Now I See You

by Nicole C. Kear

  I remained elated through the months of morning sickness that had me yakking into grocery bags on the subway, through the ballooning of my belly like a mutant vegetable in a B movie, through the shooting nerve pain in my thigh that had me walking about as fast as a crippled tortoise, which was fine really, since that was the speed safest for my fetus, anyway. As my due date approached, I felt more and more excited, and when I woke on Thanksgiving morning to an unmistakable contraction, I was positively giddy.

  And then the pain started, and the giddiness was obliterated.

  It’s not that the pain came as a surprise. Oh no: I’d been thoroughly prepared by my grandmother.

  Nonny was the worst thing to ever happen to the natural childbirth movement. If home birth advocates knew she was running around sowing seeds of terror in the hearts of expectant mothers all across New York City, they’d have locked her up somewhere. With one sentence, she could crush nine months of hypnobirthing prep.

  “Dio mio,” she moaned, transported back to the birth of her own daughters in the late 1940s, “I neva forget de pain! Madonna! De pain! I tought I was gonna DIE de pain was so terrible! Is someting you can neva imagine!”

  I explained to her that nowadays the medical world has more to offer in the way of anesthesia than a leather strap and a shot of whisky, but there was no interrupting the flashback once it began. She just had to let it run its course.

  “De pain is so bad, you gonna beg to die. You understan’ me? You gonna BEG—”

  I stopped listening there. I’d get the epidural. She’d had me at “beg to die.”

  So when I went into labor, I expected the pain. I just didn’t expect it to go on for so damn long.

  I spent all of Thanksgiving day writhing around in my apartment before I decided I’d had it. It had been seven hours, which was a perfectly reasonable amount of time for a labor to last, and now enough was enough. No more screwing around.

  In the eight minutes between contractions, I applied a full face of makeup using the magnifying mirror in my bathroom. Then I informed David: “It’s time to go into the city. To the hospital.”

  “Did you just put on lipstick?” he asked. “And mascara?”

  “What difference does that make?” I countered.

  “I just don’t know if it’s time yet.” He was ginger, not wanting to set me off. “Your contractions aren’t close enough together.”

  It took every modicum of restraint not to crinkle up my nose and imitate what he’d just said in a nasal, singsong voice, like bullies do before beating the shit out of kids on the playground.

  David is a by-the-book kind of person. If he’s in the ten-items-or-less line at the supermarket and realizes that he has eleven items, he will get off the line, even if he is the next person to pay. He is the kind of person who makes an honor code actually work, the kind of person I refer to derisively as a goody-goody as I flash a student ID that hasn’t been valid in years to get a discount at museums. In my defense, I’m an absolute straight shooter compared to my mother, who had my sisters and I ducking under the subway turnstile until we were in high school and has, on occasion, made a meal out of the free samples at Costco.

  In general, I could appreciate that David’s honesty was part of what made him a good match for me, the Jiminy Cricket to my Pinocchio. But in this particular instance, as it was standing in the way of me getting a hefty dose of morphine, I found it really fucking annoying.

  “I don’t care if they send me home,” I said through gritted teeth, “I can’t take it anymore.”

  Of course, David was right.

  “You’re not technically in labor,” concluded my ob-gyn, Dr. Lamont, after examining me at the hospital. “You’re no more dilated than you were at your last office visit.”

  “But that’s impossible,” I moaned. “It hurts. So much.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t hurt yet,” laughed Dr. Lamont, somewhat sadistically. “Your mascara is still perfect.”

  “How is that relevant?” I cried. “Why is everyone so fixated on the mascara? I want that epidural, just like you promised.”

  “Go home and eat some turkey.” She smiled. “Well, maybe not the turkey. But a glass of wine, definitely. It’ll help you relax.”

  Very much chagrined, I heaved my cervix out of that hospital that didn’t want me. But the prospect of going all the way back to Brooklyn, walking up all those stairs, and continuing my writhing in our tiny apartment was unbearable. So I did something highly inadvisable.

  I went to my parents’ house. In the middle of labor.

  Their apartment was in midtown, so in the event that I ever went into actual labor, I’d be close to the hospital. And besides, Thanksgiving dinner was just wrapping up. If we hurried, David pointed out, the meatballs would probably still be hot.

  My grandmother greeted us at the door: “Jesu mio! De baby’s coming! Did it start? De pain?”

  She pulled me into the living room where my parents, sisters, aunt, and uncle were all scraping their plates clean and refilling glasses of wine while Pavarotti provided a little light night music. I felt like I’d been returned to the scene of my pregnancy announcement, only with a lot more physical agony.

  My mother walked over.

  “You don’t look like you’re in labor,” she observed helpfully. “You’re not even in pain.”

  “Oh, she gonna be,” shuddered my grandmother.

  A good-for-nothing contraction hit and I grabbed the edges of the glass dining-room table and closed my eyes.

  “What’s the matter with her?” Aunt Rita asked, with what sounded like a mouth full of meatball.

  “She’s having a contraction,” my mother called from the kitchen. “A little practice one.”

  “Well, we saved you some turkey,” Aunt Rita announced, placing before me a heaping plate of turkey, stuffing, manicotti, meatballs, and fried cauliflower. Precisely the kind of light fare recommended in situations when you’re about to push a human being out of your guts and are likely to shit yourself in the process.

  “I can’t eat,” I panted, pushing the plate away. “The doctor said just some wine.”

  “Vino?” Nonny shrieked. “Wat kinda doctor is dis? A drunk? Assolutamente no!” She pushed the plate back toward me. “You gotta eat! You need you energy!”

  “Don’t you understand?” I pleaded. “I’m in pain.”

  “Well, I hope you’re not planning to get an epidural,” Aunt Rita pontificated. “Those drug your baby up and then they can’t breastfeed and you’ll have to use formula which’ll give the baby a lousy immune system and then you’ll have real problems, I’m telling you.”

  Good God, I thought, what have I done? I was about to walk over to David and tell him discreetly to get me out of this madhouse when another contraction hit, and I had to drop onto my hands and knees. A captive audience.

  “Since when you don’t eat?” my grandmother shouted. “You gonna run out of energy right in da middle and den finito! De pain is gonna get you! You neva gonna make it!”

  My mother drizzled sauce over the manicotti. “I hate to say it but she’s right.”

  I shot David a desperate look but he was too busy gnawing on a drumstick to pay me any attention.

  “Just let her see for herself,” my aunt added. “She’ll learn the hard way.”

  When the contraction eased up, I shoved a few forkfuls of manicotti in my mouth, just to shut them up for a minute. As soon as the next contraction passed, I told myself, we were going back to our place.

  But in less time than it takes for a tryptophan coma to set in, something strange happened. I went from masticating manicotti against doctor’s orders to floating buck naked in my parents’ bathtub yelling, “Harder, harder!” as Marisa dug her fists into my lower back. Two hours had passed but I couldn’t say how because the legendary pain had arrived. I was in a Manhattan high-rise but I might as well have been in rural Italy, begging the goatherd passing by to put me out of my misery.

 
My aunt and mother leaned against the bathroom wall, drinking red wine. My grandmother stood beside them, crying.

  “I think you should try a different position,” Aunt Rita suggested. “That’s just my advice.”

  “What do we know, after all?” my mother joined in. “I’ve only had three kids—all natural childbirth.”

  I leaned over the edge of the tub and emptied the contents of my stomach onto the bathroom floor. This worked Nonny up to a frenzy: “Madonna! O Dio! De pain! De pain!”

  I was ushered out of the tub and Marisa helped me get dressed, for which act of kindness I threw up on her. Before she’d had a chance to recover, I informed her that we had bigger problems.

  “I think I peed my pants,” I sobbed.

  My sister pointed out that perhaps, seeing as I was in labor and all, my water had broken. I was so deranged by pain I’d almost forgotten that I was having a baby. I yelled for David.

  “Hospital,” I panted.

  “You’re still seven minutes apart.”

  I gave him a look that said, “I don’t care how far apart the contractions are, if those doctors don’t jam a needle full of drugs into my spinal column like they mean it, I will bitch-slap them with a bedpan.” The great part about being married, even for only a year, is your spouse understands these looks without you having to say a word. Then I threw up on him, for good measure, and the matter was settled. To the hospital!

  Dr. Lamont was impressed when she examined me. “You’re at seven centimeters. Good job! And your mascara is running all over the place! See?”

  I was about to strangle her with my bare, suddenly crazy-strong hands, when she asked: “Want that epidural now?”

  This seemed so absurd I began to cackle wildly. Did I want one? It was like saying, “Would you like me to untie this boulder from around your neck before I throw you in the river?” Yes, thanks, that’d be swell.

  “Make it—a big one,” I panted.

  I couldn’t make out the fine print on the paperwork the nurse brought over but it didn’t matter. Even if it had said, “Epidural may cause the baby to come out of your mouth instead of your vagina,” I think I would have signed on the dotted line.

  Within a half hour, the magic drug cocktail was oozing into my system, bringing the giddiness back. I applied a fresh coat of lipstick so I’d look effortlessly beautiful in the postbirth pictures and then, before I knew it, Dr. Lamont was telling me it was time to push. She directed Marisa and David to each hold one of my legs, which made me feel a little like a wishbone. Things happened very quickly then and after a few pushes, the doctor said she could see the baby; it was that close.

  After that, I didn’t need any encouragement. I wanted to see that baby; I wanted to hold that baby; I wanted that baby here in the world with me—immediately. I pushed with an artery-popping force and within minutes the head crowned.

  “Look down, Nicole,” Dr. Lamont urged.

  There was my baby, his face, his tiny, perfect face. I’d waited so long to see it and now here it was, and my God, it was beautiful. More than beautiful. It was sublime.

  How can it be so tiny? I thought. I never knew eyes and nose and mouth came in sizes this small.

  It was one of those moments where time freezes, a second that goes on and on and on, stretched like taffy and never breaking. I was mesmerized. I could not rip my eyes away.

  I’m seeing this, I marveled. Please let it last.

  Then I heard Dr. Lamont coach, “Come on, girl, one more push.”

  I bore down and watched as the baby’s body—shoulders, arms, torso, and legs—poured out of me in an enormous rush. And as he slipped right out of my insides, into the world, I screamed.

  Later David would tell me it was the most animal-like noise he’d ever heard a human make and he thought I was tearing in two. But it wasn’t pain. It was the sound of pure release; from my body was released another body, from my person, a person. My little person. Because, there in the doctor’s hands, letting forth his own primal scream, was my Lorenzo.

  David and my sister and I were all shaking and crying, in the moment now, the great moment that had broken open and was pouring over us. In the mix was joy and wonder and gratitude but holding it all together was this brand-new sensation, of grace, the kind of grace they always talked about in church, but I could never work my mind around.

  “My baby, my baby,” I kept repeating, “my baby.”

  I cried like it was me being born and in a way, of course, it was.

  The doctor placed the baby, warm and wet, on my chest and as I watched he fluttered open the lids of his bee-stung eyes and reached for me, stretching his spindly fingers toward my lips. In that moment, it happened. I became a mother.

  I know it was probably just coincidence that in his first earthly gesture, my son reached for me. I know he was really just writhing around in shock and disgust, madly attempting to scramble back into the womb. But it didn’t feel like coincidence. It felt like a contract.

  Will you have me? he was asking. Can you?

  I will, I promised. I can.

  In that moment, something changed in my anatomy, and I’m not referring to the fact that my stomach dropped back down from my chest to my abdomen, where it belonged. Suddenly, I had a new reason, a new purpose. From now on, what mattered most was caring for this tiny creature, making sure he was safe and happy. To do that, I would have to sacrifice. I’d sacrifice the things all parents do, like sleep and money and leisure. But I’d have to sacrifice something else, too, something that had become indispensable to me. I’d have to sacrifice the lie that I was like everyone else. I’d have to sacrifice the denial about my encroaching blindness, a denial I’d indulged in for more or less my entire adult life.

  I looked at the naked infant in my arms.

  For him, I’d do it.

  Tip #11: On baby care

  The good news is, you don’t need to see to accomplish most of the big, important tasks of new motherhood. You can create a baby and deliver them into the world, with no vision at all.

  The bad news is once you do that, you’ll have a cantaloupe-sized human being with no abilities or defenses whatsoever who will be left in your care. The desire to keep this being alive will be roughly one billion times stronger than the most passionate desire you ever had before. And if you trip over a rattle on the floor, it could all be over. No pressure or anything.

  The only answer is to go slow. Turn down your speed dial so that you’re moving at half the speed you normally would, and then turn it down again, so that you feel like the room is filled with cannoli cream and you’re just trying to wade through it. You’ll know you’re moving at the right speed if octogenarians pushing walkers are leaving you in the dust.

  You still won’t be able to prevent tiny and potentially fatal mistakes, but it’s as much a guarantee as you, or anyone else really, gets.

  11. BABY STEPS

  When I imagined the halcyon days of new motherhood, I never imagined sobbing as I soaked my tits in a sitz bath in the toilet at 3:00 A.M. Yet there I was, wailing as loud as my newborn.

  I’d known the first few weeks would be hard but this was like Armageddon. The effect of the baby’s birth on my life was not unlike that of a demolition crew laying into me with a wrecking ball. Everything—my identity, my apartment, my lady parts—had exploded into chaos and now I was left to sift through the rubble to see what was salvageable and what needed to be replaced. Odds were good that the finished product would be an improvement over what was there before but that didn’t mean the process wasn’t ruthless.

  In the first few weeks after Lorenzo’s birth, unimaginably weird shit occurred on a daily basis. Usually, these developments were revolting and/or painful. Invariably, a medical professional assured me they were 100% normal.

  Baby pissing directly into your eye during a diaper change?

  Routine.

  You passing blood clots the size of a fist?

  Comes with the territory.
r />   Scabs on your nipples?

  Yeah, shit happens.

  I’m no dummy but I did expect Life with Baby to more closely resemble a Pampers ad than, say, a carnival freak show.

  What really troubled me was that I had no instinct anymore to sense what was okay and what wasn’t. Not only were my nerves shot; my confidence was decimated.

  The morning after Lorenzo was born, I was lying in my hospital bed, cradling the baby in my arms and gazing at his sleeping face, when he suddenly started to choke. On thin air. He hadn’t been nursing or anything, he just went from slumbering in that unreachable, newborn way to gagging.

  I lay immobilized for a second or two and then I raced into the hospital hallway, holding Lorenzo and yelling: “Help me! Someone! My baby is choking!”

  I was fully aware of how ridiculous this sounded and what a spectacle I was making but my panic overrode any sense of decorum. This was life and death.

  A middle-aged nurse strode over. She was built like a brick shithouse, solid in her scrubs, and she walked like she meant business. Within a few seconds, she’d grabbed the baby out of my arms like a sack of beans and whacked him on the back, twice, with what seemed like excessive force. I winced as I imagined his spinal column shattering. But he remained in one piece, as erect as a newborn can be, and his gagging was replaced with bawling.

  “That’s normal,” the nurse explained, handing the baby back to me and paying precious little attention, I noted, to supporting his head. “He’s just gagging on his amniotic fluid. They do that sometimes.”

  She said it casually, like it was supposed to make me feel better. In fact, it had the opposite effect. I’d been prepared to protect my son from all sorts of choking hazards—loose change, hot dogs, paper clips—but later, in a few months, when I’d had a chance to hone my mothering skills. I’d never thought I’d need to start now, right out of the gate, and that I’d have to also worry about him choking on stuff that was already inside of him. The very stuff that had shielded him from harm for the past nine months.