Dilena

It is snowing.  It is October 18th, and it is snowing.  Not flurries either.  Its big, fat, fluffly snowflakes.  Enough to cover the green grass.  I am pacing outside.  I can't bring myself to get in the car.  I am in excruciating pain, is that even accurate.  The pain is worse than excruciation.  I am being crucified, but is that similar to excruciating, I am thinking as I pace through the snow.  My mother coaxes me into the car.  My labor music is playing.  I am gripping the handles and throwing my head back and making sounds I didn't think I could make.  I scream at Mark when he slows down, when he speeds up, and for every bump along route 9.  So this is labor, this is what I waited for? This is what I so desperately wanted to feel?  What the hell was I thinking.  Suddenly I am longing for the c-section.

We make it to the hospital, I don't know how.  I have to go back to register, I can't even sign papers.  Why oh why do they make a woman in labor sit down and sign papers and answer stupid f-ing questions when I am in so much pain I don't know my own name?  I guess I freaked out the girl enough so she skipped the paperwork.

Finally in my room.  I need drugs, now.  All my hypno-birthing tapes, all my reading, all my research.  To hell with it all, I want drugs.  The sooner, the better.  The more the merrier. Now.

I change into that pale blue gown.  I turn my back to everyone and brace myself between the bed rail and the wall through my contractions.  I use the rails in the bathroom to rock myself through contractions.  I get really really pissed when I am forced to leave any position and change.  My mom attempts to drink coffee in my presence, I order her out.  The smell makes me retch.  A not-so-considerate nurse comes in with a mouthful of freshly masticated Doritoes and demonstrates proper breathing...blowing moist flecks of Cooler Ranch chunks in my face.  I will myself not to punch her teeth out, so that I can prevent further Dorito consumption.

Finally, a lovely midwife intelligently checks me and does a stretch, which instantly dilates me from one to four cm.  I have some relief.  She hypothesizes that my cervix was scarred in my miscarriage and the scar tissue was preventing dilatation, which is why my contractions were so fast and hard and painful.  They space out a bit.  four minutes apart.  I rock myself in the rocking chair and wait for my epidural.  I have no interest in a med free birth at this point.  I need relief, badly.  My doulas have not returned calls. They are absent for my birth, and I am lost.

The anesthesiologist is white haired and beautiful.  Probably not, but anyone with pain relief was beautiful then.  I have three contractions while he works.  I have never summoned so much strength as I did to keep my body still through that.  I loved the epidural.  Once it worked, I was a happy, peaceful, lovely person again.  I was hungry and laughing, looking at that disgusting giant zit popping video on YouTube.  We watched TV, updated facebook and generally had a great time.

2 am.  I am ready to push.  I feel nothing.  I know I am not pushing well, I don't know how.  I don't even know where my own ass is at the moment, I am numb.  Epidural is turned off. Sensation begins to return. There is mumbling.  They can't track the baby's heart rate.  They go inside and screw that nasty looking needle into her head and the once pleasant, horse galloping rhythm of my baby's heartbeat is now an obnoxious wooden knocker, load, harsh and unsettling.  It stops periodically.  I can't ignore it. They turn it off.  I ask if the baby is OK.  My nurse smiles sweetly and tells me, "honey, if something bad happened, you would see about 20 people run into this room".  I am relieved, briefly.  Until about 20 people, quickly, silently, enter my room.

Pushing was awkward.  I tried everything they asked me too.  Being on all fours was far too graphic for my imagination.  I know I shouldn't have, I know how normal childbirth is, but honestly, being in that position in front of all those people, it was difficult to forget that a bunch of strangers are looking at my naked, oozing body.  It did inhibit my pushing, and my enjoyment of the moment.  That and the pain.  I wanted to push on the toilet, I begged them to let me do that.  My sister and mom are crying. I know I hear them talking about a c-section now.  Good.  Bring it.  I am done.  I have been pushing for two hours, vomiting on myself between contractions and the pain is worse than before.  I am dying.  I have no concept of reality, I am not having a baby.  I am dying.  The nurse tells me I need to push for my baby, I need to get my baby out.  My baby isn't doing well and she needs to come out.  What baby, I don't even care.  The pain is all consuming.  Everything is black, are my eyes closed, or did I just block out this memmory?  I still have no idea.  All I remember is pain, blackness and all those voices.

The baby's heart rate is doing rapid decelerations.  I know this is bad, my sister, who is a nurse, knows its bad and she is crying.  My husband is a particular shade of green.  I remember digging my nails into his hands, trying to separate the tendons so that I could pull on something.  At one point the nurse forces him to sit down.  I am getting close to c-section time.  The nurse urges me to push.  No.  I am done, I refuse, I give up.  The doctor tells me she will help me, she whips out the scary looking scissors for an episiotomy and the tiny vacuum, which sounds horrific but looks innocent enough.  She attaches it to my baby's head, which hasn't moved in hours.  She pulls gently as I push and POP!  It flies off immediately.  As she fumbles to reattach it, I relax, and my baby shoots out of me entirely in one push.  No crowning, no burning, nothing.  Just baby, out, completely.  The doctor is still fumbling with the vacuum and just yells, "Julie, look!"  And I open my eyes to my baby girl, her legs just exiting my body.  Mark chokes out, "its a girl" and I am dumbfounded.  I didn't even push that time.  as if all along she would have come, when she wanted.  I should have known, my Dilena wanted to be born when she wanted to be born.  She avoided two, nearly 3 c-sections and an induction.  My baby girl was here.

The NICU team took her.  My nurse in a moment of craziness kissed me, I kissed her back.  We yelled at each other the entire labor, but now I love her.  The pain is all gone and I am amazed.  The pediatricians are silent, but I hear baby cries.  I keep asking how my baby is, no one answers.  Finally a women says "she's fine" barely looking up.

It takes an hour to sew me up.  I have 4th degree tears.  I ask to see my placenta, its quite pretty, in a strange way.  It looks like a bloody liver on one side, but has a beautiful fern, or tree -like pattern on the other side.  Neat.  I look at the floor, the nurses and doctors are slipping in puddles of blood.  Mark later told me it looked like a scene from Saving Private Ryan.  


The first time I ever saw Dilena's face, is one of those moments that is forever imprinted in my mind, with a halo of white cloud around it.  Her eyes are open, she is holding up her own head.  I know breast feeding may be difficult, because it has been so long since I gave birth and didn't do skin-to-skin or hold her.  I wasn't even the first to hold her, but I wanted her to be held by someone, even if it was not me.  My first thought was that she was so cute.  I reached for her, all bundled in those hospital blankets, her little knitted hat.  She is already opening her mouth when she sees me.  She starts eating immediately, she is sucking before I even have her on my breast.  To this day, my Dilena doesn't miss a meal.  This is my baby, my daughter.  She is perfect, she is beautiful, she is mine.  Ours.

Dilena Cecelia, 10/19/2009, 03:58; 8 pounds, 2.6 oz, 21 inches.