It started at 2:00 AM on November 18, 2015. At 11 days past my due date, the contractions finally came. They were the horrible back grinding kind. They started slowly, so instead of waking Pierre, I just got out of bed and went to watch my series in the living room.
I had already watched the first and the only good season of the series and was now on the second, bad season. The female lead was on to yet another new diabolical plan to avenge her father’s murder. But it did not matter what was happening in the series, with someone slowly grinding off the end of my spine every 20 minutes or so, I wasn’t really paying attention to the story, just using the lead’s struggle to distract me from my own.
Pierre woke up around 3:00 AM alarmed by my moaning. But when he saw the familiar sight of his ultra pregnant wife sprawled out on the couch like a beached wale, he went back to bed to try to get some rest before the big day.
Around 5:00 AM, the contractions were about 10 minutes apart and my discomfort intensified. Pierre got up. He filmed the apartment with our new camera: a clean kitchen and bathroom, a fully decorated baby room with white cloths protecting the unused furniture. Pierre was trying to buy us time before the hospital. Then the camera zoomed in on me. I flashed the smallest smile, but my eyes screamed in fear. This was the end of the two of us. When we came back here, we would be three and it was so painful already.
My contractions became 5 minutes apart. Around 7:00 AM, Pierre called a taxi. I pulled out my pre-packed suitcase, stuffed with baby undershirts, pajamas, little hats, footed pants, a baby snowsuit, a few clothes for me, and two granola bars. The large city park in-between our neighborhood and the hospital was a green blur.
At the hospital, I took my homeopathic medicine, which was to be the first step of my natural childbirth. Perhaps they would even let me use the bathtub and the baby could be born underwater, as I indicated on my intake forms. It felt as if the end of my spine was slowly being forced through an old fashioned coffee grinder. I went to be examined. Six hours of contractions and my lower back about to separate from my body, my cervix must be at least half way open, I thought. “Two centimeters,” said the midwife, who gave me a suppository to help me with the pain already.
I pulled out my paper from my doctor stating that the hospital must do another ultra sound to check the weight of the baby before birth. They took that paper and thought it would be a perfect task for the intern. The intern shakily spread a large glob of gel on my belly. She scraped the ultrasound stick across me like she was cleaning off a frozen windshield. Her calculations came out to five kilos or 11 pounds! The supervising doctor came in and with a few sweeps of the wand determined a little over four kilos or nine pounds, big but perfectly fine for a natural birth.
We went to wait in what was to be our room. Already prepared with a little wooden baby bed covered in plastic and a couple holding their 3 hour-old daughter. We talked a little and admired their baby. I wondered if we would ever have one. We put down our things. The hospital brought me a warm lunch, but nothing for Pierre. I ate, and we walked the halls of the hospital. We went back to the room, and I started shrieking and gyrating in pain, which probably more than slightly disturbed the peace of the new family less than two meters from me. A nurse sent us back to the delivery rooms. Please come out baby, I thought.
I was open 3 centimeters. I had trouble breathing through the contractions. Night fell, a new midwife came. They released my amniotic fluid. It flowed all over the bed and kept seeping out. My contractions were all over the place fast and slow. The baby’s heartbeat was fine, no stress. Pierre watched other women’s contractions speeding up and then ultimately stopping indicating a birth with the monitors on the wall.
Intense pressure filled my pelvis and the grinding continued. The pressure must have broken the coffee grinder because now it felt as if a jackhammer was boring into my back, cracking open a large hole into a busy New York City intersection. Taxi cabs honking from all directions. Businesswomen in red stiletto heels stumbled over the crack, spilling their piping hot coffee on me, as they rushed by. I forced Pierre to rub my back. I sat on the floor, I curled in a ball on the bed, I went back and forth to the bathroom. It was late at night, all dark outside.
I begged for the epidural. The midwife agreed. I gave my full authorization for the procedure, scribbling an X for my name on the paper in the dark. With medicine to slow the contractions, they found a safe second for it to be injected. My contractions became less painful, and I peed on the floor. I ate a granola bar and drank warm Poweraid, feeling a little better. The midwife looked at us and said, “You look so pale you must eat something!” I said that I had just eaten a bit. She replied, “No, you Pierre!” He ate the other granola bar and curled up next to me on the bed. I started trembling. I could not stop. I was cold in my huge fluffy snow leopard bathrobe, pregnancy top, stretched-out yoga pants and covered in a blanket. Beneath the waves of shakes, the midwife checked again, I was only open about 5 centimeters, not enough for a baby. The midwife told me that they had tried everything for a natural birth, but it didn’t work and that it was ok to cry now. It was time for a cesarean.
I was relieved but could not understand how they could give me a spinal blocker when I was shaking so profusely and still having painful contractions. The midwife shaved the top of me and made sure no one else came in while she was doing it. She told me I was all ready for the beach. They put my hair into a net, and I had to take off my sweat stained bathrobe. I wore a hospital gown. They wheeled me into the nearby operating room; I passed the bathtub birthing room on the way there. Pierre went to prepare for surgery with the midwife. When she left him alone, he cried.
The sky was lighter out and the new morning staff was fresh on the job. They asked me how I was. My German had completely fizzled away at this point. They said there was at least one person in the operating room who spoke English. I told them that I was trembling so badly that they would never get the spinal blocker in. And as a result, they would end up paralyzing me and then the baby would be stuck inside me forever and we would both die right here and now on this table. I did not mention the second part. The one English speaker told me to listen. He said that they saw women in my state everyday and that I could trust them. I went quiet. But it did take them four repeated poking attempts to get in my IV, as my veins were so stressed. They preformed the spinal blockage, and the grinding in my back finally faded away. All I felt was the cold of the instruments on my belly. Pierre came into the room and watched from behind me. Why was I here? What was all this for? I was so tired and disorientated. I remembered that it was for the birth of our baby, and I tried to enjoy the moment. Never wanting to know the baby’s sex before, I had a sudden brain flash that it would be a girl.
At 5:23 AM, November 19th, the doctor pulled out our 4.3 kilo or 9.4 pound baby and exclaimed, “Ein riesiges Kind! A gigantic child!” I used the last of my energy to squeak out his name, it was a boy.
He cried briefly then they put him next to me, and I could not believe what had happened. Pierre went with the midwife to dress him. I stayed in the operating room to be sewn back up, chatting in German with the staff. I was so relieved.
I was brought to Pierre and our baby. They took a picture of the new family, and it looked like the baby was smiling. The midwife placed him at my breast, and he attacked me like a vampire. My upper chest was bright red and itchy from the medicine and my breast was now bleeding. Pierre wheeled me back to our room. Our son stared at us. I wanted to sit up and hold him to feed him, but it was so painful. I could not sit up, stand, cough or even breath deeply. I had to feed him lying on my side, using the jungle gym grip above my head to hoist myself up.
When the night finally came, I was alone with him and barely able to move. I was terrified. He started to cry even though I had just fed him. I did not know what to do. Rocking him, changes his diaper, even washing the goo out of his hair was all out of the question. I could barely move after having my tummy sliced open. I offered him the only thing at my disposal, my pointer finger, and he wrapped his tiny little hand around my finger. He stopped crying. And it was at that moment that I fell in love with him. I do not know how or why but it made it all worth it. The months of waiting, the pain, the grinding, the humiliation of peeing on the hospital floor, and the exhaustion were all worth it. I could not focus on him during the birth, but now that he was here and that he needed me, all was forgiven.
*November 21, 2018 Postscript in Honor of our Son’s Third Birthday*
I am always smiling when I tell our son’s birth story. Yet, in rereading this I can feel the pain all over again! Most moms I talk to smile too when talking about the birth of their children. It is our badge of honor. It does not mater if a birth lasted three hours or 27 like in this case, coming into the world is not easy. And in a way, birth is preparing us for life itself. Both are agonizing, messy, humiliating, but beautiful. Every day I pray for life, especially with my now two children to get easier. For the three-year old tantrums to end, for his baby sister to stop clinging to my leg while I am cooking, for me to be able to put a suitcase away and have it stay in the closet for at least one day so that I do not find it stuffed with random toys, my cell phone, and cookie crumbs blocking the hallway in the middle of the night! But I know that is not what life is. Life is a difficult mess and that’s what makes it worth living. (And seeing my son play airplane with before mentioned suitcase, designating his baby sister as pilot and me as fellow passenger is priceless.) Thank you, Son for being the first one to really show me this! Happy birthday!
Frozen Ocean Mom 
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