Newly pregnant at 23 years old, I shuddered at the thought of what would happen nine months later. I would push a baby out of an impossible orifice. Intervention-free, of course, like they say you should in the childbirth documentary The Business of Being Born.
I was teaching at the time, and one day my students steered me onto a tangent about childbirth.
“Today’s my Extraction Day,” said one kid. “I was a C-section baby.”
“C-section kids don’t get birthdays,” said another, “because they weren’t really born. They were removed.”
We all laughed. That’s right, I thought. C-sections aren’t really giving birth. And I would not be getting a C-section.
And then I suffered a subchorionic hemorrhage
The hemorrhage made me bleed through the 10th week of pregnancy. Each time blood stained my underwear, the breath froze in my lungs.
I had to get two echocardiograms because I have a ventricular septal defect, aka a hole in my heart. A maternal-fetal specialist and cardiologist monitored my entire pregnancy to make sure my baby didn’t have heart problems, too.
I spent entire days and nights counting kicks. I rushed to the hospital if my baby went too long without moving. By the time week 39 rolled around, I wanted him out of my perilous womb.
That's what I thought, at least
The day before my induction, a doctor who wasn’t mine shoved his fist up my vagina and said, “I don’t know what she’s thinking, inducing you. You’re nowhere near ready.”
These are not the words you want to hear before you get induced.
But he was right. I labored on a Pitocin drip, my body fighting to not give birth, for 24 hours. My baby got tired, his heartbeat dipping with each contraction.
My warm, wonderful doctor sat down with me at 9:30 a.m.
“We might have to do a C-section. Are you —”
“Let’s do it.” I wanted the baby out safely — now.
I let loose a string of choked curse words and struggled to keep from vomiting.
A team of nurses wheeled me into an operating room. Bob Marley thrummed from tinny speakers. A nurse anesthetist assured me that he’d boost my epidural — which I’d received the night before — to the point where I would feel absolutely no pain.
“There,” he said after a few minutes, pinching my belly. “You don’t feel that, right?”
“Oh, I feel it.” The pinch even hurt. I tried to calm my clacking jaw enough to speak. “Can you give me more?”
The nurse shook his head
“The only thing we could do is put you under general anesthesia, but that could be dangerous for the baby.”
And so I squeezed my husband’s hand, shut my eyes, and tried to think about Bob Marley. Jamaica. Cool, clear water.
It was impossible when it felt like my doctor was dragging a lit match across my belly over and over again.
“I’m sorry, Laura,” she said from the other side of the curtain. “Your baby’s about to be born, OK?”
She said I was going to feel pressure while they pushed on my abdomen to squeeze the baby out of the incision.
Weak from pain, I started to nod and stopped abruptly as a 14,000-pound backhoe dropped onto my stomach and started scooping my guts out. I let loose a string of choked curse words and struggled to keep from vomiting.
And then a tiny, frightened cry filled my brand-new mama brain with wonder
My baby.
Tears soaked my sweaty hair. “He’s OK?”
“He’s beautiful.” The doctor showed me my tiny boy.
“It’s really you,” I whispered. I wanted to leap out of my frozen, flayed stump of a body to drink in his sweet face.
But they still had to put me back together. So, my husband got to go hold our new baby while I gritted through more poking and tugging and prodding. Blessedly, the nurse anesthetist could give me morphine, now that I was no longer pregnant.
Half an hour later, the operating team hoisted me onto a regular bed, and I got to really, truly meet the baby I’d just given birth to.
Because that’s what it was: a birth. Not a removal, not an extraction, but a gory, beautiful birthing of a new person.
And C-section mamas? Don’t ever let anyone tell you it was anything but sacred.
