Archimedes Inside and Out:
Chronicle of a Pregnancy
by Yumiko Shinoda
previous | next
Part 9: Archimedea Makes Her Debut
Month 9+
A week before Archimedea's due date, I was convinced I was in labor, but I was wrong. I was so terribly tired of being pregnant that even a practice run seemed futile; I was convinced I was going to be a forever pregnant freak of nature.
Ironically, that false alarm went the way I had imagined the real thing would unfold. To me, it seemed unlikely that the event would be shrouded in a "Honey, it's time" style serenity. Surely, nine months of anxiety and anticipation would end in melodrama, with maybe a dash of pandemonium thrown in as a reward for the forty week waiting game.
Liam and I had spent a night counting the minutes between contractions. They were pretty close together but oddly painless. We called the hospital and the nurse said to wait until the contractions hurt. The pain began a few hours later.
I went into urgent efficiency mode, driven by the enormity of the situation, my manic personality, and years of school fire drills. But I was thwarted by my own vanity. How could I possibly become a mother and smell skanky at the big moment? I shouted at Liam, "I'm taking a quick shower; we're leaving in three minutes!!!" He smiled sluggishly, his bleary-eyed face half-heartedly registering what I'd said. As if I were kidding.
Note to future fathers: Nine-month pregnant women do not joke. When we lost the ability to see our toes, we also lost a great deal of our senses of humor. If we do decide to crack a joke, remember that you are to laugh only when given permission. I'm not kidding.
I took the quickest possible shower and sped past Liam, who was using gravity to tip himself out of bed. I yelled, "I'm leaving in 90 seconds!" It was painfully obvious that the London school system does not practice fire drills as diligently as American schools do.
I waited for a lengthy ten seconds before impatience overtook my brain. I decided to load up the car. Adrenalin helped me shoulder our 30 pounds of luggage and four enormous pillows down two and a half flights of steep stairs and into the car.
Another monumental ten seconds later, I got on my cell phone and shouted at Liam, "I don't know what the f*** you're doing, but I'm leaving! NOW! Follow me in the other car!"
Liam protested long enough to buy time to jump in front of the slow moving car and clamber in. His pleas to let him drive unfortunately fell on my deaf ears. On the way to the hospital, however, I did get to learn firsthand the benefits of skid control on our new car.
Unsurprisingly, we were at the hospital in record time. But it was clear to the nurses that I was not in labor: I was not howling at the top of my lungs like the other patients, who incidentally did not drive themselves to the hospital. After an irritating couple of hours, we were sent home empty-handed.
On the day before Archimedea's due date, I couldn't tell if my water was breaking or if I had all of the sudden lost my ability to hold my pee. Given the lack of certainty, and the captivating aroma of my green chile tamale lunch, I decided to eat lunch first, then head out to my scheduled appointment with the obstetrician only an hour later.
My obstetrician checked and confirmed that my water had broken. She said it was difficult to tell because sometimes the baby's head seals off the cervix, causing the bag of waters to reseal itself. I guess this is nature's double-bagging, but I'd never heard of it before.
I went to the hospital. Liam went home to retrieve our 30 pounds of luggage. I had been dubious when I packed these bags, following the recommendations from the hospital. Did we really need some hokey aromatherapy when the hospital was well-stocked with painkilling drugs? Would I really stare at some silly candle and listen to a selection of soothing music with Demerol so close by?
At the hospital, labor was induced and I fell asleep for a few hours. So far, labor seemed very civilized! I had been told to expect waves of pain from the contractions. I didn't feel waves. Instead, my bones felt like they were splitting from the inside out with blistering heat. I wasn't prepared for this kind of pain. How was I supposed to hee and haa? I felt gypped by the Lamaze class! Plus, once the drugs started, I couldn't eat any of the semi-nutritious snacks that filled up a third of our bags.
Bag of waters #2 broke as soon as I got the miracle epidural. My legs ceased to exist to me. The fetal monitor buzzed quietly away and the hospital room was incredibly still, except for Liam's rhythmic snoring. I was dilating on schedule and fell asleep again, dreaming of the Nilla wafers in my bag only a few feet away. Even with nurses and doctors administering internal exams with the casualness of reaching into a fridge for a beer, labor felt so calm. Where was the pandemonium?
It started soon enough. A nurse woke me when I was near ready to start pushing. But Archimedea was not sufficiently far down enough. I was coached to push anyway. So I pushed and pushed. It was exhausting.
The Lamaze class hadn't prepared me at all for this! I was not hee-ing, I was not haa-ing. During a contraction, I had to pull my knees as close to my ears as possible, hold my breath and try to push an imaginary pumpkin-sized poo through my ass. I did this for about 30 seconds, waited 60 seconds before pushing it again. And again. And again.
Liam counted the seconds for me, but he did it in a Casey Casum voice that was really irritating. I told him so, but he was annoyingly undeterred. I was concentrating so hard on the pushing that I didn't even have the presence of mind to swear like my usual self. To our surprise, I swore only once: "No shit, Sherlock", in response to "That was a big contraction, sweetheart!"
Pandemonium erupted when the epidural drugs ran out, not once but twice. What the hell?! I didn't know that you had to get topped up every now and again! It was all agony and blistering excruciation, no "waves of pain." Panic welled inside me as I realized how inappropriately prepared I felt.
Then the nurse, who apparently was a spawn of Satan, tried coaching me in spinning class style. "You're not pushing hard enough. Don't cry, use the pain to push…push harder!" I don't think I've ever hated anyone as much as I hated her. Between sobs, I answered venomously, "NO." Had I had any energy to spare, I would have countered her crappy coaching with some very personalized cursing.
And so it went for three and half endless hours. Casey Casum, spawn of Satan, lots of pushing, and one determined mom-to-be. Where was Archimedea?
The obstetrician checked and announced that Archimedea had decided she didn't like the looks of that last inch out. Maybe she thought she had a pretty good thing going on inside my belly. Maybe she didn't like that goddamn nurse either.
The obstetrician presented us with two options: get her out now with some help, or push indefinitely. As if there were a choice to be made.
The obstetrician quickly donned a ton of gear, looking more like an asbestos removal guy than a doctor. Meanwhile, Liam, standing less than two feet away, was told he was fine to observe in his shorts and flip-flops. A handful more nurses entered the room and readied the emergency neonatal gear. Why were all these people here? Why were they averting their gaze from mine? I was terrified. The rosy picture I had let myself have—of her screaming on my deflated stomach—dissolved instantly. Perhaps my worst fears about Archimedea's health would be realized.
I looked up to see our toxic-waste-ready obstetrician wielding forceps. Without exaggeration, they looked like three-foot-long stainless steel salad tongs. I nearly fainted. I couldn't believe that Archimedea would be forcibly pulled out of me with that medieval equipment. I gripped Liam's hand and the small remainder of my sanity.
I closed my eyes to keep from panicking at the melodrama unfolding in front of me. I concentrated fiercely on holding Liam's mangled hand. At the next contraction, I felt my insides being pulled inside out, kind of like taking a sock off, but with a bunch of pain because that sock was a pretty important body part. Then, I heard a very indignant wail. Archimedea was rushed over to the emergency area and the nurses swarmed her.
Exhausted, I teetered on the edge of an abyss of worry. How was she? Was everything where it was supposed to be? Were there any visible effects of my prenatal diet of Snackwell cookies and diet Coke?
A few seconds later one of the nurses cried out, "She's perfect!" Liam went over to verify. One look from him confirmed the nurses' proclamation. I was so relieved she was OK, I felt hyper-energetic in that messy bed. Then I sobbed and couldn't stop myself. Forty weeks of pregnancy paranoia finally gone. I was overwhelmed with relief and gratitude.
The forceps and difficult delivery left the obstetrician patching me up for a good while, so it was nearly an hour later that I first got to hold my new baby daughter. I didn't want to name Archimedea for real until I got to see her, so the label on her bassinet bore my name and, tragically, "GIRL" in large letters.
I couldn't believe I was finally holding her. She didn't look alien or old mannish or even simian, as I had thought she might. She looked pretty damn perfect. I was completely transfixed and felt annoyed when I had to blink. She looked back at me, skeptically, with bright unblinking eyes. I was amazed.
I wish I could say that the sky opened and white light poured out in a magical lovey bonding moment. It didn't. I was too much in awe and I hardly knew anything about her except her dislike for Bryan Adams. But at the same time, I would have endured anything to have the surreal and glorious privilege of staring into her eyes for the first time.
We deliberated, and Archimedea became Kendall—actually Kendall Kana (after my grandmother) Shinoda Foley. She was born exactly on her due date of July 10 at the very civilized hour of 9:16 a.m. She weighed seven pounds, twelve ounces, measured 20.5 inches, and she didn't even have to blink her eyes to melt my heart. 
Copyright © 2002 Yumiko Shinoda
|
