So my otherwise chill and drama-free pregnancy took... a turn... on Wednesday morning. At my scheduled OB visit, after we’d discussed the final stretch, and the various plans/expectations for delivery, inducing, pain relief, etc, I was checked over physically, assuming everything was fine. FUNNY STORY. Turns out I had been walking around, for some unknown period of time, with my cervix dilated halfway to all-the-way, and that the irregular, mild, and generally quite ignorable cramps I’d been dismissing as Braxton-Hicks faux-contractions were, well, actually contractions. Contractuallies. Quietly and unobtrusively, while I was writing and going over edits and going to birthing class and failing to go to yoga and making plans for the big day IN MARCH, my little man was gearing up to experience a New York February.
Still assuming this was all some kind of false alarm or at least, a slowable process, we got in a cab from the doctor’s office to ride twenty blocks south to Mount Sinai West, which we toured two weeks ago. Back then I was convinced that in the delivery room I’d fixate on the blowsy, blood-colored peony print on the curtains and wallpaper border, that brand of hospital decor that somehow just accentuates the institutional ugliness. But in the moment I didn’t even notice they were there.
The rest of the day was spent waiting, in a series of less and then more private rooms, while it still seemed possible that we’d be sent home and told to come back in the morning, or in a couple of days, or perhaps that the whole thing was a false alarm. Underneath all that, though, was progress, slow and anything but steady, and at some point it became clear that no, we’d be going to a delivery room tonight, not next week. I didn’t have any drugs, because I wanted to be able to move around and because the slow onset got me used to the pain. By the time I was tired enough and feeling enough to want some of the edge taken off, I was being asked, and then told, to push.
There is so much to say about all of this, this most banal of miracles. I have thoughts on everything from commodity-healthcare to nursing training to the relationship between aesthetics and emotions in recovery; about the gaps between people and protocols, the conflict between science and experience in pregnancy and childbirth, the myths around instinct, and the strange way time works in institutions, and in our minds and bodies. I’m interested in the way that we narrate huge experiences, and how surprised I was that everything was like something else, rather than a series of brand-new sensations, or perhaps that’s just the way our minds and bodies process the new. Also, the postpartum physical battering is no joke. I’m recovering pretty well, but the whole “you forget the pain once you hold the baby” is bullshit straight from the minimizing-of-female-pain playbook. Getting stitched up was the worst, most miserable part of the whole experience.
TL, DR: pain, relief, boredom, terror, *enormous quantity of effluvia*, human baby!!!!!
So that’s where we are. His name is Felix Jeremy (after my beloved dad). He was just under 6lb, and three and half weeks early, but he missed being born on Leap Day. He’s a tiny little blue-eyed redhead with scratchy fingernails and chicken legs, and, well. I knew I wanted to do this. But I’m surprising myself, hour by hour, with how much I want to do it. It’s a trip. (My posting schedule may be a bit erratic over the next few weeks, and likely somewhat baby-centric. Little X is very chill and sleepy right now but I am pretty sure that isn’t going to last...)
Finally! I’ve never shared this link before, but if you enjoy reading my rambling, there has probably never been a better time to ask you to buy me a coffee.