The student nurses engaged with me before and after contractions, asking questions. I remember announcing (loudly) I was never having another child because it hurt like Hell. They giggled and knowingly assured me I would both forget the pain and have more children. Well, that pissed me off.
Seriously, they said that to a woman in hard labor. No sympathy, no drugs, just happy-crap jargon. As if that information would make everything okay. The present doesn't exist, only the future? Nah, if anyone knows reality it is a woman in the throes of hard labor.
Right then and there I made up my mind NEVER, EVER to forget, and not to have more children. True story. I am my own worst enemy.
The first night home with the baby I slept as badly as she did. I kept dreaming famous patriarchal icons got me pregnant and I was going to be forced to deliver their baby against my will. One famous icon was John Wayne. The other was Pope John XXIII. Thankfully, I didn't dream about the sex.
My niece had a baby yesterday. Another niece had a baby last week. One of my granddaughters is due in a couple months. It's all so glorious and exciting I can hardly breathe.
When women I love are in labor I can recall my own labor and delivery crystal clear. Except for the pain. I know it hurt, but I don't remember hurting.
I kind of wish I had done it again.
Some days I wish I hadn't done it. Some days I am ecstatic to be able to call myself a mother. But I remember it all crystal clear, even what music was playing in the background. That is a beautiful picture, caught at just the right moment.
ReplyDeleteWhat music was playing in the background?
DeleteThanks. I have a vivid memory of my husband taking that picture. We were such kids.
"The first time ever I saw your face"....no kidding!
DeletePerfect. I love that song. Was it the Roberta Flack version? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9jmusgMgro
DeleteThe Joy exceeds the Pain I guess because only a scant few don't do it again. *smiles* I think different kinds of Pain are easier to forget... I think the Pain experienced in the Adoption of our Grandchildren far exceeded Childbirth Pain, which was brief by comparison to the Years spent ensuring that The G-Kid Force would remain in our Home so we could finish Parenting them. But Yes, Childbirth was pretty epic... my last Child weighed 10.5 lbs., if he'd been my first perhaps he would have been my only? *LOL*
ReplyDeleteGeez, 10.5 lbs! I don't even know what to say about that! So, now you have me wondering why it is easier to forget physical pain than it is to forget emotional pain?
DeleteThat is something to ponder isn't it Colette? Because Emotional Pain lasts ever so much longer, sometimes forever, than any physical pain I've ever experienced, no matter how traumatic.
DeleteI remember saying the same thing after my first child. I had three more and the last one came very quickly and I liked that one the best. I was with my DIL during labor and they gave her a block and she had very little pain. That is the way to do it.
ReplyDeleteI love your new photo! I salute you for doing it 4 times. You most definitely earned the 4th one coming on quickly.
DeleteNo pain with my first. Scheduled C. I remember funny smells and an odd pulling, my daughters face right in front of mine and then drifting away. The others, all V-Backs, no memory of the pain what-so-ever but I still talk about it as if I remember it.
ReplyDeleteAs is your right!!! I love hearing other women's labor and delivery stories.
DeleteThe pain of gibing birth is gone instantly when the baby is completely born. What a glorious thing the female body is.
ReplyDeleteYes, glorious!
DeleteHappy birthday, big little girl.
ReplyDeleteMy first baby was so easy peasy I thought no big deal. What are women complaining about. I agreed to another. I was sick every.single.day. I gained no weight; I was 20 pounds lighter when my second was born. upside down and backwards. They gave me a washcloth to bite on and scream into. I don't remember the actual pain, in the same way I cannot bring up the actual pain of breaking my bones a year ago. But I can tell you, it hurt like hell.
Yikes.
DeleteWith Miss Katie I had an episiotomy without any freezing. Worst pain I have ever had in my life.
ReplyDeleteI would have liked to have had more kids if I had a different husband and didn't have Katie. Can't change it though.
I always said I'd like to have more "adult" children. The universe must have heard me because I actually received a fully grown woman child two years ago when my husband discovered his older daughter.
DeleteI'd like to throttle the doctor who gave you an episiotomy without freezing.
I loved the whole experience -- being pregnant, having the babies, nursing -- the whole shebang. I look forward to babies in my life again one day.
ReplyDeleteBabies are a special kind of wonderful.
DeleteDid you think God was a man? After all He came up with this lousy system. Why not, I asked, couldn't babies be hung up on the wall in some sort of chrysalis and allowed to develop that way? Even worse than the agonies mothers suffered was the rationale offered by certain types of men: that childbirth was some form of low-grade imitation of Calvary and women would blah, blah, blah.
ReplyDeleteVR took a long time and I'd promised I'd be there with her, holding her hand. (An arrangement unavailable in Pittsburgh where she had our second daughter). At midnight I rushed out into the centre of London, bought and ate the world's worst hamburger. Still no progress. A nurse suggested I might like to doze and she found me an unused operating table. At 3.15 am I was awoken and taken into the delivery room where the temperature was 120 deg (we were on fahrenheit in those days). I held her hand as great beads of unhealthy sweat formed in my eyebrows (the aftermath of that hamburger); the gynae man took one look and said "Get him out." Thus I watched the birth from the other side of the viewing window and was not able to hold VR's hand. I regret that now but my concerns are piddling; I saw my wife suffer in a way I couldn't comprehend and was denied any gesture. Bahh
Childbirth in the old days was pretty harsh. My husband was not allowed in the delivery room. The baby was kept in a nursery and I only saw her every 4-6 hours. My husband was NOT allowed in during those times. His only chance to "view" the baby was when he went to the nursery and held up his identity card to the window. Then the nurses would find his baby and bring it to the window, holding her up for him to see. Ridiculous.
DeleteI made a choice from a very young age to never have children. I remember telling my mom, "I can't promise them a future." That was more than 50 years ago. As I've gotten older I have often wondered what it might have been like to have given birth. Seven billion people on the planet, seven billion stories. I liked reading yours.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Robin. Not having children is a valid life choice. I admire you for making your decision based on who you are and what you wanted. Getting pregnant wasn't something I planned, and all kidding aside (from the post above) it was always very clear to me that I only wanted to do it once. Not just because of the pain, because of the overwhelming responsibility. To each their own.
DeleteI can't even imagine what it must be like!
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty amazing. The best part for me, though, was being pregnant and having a separate being growing inside my body. That was cool.
DeleteAnd I was pregnant long before Alien hit the big screen, ha. Glad of that.
DeleteYes. To all of it.
ReplyDeleteI actually wrote a note sometime around the 25th hour of labour while I was alone in our bedroom for a while, I signed it and I remember clearly that I handed it over to R sometime later but the note has disappeared - or maybe I was halluzinating.
When my daughter was almost due last winter and we had another of our conversations, i.e. me doing the cheering up pep talk about breathing and waves and all that stuff and she unloading all her fears, I told her what my midwife at the time said to me: with every contraction you get through, you are closer to holding your baby in your arms.
For once, I could make sense to her.
That's great, what your midwife told you. Sure wish you could find that note, wouldn't it be fun to read what you were thinking at that moment?
DeleteWhen one of my nieces was in labor (the one last week) a friend texted her this quote: “Labor is the only blind date where you know you’ll meet the love of your life”
I distinctly remember the pain (the first was 25 years ago), but I still did it again.
ReplyDeleteYou are fearless!
Delete