Birth
Note: This continues the story from the previous post, Leisure and Labor.
I held tightly onto the arm of the nurse who had been monitoring me during induction while receiving the spinal anesthetic, which really hurt. My husband was not allowed in the room for that but came in afterwards. He sat on my right, next to the edge of the screen in front of me, and the anesthesiologist stood behind me out of my line of vision. My youngest sister, Monica, who is a surgeon, was in the next room and could hear everything.
“Wiggle your toes,” they said. I felt them wiggling.
“Can you feel this?”
“Yes.”
Then the operation started. “I can feel that,” I said. No answer. “That hurts,” I said. No answer. It became clear the operation was not going to be painless. From everything I had heard, you were supposed to feel pressure but no pain during a C-section. It was hard to feel anticipation about the baby when it felt like I was being torn apart.
After a lot of agonizing pulling and pressing and muttered conversation up front, the doctor said clearly: “It’s a boy.” “Adriene was right,” I thought, and “So it’s Theo.” My husband’s attention was now drawn off to the right where the baby was being checked. They held him up briefly for us. I can’t even really remember that. I was moaning. The anesthesiologist gave me morphine and asked if that was better. “A little,” I said. They were still pulling on me up in front, and then I heard, “There’s a sponge missing. Get the portable X-ray machine.” So the sewing-up process was delayed, too.
Theo, meanwhile, was making a good Apgar score (9, only pediatricians’ babies make 10s, they joked) and getting lots of admiration. The pediatrician who was on duty from our pediatrician’s office, a tall woman behind a mask, came up and told me he was a beautiful baby.
I don’t remember much of the two hours in the recovery room. I know I was in pain and cried constantly. I was impatient to see the baby and watched in awe when he latched on to my breast right away and sucked vigorously. After that, my husband and Monica took turns holding him and taking photos. I remember that my husband played Rachmaninoff on his CD player, and I begged him to play something more tranquil. We asked Monica to be Theo’s godmother and she was pleased. Monica left at 1 a.m., before I was moved to the postpartum room. During the move to the room, I kept my eyes shut. I can’t even remember what happened next so I must have fallen asleep.
The next morning, I felt so awful that I asked my husband to discourage visitors for the time being, except for Monica. We were not expecting many visitors anyway since it was a weekday, and my parents, who lived in another state, had decided not to visit until after we were home. There was no question of having the celebratory champagne yet. It was exactly like the books describe: I felt groggy and cross-eyed from the Percocet and shocked by the rush of feelings, of which joy was somehow muffled by the pain, resentment over the painful delivery, fear of motherhood, and so on.
Theo cried a lot but continued to nurse well. Every time I hauled my aching body up into a semi-sitting position to nurse, I was appalled to think that in a few days I would be completely responsible for this child. “I don’t think I’m up to this,” I wailed to a nurse. Theo spent some of that day in the nursery so that I could sleep, but I felt guilty sending him there, even though the nurses assured me these were all normal feelings, and it was fine that I should rest now, and I would soon feel better.
My own OB/GYN arrived that day to visit. She is a reserved woman who would rarely crack a smile except at some of my more outrageous comments during prenatal visits. After one visit, my husband had laughed, “You basically told her that you plan to have postpartum depression.”
“No, I said I thought I was more likely to have it because I’ve been depressed before.”
Now she arrived with a warm smile and tenderly took Theo into her arms.
It seemed like a long time later when I saw her again for my postpartum appointment, after we were all back home. I was doing fine. The doctor seemed tense, and I knew she was grieved at what had happened. When I said goodbye, she said tearfully, “I’m sorry,” and hurried away.1
Next: A Pandemic Impasse
For first-time readers, what happened between Theo’s birth and this second encounter with the doctor is explained in the first post, Do I Love Him Too Much? Do I Love Him Enough?