The MIddle of the Day

Though it was only 8am, we were all assembled and ready for what was going to come next. An update on what my status was in terms of dilating.

"How long have you been married?"

"Three years," I said.

Mom and hubbie had taken up their stations again in chairs side by side facing my bed.

"That's still really new," the doctor said. "Husband, please leave the room."

"He's seen all the other exams," I said, managing a laugh, feeling good after a few hours sleep and the liquid sugar still keeping my body at a steady hum.

"No, no," she said. He willingly left. They did another sweep, this one perhaps the most painful of all.

"You're 3 maybe 4 centimeters," the same stylish, extroverted South Asian looking doctor said. "The baby hasn't dropped and your cervix isn't expanding."

Lovely. And this after a pitocin drip, that magic dilation drug.

"We recommend a C-section," my doctor, now back on duty and almost girlish in cream scrubs said.

This was an interesting development because earlier, a lifetime ago, when we checked in and were debating the category of room to get at the hospital, we had asked her if she thought it could go this route. She had said natural delivery at the time. We decided to wait for the room in a regular room to avoid being charged at the higher price. Now I was really glad we had exercised patience.

"Let's do it," I said, "I want this baby out." I wanted to hold him in my arms after waiting, and waiting, and then the last two days of more painful waiting.

After this long road and all jokes about my husband's queasy stomach, it turned out that neither men or mothers were allowed in the operating room. The first reason was cultural and the second reason was to not ruin the sterile environment.

They rolled in another bed, switched my gown, fixed the IV because I could feel the right side of my body again (turned out it had come unhooked from my body) and within twenty minutes I was being rolled into the operating room.

They clipped my dress up to between two poles and this served as a screen between my head (eyes) and what was going on about 20 inches below near my pelvis. I was wide awake, though numb from the waist down.

I could hear all the gossip between the doctors: this discussions of various parenting strategies, thoughts on other doctors on the ward, plus the added variety of the mostly Philippino nurses speaking to each other in Tagalog.

"Here he is!"

And they showed me a squirming infant, with dark skin, who was screaming his head off.

"Oh thank God," I said, and cried, for about three seconds, all the strength that I had left in me. And they took him away. Gone was my birth plan immediate to the chest bonding or breastfeeding.

"Like humpty dumpty," the one doctor said to the other, "we are putting her back together again." The other one didn't get the joke right away and so she had to repeat it.

They sewed me up which just felt like major pressure being put on my abdomen. And then someone came and squeezed my hand, telling me I had done well.

"Can someone tell my husband?" I asked the nurse feebly. They agreed and then came back and aid he couldn't be found. This was not the sweaty, heartfelt moment you see in the movies as the exhausted couple kiss over the downy head of the infant.

But my dynamic duo were waiting for me when we left the operating room. They squeezed my hand as we had to go our separate ways yet again.

They wheeled me into recovery and I couldn't stop shaking. First from the mild shock of surgery and second from the cold. The strange thing was while my upper body was freezing, my lower body was still numb so even with the heat vents they turned on, I still couldn't feel anything to get warm.

The recovery room was a cacophony of sound. The Tagalog nurses from my procedure were joined by they colleagues and the conversation was non-stop, at full volume.

"You aren't sleeping?" A nurse who came by to check on me asked.

"Who can sleep with you all shouting at each other?" I asked.

It was finally time to be wheeled to my room and to see and hold my baby.