Thursday, June 28, 2007
Life
Not a silent birth
The first thing I felt when I heard I was going to have a C-section was vindication...
| “What did I say?” I asked, thinking it possible that, while floating in a morphine haze, I had uttered something profound and beautiful at one of the most important moments in my life. |
By Lisa Baron
The first thing I felt when I heard I was going to have a C-section was vindication. You see, after a certain statement I made last year about the size of my vagina, everyone went crazy. My former boss was upset, my parents were horrified, the country’s top newspapers wrote stories about it, liberal blogs posted it on the front page of their Web sites, and another local rag even drew a cartoon regarding the comment.
But I knew it was true, not because I ever measured it, but because I instinctively knew. In black and white, plain as day, I told you that I did not, in fact, have a large vagina. I took a lot of crap for it, but it was the truth, and I have the scar across my lower abdomen and a prescription for morphine to prove it. Indeed, it’s so not big that my doctor put the kibosh on a big, fat baby traveling through it. And at the time, before little Micah was surgically plucked from my pouch, we thought I might be carrying a nine-pound package.
So when I found out that I wouldn’t have to deliver the baby through the proper channels, I felt relieved, but also a little scared. After all, I was going in for major surgery. And after an hour of preparation, which included a catheter inserted into my back, I was no longer to able to feel my legs. I was ready, medically speaking, that is, to meet my child.
Northside Hospital allows only one person in the delivery room, and since there had been only one other person in the room when I made my new baby, I decided to pick my husband. So Jimmy and I bid farewell to my mother and his parents, and they rolled me into a sterile room full of machines and stainless-steel cabinets. I was lifted onto the operating table and a curtain was erected that separated the upper and lower halves of my body. “Let me know when they start,” I said to Jimmy, who was peering over the paper wall. “When they start? Your guts are all over the table,” he said. Suffice it to say, I felt nothing.
Within seconds I heard the cries of my new baby and I was elated. But I still felt numb and a bit overwhelmed. When they brought my son over to me so I could see his face for the very first time, I felt love and gratitude for a healthy baby. Within seconds I was seized by guilt. I apologized to my son—whom eight days later we would name Micah Alexander—because of all the bitching and complaining I had done about my pregnancy discomfort.
But then I reminded him that I stopped drinking and refused tuna fish for nine months. I also told him that I painted his room green (it used to be a light purple). Of course, Jimmy’s first interaction with Micah was to take a picture of his tiny twig and berries that he later e-mailed to all of his friends. He then raced out to the waiting room and used the photo to announce to Micah’s newly minted grandparents that we had welcomed a baby boy into our lives.
“You know what you said, don’t you?” Jimmy asked, hours after our new son was lifted out of my stomach. “No,” I said, groggy with post C-section morphine. “It was beautiful, truly a beautiful thing to say after finding out for the very first time that we had welcomed a son into the world.” “What did I say?” I asked, thinking it possible that, while floating in a morphine haze, I had uttered something profound and beautiful at one of the most important moments in my life. “Well, as soon as I said, ‘It’s a boy,’ you said—and I quote—‘I knew it! You owe me so big time.’”
The birth happened so quickly that I didn’t really have time to process it. But apparently I recalled that, for the past nine months, all I heard from my husband was how badly he wanted a boy. (We chose not to find out the baby’s gender.) So in the recesses of my epidural-addled mind I knew that I had to somehow leverage this for payback at a later time.
I was embarrassed at my outburst, but Jimmy assured me that all was well—he just told the doctors that I was probably having a rare, adverse reaction to the epidural. Probably not. But I knew one thing for sure: Once I had my son, I felt nothing but peace, knowing that he was here, safe and sound. And with that, I pushed the extra-dose button on my epidural drip and went to sleep—very, very happy.
Lisa Baron is a communication consultant, which you’d think would be helpful in a marriage. She lives in the suburbs with her husband, Jimmy. E-mail her at lisabaron@sundaypaper.com.