Momsicles 102

Birth. The miracle of life. For some people, they have their first look at their child and suddenly life makes sense. Some people feel love for the baby and strength for having delivered the baby. Me, I looked at my baby and I thought, “she has a big forehead. She is giving me a zap sign; she hates me already. Say something nice.”

We gave my obstetrician a vast sum of money in exchange for his experience and influence over the midwives on D-day. He returned the favour with the following instructions on my hospital notes: “Low pain threshold. Give epidural.”

And yes, I got my epidural right from the start. The contractions were painful enough to hold my breath and perhaps let out a squeak once or twice but not as painful as the lady down the hall who was screaming. (The midwife said she was just getting started.)

The anesthetist came in with a large needle, swabbed my back and told me to hold still. A contraction came the same time as he jabbed me and instead of saying, “faaaaacckkkkkk” (I thought it instead), I said “ahhhh”. I hope the midwives and anesthetist appreciated how polite I was.

I lay there, blissfully unaware of the contractions and I wanted to go to sleep. Baby wasn’t progressing down according to plan so after some discussions and some hours they took me down to the theatre for a cesarean. My lovely anesthetist friend came and topped up my numbing dose. I just wanted to close my eyes for a few minutes. By some stroke of luck, my obstetrician checked me, saw I was fully dilated and changed plans again for a vaginal delivery. It was 1:30ish AM, I was high as a kite from the epidural and I really just wanted a little bit of sleep.

My body was telling my mind to shut down, my mind was thinking, “this is the birth of your baby, the most important day of your life! You cant go to sleep!” and the obstetrician was saying “push! Push! Push!”

Thea came out; they cleaned her up, took some photos, wrapped her up and gave her to me. I held her with my left hand because my right hand was still paralyzed from the epidural. I looked at her face, studied her features and said, “Amma’s little jelly bean. Because you look like a jelly bean.”