birth, part i
Friday, Aug. 25
When the deal was made, the movers promised to pack and unpack everything, put the whole house right back together the way they’d found it. That wasn’t quite the way it happened. They left everything everywhere in big black bags and unmarked boxes. At the end of the day, they asked for 200 euros more than what we had agreed.
Monday, Aug. 28
I thought it was funny that the buka was upside down (right side up)… until she did it again. Sometime between the 36th week, when she was definitely in the right position, and the 38th, when she wasn’t, the buka turned again. The doctor was shocked: never in 20 years had he seen such a thing so late in a pregnancy. At first I was mad at the buka and mad at myself. We had just moved into the new house two days before and I had spent both of those days bent over in boxes, climbing up and down chairs, lifting heavy books and clothes, doing everything everybody told me not to do. I was stubborn, and so was the buka. She tried doing things the right way (I have to acknowledge that) and, for her own reasons, preferred the wrong.
And it did seem very wrong to me. The doctor immediately got on the phone to schedule the operation. He wanted to do it in two days’ time. Knowing the state of the house (total chaos) and various other factors (equally chaotic), I started the water works and begged for another week. The best he could do was Saturday. He set up blood tests in the clinic for the following day. That afternoon, when I returned to him with the results, I told him I still hadn’t accepted it. Accept it, he said. I couldn’t then, and the truth is, I still can’t. It’s over, the stitches are out, and I still can’t look at the scar.
Thursday, Aug. 31
I got a call in the morning saying the mil was on her way, unexpected, uninvited. Electricians were busy destroying the house, so all I could do was sit around, making polite conversation with her.
I went to a party that night, feeling robust and steady on my stout legs, while everyone fussed over my apparent delicacy, offering me a chair, ice cream, a hand on the stairs.
Friday, Sept. 1
I went to the clinic first thing to have blood drawn and banked for the next day’s surgery. I stopped by the supermarket and came home on foot. I hung around with the mil for a while, then decided to take a walk to the hardware store, accompanied, to shop for towel racks. The house really wasn’t ready for company.
I walked through the neighborhood, stopped outside the hardware store to look at something in the window, and… felt a sudden wetness seeping down into my pants, the crotch of which I was shamelessly grabbing in a state of disbelief and burgeoning panic. I turned around and headed back home, feet moving fast and mind racing faster. The doctor said he’d meet us at the clinic.
I had my bag packed and ready, but I couldn’t find my passport. I was somehow happy, despite the gaspy tears and the frantic search, to have that as an excuse not to leave the house. I ended up leaving without it.
I went back to the clinic where I was surprised to find the doctor, unrecognizable in green surgical scrubs and a funny round beret. A nurse told me take off my watch and earrings. Somebody took them. Another nurse took me into a small room and told me to undress, put my clothes in a bag, and put on a green hospital gown, open in front. She gave me some slippers I could barely get my swollen feet into. I did as she said, but then I was alone there, water still pouring out of me, trailing down my legs and dripping on the floor. I didn’t know if I should stand or sit or wait or what. I walked out, looking for the nurse. The nurses were nowhere to be found, but other people, men, were waiting there, milling about while I was naked and shaky and about to give birth. The mil didn’t even recognize me and was no help at all. The urgency of the situation overwhelmed me, and I started shouting, to anyone that would listen: I don’t know what I’m doing!
A nurse emerged: she got me back into the room and up in stirrups. She shaved me between the legs; we made polite conversation to the accompaniment of an efficient but awful wet-dry scraping sound. She gave me an enema, shocking and cold, and told me to walk around for two minutes then go to the toilet. Walk where? In the room? In the hall? I was alone again, but the toilet was within view and relatively clean. I went, I waited, I wiped, full of blood from the hurried shave.
I was taken somehow to another room, where I lay down on a bed on my side. A double IV was inserted into my wrist, and a fetal monitor strapped to my belly; the sound of the buka’s beating heart was so loud, I asked the nurse to turn it down. Just when I started to relax, the controversy over the anaesthesia started. It must have been 12 or 12:30.
One doctor came and explained everything once in Greek and again in English. Because I’d eaten breakfast, he said, I couldn’t have an epidural. But because I’d been taking aspirin until just a few days earlier, it was also a risk to undergo general anaesthesia. He said he’d try to buy some time while I rested for a few hours. I just closed my eyes, listening to the baby’s heart beat.
In no time at all, another doctor came and said we’d have to go. The baby was in distress. I got up, stumbled along in my undersized slippers through the hospital laundry and into large, open operating theater; the room was cold, metal, and green. I took off my robe and they crucified me, naked, arms and legs outstretched, strapped, exposed, immobile. I felt, not saw, a bucket of freezing cold liquid poured over my abdomen, and chest, and legs, and then a warm, heavy blanket descended. The anaesthesiologist gave me some oxygen while she went on bickering with my doctor. Kostas, she said, you shouldn’t have scheduled this operation for Saturday if she was still taking aspirin on Monday. I think that’s an exaggeration, he said. Well, you haven’t read the latest articles, she said. I felt I was choking, not breathing. I’m giving it, I’m giving it, I heard her say, raising her voice, calling everyone to attention. Because I didn’t have their attention already.
The buka was born at 1:50 p.m.
Next thing I know, I’m overhearing a conversation about potatoes and omelets. Somebody shouts, congratulations, Sissy! The baby’s fine! I start weeping and choking; I couldn’t open my eyes or catch my breath. Why is she doing that? somebody asked. She’s moved, the doctor said.
They picked me up and I landed heavily in another bed, suddenly aware of the pain and the cut. And for hours and hours after that, I was aware of nothing at all.
Later that night, I opened my eyes in a dim room. Look, said the person sitting next to me, we have such a nice baby. I saw a shiny plastic bassinet with a tiny, black, scrunched-up head inside, a Mediterranean baby I didn’t recognize at all. Is she pretty? I asked. She’s very pretty, he said. I closed my eyes, and kept them closed. I couldn’t wake up, and I didn’t want to.
(And if that’s not bad enough, the rest of the story is over there.)
When the deal was made, the movers promised to pack and unpack everything, put the whole house right back together the way they’d found it. That wasn’t quite the way it happened. They left everything everywhere in big black bags and unmarked boxes. At the end of the day, they asked for 200 euros more than what we had agreed.
Monday, Aug. 28
I thought it was funny that the buka was upside down (right side up)… until she did it again. Sometime between the 36th week, when she was definitely in the right position, and the 38th, when she wasn’t, the buka turned again. The doctor was shocked: never in 20 years had he seen such a thing so late in a pregnancy. At first I was mad at the buka and mad at myself. We had just moved into the new house two days before and I had spent both of those days bent over in boxes, climbing up and down chairs, lifting heavy books and clothes, doing everything everybody told me not to do. I was stubborn, and so was the buka. She tried doing things the right way (I have to acknowledge that) and, for her own reasons, preferred the wrong.
And it did seem very wrong to me. The doctor immediately got on the phone to schedule the operation. He wanted to do it in two days’ time. Knowing the state of the house (total chaos) and various other factors (equally chaotic), I started the water works and begged for another week. The best he could do was Saturday. He set up blood tests in the clinic for the following day. That afternoon, when I returned to him with the results, I told him I still hadn’t accepted it. Accept it, he said. I couldn’t then, and the truth is, I still can’t. It’s over, the stitches are out, and I still can’t look at the scar.
Thursday, Aug. 31
I got a call in the morning saying the mil was on her way, unexpected, uninvited. Electricians were busy destroying the house, so all I could do was sit around, making polite conversation with her.
I went to a party that night, feeling robust and steady on my stout legs, while everyone fussed over my apparent delicacy, offering me a chair, ice cream, a hand on the stairs.
Friday, Sept. 1
I went to the clinic first thing to have blood drawn and banked for the next day’s surgery. I stopped by the supermarket and came home on foot. I hung around with the mil for a while, then decided to take a walk to the hardware store, accompanied, to shop for towel racks. The house really wasn’t ready for company.
I walked through the neighborhood, stopped outside the hardware store to look at something in the window, and… felt a sudden wetness seeping down into my pants, the crotch of which I was shamelessly grabbing in a state of disbelief and burgeoning panic. I turned around and headed back home, feet moving fast and mind racing faster. The doctor said he’d meet us at the clinic.
I had my bag packed and ready, but I couldn’t find my passport. I was somehow happy, despite the gaspy tears and the frantic search, to have that as an excuse not to leave the house. I ended up leaving without it.
I went back to the clinic where I was surprised to find the doctor, unrecognizable in green surgical scrubs and a funny round beret. A nurse told me take off my watch and earrings. Somebody took them. Another nurse took me into a small room and told me to undress, put my clothes in a bag, and put on a green hospital gown, open in front. She gave me some slippers I could barely get my swollen feet into. I did as she said, but then I was alone there, water still pouring out of me, trailing down my legs and dripping on the floor. I didn’t know if I should stand or sit or wait or what. I walked out, looking for the nurse. The nurses were nowhere to be found, but other people, men, were waiting there, milling about while I was naked and shaky and about to give birth. The mil didn’t even recognize me and was no help at all. The urgency of the situation overwhelmed me, and I started shouting, to anyone that would listen: I don’t know what I’m doing!
A nurse emerged: she got me back into the room and up in stirrups. She shaved me between the legs; we made polite conversation to the accompaniment of an efficient but awful wet-dry scraping sound. She gave me an enema, shocking and cold, and told me to walk around for two minutes then go to the toilet. Walk where? In the room? In the hall? I was alone again, but the toilet was within view and relatively clean. I went, I waited, I wiped, full of blood from the hurried shave.
I was taken somehow to another room, where I lay down on a bed on my side. A double IV was inserted into my wrist, and a fetal monitor strapped to my belly; the sound of the buka’s beating heart was so loud, I asked the nurse to turn it down. Just when I started to relax, the controversy over the anaesthesia started. It must have been 12 or 12:30.
One doctor came and explained everything once in Greek and again in English. Because I’d eaten breakfast, he said, I couldn’t have an epidural. But because I’d been taking aspirin until just a few days earlier, it was also a risk to undergo general anaesthesia. He said he’d try to buy some time while I rested for a few hours. I just closed my eyes, listening to the baby’s heart beat.
In no time at all, another doctor came and said we’d have to go. The baby was in distress. I got up, stumbled along in my undersized slippers through the hospital laundry and into large, open operating theater; the room was cold, metal, and green. I took off my robe and they crucified me, naked, arms and legs outstretched, strapped, exposed, immobile. I felt, not saw, a bucket of freezing cold liquid poured over my abdomen, and chest, and legs, and then a warm, heavy blanket descended. The anaesthesiologist gave me some oxygen while she went on bickering with my doctor. Kostas, she said, you shouldn’t have scheduled this operation for Saturday if she was still taking aspirin on Monday. I think that’s an exaggeration, he said. Well, you haven’t read the latest articles, she said. I felt I was choking, not breathing. I’m giving it, I’m giving it, I heard her say, raising her voice, calling everyone to attention. Because I didn’t have their attention already.
The buka was born at 1:50 p.m.
Next thing I know, I’m overhearing a conversation about potatoes and omelets. Somebody shouts, congratulations, Sissy! The baby’s fine! I start weeping and choking; I couldn’t open my eyes or catch my breath. Why is she doing that? somebody asked. She’s moved, the doctor said.
They picked me up and I landed heavily in another bed, suddenly aware of the pain and the cut. And for hours and hours after that, I was aware of nothing at all.
Later that night, I opened my eyes in a dim room. Look, said the person sitting next to me, we have such a nice baby. I saw a shiny plastic bassinet with a tiny, black, scrunched-up head inside, a Mediterranean baby I didn’t recognize at all. Is she pretty? I asked. She’s very pretty, he said. I closed my eyes, and kept them closed. I couldn’t wake up, and I didn’t want to.
(And if that’s not bad enough, the rest of the story is over there.)
posted by soap at
8:25 AM
2 Comments:
Sis, I'm so, so sorry you had such a wretched birth experience. That's such a shame.
That instantaneous bonding thing is a bit of a fantasy, I think, that mothers put on each other. Maybe there really are experiences like that, but I didn't feel like that. It comes, it grows.
Long distance blessings. I wish I could offer more support than that.
I did have a wretched experience, but my main complaint is that I don't have any "birth experience" or memory of a birth at all. I'm still piecing the story together. I had a revelation just yesterday about my first hour out of surgery. I'd really like to get to the bottom of that omelet conversation, but I think there are some details I'd rather not know.
Thanks for the reassurance about the bonding thing (I like your terms). The truth is a lot has changed since I wrote those posts. She's even started to look like me. :)
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