« Working 9 - 5. It'll Make You Crazy If You Let It... | Main

July 16, 2009

Labor & Delivery

Around 5pm on March 19, I got some cramping. I was lying in bed with tolerable pain. I was talking and stuff. They say you can’t talk if it’s a “real” contraction. I didn’t start counting how far apart the contractions were. To be honest, I found that confusing. When does the pain stop and start? Are they five minutes apart? Does the pain last for a whole minute? I would have no idea because it was all annoying all the time. I waited until Justin Beck came home from work to do the counting for me.

He came home around 7. I told him that this shit is probably going to go down tonight. I just had a feeling about it. Looking back at the weeks before where I was on all fours bleaching the bathroom floor with scalding hot water wearing hot pink gloves, thinking the chemicals and physicality of it all would induce my labor -- it was so about time. Quit torturing me fetus.

At 8 pm, I started yelling “time!” anytime the pain kicked it. Finally, he was like, “Babe, they’re five minutes apart lasting for about a minute.” I, for some reason, felt like I could hold out. We ate Chinese food (oh mythical labor inducer) while we watched Pineapple Express (420 womp womp womp). I was a throbbing blob of discomfort on the Eames*.

When I started crying, my husband brought me an entire tub of ice cream with a big spoon. This is a big deal. He was not a fan of my “fat fuck” cravings throughout the entire pregnancy for fear that I would have trouble getting back to my original self. All husbands should take note that after a baby there is no “original“ and only “new“ and “improved.” He may have said something about “bait and switch” that he had to take back. You would take it back too if you were being held at knifepoint. “Hormones,” I’d say.

I wanted to hold out on heading to the hospital only because I’ve seen where folks go all the way there only to be sent back home. I also wanted to avoid an insurance scam. I heard that this one girl got billed for a whole day because she checked in at 11:49 pm the night she went into labor. Not that I would have had to pay outright, but you never know. I hate a medical bill. I don’t open them. Justin Beck thinks I have hoodrat mentality by allowing them to stack up on the kitchen counter, unopened for weeks at a time. But whatever. I’ll write a fucking rap song about it, leave me alone. I hate a medical bill, okay? The numbers are always lofty and I never feel like it’s fair. It just stresses me out. I have been trained to fear both emergencies and medical bills from early on. Thanks Shorty.

At 11:44 pm, a friend texted me that she wanted Shalom to hurry up because she had major gifts. At exactly that moment, I managed to crawl to the edge of the bed to put pants on. I had ordered Justin Beck to pack Shalom’s going home outfit because it wasn’t packed with my things that had already been in his trunk for three weeks. He couldn’t find her Hello Kitty outfit so he said fuck it and we somehow floated down the stairwell and into the car.

I was so ready to go to the hospital. The contractions felt like sharp stabbing pains left to right across the bottom of my belly. I was still talking though. I don’t know why they say you can’t talk. I was shouting orders and flailing about. I felt every turn, every bump in the road. My husband was calling people, yes at this hour, to say we were going to the hospital. Smiling from ear to ear, “Yeah dude, this shit’s going down I think.”

I had always pictured myself in full make-up on the way to the hospital. I don’t know why. Obviously that didn’t work out. I went straight away, no face. Nina Flowers would not have been proud. Not hot. Brown spots on blast. I did not care, but I still thought about it for a split second only because at some point, someone along this “journey” would ask me if I was, in fact, Melissa from the Real World. It has happened every time I went to the hospital throughout this pregnancy.

My pussy could be on blast at the end of a table with a human hand or a plastic tool inserted within or I could be writhing in pain with my whole ass ablaze and someone would say, “Have we met before?” or “Were you here last week with early labor?” or “Did you go to Hofstra?” and finally, “Were you on TV?” In pain, looking like Biggie said “ugly as ever” I’d just nod and smile and when that person left the room, I’d shoot my husband the evil eye because a part of him is still amused by this exchange. Every time though, I go back to the no make-up thing only because I imagine the inquiring person back at home eating at her kitchenette on the phone with the curly cord telling a friend, “Her skin is really fucking bad, but she was pleasant…”

We get to the hospital and they put me on the monitors around 12:30 am. The midwife, looking exactly like Vicki Gunvalson of The Real Housewives of the OC, comes in to check my shit, see how dilated I am. Another term I never fully understood. You see, they tell you all this shit in Lamaze class and at your check-ups but do you really understand? This percentage effaced, such and such dilated blah blah blah. I speak in terms of hours. How much longer with this shit please?

Vicki tells me I’m only 1 cm dilated and 75% effaced. Okay, whatever. On many occasions I’ve heard that you get sent straight home with that lonely one cm dilated number. I said, “I don’t want to go home. The pain is real. Can you fudge those numbers?”

She dug around in there. Ouch, goddamn! And she said, “Yup, you’re 2 cm dilated…”

She then asked me if I’d like an epidural. Um, is Oprah black? She left the room. Random other people came in and asked questions, shoved papers in my face. Justin and I were silent eye-talking about how closely the midwife resembled Vicki. He was steady taking iPhone pictures of my big ass and it was really annoying.

Time is passing. The pain is still real. I’m lying there. Justin Beck is playing Mariah Carey songs for me on his iPhone. He’s drumming along to the songs on his legs which normally annoys me, but I am blocking it out. I was doing anything to take the focus off of the pain. I specifically remember singing/mumbling along to Fly Like A Bird off the Emancipation of Mimi album. “In this harsh reality, sometimes I’m so despondent that I feel the need to…”

Somehow, in a swirling vortex of time and space and Digable Planets (translation: blur), at 3 in the morning, I am now in a birthing suite. Room 7. The epidural man comes in. I sit upright and they do it up. I didn’t feel a thing. Epidural is on some Sam Lufti drugging up “baby I can make you feel hot hot hot” type shit.

I feel fantastic. Now I’m talking shit. “I don’t know why women talk all this shit about the pain. This is crap. I feel awesome. I love it here!”

It’s now 6:45 in the morning. Some lady comes in and breaks my water for me. Didn’t feel much. No gush. No nothing.

They don’t want to keep doing vaginal exams to avoid introducing bacteria. I feel like we are left alone for a gang of time. Finally, someone turns the TV on. We are watching The Jeffersons. George Jefferson is so Shorty it is laughable and almost rudely stereotypical, but it is so him. At some point, I tell the nurse that the woman on the screen is Lenny Kravitz’s mom. Just a fun fact. She didn’t know. I smiled to myself knowing that I was about to present the world with more flavor crystals. A Filipino black Jew? Love it.

Around 10 am, Justin Beck decides to watch a stretch of Maury Povich episodes. The You Are Not The Father ones. He won’t change the channel. He loves these episodes.

“That baby ain’t mine! That baby got six fingers on one hand. Look! I got one, two, three, four, five fingers.” Justin is straight up LOL next to me. This has probably gone on for hours and hours. Now he’s getting involved in court shows.

At some point, someone comes in and puts a catheter on me. I’m apparently peeing this whole time. Ugh.

The pressure kicks in. What time is it? Who are all these people? No, really. Are you going to eat that fucking tuna sandwich in here Justin! The pressure! It’s like sitting on a block of ice with a crew of worker gnomes inside the ice pounding you in the asshole with a dozen sledgehammers. I am literally sitting on pins and needles.

Cold cold cold.

Pounding.

The lady managing my pain tells me she can dial up the epidural to take the “edge” off but that the epidural doesn’t take away the pain of the pressure. It sure doesn’t. She knows she ain’t never lied.

I stay at 4 cm dilated for 897 hours. Seriously, nothing has happened for fucking hours. The pressure is just brutal.

At 6:20 pm, I insist that they have someone come and check my shit. I know that I am more than 4 cm dilated because I feel like I’m shitting on myself but trying my hardest not to. I insist! “Something is coming out. Please tell the doctor to take a look!”

The epidural lady lifts the sheet and says, “The woman knows her body. Get the doctor. She’s ready to push.”

A nurse comes in to tell me my doctor is somewhere performing the never-ending hysterectomy and she’d like to know if I’d like to wait for her. She claims she will only be a half hour.

I tell her I’m willing to wait five minutes because I really want to push. And that if after five minutes, she is not available the fucking janitor can come up in here and deliver this baby. I am fucking over this shit. I say it as nicely as possible though. No F bombs.

Five minutes pass. Two nurses and a senior resident come in. They change the bed positioning and go over the breathing shit with me.

We start pushing.

Hours and hours of pushing. They’re pushing my legs to my chest and pulling my arms away from me while Justin has his hand at my neck and tucking my chin down. I push in ten-second (long pauses between the numbers) intervals, three times a piece. Pushing, pushing, pushing. Different doctors come in and introduce themselves. I don’t give a fuck. There’s no other way to say it. I really, truly do not care who you are. Can you dig this baby out or what? I met 9 different people. It’s the musical chairs of doctors and nurses. There is still no baby.

Some other doctor comes in and says the baby is “sunny side up” and if she weren’t, since I’m such a good pusher, this baby would have been out already. But apparently her face is getting stuck in my pelvic bones and causing her stress. So when she’s stressed, they have to stab me with this stuff that counteracts the Pitocin (makes contractions happen). The needle prick even hurts. Bad. And I am forced to take a break from pushing. The counteracting stuff makes me very anxious and shaky and stupid emotional. I feel like I am convulsing on the table. I am freezing too as white hot tears stream down my face. I am just crying and crying. Quiet, sad crying but with a GANG of tears.

At 8:30 pm my doctor comes in. “You guys are still here?” she asks. This annoys my husband. “Yes, we’ve been waiting for you,” he says curtly.

She then tells everyone in the room that has been helping me push that she doesn’t like the position of the bed and she doesn’t like when people push like that. She could have whispered the shit. Because for me, it felt like I was pushing in vain for the past two hours or that I’d had incompetent care. I glare at my husband, no words. And he smells what I’m cooking. And I can tell he’s pissed, but he stays calm and feeds me the ice chips and keeps telling me why we’re such a good team and why I’m so fucking awesome. I still hate him and everyone else in the room, but I love him.

At some point I scream, “Is my asshole on the outside of my body!” Everyone assures me it isn’t. I am telling you, it is. The Lamaze lady said not to push like you’re having a bowel movement. To push with your vagina. But the nurses keeping saying to push like you’re pooping. I opt to do whatever the hell feels like there is progress. I am willy nilly pushing hard and hating life.

Around 9:30 I’m like, “Is another day going to go by? Is the baby coming tonight? What are we really talking about? Isn’t it time to cut her out of me?”

I'm whispering to myself and maybe to anyone that cares.

“I don’t think I can survive this.”

“I don’t think I can do this.”

Silent tears. I’m staring into Justin’s face looking for answers. He has none. He looks about as sad as I feel.

I don’t really want a C section. It has never been offered to me. But I am just talking shit now. I am so over this. I’m starving. Hadn’t eaten since 7 the day before! An entire 24 hours plus has passed.

Around 10 pm, everyone in the room starts hustling around, opening packages, rolling this table here. Putting on big blue jackets and shit. I just hear packages being opened. And everyone tells me I’m really close.

At 10:18 p.m. this baby is out of my body. I don’t cry. I cry at A Baby Story and I don’t cry at my own birth? Am I sociopath? What is wrong with me? They bring her bloody body to my chest and place her in my arms. My arms are jelly mush. I have been pulling on these bed handles for hours. I can’t hold her because I’m shaking. I am not crying. I ask them to take her please. My hands are bloody now. They take her. Justin Beck is somewhere doing something. I’m lying there like holy shit.

I ask to see the afterbirth. I’m gross like that. They lift it up but I can’t get my neck in an upright enough position to look in the bucket. I regret not seeing it. I like to see progress. I am a person that has Youtube’d periodontal disease, you see.

Then I feel stitches. The numbing shit so didn’t work. I felt every pull of every stitch in and out, the sewing. That shit hurt really bad.

Justin Beck is next to the nurse that is shoving stuff in her mouth and cleaning her up. He’s yelling stuff to me. “Babe, her hands are really ashy!” “Holy shit, her fingernails are so long!” “She has crazy long toes!” “Hi Shalom!” “She’s a Chinese baby!” I’m exhausted, lying there waiting for someone to put my glasses on me. I’m also wondering why I am not crying. I’m not crying at the birth of my own baby. I keep saying that in my head. I’m just lying there quiet and uncomfortable, yet relieved.

They weigh her talking about six pounds. I manage to sit up and say incredulously, “That’s it!” I really thought she was a fucking monster baby. I gained 42 pounds!

Someone changes the sheets beneath me. It’s quiet and dark in the room now. Justin is holding the baby. My mother-in-law comes in. My father-in-law comes in. I feel huge and heavy.

Then someone comes in and rips tape off my back. The pain never ends. Someone puts me in a wheelchair and rolls me to another room on the other side of the world. It’s now 2 in the morning.

Another nurse comes into my room. Shows me how to make my own diaper and there are so many steps and layers, it’s literally like making a big sandwich. I’m wearing a wee wee pad and four Tucks medicated pads and a maxi pad and these mesh panties. And I’m peeing in a hat. What time is it and where is my baby? She’s exclusively breastfed and so does this mean she hasn’t eaten yet? There is no lactation specialist available at this hour.

At 2:45 am they bring her to me and tell me to try to breastfeed. Um. I have never done this before. She latches on like a champ. I do this for 10 minutes and then I can’t see straight. I must lie down. The baby disappears. The girl behind the curtain next to me is moaning in pain. I sleep/not sleep til 4 am and then I get up to go to the nursery to really see the baby.

I’m walking down the hallway, holding the guardrails. Walking. Thinking to myself, “I’m walking!”

They call me Mommy Beck and they tell me my baby is alert and has been entertaining herself quietly since she came to the nursery. That’s nice to know.

The next day. Shalom is a fucking Harlem Globetrotter. She is entertaining the masses. I have visitors. So many visitors. I managed to shower and put makeup on at some point in the darkness. I do not sleep. I am feeding every two hours. Nothing comes out of my boobs. She poops and pees though.

"Tomorrow," the lady said. I get to go home. I do not sleep. I do not cry.

I eat Apple Jacks for breakfast this morning. I’m going home. Wait, I’m going home? With this baby? Me? Justin Beck? And that baby? Home, you say? But…

I am in a wheelchair being pushed by a nurse. In front of me, I see my husband’s back. In his left hand he has my Louis Vuitton*. In his right hand, he’s got our baby in the car seat. She’s facing me. It’s my husband’s back and I can hear him trudging along in his Timberland boots. He never picks up his feet.

Now, I am crying.

A rush of heat from the top of my head to my chin. My face is on fire. My tears are warm. There are so many tears. I am crying so much. Everyone in the elevator asks if I’m okay. I stutter that I’m just so happy.

I am home. I do not sleep. Lots of visitors. Pizza. Ice cream. Diaper changes – for me and baby. Vaginal ass pain. Flights of stairs. So thirsty. Milk coming in. Holy shit! Milk is here like crazy. Drive myself to the maternity store. Leak all over the dressing room. Limp and hobble about the baby store to buy a breast pump.

I do not sleep.

Two weeks later, I have a system. I am calm. I troubleshoot. I fulfill the needs before she knows she needs them filled. I am the baby whisperer. I understand the cues before they become problems. I am a serene robot. I am hardly stank. I sleep when she sleeps sometimes. She sleeps in three hour stretches. Her daddy cuddles her. She is an angel baby and I deserve that considering I vomited for 18 weeks straight while my face looked like Iraq. She doesn’t wail. She doesn’t complain. She sleeps, poops, pees and smiles. Really smiles.

She’s perfection. I am happy. I can see my crotch today.

*Justin Beck forbids me from calling my stuff the name of the brand. Says it’s pretentious and gross. Sorry. When I say pass me the “Louis” I don’t mean it in a shitty way though. I swear.

Posted by melissah at July 16, 2009 10:59 AM