The First Labor. Laps Around the Delivery Room. A Shot in the Spine.
PART ONE: Baby Number One
At first, the pain came in manageable waves; mine was the slightly orange, straight-mouthed smiley-face in the middle of the one-through-ten chart on the wall in front of me. I can do this, I thought. No epidural.
There was the screech of metal as the nurse pulled the privacy curtain, and then I was walking furious wobbling circles in a polka-dot hospital gown with a giant hardcover copy of Cujo gripped open in both hands, as if I were conducting a séance. My husband was watching the six-screen computer monitor by the bed that graphed—this is true—the contractions of each other woman in the unit, like it was a soccer match. Just as rabid Cujo was lunging at the mom and her son in the car, the line on one of the charts shot up and there was a scream from somewhere down the hall. My husband let out a yell.
“Wow, she just had a big one! She’s definitely beating you,” my husband said.
I rounded the turn of my hundredth-something lap in the ten-by-ten space and looked at him.
Another fifty or so laps in, the straight-line mouth of the smiley-face was starting to bend down and turn just a bit red.
Then I was on the bed, curling and uncurling, Cujo dog-eared on the table, while the nurse was telling us that the lady who had been screaming down the hall had arrived after me and already had her baby, wasn't that funny, and was I sure I didn’t want the Epidural, because soon it would be too late.
But it would be like cheating. Women have been doing this since the beginning of time without that drug, many even now. This was life.
Then the nurse said the first birth could be anything from five to eighteen hours of labor.
Thirty minutes later I was on my side, supported with pillows, pleasantly tingling from the waist down and sucking on an orange double-Popsicle. I used to prefer red everything—Popsicles, Freeze Pops, Jolly Ranchers. But hey, sometimes you have to take advantage of choice.
- Jessica
To be continued..."PART TWO: Baby Number Three" - On realizing had we not left so early for the hospital, I maybe wouldn't have felt the need for the epideral...
At first, the pain came in manageable waves; mine was the slightly orange, straight-mouthed smiley-face in the middle of the one-through-ten chart on the wall in front of me. I can do this, I thought. No epidural.
There was the screech of metal as the nurse pulled the privacy curtain, and then I was walking furious wobbling circles in a polka-dot hospital gown with a giant hardcover copy of Cujo gripped open in both hands, as if I were conducting a séance. My husband was watching the six-screen computer monitor by the bed that graphed—this is true—the contractions of each other woman in the unit, like it was a soccer match. Just as rabid Cujo was lunging at the mom and her son in the car, the line on one of the charts shot up and there was a scream from somewhere down the hall. My husband let out a yell.
“Wow, she just had a big one! She’s definitely beating you,” my husband said.
I rounded the turn of my hundredth-something lap in the ten-by-ten space and looked at him.
Another fifty or so laps in, the straight-line mouth of the smiley-face was starting to bend down and turn just a bit red.
Then I was on the bed, curling and uncurling, Cujo dog-eared on the table, while the nurse was telling us that the lady who had been screaming down the hall had arrived after me and already had her baby, wasn't that funny, and was I sure I didn’t want the Epidural, because soon it would be too late.
But it would be like cheating. Women have been doing this since the beginning of time without that drug, many even now. This was life.
Then the nurse said the first birth could be anything from five to eighteen hours of labor.
Thirty minutes later I was on my side, supported with pillows, pleasantly tingling from the waist down and sucking on an orange double-Popsicle. I used to prefer red everything—Popsicles, Freeze Pops, Jolly Ranchers. But hey, sometimes you have to take advantage of choice.
- Jessica
To be continued..."PART TWO: Baby Number Three" - On realizing had we not left so early for the hospital, I maybe wouldn't have felt the need for the epideral...