A Child Is Born

[sasha]

I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into fatherhood. The enormity of the task – in both duration and import – terrified me. There was no way, I felt, that I was qualified to become a father. Maybe it’s because my own father was such an imposing figure to me that even in my 20s I sometimes wondered about my competence as a son. Whatever the reason, whenever the topic of starting a family arose, my wife must have sensed my diffidence, and never pushed for a conclusion. Each conversation on the subject just trailed off as an ellipsis. So, as happens more often than not, her eventual pregnancy was an accident.

I berated myself for giving in to the heat of the moment without taking precautions, and during the first few months managed to pretend that a life-changing event was not in the offing; but when she started to show, and the prospective grandparents’ excitement became palpable, I began to experience a queer and disagreeable blend of guilt, resentment, and loneliness that pretending to be excited by the prospect only made worse.

The tentative date was somewhere around Thanksgiving 1981, which came and went with nothing happening. Betty became increasingly bloated and fatigued as the reluctant infant’s waste products continued flooding her own overloaded system. It wasn’t until 7 December – a snowy Monday afternoon - that contractions of any significance arrived. They never really settled into a trend of increasing frequency, but convinced us nonetheless that the time had finally come. By midnight, they seemed to be coming about every 4 minutes, so we bundled up and drove through 20 miles of swirling snow to the Peterboro hospital. We checked in at 1:00 am, at which time the contractions (naturally) stopped dead. We sat there for three hours watching the night shift polish the floors, during which time the nurse on duty felt Betty's belly twitch once with what she allowed might, indeed, have been a contraction. They sent us home.

At 7:30 the next morning, after a refreshing 2 hours of slumber broken only 7 or 8 times by wild, bizarre dreams, the contractions started up again, this time around 9 minutes apart. All day long, as the snow continued to drift down, we watched and timed them, waiting vainly for them to settle into a regular pattern. By midnight, they were still anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes apart. The weather was showing no sign of improving, so we drove to the hospital again. We checked in at 2:00 am, at which time the night nurse said Yeah, it's real labor, but not good labor. They were coming at irregular intervals, you see, and perhaps we should wait until they had established a more predictable rhythm. (Ya think??)

But Betty was so worn out by now they decided to keep her and let her get some rest before the show really began. We spent another restful night, Betty in the fetal position on a hospital bed, me slumped in a molded-plastic chair.

At 9:00 AM the midwife breezed in, rested, showered, and fed, and chirped that it was time we got to work. She broke Betty's water while a nurse started up an IV of pitosin, a hormone to induce contractions. Did it ever. Trouble is, it rendered all of our Lamaze training practically useless. Naturally occurring contractions come on gradually: you can feel them build, and being able to gauge when the peak will occur allows you to establish the breathing rhythm they teach. Once it's peaked, a typical contraction slowly fades, and you glide down to a little rest period before the next one.

But contractions induced by this stuff sneak up on you. Where the cycle of natural contractions is sinusoidal, these follow a square wave. One minute, nothing; then it’s like being struck in the midriff with a baseball bat. There was no preparing for them. She'd suddenly double up in agony, and the two of us would hyperventilate in unison for 60 seconds; then, as abruptly as it had come on, it would release her, dropping her like a glutted tiger dropping the goat it’s just killed for the sheer pleasure of killing. Unwilling to let her guard down and relax during the brief respite, she'd remain tensed up in fearful anticipation of the next one.

Despite this, she made pretty good progress, and was 5 centimeters dilated by noon; but then she stalled out, and by 4:00 had only gained another centimeter. The doctor reached up inside and said uh-oh, which I gathered was medical jargon for This Ain't Right. He explained that her cervix had folded slightly so the baby's head was now pushing shut the very door it was trying to squeeze through, kind of like what happens when you try to pull up your pants while standing on them. It was time, he felt, to consider "alternate means of delivery."

Betty looked crushed. She was exhausted by a full day of unrelenting pain following two sleepless nights on the heels of two weeks of systemic overload from an overdue baby. She'd waited so long and had worked so hard to deliver a baby from between her legs, and now when it was so close, minutes away, it was being denied her. Alternate means of delivery. For a moment I thought she was going to cry.

The doctor turned to me. "Have you ever seen a Caesarean?" he asked.

Oh sure, I thought. Three last week alone. "No," I said, "I don’t believe so."

"Would you like to?"

I briefly envisioned a team of surgeons bent over my wife's shrieking, writhing form while brandishing an assorted collection of filthy veterinary and butcher tools. One of the surgeons bears an uncanny resemblance to Moe Fine, and is using two claw hammers as retractors so that Larry or Curly can perform some abominable act with poultry shears. The fantasy ends with me swooning, collapsing on the floor, and wetting my pants. "Sure," I answer faintly. "Sounds like it might be interesting..."

"Good!" the doctor beams. "See you in O.R."

I numbly follow one of the nurses to the scrub station, where I wash and slip into an all-paper ensemble including cap, gown, mask and slippers; and now I find myself sitting in a chilly little green cinder block chamber that looks more like the junior high band room than an operating theater. Betty's head is poking out from under a little pup tent of some kind, and a few feet south of there, some guy in yellow, bloodstained latex gloves is tugging on two flaps of meat while another is sawing away with a scalpel. I find myself vastly relieved that they have started without me - I don't think I could have watched the initial incision. As it is, it never registers that this slab of flesh and fat is the inside of my wife, and at that emotional distance it's easy to be fascinated by it. Whenever I stand to get a better look, though, this cute little redhead keeps pushing me back down, directing me to talk to Betty. "We don't want you passing out on us," she jokes. She has evidently seen my nightmare.

I'm cold. My eyes are stinging from lack of sleep, and I'm a little light-headed from exhaustion. All of the feelings I've struggled with for the past nine months now seem to be focusing to a point, converging into a single angle, a moment, an event. This is it. This is what we have tried to prepare ourselves for all this time; this. This is the moment I have dreaded for so long, the moment I wished I'd prevented; the moment that, knowing it could not be prevented, I tried to ignore; the moment that, unable to ignore, I desperately wanted to forestall; the moment that, unable to forestall, I crazily wished would just get here and be done with.

Well, it's here. I have a sensation of hurtling headlong through these last few seconds, and I want it to slow down, no longer because I dread the outcome but because I want savor it, I want to experience it slowly enough to absorb some of its portent; but as it has all year, it pays my petty wishes no heed and approaches at its own rate. I feel as I've read soldiers do in the instant before plunging into combat: afraid, yes, but ready, somehow. Afraid, but not fearful; and at peace with that fear, recognizing it not only as an ancient demon but quite possibly one's staunchest ally in the face of what is about to come. Of course soldiers are afraid to die; who isn't? And of course I'm afraid to become a father. Isn’t everyone at first?

Oh God I'm tired. How are you doing, Hon? Is it the spinal that's glazed your eyes and slurred your speech, or is it just that you're bone-weary, even moreso than I? Destiny. Inevitability. We've rehearsed this event, in class and in our minds, and here we are. Deja vu, only inside-out. I feel like I'm watching from somewhere else; I feel like a character in a movie, or an episode of M*A*S*H. I want to go to sleep. I want to get drunk, I want to get high, I want to jump up on the operating table and shout, "Hey everybody! I'm watching an operation, and I didn't even faint!" I don't want to go back in time any more. I only want to press on, to see where the hell this leads. Forward, march! Warp 7, Mr. Sulu! Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

The doctor says, "Okay. I've exposed the uterus. Let's see what's inside."

Yes, I think, time to see what's inside. I stand up to take another peek at Betty's guts, and behold a bluish-lavender bladder about the size of a volleyball sitting atop a wet, glistening mass of red and orange tissue. It doesn't look like it's connected to anything. It looks like it just bounced there from over the net.

"Sit down. Please." Cathy says, digging her fingers into my shoulder again. She no longer finds my insubordination cute.

I sit down and turn to Betty, who's gazing dreamily around her. I managed a smile, which she returns, although I don't know if she’s smiling because I did or because for the first time in almost 3 days she’s free of pain.

"It looks like a little girl!" The doctor straightens, holding an infant who appears to be covered with mud. An umbilical cord dangles from its tiny belly and trails away into the lavender volleyball from which it is unraveling. A quick glance at the child's - MY child's - private parts confirms the doctor's diagnosis. He holds her casually, almost carelessly, not with the ginger timidity a novice such as myself would. "Rebecca," I breathe. Betty gives me a distant, puzzled look. While we've discussed the name, and both seemed pleased by it, we've never firmly agreed that this would be what we'd name a daughter. "Look at Rebecca," I urge. She nods and looks up at the overhead light.

"Mr. Saunders, would you PLEASE sit down." By now, though, I'm on my way out of the room in pursuit of the pediatrician. I don't want him entrusting care of my daughter to some bored, slipshod candy-striper who might do God-Knows-What, and I trust that the standby team is capable of stapling Betty shut.

I'm still wearing my paper overalls when a nurse leads me to a little utility room opposite Betty's. Then another appears, carrying my baby, a red-faced little ogre. Her eyelids are tightly shut, the eyeballs bulging beneath them like a baby bird's. Her hair is still wet, and her face is smeared and spotted with drops of undried blood. She has an odd, meaty odor that reminds me of puppy breath. She is not squalling, but lies in peaceful repose within her swaddling blanket.

The nurse holds the baby out to me. "Here she is!" she says. "Why don't you take your baby?"

Because I don't know how, a voice in my mind plaintively wails, but I take this tiny, precious creature into my arms anyway and awkwardly cradle her the way I'm shown. She greets me by screwing her face up into an even uglier expression, and grunting. A liquid bubbling sound from somewhere underneath her informs me that my baby has taken her first dump.

The nurse laughs and moves to take Rebecca back. "You get one complimentary diaper change here," she jokes. "You watch, though, because you get to do all the others."

"No," I say. "Let me. Just talk me through it."

She registers surprise and, I think, approval. "Whatever you like," she says, and guides me through Baby's First Poo. It is thick, black and tarry, and, I'm assured, not at all what the rest will be like. This isn't a real B.M., she insists. It's more like the intestines' packing material - Nature’s cosmoline.

Whatever it is, it's pretty nasty, but there are plenty of cleaning supplies at hand, the nurse cuts me a lot of slack, and the clean diaper that goes on is secured almost as snugly as the one that came off. The nurse compliments me as having handled that like a pro, then suggests I sit in the rocking chair with Rebecca until Betty returns from post op. I gratefully ease into the chair, and the nurse slips quietly out of the room, shutting off the light as she does. Light from the hall reflects off the shiny linoleum floor, but it is dim and subdued, and after the nurse's footsteps have died away, it is quiet.

I am alone with my daughter.

She's so tiny, I note. And that smell... I raise her head to my face and sniff her. Not exactly like meat... but not exactly like a baby either. (As if I'd know.) I lower her so I can look at her again, and start to rock. Should I hum? Maybe I should hum a song. I start to hum, trying to recall a lullaby, but it segues into something by the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

She doesn't seem to mind.

"You little bug," I whisper, and I kiss her forehead. I'm tempted to smell her again, but wonder if that would be unseemly. I decide that it might be, but that if I want to sniff my baby, it's okay. So I do.

And she doesn't seem to mind.

Little bug.



(Pieced together from letters and journal entries penned at the time.)

[saw]

superb....witty and real.....such a magical experience is birth...and all the emotional wrangling that comes with the actual event....the excitement, the fear, the trek into a wilderness without comparisons....my first child was born in the house where I still live in the room I call my bedroom....he is 38 years old now, but that March Sunday was unforgettable
had a midwife ( and a 78 year old female doctor named Coral Gordon )....Dr. Gordon supervised the whole affair.....she had delivered hundreds of babies and had a book with crinkled yellow pages that documented each birth.....I was never afraid, because of her calm demeanor

love the details of your adventure ( I assume this is autobiographical )....it's such a wonderful ride ( actually more than one...ha ) through the whole process...and I too had reservations about fatherhood...( my dad and I fought like cats and dogs )....and he was quick to take off his belt.....and well...I just didn't know if I was the right man for the job....but as you describe, once you see that little creature, it's an instant love affair....unconditionally

thanx for sharing this story....I feel like these types of stories are important...are the fabric of being human in it's most essential ways....the cycle of life is profoundly poetic, isn't it ?

[sasha]

Thank you so much for your positive comments! Yes, the "I" in this story is me, or was in 1981, when I wrote much of it down before the memories had a chance to crystallize into something else.

My father's chief weapon wasn't the belt, but a biting wit that left you wondering whether or not you'd really been stung. I miss him dearly, but always felt it was a struggle to measure up. How could I possibly raise a child? What I never expected was how the experience would let me be a child again - building snow forts with her, showing her how to catch and release frogs, how beautiful snakes actually are and not to be feared... all of it. She's 3000 miles away now, an architect on the west coast, but still holds onto those values.

Anyway - I'm very happy you enjoyed this. It was an amazing experience, yet plays out thousands of times every day.