What is it about women and birthing? A pregnant belly invites all mothers to marshal forth the most intimate of details. A few days ago, when discussing the impending birth of my grandson James Whitney, an eighty-year-old acquaintance immediately began describing her epidural. I paused. It seemed so incongruous, thinking of this woman who hobbles with a cane as young enough to be in the throes of labor. (I remind myself of the young children in Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine who refuse to believe that the seventy-two-year-old Mrs. Bentley was the child in the photograph.) Then I wondered. I too am no longer a spring chicken. How often have others looked askance as I have regaled them with my labor and delivery stories?
And yet I do not censor myself in this post. What follows is the birthing experience of my first child, Chrissy. Perhaps I get a pass because I wrote this twenty-six years ago, when I was still young, only a few months before I got pregnant with James' father Nathan. Can I mention it this one last time?
As I reread this short essay, I am intrigued by how some things have changed and yet others are still the same. The bookstore Printers Inc. is no more. Gone the way of most independent bookstores in the Internet age. And as nostalgic as I am, I too search the Internet, not bookstores nor libraries for information. If I were birthing today, I would undoubtedly have been surfing the net for information until labor became unbearable.
Yet some things never change--our personalities and our universal experiences. I am still me. I still approach life's challenges by endlessly seeking out information. And the experience of birthing a baby, despite well-appointed birthing rooms and modern technology, is still very much the same--an intimate, emotional, once-in-a-lifetime experience, never to be forgotten and far too often to be shared.
By the Book
(1988)
(1988)
As a freshman in college who had never cooked a meal in my entire life, I quickly learned an enduring truth from my best friend
Stephpanie: "If you can read, you can cook." Because I shared not only an
apartment, but also cooking responsibiliteis with five other roommates,
I quickly learned how to read a recipe. Stephanie and I also decided
to major in English. If all else failed, we figured we coud get jobs as
cooks after we graduated from college.
By the time I graduated, even I could make a lemon meringue pie my mother envied. I had also learned how critical Stephanie's adage was. I could learn to do anything simply by reading. Never mind that the method had failed me in the conversational German class I took as a junior and the racquet ball class I took as a senior. A survey of the "how-to" titles in any public library proved hundreds of publishers concurred. If I could read, I could dress for success, program my computer and travel Europe on $10 a day. How well I had spend my parents' pennies by studying English.
It was only natural that when I got pregnant years later, I reasoned that if I could read, I too could survive pregnancy. I placed my confidence in the well-stocked childbirth and pregnancy section at Printers Inc, the eclectic bookstore a few blocks from my apartment. Its consumer guides to pregnancy shattered the mystique of finding an obstetrician by stepping me through researching, interviewing, and choosing one. (After looking at the Bay area yellow pages, however, I chose Dr. Wedell, whose only recommendation was that his elder sister had taught Latin at my Utah high school.) Nutrition books counted caloric and calcium intakes for the two of us, fashion guides dictated the correct fashion statements for my burgeoning body and a pencil-thin Jane Fonda demonstrated pelvic rocks and wall pushups. (In disbelief, I stared at a sea of leotard-bursting bellies engulfing Fonda and swore that I would never get that fat.) Every few weeks, I went from morning sickness to delivery in a few hours and a few hundred pages as I skimmed the latest "complete" book of pregnancy.
By my ninth month of pregnancy, I had read not only every outdated issue of People and Time magazines in Dr. Wedell's magazine rack, but all the posters and newspaper clippings papering his walls as well. Committed to memory were the free nutrition and hemorrhoid pamphlets that I had shyly stuffed into my purse along with complimentary copies of Baby Talk and American Baby. I doubt there were few books in print connected to pregnancy that I had not read. Nonetheless, two days after my husband and I had finished a rather disappointing Lamaze class (alas, no handouts), when a sudden low backache made me feel Chrissy was on her way, I headed straight for the bookstore to double check a few facts one last time.
Picking out the first complete book of pregnancy that I saw, I checked my symptoms once more. Backache. Cramps. Increased Braxton-Hicks contractions. Nesting instinct. Even I had the nesting instinct. This must be it, I thought. Hurriedly, I turned once more to the three stages of delivery. I grimaced. Will my body really do that, I wondered. Maybe I don't want a baby after all. A chastising contraction gripped my abdomen. Too late, I thought. I remembered the woman screaming during my tour of the maternity wing of the hospital. Take a cleansing breath. Breath slowly. In through your nose. Out through your mouth, I coached myself. Stay calm. Relax. Reality loomed: I'm going to be that screaming woman soon, I thought.
After eunduring natural, medicated, forceps and cesarean deliveries as well as a few serious contractions, I reshelved the books and I returned home. I waited out the rest of the afternoon, napping and nibbling on toast and juice. I avoided the kitchen and the wafting aroma of stew simmering in the crockpot. No heavy foods, the books had advised. Pain and contrctions I could not control, but my appetite I could. But at 5:30, I threw the book out the window. My will power lost for a mess of pottage. I devoured a piping hot bowl of the rich stew.
When my husband returned home from work an hour later, so did my calm. Scott was not well-versed in childbirth. He had never attended a baby shower. His naive amazement at our Lamaze instructor's description of birth had embarrassed me. It was hard not to feel knowledgeable and controlled around Scott. I suggested we go to the bookstore just one last time. After whiling away an afternoon with only my morning's reading to think about, I just had to check out a few more things one more time.
At the bookstore, I picked up a new Lamaze book that had somehow escaped my attention. I began reading all sorts of things I had never heard of. I madly set about scribbling notes and new lists as we timed my contractions.
"Scott," I whispered in amazement. "This book says you should use cold oranges to ..."
I lowered my voice. "Start your watch," I whispered as I began to breath slowly in through my nose.
Scott's wristwatch beeped as he fumbled to set its timer. I could hear him breathing heavily. In and out. In and out. He's breathing too rapidly, too loudly, I thought. Does anyone else hear him, I wondered.
"Stop," I whispered.
He stopped inhaling mid-breath and clicked the button on his wristwatch. Then he gasped and whispered emphatically, "Eight minutes, Marcia. Eight minutes. The last three contractions have been only eight minutes apart. Don't you think we should do something?"
"Shhh," I whispered back. I looked around quickly. "I don't want anyone to know."
To stave off embarrassment and appease my husband, we bought a book and went home. There I repacked my suitcase, rearranging the two-month-old creases in my new nursing gown, and we went to bed for a rather restless night. Like clockwork, my husband dutifully recorded every contraction and rolled cold oranges in the small of my back to ease the pressure. And when we had checked off all the criteria for active labor and then waited an extra half hour to compensate for our being overly anxious first-time parents, we called Dr. Curtis. (Unfortunately, none of the consumer guides had suggested I ask Dr. Wedell about his vacation plans. He was in Australia.)
We drove to the hospital, where four hours later in a fashion something like the books described, I pushed, Dr. Curtis pulled, and Chrissy emerged, totally unaware of the world around her. She looked something like the books had described. She had an enormous, misshapen head, eyes nearly swollen shut, and bluish-pink, wrinkly skin. That gorgeous child with soft, dark hair was finally in my arms. I suppose she would have come and looked exactly the same even had I not read a single book.
I have since given up Lamaze books. Labor and delivery have cured me of that obsession. I still go to bookstores, but Chrissy does not like lingering while I peruse the stacks and skim the books. Instead I must buy all those child rearing books and read and reread them while she naps. It only seems right.
