt as if I were trying to plunge a toilet; I kept thinking that the next push would be the one that would clear everything out, but there was the fear in the back of my mind that whatever was in there was insurmountably large.
“We’re going to have to do an emergency C-section,” said the annoying doctor.
“How old are you?” I asked. “Are you even thirty? I want to see your supervisor.”
If a vet can reach up into a horse and yank out her foal, I saw no reason why they couldn’t do that for me.
“What about that vacuum thing?” I wanted to know.
“That can cause stress on the baby,” said the attending ob-gyn, who was slightly older.
Two of them now, with their clipboards.
“I’m so close,” I said. “I can do it.”
“We’re going to let you go one more hour,” the attending said. “But that’s all. After that, we have to do a C-section.”
“I won’t need it.” I glared at her. “I’ll get him out.”
As she left the room, I sat up and tore off my hospital gown. Sorry Matt. And Wib. And Sara. I decided that I was going to do this like an animal, without silly bits of clothing covering me. I asked for the squat bar. I made myself beet red pushing. I have never been so determined.
Why did I want so much to push that baby out? Maybe on some level I wanted to prove I was tough, just as I had when I’d gone to the trailer. That last hour of pushing passed like five minutes. Then there they were again, handing me releases to sign. The instant my pen lifted off the clipboard, every light in the room came on and people started flooding in. Someone was washing me, someone was shaving me, someone was putting a cap over my hair. I was furiously sobbing. I was not going to be allowed to experience birth, the real birth. I was going to get some man-made version of it, pushed on me by the great conglomerate of lawsuit-fearing HMO assholes.
Thus it was that
I was indignant when I first laid eyes on Dolan, and disconcerted by the sense I had that I could feel them pulling my insides apart. It was 8:16 A.M. He was indignant and disconcerted too, by the sudden absence of his warm cave. For just a few seconds, they held him over the curtain that separated my top half from my bottom, sawed-off half, and I saw Gollum, a fuming Gollum, long and lean. My baby. I clutched Matt’s hand hard and continued to cry, tears of rage and relief. And then he was whisked off.
I woke up in recovery about an hour later. Matt was sitting in the corner, holding the baby. He was holding Dolan. Before I did, I thought. How strange. Matt looked at ease, far more so than I expected. The baby was fair and pink. The nurse put him in my arms and started wrestling my breast into his mouth. I’d read, in all the natural birth books I’d been browsing, that he’d be less likely to latch on easily after the drugs from the epidural. But he took the breast right away. There was a huge bruise on his head, and a scab from where he’d been repeatedly knocking against my bone while he tried to get out. “I’m sorry,” I murmured to him. “You were stuck, and I couldn’t help.”
Wib and Sara came in, bearing big bouquets and smiles.
“He’s beautiful,” Sara said.
“Did you see?” Wib said. “He has a dimple in his chin.”
I checked. There it was. “Just like Mumma’s,” I said. The tears flowed so fast, they went into my ears.
I COULD HAVE PAID $200 a night for a single room, but I figured that was a waste of money I didn’t have. I was entitled to four nights in the hospital to recover from the C-section, and I thought maybe I’d bond with some of the other moms. My book club friends told me this happened, that this was a way to get a moms’ group going.
My first roommate snored like an ancient Labrador and refused to have her baby in the room with her. No one visited until her husband came to collect her, with another child who also seemed to be hers and not particularly cherished. My second roommate arrived in the middle of the night. She was a strident woman with a needy husband. They fought in stage whispers over the issue of the room—he had fucked up, she was supposed to be in a single, could he fix it now?—and over the child. You’ve been holding him for an hour, give him to me. “Well, I feel left out,” he whined. They argued over how to change a diaper and who would sleep and when. If that’s a husband, I thought, I don’t want one. The third woman seemed like someone I could hang out with, but she was too nervous to bond. She kept hitting the call button. “My baby just threw up,” she wailed. “That’s spit-up,” the nurse explained. “Perfectly natural.” “Something seems wrong,” she cried. “He keeps pooping.” Jesus, I thought, cool it.