The Birth Story

Teddy's birthday is a week from tomorrow, which is the same week as my finals at school and like fifteen minutes before Christmas. With that in mind, I'm posting his birth story now, while I still have a brain. Enjoy, and please send your good wishes to the boy, who will be nine years old on the 14th.

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Like many of the best things in the world, Teddy was conceived in London. C and I had been married for six months—and he was still a student—when we jumped at the chance to liquidate all of our belongings and spend his last semester at the law school’s sister school in London. We lived just off the tube stop in Fulham (SW6), in a third floor walk-up above an Indian family who insisted we not try to pronounce their name (granted, a very long one which I’ve since forgotten) and just call them Mr. and Mrs. Russell.

We didn’t have a TV, so all of our news and entertainment came from The Times and the tiny speaker of the clock radio that sat next to our terribly lumpy bed. C went to school and did an internship with an investment magazine, of all things, and I did some copywriting for the same publication (I used to love going into the office, which was in a building right across from Harrod’s) and also worked in a pub right around the corner from our apartment. The couple who ran the pub, Russell and Debbie, had a baby called Dylan who was born on what would one year later be Teddy’s birthday. I always feel sad when I think of Dylan, because he spent the beginning of his life sitting in a baby seat on top of a bar, drinking bottles that I sterilized, while his parents smoked and shouted at one another.

But I digress. C and I were totally alone in London, and totally happy. We walked and window shopped and walked and went to museums and walked and went the opera and walked and went to the theatre and walked and . . . you get the point. We were in love with London (and with each other) and were planning to stay beyond his graduation.

And then I missed a period and started to be really bothered by the smells of all the people riding the tube to work with me. I’m short, so was often forced to ride with my face on level with armpits and coffee breath, and all of the mouth-breathing in the world couldn’t help me. It occurred to me that I might have a bun in the oven. I was twenty-five, a free-lance copy writer who worked in a pub and had no money at all in savings.

I picked up a pregnancy test in the Boots’ down the street, and the instructions indicated that it was best to take the test using “first morning’s urine”. I woke up around 2am to use the bathroom, and decided I couldn’t wait a moment longer; I collected a few drops and set the timer on my watch. C and I shivered, he bleary-eyed in boxers, with major bed-head, and I in a t-shirt, feeling like I had just done a bunch of “whippets”: I was jumpy and shaking, and lights and sounds seemed to be bouncing and magnified.

I had covered the test with a sheet of paper, and when the time was up and I removed the paper to reveal the Yes dot, C and I looked at each other and CRACKED UP LAUGHING. We laughed like idiots, really guffawing and crying, and then wiped our eyes and went back to bed.

He blew off the rest of his semester—because who could concentrate? We bought a book of baby names, which he read while I hung my head out the window to escape the smells of the Indian food that continually wafted up from the kitchen below.

We were on our own and pregnant, and we didn’t tell a soul. Not our parents, not my sister, not our friends. We just sat on the knowledge, not really knowing what to do with it. I had a free check up, thanks to National Health, and even had an ultrasound, which showed I was indeed carrying a squashy grape. What a secret!

Fast forward to our homecoming at my parents’ house, where my mom and dad and sister and C’s dad and step-mom were gathered for dinner. Everyone was still seated at the dining room table, aside from C and me. We announced that we were planning to move from Michigan back to Pittsburgh—something we’d always said we’d never do. Everyone was happy, but only C’s step-mom said, “Do you mind if I ask what made you decide to come back?”

No one was prepared to hear the, “Because I’m having a baby,” that I squeaked out from behind C’s back. Food dropped onto plates. Then there was silence. And then the hugging and happiness and questions commenced. I swear that I was a married woman who was worried that she would get in trouble for getting knocked up!

I didn’t get in trouble, but C and I did have to live with my parents for about three months, while he found a job and I found an apartment.

I was very good at being pregnant until around September, when I started having contractions and making visits to the ER. Hello, Velcro fetal monitor! Hello, short cervix! Hello, pre-term labor! Hello, steroids to make sure Teddy’s lungs were fully developed before he popped out! Hello, bed rest! Hello, cruising around Ikea in a wheel chair! UGH.

We had so many visits to the hospital that we didn’t arrange anything at all as far as a birth plan, or anything like that. I wasn’t interested in a home birth or a midwife or being drug-free. I’m a hypochondriac, for the love of God! I wanted to be near doctors and nurses and drugs and technology and sterile surfaces and stainless steel, and that’s what I got.

Finally, ten days before he was due, the contractions wouldn’t stop. We went to the ER and they sent me to the labor place. My doctor was out of town. Someone decided to break my water, and plunged a knitting needle (or something) into me and opened the floodgates. I hadn’t realized how much STUFF was in there! I was so sick of being pregnant and sedentary that I didn’t care about anything beyond getting the rolling, roiling, kicking beast safely out of me. (So much for that notion of an enchanted young mother yearning to hold her babe in her arms: I just wanted it all to be OVER, already.)

So the contractions got bad. BAD, bad. Puking into one of those kidney-shaped pink trays bad. But you know what? I didn’t whimper, moan, or shout. Someone offered me an epidural, and I nodded. And then . . . bliss. C and I watched the monitor jump around as I contracted and felt no pain. We watched “A Christmas Story”. We phoned the family to tell them that I was in labor, but that it would be hours, so they should all stay where they were. We played two games of Scrabble, AND I WON.

And then the stupid epidural wore off, and someone said I should try to do without it so I’d be able to push. Waves of bone-crushing, retching-ice-chips-into-the-pink-tray-pain came back. Returning to my Stoic In Pain state, I nodded my assent to the removal of the needle from my back.

Around about this time, my mother and grandmother waltzed into the room. They were beside themselves with excitement, as I am the oldest child/grandchild, and Teddy was the first grandchild/great-grandchild. I’m a girl who likes her privacy—yes, it was likely obvious that I was suffering, as I was sweating and retching, etc., but please note that I didn’t yell or cry or squeak. My pain and misery was private. I used all of my energy to just remain cognizant so I could push. I nodded and shook my head at Mom and Gram, sent them telepathic messages asking them to leave, but I didn’t speak. C knew I didn’t want them looking at me, but he wasn’t brave enough to order these formidable looking NURSES from the hospital room.

So they remained. Finally, the sweet nurse came to check me for the last time. I will never forget the look on her face when she had me try a push: She held one of my feet in each of her hands, and told me to bring my knees to my ears. Which I did. She wasn’t expecting me to be as flexible as I am, and shot forward, nearly putting her face right into my region. The insanity of this moment, witnessed by my husband, mother and grandmother, almost made me laugh.

Instead, the nurse recovered and rolled me to delivery, where I pushed for an hour wearing nothing but socks and my glasses, because I needed to be able to SEE, dammit. Everything still hurt, but the pushing was at least DOING something, and I knew I was getting to the end of the torture, so I was okay. C remained up near my head, never even glancing down to the massacre happening below my waist. He kept saying, “You’re doing great. You’re fine. Think of the dog.”

Did you catch that? THINK OF THE DOG! I’m still not sure what this indicates. Yes, Franklin, the miniature schnauzer, was totally sweet and cute. But . . . not so much help as a labor and delivery aid.

Anyway, there was lots of blood. Teddy finally made his way out, feeling very much like the bowel movement people told me about. And the doctor held him up, and he was gross and bloody and slimy and HIS FEET WERE HUGE. He was whisked away for cleaning and Apgar purposes, and I . . . well, I had to deliver that gross, purple, sausage-like placenta thing, which had apparently started falling apart before coming out. C sat near my head, cuddling our blanketed and be-hatted little baby, while I continued lying nude on the table, with the doctor digging around inside me with one hand while pressing on my stomach with the other. It was then that I finally spoke, informing the doctor that the process really did seem to be a good example of adding insult to injury.

He laughed, sewed me up, told me he didn’t think I’d need a transfusion, and THEN gave me my kid. Whose head was very pointy, from squeezing out of me. And also? His collar bone? BROKEN! He broke it during the squeeze that shaped his pointed head. Did you get that? I broke my poor child before I even got the chance to hold him. I don’t think that was fair, do you? Inside his little swaddling clothes, the long sleeve of his onesie was safety-pinned to his chest to keep his shoulder sort of immobilized. How pathetic is that?

True to the doctor’s promise, though, the collar bone healed quickly and without problem. It look me a while longer to heal. I broke blood vessels in my face with all the pushing. I was anemic from losing so much blood. I had stitches in my region. But I was a veritable milk machine—all systems go!—so I felt like I was going to be a good mom after all.

And you know what? I was right. I'm a lazy employee and a crazy woman, but I rock motherhood! Just ask Teddy.