MY OWN LITTLE CHAOS MONKEY

Hey Zeus Christy! How long has it been since I posted…?

I have a good excuse, though. Of course, the holidays are always hectic, though at least this year I didn’t leave town for a month immediately after. There were the usual holiday festivities – dinners, houseguests, the Thirteenth Annual X-mas Eve Party at my place. But this year, on top of all that, I gave birth.

Though the event itself was not totally unexpected (I thought my pants were fitting a bit more snuggly than usual…) the timing was. We were still busily enacting The Huge Plan for Home Renovation in preparation for her arrival when she decided that she was arriving NOW.

My plans for the day had been simple and straightforward – make a batch of whole wheat blueberry pancakes, then paint the living room (I already had the paint) and make pillow covers that matched the curtains and new slipcovers. As I was considering whether or not my blueberries were ridiculously large to be put into pancakes or if it would be wise to drop them in a blender first, I felt a huge and surprising gush of water.

How unexpected.

I stayed calm, largely because I knew that the baby wouldn’t need any extra adrenaline at that point, and sat very still on a large pile of towels while my partner ran around the house packing a bag which our birthing coach had advised we pack early. (Did we listen?) I don’t remember much about the drive to the hospital, though I do remember waiting in the van for my partner to return with a wheelchair. He couldn’t find one handy and didn’t feel like waiting, so he “commandeered” (read: stole) one from somewhere to facilitate my arrival in a timely manner. (He promised me that he didn't actually throw anyone else out of it.)

The first twenty-one hours after this were spent attempting to make labor stop since she wasn’t quite due to arrive just yet. Despite all of the wonderful abilities of modern medicine, she was bound and determined to be a Sagittarius instead of an Aquarius.

Up until that day, I had been in the care of midwives, though at this point I was turned over to the high-risk doctors whom I had never met. This made me a bit nervous since I had some pretty definite ideas of what I was and was not willing to do / have done to me during this process and had enough on my mind without having to battle with medical staff. Though, really, that’s what my partner, mother and mother-in-law were there to do if the need should have arisen. (My mother and mother-in-law discussed which one of them was the tiger and which one was the polar bear.)

Happily, The Matriarchs didn’t need to go into pissed off mama mode nor did my partner have to ask them to dismiss the anesthesiologist I had no interest in. The doctor chance provided (thank you chaos – bock! bock!) was more open-minded than I could have hoped.

We met at ten in the morning when she came in to see me for the first time on her shift. After giving me an exam, she said “Hi. My name is Dr. X and I’ll be delivering your baby, probably in about twenty minutes. I don’t know what your plans were, but if you have any interest in going natural, I’d go for it – the hard part is already over.”

This was exactly what I wanted to hear because I had NO INTEREST in an epidural or anything at all that would numb the experience for me. I had been taking a Hypno-Birthing class in preparation for this, and though some of my friends laughed at the possibility of birth not hurting, I was determined. Between the techniques my partner and I learned in the class and all of the years I had spent meditating, I figured that, barring any unforeseen complications, I could do it.

The most difficult thing I had had to deal with in the previous twenty-one hours was not “going with it” since we were trying to get the birth to stop, or at least pause for a few days or weeks. Sure, it was a bit uncomfortable, but on a scale of one to ten the pain never rose above a three and half.

Of course, much of the ease of the experience was due to the terrific support I had from my partner and mother. Several people, after seeing the two of them in action, asked whether they would attend their own births and suggested that they might consider going into business together.

There were a few times during the middle of the night when my partner was sleeping that I went it alone, and I could see where the sensations could take a turn toward “Very Painful” if I would have let them. It is difficult to relax through pain – it is instinct to tense – but doing so only causes more pain. As long as I stayed relaxed, which my partners did a wonderful job of reminding me to do, the discomfort just washed through and away. Frankly, it is not nearly the most painful thing I have ever experienced – I have had headaches much worse then labor.

So, there I was, fully dilated with the baby in the birth canal just meeting my doctor for the first time. Now it was time for the movie scene – frantic turning off of IV’s, nurses running down the hall, bed clattering and sheets fluttering with IV poles in tow, medical staff rushing around scrubbing up and getting out hundreds of utensils. In minutes, an entire fifteen to twenty person crew was standing around wearing hats, masks and gloves waiting for the baby to come rushing out, all prepared to tend to her every need whatever they might have been.

Then, everything stopped. For ten hours.

The doctor, who had been delivering babies for fifteen years, said she had never seen anything like it. The baby was in the birth canal, I was ready to go, there was no turning back, and then everything stopped. But, she was a patient woman, and since neither the baby nor I were in any distress, we would let nature take its course.

This was the really fun part of the whole event. Now that I was dilated (it really is the most difficult part), I had NO PAIN whatsoever. For the next ten hours I hung out with my partner, mom and mother-in-law (the huge medical staff slowly disappeared one by one after the first hour, accepting that nothing exciting was going to be happening any time soon) trying every trick we could think of to get her moving again.

This brought many spectators from outside of the delivery room to come in and observe our antics for themselves, for I WAS NOT behaving the way a woman in labor is supposed to behave. (What do I know? I’ve never seen another woman in labor.) I was, literally, singing and dancing, doing kick lines, jumping up and down, laughing and generally having a great time. Had we video taped the event, my Hypno-Birthing instructor would have made a million dollars.

I even tried method acting – What would a woman in labor be doing right now? I pushed and grunted convincingly enough that my support people got excited, but then would abruptly stop and say “Nah, nothing is happening.” We tried massage, bouncing on a ball, nipple manipulation (though we waited until The Matriarchs were out of the room for that one), unique visualizations, psychological analysis, promises to the child of a pony if she would just come out…

The medical staff kept asking me over and over again to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten… Um, look at me – do I look like I’m in pain? “Zero” was my repetitive answer, and it was true. Had I wanted to (it didn’t occur to me) I could have reached in and touched her, and it didn’t hurt AT ALL.

Finally, after ten hours of irregular contractions that had only moved her an inch or two (I felt every centimeter of it – I highly recommend eschewing the epidural), I asked if they could go ahead and induce the rest of it. She couldn’t go back and she didn’t seem interested in going forward. And, after more than thirty hours, I was bound to start getting tired sometime and there was still some hard work ahead of me.

Soon after, the contractions came fast and regular and I totally lost track of time. They say it took two hours, though I had no idea – it seemed much faster. None of it was at all painful – in fact, it was the most exhilarating experience of my life. Between pushes, I was either laughing my head off or just smiling, happy and all blissed out.

The whole event felt very right – my partner and his mother each held a leg and my mother held my head and wiped my forehead with a cool washcloth. It just seemed like that was how birth was supposed to happen, with my partner and our mothers there to assist. The doctor truly enjoyed the experience as well and pretty much stayed out of our way.

There was, again, the HUGE medical staff bustling about the room, but I kept my eyes closed so that I could stay focused and not get distracted by the bright lights and chaotic bustle going on all around me. I concentrated on the sound of the voices of my loved ones, who kept me informed of what was happening from an external visual perspective.

There’s no doubt about it – though it wasn’t painful, it was HARD WORK – which is why they call it “labor” I suppose. It was like trying, and eventually succeeding, in lifting a house off of its foundation with one’s bare hands. At one point, laughing, I told my support team that I was afraid that I was going to start roaring like a lion, because I certainly felt like I could and that it would be appropriate.

To make a thirty-six hour long story short, everything turned out wonderfully and I have a healthy, strong, determined, head-strong little girl who is beautiful and perfect in every way. (No, I’m not biased or anything.) Many people are really surprised (and some barely believe it) when I tell them that birth wasn’t painful.

Ironically, the Tibetan monks we are friends with weren’t surprised at all – in fact, they assumed it. (She didn't have any pain, did she? they asked my partner.) In their culture, they believe that really special children don’t hurt their mothers when they’re born, and they assumed that we’d have a really special child. I, of course, would have to agree with them. (More evidence of my non-bias.)

If I had had any idea how much I would love being a mother, I wouldn’t have spent the past few years debating whether or not it was something I wanted to do. Prior to that, I WAS NOT having children… But then I thought, well, maybe… or maybe not…

But chaos is a happy thing as long as you keep your hands inside the ride and don’t try to stand up in the seat to cling to the sign at the top of the hill. If she has taught me one thing already it’s that there is no point in being attached to plans – many of the best things in life come as a complete surprise.

I doubt that my Little Chaos Monkey will ever cease to surprise and amaze me.