August 23, 2003
friday 21 august 1997; 12:01 pm
by sabater
even to this day it is somewhat difficult for me to put into words what i was thinking when i woke up that morning, six years ago. i had cried my eyes out, mourning the 'loss' of the natural birth i had so hoped for my baby. he was destined to be born not of woman due to not just being in the full breech position but having his butt stuck in my pelvis. the week before two ob/gyn's had tried to turn him manually but given his size and the placement of his buttocks, it was not meant to be.
it was a clear friday morning, ready to be a scorcher. i moved as slowly as possible, trying to defer my arrival to the hospital, which i literally could see right out of my bedroom window. i tried to find chores to defer my waddling across the street and into the hospital but i had taken care of everything that needed to be taken care of and both my husband and mother reminded me of that. i remember though that what slowed me down the most was the realization that this was the last morning of my life as a non-mother. that from now to eternity, no matter what would happen, i was going to be always somebody's mother, that my body was going to be forever marked with the signs of my son's impending delivery.
yes, pregnancy takes 9 months and you are carrying a baby but your baby is not an individual taking up your space and time outside of the controlled environment of your body. yes, even if i had not birthed him, his being inside me had forever changed my body. what was different this morning was knowing that the quietness of our space, our rooms, our lives was going to be taken over by this little bundle of (hopefully) joy.
after much futzing around, i waddled my way across the street with mom and hubby in hand. most of it is blurry, but i remember refusing a lot of things. one of them was to lie down on a bed on triage. i did not need triage, i thought, i can walk to the operation room. i just so wanted for this birth to be the least medicalized experience i could have but those hospital creatures would not let me have it my way. still, the time came for my trip to the operating room and, just like i thought they would, they gurneyed me. mark was all the time next to me, fulfilling his promise to never leave my side and then to stick like glue to our baby once he was born.
mark is not a man of many words but when he speaks, he is bound to almost always make me smile. like jessica rabbit, i love my husband because he makes me laugh. so it was when he turns to me as i am being wheeled into the operating room and barks: "well, no matter what, i hope you give me a kid that tans". given that he comes from a race of people that believe that being melanin-impaired is an advantage, i understood his cause for concern and reassured him, amongst fits of laughter, that, yes, honey, our baby will tan.
off he went to get into his scrubs, off i went to be 'prepped'.
the process of having a c-section can be quite surreal: you are completely aware of what is going one; albeit blocked of the view by what looks more like a belly curtain than a screen.
i had two ob/gyn's: one we will call junior and the other senior. senior became the bad cop and junior the good cop in our threesome. having junior there was actually quite soothing: she is one of those women that look far too young for their age but have a gravity and wisdom about them that can set straight the biggest bully with just a whisper. she knew of my aversion of needles (saw me cry more than once at their mercy) so made extra sure that i would not freak out during the placement of the anesthesia. to their credit, they had an amazing anesthesiologist. he looked more like a sensei than a doctor. he barely spoke but his silence spoke of an intensity of purpose that immediately relaxed me. given the potential risks to the procedure, i knew by his silence that i was in good hands.
junior started to work with me on visualization exercises, deep breathing and relaxation while the anesthesiologist waited patiently, never intruding and respectful of my fear. once my breathing got deeper and quieter, he came closer, touched my shoulder and proceeded to insert the needle. all the while, junior explained what was happening; aware that the more i knew (or seemed to know) the less frightened i would be. the needle went in swiftly but not without pain. what happened next threw me into a panic attack : i could not feel my breathing.
since the anesthesia is supposed to work on the lower part of your body, you feel the lack of motion on your lungs and it registers as not breathing. i panicked and started screaming for mark but it felt like those silent screams in the middle of a dream; the ones that you know you are supposed to be making a sound but somehow your body is not responding. that's the kind of feeling that you get when you have local anesthesia. let's just say it was like living a daymare.
so in came mark to hold my hand and calm me down. on came the screen to separate us from the blood. what i remember is vague because for the longest time nothing seemed to happen but then, an intense sense of nausea overcame me, as if i had fallen of the edge of a roller-coaster and were hurtling into the void. the anesthesiologist saw my reaction, upped the magic gas and it was then that i knew that my womb was opened. anesthesia during labor and/or birth is not the easy proposition that many make it to be. too much, you risk debilitating the baby, too little and you risk doing so to the mother. my anesthesiologist was more like a musician; trying to hit the right notes at the right time. still, i felt the opening of my womb.
i also felt the tugging of the baby. these days incisions are not as big an all encompassing as they used to be --and as martha stewart would say, "it's a good thing". still, when you have a 8 lb. 6 oz baby that is 22 inches long and you are trying to get him out of a 4 inch incision --while his butt is stuck in some bone-- you can understand that it may take a little force for that to happen. so while i was feeling the tugging, mark could see the doctors pulling on something. "he's out" they said and all mark could say was: "but he looks like a sausage". since i could not see what was happening directly in front of me, all i remember was the running around me and then, the sudden, piercing screams and cries of my baby.
it was then, at 12:01 p.m. on friday the 21st of august of the year 1997, that Evan Michael Sabater-Napier was born. we officially became three.
it was the eeriest thing, to all of a sudden have this presence, this person, taking up all the space and time and effort and air with their cries and screams and their littleness. because that is what is most amazing, that this little creature comes into this space and just takes over, just like that.
mark ran over to him, counted ten fingers and ten toes, touched him and spoke to him all the while the little thing kept screaming at the top of his lungs. everybody is rushing and running to make sure he was all right and we are all feeling a bit overwhelmed by the whole scene. then, it occurred to me to talk to him. i had been talking and singing to him since he was an eight month old fetus and his response was to kick or move. it was like a knee-jerk reaction to talk to him and let him know where i was so i shouted, "mami esta aqui mi amor, mami esta aqui". with those words, silence came to the operating room once again. i am not exaggerating when i say that it shocked everybody in the room. the anesthesiologist broke his silence to say : "he understood what you said. he knows who's his mommy".
he was right. it was as if evan needed to know where i was, to make sure he was not in danger. this was the first of many times where through his cries he would communicate to us more than his distress. and it was a presage of how closely related we are and how we communicate with each other.
while the nurse and mark dealt with our son, the doctors started the task of sewing the seven layers of muscle that they cut through to get to the baby --and while they did this, they made sure to take in and enjoy the scenery offered by my innards. "look, a little fibroid, how cute". i said, "what?! what fibroid!" it's as if they had completely forgotten that i was there, that the scenery was attached to a human being who happened to worry about these things. "never mind", said senior and she let junior do the sewing while she went to check on the kid.
after what seemed like an eternity, evan was brought to me by his beaming daddy. i could not wait to touch him and hold him and have him close to my heart. i asked for the nurse to take my robe off so i could have him on my bosom when i saw his feet to his face. the nurse promptly interjected. since he wasn't stretch through the birth canal it was going to take him a few weeks to get his feet off his face. "it's a normal c-section baby thing", she said. "also, check out the head. see how it is perfectly round? that's how you know he's a c-section baby." well, i spent about a month looking at people's heads, trying to figure out how they were born.
after that, i was taken to recovery, i saw my mom who was so happy to see her first grand-child and then, with her help, i nursed my baby for the first time and became mommy moo cow. then, mark, my mom had one of those moments that only happen in the intimacy of a family. we were just so overcome, so tired, so relieved, that we were there, just silent, looking at this little bundle of sounds, coos, muscles and goo. i remember feeling so tired but not wanting to take my eyes off him.
his coming to the world just crushed every single expectation, wish and even prejudice i had about family, motherhood, parenting and life. and i loved him for it ... and i still do. once you have children, you just can't imagine a world without them. ever.
Posted by Liza in Parenting, Story
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