Sat 5 Nov 2005
9:05am

Everett’s birthday. My baby is 13!

Thirteen years ago I was in a hospital bed, where I’d been for several days, hooked up to an IV for nourishment and medication, unable to walk across the room to empty my bladder every hour. I knew what it felt like to be totally helpless; a button had to be pressed to have two nurses come and carry me to the bathroom, and stand beside me as I sat on the toilet, in case I fell over.

At the end of three days of it, I said “Tell the doctor to take me off this drug [a muscle relaxant to stop the contractions, as my labour was eight weeks early] and let this baby be born, come what may.”

It was the second time I’d been disappointed by my plans, for a homebirth with a midwife, going awry. Emil had been born 10 weeks early, by emergency caesarian. Everett too was in a hurry to see the world, and my midwife advised going to the hospital in case he needed medical help when he made his entry. So I climbed out of the bathtub at home, where I’d gotten my first taste of trying to breathe through labour pain — oh my god, this is BAD! can it possibly get worse? — and off to Edmonton we went.

From my journal in November 1992:

... I thought I’d died and gone to hell. The contractions hurt like hell and yet there seemed to be no progress. The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) team had come into the room and left again. [My midwife] Barb was at my left leg, guiding my breathing, encouraging me with “You’re doing good Kathy” and “Relax between contractions” and “It won’t be long now” and then “Do you feel a pressure in your rectum?” I felt a pressure all right, but kept waiting for an “urge to push” that never came. I couldn’t believe this whole scene was happening to me, and kept thinking When this is over I’m going on a speaking tour to warn women how horrible childbirth is.

When a contraction would come, I’d be beside myself with wanting out of my body. There was something everyone kept urging me to do but I couldn’t really grasp it, and kept waiting for this urge to push, all the while feeling like there was this massive bowling ball up my ass. At some point the attending nurse said “It’s like you haven’t had a shit in 10 days and you’re really constipated and you have to work really hard to get it out.” That’s when I clicked in — Ah, I’m supposed to push this bowling ball out. I don’t feel like it, it hurts like hell, but that’s the only way to get this pain over with. So during contractions I began to push. “Atta girl, now you’ve got it!” I kept hearing. “No one can do this but you, Kathy!”

“It’s for your baby, Kathy,” Barb said, “for your baby ... soon he’ll be in your arms, you’ll be holding him ....” I looked into her eyes, taking strength from her. Finally I said, “It seems like something’s holding him back,” and Barb, the doctor, and the nurse all looked at each other. “If she’s saying that, it’s okay to break the water.” With my permission, the doctor did, and called back the NICU team. He put on his greens. Barb told me through contractions to keep my chin down and my voice low, to direct the energy downward to the pushing and the baby. It was hell — all I could think of was getting him OUT. Gord was getting cramped legs in his position behind me on the bed, and if he’d move during a contraction it added to my pain.

In my mind’s eye I saw a dark tunnel with a light at its centre as I pushed. Everyone cheered me on — “That’s it! You’re doing it! It won’t be long now!” Finally they said “There’s his head!” and got a small mirror to show Gord, and I thought Finally this torture is about to end and Barb put my hand in my vagina to touch the baby’s head, which was a great comfort to me, stoned as I felt in the unreal too-real horror-movie atmosphere I felt myself to be in.

Then the pain became constant. The head was there, and I did not want to let it slip back in; now that I knew how I’d got it there, I blew and panted and pushed to keep it there. More of his head showed; the nurse put her fingers in my vagina and told me to direct my pushing there; all of a sudden the pain was gone and I heard “There’s your baby!” and “Look at that — sunny side up!” and I looked and there was this little purple creature laying crying between my thighs.

The doctor laid the baby on my tummy, I put my hands on him, and vaguely recall Gord saying “Me? Sure,” about cutting the cord, and then I had the little sticky guy up at my face, mashed right on as I told him not to worry, everything is fine, and he calmed right down. Then the NICU team took him to a table near the foot of the bed to make sure he could breathe okay and he got upset and they said he was having a little trouble and I said “Give him to me, he’s just scared” so they did and I put him to my face and talked to him, told him everything was fine and they would be taking him to another room but they would take good care of him and I would come and see him in a short while. He calmed down; he believed me; he knew who I was. Later on Barb said “That was really beautiful, the way you did that, that connection between you.” The NICU person had been holding the oxygen mask at the ready but the baby no longer needed it. Then I let them take him, and I breathed a big sigh of relief: IT WAS OVER.

Fri 4 Nov 2005
5:23pm

Still in my housecoat. Tsk! Haven't lifted a finger all day. Woke with the neck thing, stayed up a half hour, took medication and went back to bed for an hour or two. The rest of the day I have spent in my housecoat, unforgivably self-indulgent — feeling fine, just not ambitious.

The one thing I feel good about is being able to reach a dear friend whose husband has been diagnosed with an incurable cancer. When I received the news on Wednesday I kept picking up the phone to call her and having to put the receiver down because I'd dissolve into tears. Yesterday they were out when I tried. But today I got through and got to talk to them both. They're pulling together, with their devoted daughter, as I knew they would; they are a very close family. But it was hard news to get, and there is nothing I can think of doing, to help. Sometimes that's the most difficult part — how helpless you feel when you can't fix things.

Sigh.

***

The pictures. Let's see. Emil was four, I'd guess, when they were taken. I'd have been 31 or so. The good old days? I guess they were; not that I'd go back, given the choice. The house was built in 1916 by my great-grandparents on my mother's side, and Emil and I spent a summer there when he was three.

I've been reading the journal of Helen Bevington, called Along Came the Witch. It's filled with many snippets of what she, a university professor, read in other books. I could relate to this one:

"It is the tone of voice I want to change. Why sound indignant, why scornful? Whatever the fault (a student hasn't read the assignment), it has happened a thousand times before. I grow tired of caring, bored with my impatience.
Iris Origo in the Atlantic tells of asking George Santayana in his old age whether there were many things he would like to change. No, he said. 'I feel I have much the same things to say — but I wish to say them in a different tone of voice.' "