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Thank God I had read Meaghan O'Connell's birth story a week earlier, which describes her unplanned surgical birth in pithy detail, because I'd skipped the C-section chapter of my birthing book. Because I wasn't going to have a C-section! DUH. If you only prepare for the childbirth situation you want, things go your way, right?
But yes, thank you, Meaghan O'Connell. While reading her essay a few weeks earlier, I thought, "I probably shouldn't be reading this. It'll just freak me out." But because of it I knew that the anesthesia would make me shake, that I would feel everything happening, and that the surgeon would be pushing my baby downward from the outside before pulling him out. These things were good to know.
I walked myself into the OR. You never see people do that on Grey's Anatomy. They're wheeled in on gurneys after bidding their loved ones a teary and horizontal farewell. The room felt like a TV set designer's version of an OR: blue, green, and gray walls; tile; an easily moppable floor. The metal equipment looked alarmingly old-fashioned, not because I think it was old but because isn't everything plastic these days? Shouldn't the entire room be crumpled into a biohazard bin at the end of each procedure?
I sat on the table while the anesthesiologist did the spinal block, with my midwife narrating. "Now he's swabbing your back. Now you might feel a shock..." I was still a mess, crying with a runny nose. My midwife wiped away new tears and dabbed at my nose while I gripped the table and contemplated revoking consent. It wasn't too late! I could just roll off the table with my newly immobile legs and army-crawl my way out to the hall. But I didn't.
Things got better when they brought in Dan. I was now lying on the table, with a blue curtain blocking everything below my chest. They positioned him beside me.
"Everything's going to be okay," he said. "We're going to meet our little guy, and he's going to be half me and half you, and it's going to be great." For the first time, I smiled. It was going to be okay. I've honestly never needed my husband the way I did right then. I'll always be grateful to him for saying just the right thing when I needed it, at such an important moment.
They began.
A C-section feels WEIRD. The anesthesia numbs pain receptors, but you still feel what's happening. You feel "pressure," although that word doesn't seem accurate: it's like you're feeling shadows of something happening to someone else, with whom you have a random psychic connection. One expression for a C-section is "exiting via the zipper," and the incision really did feel like someone sliding open a zip-top plastic bag.
"Okay, Dad," the surgical nurse said, "you can take pictures!" Poor Dan stood up and started snapping away, trying without success to keep his eyes off my innards. Then we heard a cry, and squeezed each other's hands. His cry was a greeting from around the corner. This was the last moment that our baby would be in the abstract, a person we were waiting to meet. They lowered the curtain, and I saw him. This new being who had entered the room, who moments ago had been a part of my body but was now his own person, alive. His lips were parted in an O, his eyes narrowed in a perfect, gorgeous scowl. It was wild.
The team ushered our baby to a warmer, where they toweled him off, cut the cord, and saw that he was doing well. I laid back on the table, exhausted, until they brought him over. "Can I kiss him?" I asked, and the nurse said of course. I didn't expect his skin to be so soft after being covered in slime, but it was. I stared into the eyes of this little stranger and put my finger in his hand. He held on. "Hi baby," I said. "I love you."
Dan went with Henry to the nursery, where they cleaned him up and did some tests. A tour group happened to be going through the maternity ward, so the nurse held Henry up like Simba from The Lion King, and apparently caused a riot with his tininess (relative tininess. He was a pretty big newborn). I stayed behind to get stitched up, and zoned out on the table. "I did it," I thought (or words to that effect). I could manage a sentence, even a thought sentence, of no more than three words. "I did it."
The recovery was rough. I wore special socks for a few days, which cover your calves and inflate/deflate to keep your circulation up. They're loud and make it hard to sleep. I had lost a ton of blood and got a transfusion, and it felt extremely weird having a bag of stranger's blood pumped into my arm. I was physically tethered to the bed for the first day, and couldn't laugh or sneeze without pain for a few weeks. But, I got my Henry - a perfect, healthy baby who, despite his rough entrance into the world, decided that we'd been through enough and would now be a model baby of excellent sleeping, easy feeding, and a hilariously sunny disposition.
I love him very much.
*I asked a surgeon friend if scalpels are reused, and she said that the blades are discarded after every procedure, while the handles are sterilized and used again. Bedside procedures are done with a single-use scalpel that is disposed of immediately after. The more you know.
