Birth: Buddhaboy

All it took was for Ed to say — once — that he didn’t want Matthew to be an only child. Back I went to the fertility specialist, and in only one cycle, I was pregnant. I remember knowing that I was pregnant because suddenly I was exhausted. Matthew was 2, and my ass was dragging. On the day I went to the doctor’s office for the confirmatory blood test, we arrived before they’d opened. I sank to the floor and sat in the hall and watched Matthew scamper around until the door was unlocked. On the way back to the car after my appointment, Matthew began taking his clothes off in the parking lot. I can’t remember what I promised him, but I made some sort of deal with him if he’d just keep the rest of his clothes on.

My exhaustion continued throughout my pregnancy. Of course, sometime during my second trimester, Matthew decided that he was done with naps. On one memorable day, I told him that he didn’t have to sleep, but that he did have to play quietly. I collapsed on my bed for about an hour. When I went to Matthew’s room and opened his door, he was standing in the middle of his room, proud and happy. He’d removed his mattress, sheets, drawers and their contents, and had strewn everything around his room. Being a loving mother, I captured the destruction in a series of three photographs, then called Ed to tell him what his son had done. Ed was amused. Me? Not so much.

During this second pregnancy I endured four bouts of preterm labor. Only one was bad enough to land me in the hospital overnight for observation. I’m not sure, but I think that was the episode where I drove myself to the hospital.

The first thing they did was hook up IV fluids. I came to hate that damn IV insertion. One of the times a tender young nurse approached me, and I gave her a look.

“One is all you get,” I said, meaning that I’d only tolerate one stick. If she didn’t get it, then too bad. She didn’t, and she brought in an older nurse who managed to get it in one.

Another IV insertion went wrong, and I wound up with a huge lump on the back of my hand. It was filled with blood, and the nurse was horrified. I wasn’t pleased, either. That bruise took forever to go away.

Buddhaboy (and we knew that it was another boy) was due on Groundhog Day 1998. On my birthday, January 15, my mother was taking me out for breakfast. While I showered that morning, my belly grew hard.

“Oh, no you don’t,” I remember thinking. “Not on my birthday!”

We had a nice breakfast — french toast for me, my favorite. During the meal, my belly grew hard a couple of times, but I didn’t think too much of it.

When we left the restaurant, we went to the pharmacy to pick up something for what felt a lot like a head cold or imminent sinus infection. As I walked back to the counter, I had to stop about half-way there, holding my belly, breathing hard. While I was at the counter, it happened again.

Mom took me home and asked if I thought I needed to go to the hospital.

“Oh, no. I’m fine.”

“Well, I’m just going to go over to Price’s Corner to pick something up. I’ll swing by on my way back to check on you.”

When she left, I puttered around, then really needed to use the bathroom. I grabbed the phone and my phonebook on the way into the bathroom.

“Thank you for calling,” the recording said. “If this is a doctor’s office or you think you are in labor, press 3.”

I pressed 3.

“Doctor’s office. Can I help you?”

“Yeah. Um … I think I’m in labor. Hang on.” My belly tightened and I had to breathe hard.

We chatted, then I was told to go ahead and come into Christiana Hospital.

My mother arrived, and I said that we needed to go to the hospital.

White-knuckled, my mother drove the 15 minutes to the hospital, growing more tense each time I groaned. When she pulled up at the door, a volunteer came to my door.

“Do you need a wheelchair?” she asked when I just sat there. I groaned. She fetched a wheelchair.

I was taken into an exam room, where I peed, then took my pants off. Someone examined me, then asked me if my water had broken.

“I don’t know. I just peed, so maybe that was it.”

Mom arrived and wasn’t looking too good.

“Mom, if I have to puke, please don’t let them give me one of those tiny kidney pans. I’m going to want the trashcan.”

Shortly thereafter I announced that I was going to hurl, and the nurse gave me a tiny kidney pan. I tossed it across the room.

“Give me the damn trashcan!” I said through the rising bile. Mom was on the job and gave it to me.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “There goes your breakfast.”

I laid back on the bed, panting. I asked the nurse what I should do, and she gave me a blank look.

“I mean, am I supposed to pant? Am I supposed to push? Or what?”

She said that I could pant-pant-pant-blow, so I did.

They got me into a wheelchair and took me at what seemed like warp speed up to the labor and delivery floor, or as I liked to call it, the screaming floor.

“Just hop on up to the bed,” the nurse told me.

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can. Go on now.”

“If I stand up, the baby is going to land on his head on the floor.”

After some back and forth along these lines, the nurse helped me onto the bed. She got me settled, then went off to do some sort of nurse-ly things.

And this was when the shit hit the fan.

Labor pains were coming hot and heavy. My mother had gone out into the hall to wait for Ed to arrive. The nurses weren’t helping me at all. In fact, the were talking about things like what they’d had for lunch, what they planned to do over the weekend, etc. The only thing they weren’t talking about was the woman in heavy labor behind them in the bed.

I panicked. I began to scream.

I’d always said that I’d never lose control to the point where I’d scream while in labor. I’d always said that women who do were just drama queens looking for attention. I’d always thought of myself as a well-read woman who knew all about labor and what to expect.

I never knew what fear and pain would turn me into: a scream machine.

I was in a hospital, and a nurse was in my room; however, I was all alone. No one was talking to me, telling that this was normal, that everything was OK. My mother was in her own hell, having to listen to her child scream in pain and fear. My doctor was nowhere to be seen. I felt like I was all alone.

While this was going on, Ed arrived. He said later that he’d considered stopping to grab some McDonald’s on the way but decided against it.

My mother was in the hall, waiting for Ed and was relieved to see him as the elevator doors open. He rolled over to where she was. A scream ripped through the air.

“Boy, just listen to that one,” Ed said with a smile.

“I think that’s Laurel,” mom said.

“Uh … I guess I’d better get in there.”

Ed came in the room to find me still in the nice shirt I’d worn for my breakfast with mom, my face red and puffy, and my eyes filled with rage and fear.

He positioned himself at my side and rubbed my arm. I snapped at him to stop touching me.

“I don’t know what to do to help,” Ed said.

“Just stay here with me,” I gasped. The screaming continued.

Finally, the nurse turned from what she was doing over by the window.

“What you need to do is stop screaming and start pushing.” She sounded aggravated.

I wanted nothing more than to get up and punch her right in the face. If I hadn’t been in labor, I would have.

So I thought to myself that if she wanted pushing, pushing she would get.

I pushed like I believed my life depended on it, as if as soon as I delivered I’d be able to leap up from the table and go after Nurse Ratched.

A new character came into my room in time to enjoy my screaming. This poor young resident was there for the delivery, which was fast. Unlike with Matthew, when I’d been numb from the epidural, with Elliot, I actually felt his shoulders, arms, and legs make the journey into the world. Weird.

“Wow! Look at that head of hair!” someone said.

I began to cry. I cried from an excess of adrenaline. I cried from the terror that was beginning to recede. I even cried from shame that I’d been screaming like some kind of lunatic.

While Elliot was being weighed and tested, my mother came into the room. One look at my blotchy face and swollen, red nose and she went into mom mode.

“Do you think we ought to call her doctor?” she asked Ed, meaning my psychiatrist. Perhaps my endless repetition of the phrase “I’m sorry” had her worried.

“I’m OK, mom. I’m just … so sorry.”

I calmed down and was relieved to hear Elliot crying.

After a while, my doctor came into the room. He wasn’t in a hurry. My mother told me later that when he arrived on the floor, he paused to chat up the nurses. She was poised to drag him to my door and push him through it when he strolled in under his own steam.

Although he was late, he was there in time for the pain to resume as I struggled to deliver the placenta. By this point I was begging for pain relief.

“If we give you medication at this point, you might have trouble bonding with your baby,” I was told. To this day, I still don’t understand what that means. Pain = bonding with your baby? Does not compute.

Once the placenta was delivered, the resident settled in to stitch me up. I was still in the shame mode as he got started.

“You’re hurting me,” I said in a thin, pathetic voice. I said it again. The third time I said it, though, my tone had changed to one of wrath … a deep, Optimus Prime warning of impending death and destruction.

Fortunately for the resident, I wasn’t in the best position to kick him, so he finished up and beat a hasty retreat.

I finally held my baby in my arms. He was perfect and had a full head of thick black hair. (Where had that hair come from?) The terror and shame I’d felt only a few minutes ago melted away, and the memory of the pain I’d endured also faded. I’d done it. I’d survived the pregnancy, and so had my baby. I’d made it through the incredibly fast labor and painful delivery and held in my arms the best birthday gift I had ever received — and ever would receive.