Anne TootillTo Be or Not to Be a Mother -Part One
September 28th 2006 17:47
All my bags are packed and I’m ready to go…Nearly five weeks to go until this egg was supposed to hatch and my water breaks. O.K. it’s early but not too early. You can come out now Josh, I tell my bulging belly as I calmly tap my husband who had just fallen asleep after watching his favorite sports team in a season finale (don’t ask me for more info on this topic, labor or not, I rarely pay attention when it comes to his greatest obsession). “It’s time,” I tell him expecting him to pop up, like in the movies, and race around excitedly. In reality, his response? Put it this way, if he wasn’t snoring there was little difference between him and a man who was sleeping six feet under.
By the time I was able to wake him my calm had been replaced with an inexplicable anxiety and my whole body had begun to shake uncontrollably. My husband called the doctor who told him that the shaking was a normal part of labor and that I should leave for the hospital in eight hours.
“Eight hours?” I screamed at my husband, my anxiety having snowballed into extreme agitation. Did that wise medicine man forget that his patient is missing a cervix and is one centimeter dilated? Forty minutes later we were at the hospital, my water breaking a second time (who knew this could happen?).
“You go in there,” a man dressed in hospital blues commanded as he guided me in a less than gentle manner through double doors and away from the only familiar face I knew, my husband, who he told to stay where he was and that someone would come to get him shortly. “Wait in there,” he directed me without a shred of kindness, pointing to a room, “someone will be in shortly to see how far along you are.”
I was scared. No, I was in a panic. I was shaking like a leaf, I couldn’t stop it. And the pains were getting worse and worse and coming more and more regularly. I was soaking wet from my water having broken again and I had no idea if the baby was going to fall out of me at any time.
But still I did as I was told. Like I was supposed to. So I entered this huge room with beds lining both sides. It was like a surgical recovery room but no one was in it except me and a woman lying in a bed alternating between moaning loudly and crying. No one else was there. No doctor, no nurse, not one staff member or other patient, just me and this woman who was obviously near death. Someone help her. Someone help me. Why were we all alone? Where was everyone? The shaking, the panic, the not knowing, I couldn’t stay there anymore, I ran out of the room to get my husband. a man who may not always respond as quickly as I wanted him to but at least he responded.
“Get out of the way and go back in the room,” someone screamed - as if I was a dog that ran into the street - as he and several others tried to navigate a pregnant woman on a gurney past me and down the hall. But something had snapped inside me and that good little girl that always followed directions and did what she was supposed to do, refused to move. “Someone help me,” I said standing my ground. And then falling back into my old ways I pleaded, “please don’t make me go back into that room alone.”
I don’t know if it was because they cared or because I was dripping amniotic fluid all over their sterile hospital floors, but suddenly a young male doctor appeared out of nowhere to lead me back into the room, check me (I was five centimeters dilated) and then bring me and my husband into a labor room. Now I could breathe again.
By the time I was able to wake him my calm had been replaced with an inexplicable anxiety and my whole body had begun to shake uncontrollably. My husband called the doctor who told him that the shaking was a normal part of labor and that I should leave for the hospital in eight hours.
“Eight hours?” I screamed at my husband, my anxiety having snowballed into extreme agitation. Did that wise medicine man forget that his patient is missing a cervix and is one centimeter dilated? Forty minutes later we were at the hospital, my water breaking a second time (who knew this could happen?).
“You go in there,” a man dressed in hospital blues commanded as he guided me in a less than gentle manner through double doors and away from the only familiar face I knew, my husband, who he told to stay where he was and that someone would come to get him shortly. “Wait in there,” he directed me without a shred of kindness, pointing to a room, “someone will be in shortly to see how far along you are.”
I was scared. No, I was in a panic. I was shaking like a leaf, I couldn’t stop it. And the pains were getting worse and worse and coming more and more regularly. I was soaking wet from my water having broken again and I had no idea if the baby was going to fall out of me at any time.
But still I did as I was told. Like I was supposed to. So I entered this huge room with beds lining both sides. It was like a surgical recovery room but no one was in it except me and a woman lying in a bed alternating between moaning loudly and crying. No one else was there. No doctor, no nurse, not one staff member or other patient, just me and this woman who was obviously near death. Someone help her. Someone help me. Why were we all alone? Where was everyone? The shaking, the panic, the not knowing, I couldn’t stay there anymore, I ran out of the room to get my husband. a man who may not always respond as quickly as I wanted him to but at least he responded.
“Get out of the way and go back in the room,” someone screamed - as if I was a dog that ran into the street - as he and several others tried to navigate a pregnant woman on a gurney past me and down the hall. But something had snapped inside me and that good little girl that always followed directions and did what she was supposed to do, refused to move. “Someone help me,” I said standing my ground. And then falling back into my old ways I pleaded, “please don’t make me go back into that room alone.”
I don’t know if it was because they cared or because I was dripping amniotic fluid all over their sterile hospital floors, but suddenly a young male doctor appeared out of nowhere to lead me back into the room, check me (I was five centimeters dilated) and then bring me and my husband into a labor room. Now I could breathe again.
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