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When Hubby and I got pregnant with Ethan, we were not exactly planning it and not exactly taking every precausion either. We had been married nearly 2 years, fresh from the lovely marital torture of that first year, starting counseling and regular church attendance, etc. I was in my junior year in college, which, once I realized my state, I hurried along with 21 credit hours in the spring and another two long summer courses (history and art, it wasn’t that bad), up until 3 weeks until my due date of mid-July. I worked for Starbucks at the time, with late hours after being in class all day long. I called out every chance I got, which was often with my constant nausea and these things, which darn nearly prevented me from walking but my lifestyle demanded being on my feet often. I did find relief in prenatal yoga- sweet, sweet relief.

I stopped working at about 8 months pregnant to finish school, and spent the last few weeks of pregnancy wondering where the ever loving hell this baby was, as the due date came and went and I sat in the miserable heat of Florida’s sub-tropical summer sucking down Popsicles in my underwear, (or my husband’s boxer’s since that’s all that fit me at that point) with the AC set to 55 degrees. When the phone calls rang all day with, “OHMYGAWD! Your not picking up your phone! Are you having that baby?!” we decided to unplug the phone and sit around eating Popsicles together. I tried to “nest”, which translates to scrubbing the oven, making meals to freeze that I never did eat, and sweeping about 7 times an hour just in case we had to flee to the hospital and family saw the house before we had a chance to come home and clean it.

About a week post-due, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I tried yoga postures that they say NOT to do because it will induce labor. I sat on the massage chairs at Brookstone. I had Hubby put pressure on my ankles. I drank Raspberry Leaf Tea several times a day. I had lots of sex. I mixed Castor Oil with scrambled eggs for breakfast (which just brought on some of this, which was not a great condition to be on in the eve of your labor.) My midwife even “stripped the membranes” and felt that, since I had been at 3 cm with a head sitting in between what felt like my leg bones, labor would ensue within days. Nothing but a bunch of irregularly timed contractions, searing back pain, and constipation resulted from these failed attempts to bring on sudden labor. On the eleventh day passed due date…

We decided that my pain was too unbearable. We left the house a mess. We grabbed our bags and headed to the hospital around 10 pm. I had a written birthing plan that requested no pain medications and a shortened stay in the hospital. Hospitals reek of death and neglect and uncalled for interventions and drug-pusher’s with MD’s, (sorry, that was probably harsh).

I wanted to get that baby out of me so bad, I might have taken the hospital hostage if they had tried to send me home. So when they found I was running a fever and the baby’s heart beat was irregular, they panicked and, after much deliberating, I agreed to go on Pitocin to induce the labor. I had been feeling a bit leaky, but my back hurt so bad that I couldn’t quite focus on the other little signals my body was giving me. I mentioned to the staff that I felt like I might be peeing on myself (you laugh, but if you had the weight of that load on your bladder, while contracting and pushing downward, you’d wonder why I didn’t spray the whole place).

Before the Pitocin was even hooked up, my water officially broke. It was tinted with fresh merconium (yes, Lil’ E’s first bowel movement coming out my la la was a gloriously defining moment for my introduction into motherhood.) I wish I wouldv’e asked to hold off on the Pitocin. Maybe I did, but either way the drip began and from about 3:30 am til 2:30 in the afternoon I was bolted down into the intensity of my subconscious while my body continued on in real life, experiencing some of the most jolting waves of peaks and dips that left me fatigued and shivering. I was incredibly swollen from laboring over a freakin portable commode, and the urge to push came a few centimeters too early. I think the entire room was breathing with me, like we were blowing a feather inches from our mouths with “O” shaped lips. It actually worked! I breathed through another centimeter of dilating, until the midwife decided to force the remaining barricade open to make way for my son’s ramming head. Though I was begging for them to cut me open right before that, the invitation to go ahead and PUSH was a wonderful relief and I pushed with skill and determination. When asked if I wanted to touch the baby’s head, my clarity returned for half a second, long enough for me to say politely, “No, just get him out of me.”

When the body separated from my own, I could not believe the train ride had come to an end. I remember being so annoyed that in an instant there was no one paying attention to me except the staff; all family had scattered to make phone calls about the news while I was still lying there in bewilderment, birthing the placenta. I felt like I should force some tears of joy at this new little wiggly baby as I brought him to my breast, but really I was completely stunned. I think I was still out of body some where, floating around in the corner ceiling of the room while some one took my baby for a bath and I was escorted to the bathroom to fill up the toilet with blood and squirt my la la with a warm water bottle. Yes, for those who have not had a baby in a hospital, and for you men who will never get the joy, I am serious. After all that I just went through, I was instructed to squirt warm water at myself in the presence of a nurse. The worst part? The trickle of warm water awakened my womanly parts to the realization of what it had just been through, and it sent a message to my brain that went something like, “OUCH!”

If I could sum up the hospital stay it would look something like cafeteria food that arrived too cold, a constant stream of people coming in to check my “vitals” while I sat around bleeding on a padded bed with my teta’s exposed to the world. Oh yes, and let’s not forget the strange, spongy gut left from the departure of the solid mass it once housed. I felt I hardly bonded with my son and was fed a wealth of misinformation regarding breastfeeding and my son’s jaundice. At last I went home, 56 hours later, with out more than 2 hours of consecutive sleep in about 4 days.

After all that, the first three months were minor horrors.

And so I ask you, if you had these lovely memories to keep you warm at night, would you be contemplating another pregnancy, like EVER? I struggle with this decision, more so lately than ever. So many things, the real important things, are lining up in such a way that I’m feeling the need to procreate just one more time. And so many other things, things I think might also be important, are not lining up. And let’s not forget, the terrific anecdote I just shared for the passed 30 minutes creeps in to haunt my experience and send anxiety over any future plans.

Every day I feel differently about having another child, and sometimes I scold myself for being scared or for thinking there is a “right” time waiting indefinitely in the wings of “my plans”. I think it must not be natural, this indecision, and I might truly regret waiting too long, (I’ve always felt that a “perk”, if you will, of having Lil’ E so young is that I will still be relatively young when he’s off to college, when Hubby and I can get back to traveling the world together or something. If I have my second child ten, even 5 years later, I’ve trumped that “perk” ).

And every one has got advice for me, and I don’t agree with any of them, whether they are for or against or even indifferent to my decision, because in the end I simply don’t want any one telling me what to do.

So, there, it is out in the open, my preoccupation with another pregnancy. I hope this record breaking post made up in entertainment what it lacked in brevity.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 2:58 am and is filed under Motherhood, Parenting