The day was finally over...or was it?

   I was induced a second time four days after I was sent home from the first failed induction.  Four day lying in a hospital bad having contractions four to seven minutes apart with absolutely no dilation.  I had been induced two weeks early after I apparently failed my non-stress test.  A test which had been explained to me several times but I still did not understand fully.  

    My pregnancy was considered high-risk because I was over thirty-five years old.  My growing fetus was accompanied by a growing rage for the absent bed spring exerciser that fertilized this egg. (my goal is to come up with new and creative ways to avoid the word father)  The combination of age, angst, rising blood-pressure and glucose levels resulted in the most miserable pregnancy ever.  What should have been bliss was an awful…angry…tiresome…worrisome event.  So why would such a debacle end any other way than this.

   I enter the hospital for the second time.  I am pushed laboriously to the maternity ward by an eight-month pregnant nurse.  Walking was out of the question so my guilt grew with every ramp and turn.  My identification and medical information is confirmed in a tiny office outside of the locked ward.  At this point the panting, perspiring nurse that brought me this far bids me good luck as the elevator doors close.  Behind which I can only imagine she collapsed with exhaustion thus spurring on labor.

    After the check-in process is completed a new nurse, not pregnant, arrives to escort me to my room.  It’s spacious with one bed with a tower of electronic equipment and monitors next to it, a couch, a chair and a wall mounted television.   Once I am settled into the bed a couple of nurses busily start attaching leads to different parts of my chest and belly.  The monitors are switched on and the beeps and lights begin their report.  The next wave of activity is the administration of the drugs that induce the labor.  Shortly after they leave the room the contractions begin.  Here we go again.

    The first two days were the same as the last time I was admitted.  No movement.  My mom and best friend waiting patiently for the big moment asking…Do you want to play cards? No.  Do you want to watch television? No.  Can we watch television? No.  As I labored they giggled and talked while my mom crocheted my daughters receiving blanket.  By day three I put the kibosh on their sewing circle.  For which I was immediately dubbed as ‘No Fun’.  

    On the night of the third day I had dilated enough to break my water and accelerate labor.  A procedure that requires the doctor to insert a long knitting needle like device into me until it snags the bag of waters and bursts.  Does it sound uncomfortable?  It is.  But pregnancy is one of those things where discomfort is the norm from start to finish…sickness…gas…indigestion…probing medical visits.  It’s nine months that absolutely nothing is sacred.  Your doctor checks you out from asshole to elbow all while making small talk.  My waters release and the truly active labor starts.  The nurse asks if I need anything for pain.  Until this point I had not.  Whenever they would come in and ask me to rate my pain I would say three or four. So my reply was…No.  Five minutes later I was ringing that call button.  I told her…I lied…I need something.  What’s my pain?  High…seven.  I’m given something to help.  It doesn’t.  The wild ride is about to begin at 11pm on Thursday night.  My mother is asleep on the couch and my best friend has gone home to her own brood.  This was going to be a long night.  

     Imagine you are an orange with human feelings and attributes.  You can feel when someone peels away your skin and sinks your teeth into your pulpy, juicy flesh sucking the life out of you.  Okay…now imagine you are an orange that has just been cut in half.  Still reeling from the pain of the knife severing you in two you are picked up and placed on this device that is designed to pierce your insides to squeeze the liquid out of you.  The torturous hand presses down on your back wrenching and twisting and grinding you around this spear.  Your flesh being mangled as your drained of your life force.  Enduring the pain seems like a lot longer than the minute or two it actually is.  And you’re discarded…tossed aside…a spent shell.  That’s what a contraction feels like.  Only it happens over and over again.  Your whole body is gripped with pain and you suddenly realize that those stupid movies with the husband or best friend yelling breathe into a laboring woman’s face is to keep her from passing out because you actually hold your breath and wrap your arms around the bed rail for dear life until the contraction passes.

    My mom woke up around 6am to a sobbing daughter.  This sucks is all I could say. She rubbed my back and comforted me.  I was periodically checked for dilation.  No epidural would be administered until I had dilated beyond five centimeters because the drug slows the labor.  Seventeen hours total I spent weeping, moaning and almost tearing my mom’s arm off before I finally got the relief of the spinal.  Then…bliss.  My mother and I napped while labor continued unfelt.  I could not even move my legs.  I did not care.  I did care however that I had stopped dilating.  They checked and checked and checked again.  By 2am the checking stopped and I was prepped for a C-section.

    With our paper shower caps my mom and I were whisked into the operating room.  An intensely cold room.  You can see your breath.  The room quickly filled with doctors and nurses on a mission.  Each having or delegating tasks.  I was draped.  A curtain wall went up at my chest.  My mother was instructed to stay away from the business side of the curtain until given the all clear.  She had no problem with that.  I could feel pressure and movement but no pain.  Then some one said…she’s out!  And I waited to hear her cry.  She did not.  I worried.  The nurse cleared her nose and mouth and there was a duck like squawk that came from her.  Did I give birth to a goose?  They raised her over the curtain to show me she was ok.  She was covered in goop.  It was only a couple of minutes before I was stapled up and they told my mom she could come take a look at the baby.  She snapped a picture of her on the scale.   The baby didn’t make a sound.  My mother said she just kept sticking her tongue out as if to taste the air.  A few more minutes later she was swaddled in a warm blanket and brought over to me.  I was still strapped to the table so my mom held her near my face so that I could kiss her.  She is beautiful was all she could say.  

    We were taken to recovery and all three swaddled in heated blankets.  My arms were free to hold the baby.  So I did.  My mom went back to my room to sleep.  Eva and I stayed cuddled in recovery until I was able to feel my legs again.  They wheeled us to my room and laid us both in our separate beds.  The day was finally over…or was it?