Get Your Hands Out of My Baby Garden

                “Well, we don’t like to cut during delivery if we can help it. We prefer you to tear naturally because it heals better,” Dr. Reason said to me as she squirted cold goo onto my massive stomach. I was four days past my due date. The last thing I wanted to review was the possibility of an episiotomy.

                “I’m about to give birth! Don’t tell me that!” I thought to myself. Outwardly, I nodded along grimly. Everyone had been so sure I was going to have this baby early yet here we were. When Dr. Reason offered to schedule an induction for Friday, I was all for it. I had had enough of being pregnant. It had been a considerably smooth ride, but in the last five or six weeks I blew up to a ridiculously uncomfortable size (I was sure I was going to pop), my hips were so loose that every time I walked, my whole pelvic area would be in an agonizing free-swing, and it took hours for me to fall asleep between my continuous full-body aches and my constant need to pee. I made my peace with the idea of being induced quickly; I didn’t care how it happened anymore, I just wanted this kid to get out of my body. I had spent the past several weeks shoveling spicy foods into my mouth, driving down the bumpiest back roads I could find for hours, and screaming, “THIS IS YOUR EVICTION NOTICE! GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OOOOUUUUTTTT!!!!” at my stomach before collapsing back into my bed to weep over Disney movies.

                Thursday morning, I woke up around 4 a.m. feeling a little strange. I had only just fallen asleep two hours before so I decided I didn’t care what the-fuck-ever I was feeling and went back to sleep. I woke up again at noon and hopped into the shower. Lucy was a very active fetus from about fourteen weeks on, especially when I played music, she heard her Daddy’s voice, or I got into water, so I was really concerned when she didn’t move at all during my shower. I was already so late (okay, six days late) and now she wasn’t moving? I called the hospital who told me to drink a small coke, have a little healthy snack, and lie on my right side. If she didn’t move at least seven times within the hour, they wanted me to come in. She had moved eight times when they called back to check on me.

                “Okay, well, you’re probably starting to go into labor then,” the perky nurse told me.

                “Okay, when should I come in?” I asked.

                “Not for a while,” she said. “If you come too soon, we’ll just have to send you home.”

                “Great,” I thought, aggressively flipping through the TV channels. If I had to get my hopes up that I was about to go into labor just to be disappointed one more time, I thought I might lose it. Since February, people had been saying things like, “Oh!! You’re nesting! Any day now!” or, “Look how much you’ve dropped! She’ll be here any day now!” or worse, “She’ll come when she’s ready.” Every time someone said that to me, I felt like screaming, “BITCH, WHAT ABOUT WHEN I’M READY?”

                At three p.m., my parents were getting ready to go pick my sister up from the Norfolk airport. She was coming home from spending a week in France with her high school class. She was probably the only person who was happy I hadn’t had the baby ye, because she really wanted to be home for that (obviously). My mom wasn’t so sure she should go because she was worried I was in labor and would need her.

                “Just go, Mom,” I said. “It’s not like the airport is that far away. If I do, you’ll have plenty of time to get back here before I give birth. If I do go into labor, I can call Nan, Auntie, Dana, Sarah…There are tons of people who can come help me until you get back.”

                My mom was just about to step out the door at three thirty when she decided to stay. By four thirty, I was definitely in labor, and it was starting to hurt. Mom put dinner in the oven because she wanted me to eat before I left for the hospital. I called Jude, who was four hours away at college to tell him he should prepare to leave. At five thirty, I was pacing the house in agony during each contraction and shoveling shepherd’s pie down my throat between them. By six o’clock, I was really hurting.

                “Mom,” I said, “When do you plan on taking me to the hospital?”

                “I’m not sure, Sarah,” she replied, “but you can let me know if you want to go.”

                I tried to hold on as long as I could. I didn’t want to get down there just to be sent away, but I was feeling the pain big time. At six thirty, I very politely said, “Mom, if you don’t take me to the hospital now, I don’t know if I am going to be able to get in the car.” I called Jude to tell him to get his ass in the car and step on it because if he wasn’t there for me when I gave birth to HIS child, I would cut his face off. We set off on the longest forty minute car ride of my life. (I have never known there to be so many bumps in a highway before.)

                When we arrived at the hospital, a couple of nurses practically threw me into a wheel chair and literally ran me to the elevator. On the ride up, one of them (all too calmly) said, “Sorry for the rush. We had a woman give birth in the elevator two days ago.”

                “WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT TO ME RIGHT NOW,” I thought, my eyes widening to the size of the fucking moon before squinting back up in pain.

                The nurses forced me to hold still mid-contraction to take my weight and height. I shot daggers at them with my mind. I had a lovely nurse named Nancy who very patiently hooked me up to a million stupid medical devices to monitor our vitals throughout labor. Honestly, I’m glad the hospital was looking out for us, but in that moment I was so angry that I wouldn’t be allowed to walk around anymore that I think my hair was standing on end.

                During your pregnancy, you are told to prepare a “birth plan” and to share it with your doctor in the weeks leading up to your due date. Your birth plan should include anything you strongly do or do not want going on in your delivery room. For example, most hospitals have a limit to how many people may be in the room during your delivery. I invited Jude (duh), my mother, and Jude’s mom, Dana. (Dana is such a loving person and is so invested in all of her children, I just felt like she would want to be there. Later she shared with me that she was really touched that I had invited her. I was happy to hear that. I was also happy because she spent about a year telling anyone who would listen what an amazing job I had done. Praise? Why, yes, I will take it!) We were living in our hometown, an area with only one hospital readily available with very limited options. Things like tub births were pretty much out the window for us, but I did really want to have a natural birth with no drugs. Well, I wanted that until I hit hard labor. When Nancy came in to check on me not long after I had nearly ripped her head off for confining me to the bed, I screamed, “GIVE ME THE DRUGS, NANCY! I CAN’T DO THIS!” Bless Nancy’s dear heart for I was the most hellish patient and she treated me with nothing but kindness and understanding. She quickly pumped some kind of sweet, sweet drug into my IV; it worked like a charm! For an hour, I was super high. I whistled and sang along to the songs on my labor playlist and chattered dreamily with my mom and future mother-in-law. Nancy came back in to check on me with Dr. Reason and I gasped.

                “Oh, Nancy,” I crooned. “I am soooo sorry I was being such a turd to you when I got here. Like, WOW! I am in soooo much pain!”

                “It’s okay,” Nancy said, smiling brightly. “I understand!”

                Honestly, you will never have so many hands in your vagina as you do when you are pregnant. So many times Dr. Reason came in to see how I was “coming along”. I was very glad she was on call that night because she was my favorite doctor and if someone had to continuously investigate my vagina’s progress, I was glad it was her (and not the doctor known for his MASSIVE hands). The pain medicine lasted for a solid hour before it started to ware off. Fast. It wasn’t long until I was screaming through my contractions again, and they were coming back with a vengeance. Nancy gave me more, but the second time it wasn’t working. When Jude arrived, I was howling through a big contraction. It probably wasn’t a super great feeling for him to have to witness that right off the bat, but hey, that’s childbirth.

                While I was pregnant, I had watched several videos of people getting epidurals and I really did NOT want to do that! They snake some little wire up your spine? No thanks. Then I actually went into labor, my second round of pain meds failed me, and my entire world view of epidurals changed. Suddenly, getting an epidural sounded better than the second coming. I had already told Nancy that I did NOT want an epidural in no uncertain terms and I was embarrassed to admit my mistake. Luckily, Nancy was a genius, and not long after Jude arrived she asked if I had changed my mind. My response was something along the line of, “OBVIOUSLY!” If I have another baby, I am jumping straight into the epidural party because it takes forever to get it done. First they have to draw blood, test the blood to make sure you’re safe to have one, then the doctor has to check to make sure you aren’t too dilated, and then you have to wait for the stupid anesthesiologist to get there! It took well over an hour for everything to be in order. Honestly, it felt like maybe twenty minutes to me because time was one big blur of agony at that point. Dr. Reason gave me to okay at only 4 ½ centimeters, and thus began the terrible process of getting an epidural. I was in so much pain between the contractions and the invasion of my spinal area that I was trembling through the whole procedure. Jude was allowed to stay in the room; I glanced up at him once and his face was long with horror and disgust and had turned a faded shade of green. I decided maybe I shouldn’t look at him again until the process was over. Halfway through, the anesthesiologist made a wrong move and hit a nerve, sending my right leg into uncontrollable spasms. I remember thinking maybe the whole idea of having babies was just plain stupid, but not too much longer after, the drugs started kicking in and I chilled out.

                When they finished inserting the epidural, Dr. Reason checked on my baby garden’s progress. “Eight centimeters,” she announced.

                I shouted, “WHAT? What happened to five, six, and seven? I’m not ready for this!”

                Dr. Reason kind of laughed me off like the fact I was about to have a baby was no big deal. I did realize it was ironic that I was telling her to make it stop after all of the weeks I had spent telling her to make it happen faster, but I really wasn’t in the mood to appreciate the humor of it. After about an hour of being able to relax a little, I had Nancy turn the medicine from the epidural off at 9 ½ centimeters so I would be able to feel what I was doing. At that point, my water had never broken, so Nancy had me hang my butt off the bed, stuck what looked like a long crocheting needle into my vagina, and popped my water. (Whoooooosh!) Then in preparation for pushing, Nancy gave me a catheter. Even being super numb from the epidural, it was not a pleasant sensation. For a week after having my daughter, I had a UTI so bad from the catheter that I cried every time I knew I had to go to the bathroom. No joke.

                When it was time to push, Dr. Reason reached her hands into my vagina and kind of massaged the baby’s head into a better position to exit my body (at last!). I am proud to say that after only thirty minutes of pushing, no bowl movements, and no episiotomy, my daughter with her head full of hair landed in my beloved Dr. Reason’s arms without crying. For a few moments, I was freaking out because I was convinced she must be dead since she wasn’t crying. When they put her onto my chest, I was so relieved. At least, I was relieved until she started crying.

(Welcome to the world, Lucy Byrd!)

(I am always seeing new mom’s posting beautiful photos of themselves with their freshly popped newborn. In their photos, they usually have on some make-up, their hair is often in a cute braid or little pony tails, and they over all don’t look like they’ve just run a death-marathon the way I do in the first photo my mom snapped of me with Lucy. I would like to know the secrets of these glamorous beautiful mothers. Please share your strength with me if I ever am crazy enough to grow another child!)

                Tomorrow is Lucy’s third birthday and I couldn’t be more proud of her. She’s really awesome, so beautiful, so strong and resilient, so smart, and SUPER funny! I would definitely do it all again for her even though sometimes she wipes boogers on my clothes. I can’t wait to embarrass you with that gem!