An excerpt from my collection of
newspaper columns, Bringing Up Mommy,
newspaper columns, Bringing Up Mommy,
written 23 years ago, posted now in honor of the birth day of
Christopher Harkness Hook 23 years ago, Sept. 28, 1988.
During her pregnancy, a woman reads a lot of books and talks to a lot of mothers as she searches for answers: How will I know when it's time for the baby to come? What will I feel? Will it hurt? Can I do this? She clings go mothers who had good experiences, hoping for the same.
And yet, as author and childbirth educator Fritzi Kallop says in her "Birth Book":
"As inconvenient as it is to have labor begin spontaneously, it seems fitting to have inexplicable forces controlling one of the most important events in life. Scientists may marvel as they observe the wonders of our farflung universe; it is equally miraculous to contemplate the birth of a child. Not one is ever routine."
At some point, then, the mommy hopeful realizes there aren't any answers. Her experience is hers, alone, to endure.
I began feeling the intensity of this predicament two weeks before my baby was due. Big and tired, I had decided to take maternity leave from my job as a newspaper reporter to rest up for the days and weeks ahead. I thought I might enjoy this respite, sitting at home with my feet up, daydreaming about holding my baby for the first time. This was so very much not true, as it turns out. At least at work, I could try to be like everybody else. At home, I was isolated, trapped by Oprah, Beaver and a phone that rang incessantly. "Anything yet?" callers demanded, as if this baby was theirs, not mine.
Finally, on the morning of Sept. 28, while I toddled alone about the confines of my house, I felt the telltale trickle of water. The nurse at the OB's office confirmed what I knew to be true. "Your water has broken."
I must say I was excited as I arrived at the hospital. My husband and I settled into one of those Home and Garden delivery rooms that make you think you're going to have a cocktail party instead of a baby. Time settled into a warp as we lounged toe-to-toe on a mauve sofa under dim lights. We chatted intimately as contraction after contraction passed without a grimace. Perfect. We could have been in a movie for Lamaze.
But, oh, lest a laboring woman get too comfortable, the transition stage of labor, when the cervix opens that last little bit, was only gaining steam. Some women told me they moved up to this "real work" of labor gradually. For me, transition came fast. Nothing in the pregnancy books could have prepared me for the intensity -- or the aloneness I felt.
I remember thinking I was the only one who could do this. I remember wishing I hadn't said I didn't want an epidural. I remember getting up on all fours because the baby wasn't getting enough oxygen. I remember feeling scared. I remember forceps.
I especially remember my husband dropping his head to my shoulder and whispering, "Thank God" when we were told, "You have a healthy son."
Then he was gone. Because the cord had been around his chest, they whisked my baby into the nursery before I could look into his eyes, count his toes, feed him.
I didn't get to "bond." Steve didn't get to cut the cord. I didn't feel any of those miraculous feelings.
The experience I had anticipated for months was over, my baby was gone and so was my husband, who went to stand by the nursery window. And I was left alone with the clean-up crew who mopped up my body and wheeled me into a room where I choked down half a dry turkey sandwich and made a few phone calls. My husband came in and out of the room. He said I still looked pregnant.
Time settled into a warp again until sometime after dark, when Steve poked his head inside the door and said I had a visitor.
I grimaced then, wondering who would be coming to see us now.
Steve opened the door wide. A nurse came in, pulling a tiny cart behind her.
I cried out loud as my baby was laid in my arms while his father looked on.
There had been nothing in the books to prepare me for the feelings I had then, either.
I was not alone anymore.
