BABE IN THE (BABY) WOODS
When I see new moms these days, they look impossibly young. They are probably older than I was when I got pregnant for the first time. I was thirty. Thirty seemed plenty old enough to know a thing or two about what we were getting ourselves into – at least for the pregnancy and birth part. This turned out to be a false assumption. It wasn’t one of those cases where “I didn’t know what I didn’t know”. I knew exactly what I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. But, like any good ex-grad student, I figured I could research my way to a position of expertise. I had 9 months after all. Yet, when the Big Day arrived, I was looking up “signs of labour” for the first time. Those stories about students cracking the spine of their textbooks the night before the 100% final? That was me. It’s not that I didn’t try to educate myself. It more like I tried - and failed. I searched and searched, but never found the perfect ‘source material’.
The family and friends reference guide was a non-starter. Both of our mothers seemed to have no recollection of a time before we were adolescents. Only two of our friends had had children before us. One had a water birth in a rented outdoor hot tub with friends on hand to join (and video tape) the childbearing festivities. The other’s baby was delivered by a mutual friend who was on her very first day of her medical residency. Neither of these felt like cookie cutter approaches I would emulate. The rest of our friends were still in wedding-party(ing) mode. Baby talk wasn’t on their radar. The closest thing I had to a pregnant friend was Rachel Greene. As in “The One Where Rachel Had a Baby”, Friends, Season 8. Given that it took Rachel two full episodes to deliver, I was hoping this would not be my pathway either.[1]
So at the first date night at Chapters post pee-on-a-stick, I left M perusing the latest copy of PC Mag and sought out pregnancy enlightenment in the Parenting Section. What you don’t realize until you have cause to look is that there are approximately one million, trillion, zillion books on pregnancy and parenting. This is no time for information overload! The only thing worse than not knowing anything, is knowing too much! Overwhelmed, I grabbed the book that was positioned at the end of the aisle, assuming (like every other blockbuster-generating-pawn) that this was the best option. It was called, as every mother circa 1990-2010 knows, What to Expect When You Are Expecting.
Now that I had this book, one would think I would have some idea what to…you know…expect. I did not. At the time we were working around the clock, especially given my imminent departure from our company. I had time to BUY books. I didn’t have time to READ them. What to Expect joined the pile on my bedside table where it sat, largely unread, for give or take nine months. I would, on occasion flip to a chapter and learn that our baby was now the size of a “peanut…kiwi…avocado…papaya…” Cute as these fruit comparisons were, it was disconcerting to learn that my 40-pound, exercise ball-sized belly housed something the size of a kidney bean. I would also sometimes explore the book’s Appendix to look up various pregnancy related physical inconveniences to ensure “normality”. Constipation? Normal. Diarrhoea? Normal. Appetite increase? Normal. Appetite loss. Normal. Everything and its opposite being ‘normal’, I stopped looking things up. It didn’t seem that useful.[2] I suspect the author recognized that knowledge of all the contingencies of a first-time pregnancy is a slippery slope to a hypochondriac perfect storm. After all, when your body has been taken over by another human/alien, rational thought is always at risk.
This was thankfully before social media where there were anonymous, opinionated, oversharing people fear-mongering and up in everyone’s business online. Instead, however, there were anonymous, opinionated, oversharing people fear-mongering and up in everyone’s business IN line. At every checkout counter.
Every.
Single.
Check out.
The bulk of the advice I received was of this unsolicited variety, and fell mostly into two categories:
1) telling me the baby’s gender while stroking my ginormous belly without permission.
2) sharing their best-of horror stories.
Most indelible was the Exorcist-derivative story about how one mother vomited and s—t all over herself, her partner, her doctor and all the hospital support staff during her delivery. The moral of the story was that the “Beauty” of childbirth was, quote, “Horseshit”. How does one respond to this? “Um…thanks??”
My obstetrician took the opposite approach. He was a calm and cool dude straight out of central casting. Literally out of central casting in that he looked, sounded and dressed exactly like Stanley Tucci. I can’t remember his name because for the five-year period he was in our lives we referred to him as Dr. Tucci. He approached everything the same way Stanley Tucci makes a Negroni: suave, hyper chill and a little cheeky.[3] He leaned so hard into nonchalant that he veered into flippant sarcasm (normally my attitudinal sweet spot). Questions that at the time seemed important to ask (mostly based on the unsolicited stranger advice) got answers that I was never 100% sure how to take. True examples:
“Can I drink coffee?”
“I wouldn’t drink a pot a day.”
“Can I have a hot bath?”
“I wouldn’t BOIL yourself.”
I once told him that it felt like my tummy skin was going to split open like an over ripe tomato. Rather than say “Don’t be silly” or “You could use this special high-priced cream that only I can provide”, he said, “It could happen, I suppose”. You "Suppose”??!
I must have been commenting (or making sarcastic jokes (...when in Rome)) about Dr. Tucci at the office, because M & I found ourselves enrolled in Prenatal classes taught by our accountant's wife. This is one of those things that once it is recommended, you feel like a bad parent if you don't do it. It was not a good fit for us. It was entirely couples-oriented, and if M couldn’t attend a ‘tsk tsk’-i-ness permeated the room. Plus, they made all the beached-whale moms-to-be sit on the floor. I couldn’t go alone - I needed M there to forklift me up and down. One session I do remember was all about creating a Birthing Plan. This fictitious document included such not-happening-in-a-universal-healthcare-system as: I would like the room to smell of lavender, whilst a Bach etude plays at volume 4, as I relax in a calming bubble bath, before giving birth pain-free under the oversight my own doctor before recovering in a private suite. It was as though we were all going off to a spa retreat in the Catskills. My Birthing Plan was…1) Drugs...end of plan. Despite its simplicity, this one-step plan did not get successfully implemented in any of my three times at bat. Other planning advice involved packing an overnight bag and test driving the route to the hospital. These were recommendations we would have been smart to have actioned. But, alas, did not.
Of all the intel we should have successfully gathered “Signs of Labour” would be top of the list. As it turns out, I was cramming the delivery chapter of What to Expect an hour before H was born. I repeat, an hour before. At around 10pm, I called the hospital:
Me: “I think I might maybe be kinda sorta in labour???”[4]
Nurse: “Your first baby? Great, we’ll see you sometime tomorrow. Try to get some rest.”
Me, to M, before even hanging up the phone: “Get the car we’re going to the hospital right now.”
We barely made it in time (the nurse came and apologized to me the next day). The drive in my memory is like a Blues Brothers’ car chase - Tokyo drifting U turns as we got lost twice (yes, twice) enroute. We had no Birthing Plan prop bag filled with massage oils and ice packs, but if we did it would have been left in the trunk. I did try to implement my plan (reminder: drugs). I got the epidural which takes around 15 minutes to take effect. H arrived 10 of those minutes later.
We fared a bit better the second time, in that we at least knew how to get there. I immediately got in the epidural queue. To get an epidural they put a catheter beside your spinal column. The nurse told me hold onto her arms, lean against her and stay completely still. This while having contractions. The nurse had what my mother would describe as an “ample bosom”. To position myself, as directed, I had to bury my face into her cleavage. As forewarning, I said “I’m going in!”. It wasn’t until I was fully face-planted that I had a wicked sense of Déjà Vue. "Were my nurse last time?”, I asked. To which she responded, “Yes, and you made the same comment.”[5] I guess I blocked that out. Much of what makes you ready to have a second child is the ability to block out certain aspects of the first (or second…) go-round. I did not, however, block out the fact that the drugs didn’t have time to take effect the second time either.
The third time, I was convinced that we weren’t going to make it to the hospital at all. I had a recurring nightmare of giving birth in Walmart with the smell of French fries wafting from the in-store McDonalds. On my last check in with Dr. Tucci, I told him I didn’t want to have my baby in the electronics aisle. He responded:
“I am working tomorrow. Do you want to have your baby tomorrow?”
Me: “Wait, what? You can schedule these things? Why wasn’t THAT part of the plan before?”
And so, after a leisurely cruise to the hospital, I get settled in, start the Oxycontin and check on the availability of the anesthesiologist. Inducing labour was yet another of the topics I never read up on. Instead of T-minus twelve minutes to delivery, it took twelve HOURS for labour get going.[6] At which point the epidural had worn off, and Dr. Tucci was back at home shake-shaking his first Negroni.
I am sure the fourth time around we would have aced it. I was in for another try – but it may have just been my scholastic competitive spirit at work. Instead, M booked himself in for a Vasectomy with our go-to daddio-snip-tuck doctor, whose named rhymed with, and everyone called, Dr. Vise.[7] We didn’t get lost once on the way – mostly because the clinic was conveniently located at the end of our street. We were fully informed - mainly because the procedure required signing a ten-page waiver.
Most importantly, and fortunately, the drugs worked.
According to plan.
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[1] In the end, I avoided the 21-hour labour, but not the Yuk-Yuk TV sitcom antics.
[2] At least until day 279¾ of my pregnancy when it was SUPER useful.
[3] If somehow you went through COVID times without watching Stanley Tucci make a Negroni, I gift it to you now. You’re welcome.
[4] Note: there is no such thing as “kinda sorta” in labour.
[5] Times like these is why the “Eek/Egads” face emoji exists.
[6] We still didn’t have a bag of props packed – this time because we were too busy making arrangements for the other two girls. We spent twelve hours reading the sports section of a newspaper, and just the sports section, that we found in the waiting room.
[7] Dr. Vise performed more than 60,000 vasectomies (yes, FOUR zeroes). His obit was titled “The Wayne Gretzky of Vasectomies”. Which is Ah-mazing. But, AGAIN with the weird coincidences. I started the paragraph on Dr. Vise weeks ago. He died two days ago. My witchy-poo story magic is getting scary!