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!

Wisdom Teeth

                When I was 17, my dentist took an x-ray of my mouth to see how my wisdom teeth were coming along. I don’t like the dentist much, and I especially didn’t like this dentist. (For two years I had told him I had a cavity in one of my molars and it wasn’t until I was 16 that he finally acknowledged it. By the time he decided to admit I was right and fill the thing, he had to essentially hollow my entire tooth out;  I have had problems with it ever since.) With several black marks against him already, he gained a small glean of approval when he brought in my x-rays and said, “Well, Sarah, it looks like you only have three wisdom teeth. I don’t think they’re going to give you any trouble.” When I returned to his office for a second x-ray, it was on my 18^th birthday. I was confident the universe wouldn’t begrudge me good luck the morning of my birthday. (I mean, heck, I was already getting to miss the first few hours of school!) I was dead wrong. When Dr. Doom hung up my new x-rays next to my old ones, he announced that not only did I have four wisdom teeth (not three), but they were all impacted and had to be surgically removed. (Thanks for being a dirty liar!)

                Several months later on the first day of my last ever spring break in high school, I sat in the back seat of my mom’s Honda Pilot at 6 in the morning on my way to have my mouth sliced open like an Easter ham. I was incredibly nervous. I had never had any kind of surgery before and my extreme anxiety had graciously painted vivid images of the evil dentists doing terrible things to me while I was doped up on anesthesia. I was also feeling pretty outraged that my mom and my dentist were teaming up to ruin my spring break. It wasn’t like I really had any friends to make plans with, but the option would have been nice! Besides, why ruin my free time when you could plan the surgery during school so I wouldn’t have to be there a few extra days? I kept thinking of that part in The Princess Diaries when Joe tells Mia, “Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgement that something is more important than fear; the brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all.” I knew I was being a little dramatic, but hey, that’s me, and the quote (and the image of that silver fox, Hector Elizondo) was helping. I did have to do this. It was unavoidable as my mother repeatedly reminded me whenever she caught me trying to talk my way out of it.

                When I was called back to prepare for my (non-)life-threatening surgery, my mom and my aunt (who had come with us, possibly for emotional support but more likely to help force me into submission) were allowed to come with me. The nurse who came to take my weight, height, temperature, blah, blah, blah, and give me my IV was so sweet. She tried her very hardest to calm my nerves (alas, to no avail). Unfortunately for her (and everyone involved, frankly), I have a terrible, irrational phobia of having my blood drawn and getting IV’s. Every time she started to try to put my IV in, I started shaking so badly it almost looked like convulsions, tears free-flowed down my face, and I couldn’t stop my tiny (but shrill) squeaks of terror. (You might be wondering at this point if when I said 18, I meant 8. I assure you, I was 18 years old and acting this foolish.) Her poor, tender heart couldn’t take it. “You know what? I’m just going to let the anesthesiologist know he’ll be needed, and we’ll put the IV in after you go under, sweetheart,” she said, seeming close to tears herself. It gave me a surprising amount of comfort to know there was at least one person in my corner as I was wheeled off into the unknown.

                Having to get a good look at the surgical room was a mistake, though. The room was super white, like, transition –into-heaven-because-your-evil-dentists-killed-you white. There was a weird dome thing on the ceiling above where they placed me and my wheeling bed that turned out to be a huge cluster of lights, and although I was grateful they cared so much about things being well lit while they carved into my jaw bones, it was still terrifying to look at. There were four people surrounding me, the dentist who was handling the surgery, two assistants, and the anesthesiologist who turned out to be an astoundingly handsome man with extremely dark skin, smoky black eyes, and a thick New Zealand accent. I have a serious weak spot for accents and hot guys, and I found myself suddenly very self-conscious because weirdly enough I had not put any effort into my appearance that morning when I got up to leave for oral surgery and the nurse had taken my bra away. In my flustered moment of regret, he put a mask on my face, telling me to take three deep breaths then count backwards from ten. I reached seven then suddenly realized I DID NOT WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE! I JUST WANTED TO HIDE FROM MY PROBLEMS AND ALSO HIDE MY UNSUPPORTED CHEST FROM THIS HANDSOME MAN! I struggled to lift my arms and weakly tried to claw his enormous hands away from my face as I tried to scream, “I CHANGED MY MIND! STOP!” I don’t even think more than a slur of vowels actually made it out, and the two assistants held my arms down with no trouble at all before I blacked out.

                Suddenly, I was awake. My vision was fuzzy at best, the room around me spinning and changing shape. I remembered quickly the feeling of not wanting something to happen, launching my fuzzy brain into high panic mode immediately. I remembered my mom in the waiting room. “MAAAARRMMM!” I scream/slurred out trying to lurch myself into a sitting position. “MAAAAARRMMMM!” I screamed out again as I flailed my legs to the best of my ability, trying to remove the light blanket that was over me. A nurse came rushing towards me, and my panic hit an all-time high. Somewhere in the depths of my mind, a voice screamed out, “ALERT! ALERT! NURSE AT FIVE O’CLOCK! MOVE YOUR ASS! GET OUT OF HERE! MOM WILL SAVE YOU!” My real voice screamed out, “MAAAAAAAAAARRRRMMMMM,” as my arms flew up to try to fight the monster-nurse away. (Poor nurse.)

                She easily tucked my arms back into the blankets and repositioned it around my legs (I had barely made them move at all). “Calm down,” she said grumpily. “I can’t believe you’re awake already. Your mom is waiting for you, but you’re not ready to leave yet. You need to let the anesthesia wear off a little more. Just lie still. Try to take a nap.”

                I noticed her name-tag said, “Katherine,” on it. That made me really unreasonably excited. I warbled out, “Mai merddle naem is Catherine but wirth a C! Were like seesters!”

                “That’s great,” she harrumphed. “Settle down,” and she left the room.

                A few moments later, I sort of forgot about Nurse Katherine when I realized I was not alone in the room. In fact, there were two other people in beds to my right who were totally out cold and I freaked out again. My little alarm bell went off shrieking, “ALERT! ALERT! THE EVIL DENTISTS WANT TO HARVEST YOUR ORGANS! GET OUT NOW! I REPEAT: GET OUT NOW!” My real voice cried out, “NOOOOOOOOO! MAAAARRRRMMM!!!!!” I had regained a very small amount of control over my limbs, but enough to throw back maybe fifty percent of the blanket. I struggled to free my legs from the demon blanket/net screaming, “MAAAARM! HALP MEI!!!! MAAAAARRRM!!!!”

                Nurse Katherine came running in again, quickly wrapping me up in the blanket like a doped-up human burrito. (Possibly the evil dentist’s plan all along? Human burritos?) “Calm down,” she signed. “Why are you awake? Just relax! Take a nap; you’re going to have to stay here until the anesthesia wears off and it could take a while.”

                Again, I noticed her name tag. “Wahw,” I slurred. “Mei merddle naem is Catherine but with a C! We huve tha same naem,” and I gave her a big grin with my eyes only half open, longing for her to feel as excited as I was about this.

                “Yes, you said that before. It’s very cool,” she said (though her tone indicated she could not have cared less). “Please don’t try to get out of your bed anymore,” she shot over her shoulder as she left the room.

                I was very suspicious of her unfriendly manner. I had spent so much time before the surgery thinking of all the terrible things the evil dentists could possibly do to me, that it seemed to have manifested itself in my mind. The only thing I could focus on in my drug-induced stupor was escaping their evil laboratory and taking shelter with my mom (who I thought would unquestioningly drive me to safety). I waited a few moments to make sure Nurse Katherine (if that was even her real name!) had gone before I started trying to get out of bed again. I was still struggling to hold up my head, had very little strength or control of my limbs, and my vision was blurry and wobbly, but that wasn’t going to stop me, dammit. I would not be sold into slavery by evil dentists! I tried very hard to roll out of the bed, but (luckily) all I managed to do was get tangled in the blanket, setting me off into renewed cried of, “MAAAAAARRRMMM!!! HALP MEEEEE, MAAAAARRRMM!!!!”

                In Nurse Katherine came at a lazy speed, looking as though she would rather be anywhere else. She reluctantly (and not at all gently) untangled me from my blankets, muttering things I was too drugged up to make out. Again, I noticed her name tag. “Das cool! Yer naem is Katherine and so is my merddle naem! We should be bess frahns!”

                Nurse Katherine looked up at the ceiling and took a deep breath before saying, “Yes. I know. You’ve told me,” before trudging out of the room again, not even bothering to try telling me to stay put.

                It seemed as though all of my troubles had been solved by my stubborn attempts to escape, because Nurse Katherine came in a few minutes later to find me with my legs hanging like wet noodles off of the side of the bed, desperately clawing at the blanket that was wrapped around my left arm and torso. After she took a second to compose herself, she began untangling me saying, “I’m going to take you to your mom.”

                “MAAAAARM,” I cried out in excitement, giving her my most winning grin. This went unappreciated by Nurse Katherine who unceremoniously flung my semi-lifeless legs back into the bed and wheeled me out of there as fast as she could, pushing me down the hall so quickly that my brain couldn’t even begin to process the blurry scenes we were passing. The new room was much nicer than the dim little dungeon I had just escaped. There were lots of windows and it was very bright, but perhaps the brightest thing in the room to me at the moment was the sight of my mom and aunt waiting for me. I tried to sit up and failed, so instead I sort of twisted my neck and shoulders in her direction exclaiming proudly, “Maaarm! I derd it! I ecscaped the evul derntersts!” I heard Nurse Katherine heave a great sigh and stomp out of the room (without even saying goodbye!).

                I was asked to stay in bed, but allowed to have my mom and aunt in the room. In spite of this generous gift, my doped up anxiety said it wasn’t enough; I needed to get out of there pronto! At any moment, the evil dentist’s rouse could be revealed and now my mom and aunt were at risk of being held for ransom too! I continued to tear at my blankets, my mom and aunt doing their best to calm me down. As my limbs began functioning more, it became quite a task to keep me in the bed, and the nurse monitoring the situation decided it would be best to allow us to leave. Again, I was in a room meant to hold more than one person (though we were the only people there at the time, possibly because of the chaos I was creating). The nurse pulled the curtains around my bed area to give me privacy to dress. Ever stubborn, I refused to let anyone help me. I have always been weirdly shy about my body; even now I often wait until my husband’s back is turned before I throw my clothes on as fast as I can. Alone behind the curtain, I struggled with my bra, shirt, and pants. I really was not in any condition to be doing anything without assistance, but was that going to stop me? HELL NO! I was a runaway train, never coming back, dammit!

                After several agonizing minutes (way more than it should have taken) and several concerned calls from my mom and aunt checking to make sure I hadn’t passed out, I emerged victorious and wobbly, tripping on my own foot and crashing to the floor. I was helped into a wheelchair while my mom went to pull the car around. Even though my aunt was there, I was crazy paranoid that by the time my mom returned, the evil dentists would have locked my aunt and me in a janitor’s closet, claiming we had left with someone else. When my mom returned and I was loaded into her backseat, I was so relieved that I flopped down across the seat and would not move at all to help her buckle me in.

                The following week was equally as blurry, but even more disappointing than I had imagined. In my youth, I was notorious for having a messy room. You’re probably thinking something like, “Haha, I’ve been there,” or, “I know exactly what you mean!” Let me assure you, you don’t. I existed in a grey area somewhere between being a hoarder and living in a trash pit as a teen. My mom loves to tell stories of finding petrified ramen and cereals buried in my closet when she would hunt for dirty dishes in my room. (I particularly recall one Christmas when my cousins wanted to go dirt-biking with my Dad and my bedroom was at an all-time low. They had gone to my room to borrow some clothes so I went to check that they had found something they could use. Through the crack of the door, I saw them standing in the tiny clear spot on the floor, surrounded by piles of crap up to their waists just staring in shock and horror at their surroundings before looking at each other in silent agreement that this was the worst thing they had ever seen.) I was really hoping to have some visitors while I was stuck in bed for my spring break; in an effort to make my dreams come true, I cleaned my room VERY thoroughly, dragging an old arm chair next to my bed, setting up my TV with a wide selection of DVDS, and placing a very large bowl of candy on my nightstand. Sadly, it was all in vain. Turns out no one wants to sit in a dark room with a semi-conscious person whose mouth is too swollen to speak even if you do have candy, but at least I did get to miss an extra three days of school. Take that, education!

P.S. They gave me the most incredible ice pack I have ever seen. It wrapped around my entire head so I didn't have to hold it.

(Example of ice pack I found on Google. Thanks, Google. I don't own this image though.)