Megan Stielstra's Blog

I had been well-trained by Hollywood to expect that labor and delivery meant, in a nutshell: your water breaks, quick adventurous ride to the hospital (often in a cab, with wild traffic hijinks), cut to screaming Holy Hell in a backless gown while a doctor yells PUSH and then—SHAZAM!—there’s your baby.

The classes we took through Northwestern—and subsequent books read and videos watched—dispelled that myth: labor is actually a looong process, your water doesn't break ’til way later, you spend the first eight to twelve hours at home bouncing on a yoga ball, when you finally go to the hospital they may send you home 'cause you’re not far enough yet, when you do get admitted you walk the hospital hallways in stocking feet, timing contractions until you’re dilated enough, your partner next to you repeats HA HE HA HE HA HE WHOOO, screaming Holy Hell in a backless gown while a doctor yells PUSH and then—SHAZAM!—there's your baby.

So for months, we’d been preparing ourselves. I did friggin’ yoga, people. I practiced breathing, prepared myself for the sloooow build of contractions everyone kept talking about, read articles on how marathon runners pace themselves—I was ready.

So imagine our surprise when, at ten-thirty p.m. on February 1st while watching Lara Croft Tomb Raider on FX, my water broke.

“Your water’s not supposed to break yet,” Christopher said.

“I know!” I said, pointing at my yoga ball. “Aren’t I supposed to bounce on—“

And then I had a contraction.

It’s been over a week since Caleb was born, and so much has happened in that week that my labor feels light years away, but I remember thinking, in that moment, that I wasn’t a good enough writer yet to find words for the pain. Sure, I’d read about it on the internet: “Really intense menstrual cramps,” said one woman. “Overwhelming back pain,” said another, and all I can figure is both those women must’ve been DRUGGED OUT OF THEIR MINDS ‘cause those words don’t even skim the surface. First of all, they’re lowercase, and, believe you me, labor contractions ARE IN ALL CAPS AT ALL TIMES. Second, they’re not aggressive enough: intense? overwhelming? Try WHAT THE FUCK. Try TAKING A BULLET IN YOUR LOWER BACK, A BULLET WHICH IS ATTACHED TO METAL WIRES, AND SOMEONE IS HOLDING THE OTHER END OF THOSE WIRES AND THEY RUN AROUND FROM YOUR BACK TO YOUR FRONT DRAGGING THE WIRE THROUGH YOUR INSIDES AND THEN YANKING IT OUT YOUR ABDOMEN AND, IT’S IMPORTANT TO NOTE, SINCE MY DAD IS A BIG GAME HUNTER AND HE’S PROBABLY READING THIS (HI DAD!) THAT THE BULLET IN QUESTION IS BUCKSHOT, USED FOR LARGE GAME OR MILITARY, WHICH IS ACTUALLY LOTS OF LITTLE SHOTS INSIDE OF ONE BIG SHOT SO REALLY THERE’S A HUNDRED WIRES RIPPING YOU OPEN INSTEAD OF JUST ONE.

So please imagine, as you read on, that every five minutes I’m having one of these.

Furthermore, and perhaps the main problem for me: I was mentally set for a slow build, for pacing myself, and if THIS is what I was feeling at the BEGINNING there was no WAY I’d make it to the middle, let alone the end. I went into the bathroom, leaned over the sink, and waited. There’d be another one coming soon.

Poor Christopher—he’d read all those THE NEW DAD books, that tell THE NEW DAD how to help THE NEW MOM through labor, and all of them talk about those first eight to twelve hours: holding her hand, walking her around the block, giving her water through a straw, timing contractions from hours apart to five minutes apart and then—and ONLY then—calling the hospital, and here I was, leaning over the sink in the middle of contractions that were ALREADY five minutes apart when only ten minutes before we’d been watching Angelina Jolie do Bunji Ballet with Ninjas. It just WASN’T supposed to happen this way!

“Are you SURE?” he asked.

I puked in the sink.

“Okay,” he said, and called the hospital, which took about a half hour ‘cause first you have to talk to the receptionist, who pages the on-call doctor, who then calls you back and by that point I was pretty sure I was the World’s Greatest Pussy ‘cause if I couldn’t handle a HALF AN HOUR of labor there was no WAY I’d make it to the SHAZAM BABY part.

They told us to come in, which involved a slushy, snow-stormy Lakeshore Drive drive in which I noticed potholes that had never before existed even though I drive that drive every day. I did have one moment of great profundity, however; at one point between contractions I told Christopher that I finally understood how there can be no pleasure in life without pain, because the non-contraction-having moments were so wonderfully glorious and I wouldn’t have been able to experience that glory without the paralyzing pain now coming every THREE AND A HALF MINUTES. Christopher, trying to navigate a blizzard, was duly supportive of such genius. I was also turned sideways in the passenger seat with one leg on the windshield. Labor inspires strange physical positions, FYI.

Here’s how it works at the hospital: first you go to Triage, where they determine if you’re in labor ENOUGH to go up to Labor & Delivery and actually HAVE the kid. After that, you go to Post Partum, where you all hang out for a few days, and doctors come in and out and check on everybody, and you and your husband eat take-out and friends visit.

SO.

"I'm having a baby RIGHT NOW," I informed the receptionist, who probably heard that from panicked women a hundred times a day, most of whom are not. "Sit down, Hon," she said, "You have to fill out this paperwork and then—"

"I AM SERIOUS!" I told her. I was two seconds away from puking all over the Triage lobby. With its nice new carpet and matching upholstery. "I AM HAVING HIM NOW. AND I NEED A BATHROOM. LIKE, NOW. NOW."

So maybe this next part is just me, but you know how when you've had too much to drink, and you're going to puke, the only thing that could possibly make it better is to take off all your clothes and lie on the bathroom floor? As I walked down the hall towards the bathroom, I started to strip. One boot, sock, coat, pants over the other boot (don't know HOW I did that)--when I finally made it to the toilet I was wearing one Ugg and a shirt. Christopher told me later he followed the line of clothes.

They got me on the bed and the nurse came in. She was very nice, but, like the receptionist, probably thought the immediacy of this was all in my head. Then, she got down by the stirrups, took a peek, said, "Oh my gosh!" jumped up and said, "I need to get an extra set of hands!" Within seconds I was on a gurney, off down the hall. Turns out I was dilated nine centimeters which, if you’re unfamiliar with this whole baby-having thing, means she could already see the kid's head and he could slide out any second.

The room was fancy, with all sorts of machines and a 42-inch flat screen TV on the wall playing (wait for it, wait for it) BEETLEJUICE.

It was oddly comforting, knowing my child would enter this world with such classic cinema as his soundtrack.

I was in a pretty good place 'cause I knew they'd give me an Epidural soon. Through each contraction, as Christopher stood next to me repeating HA-HE-WHOOO, I chanted EPI-DUR-AAAAL. EPI-DUR-AAAAAL. Then Dr. Foley came—and FYI: if you’re going to have a baby, this is your guy. Super-cool, super-calm, his mere presence neutralizes anxiety—"Hi,” he said. “Let's have this baby” (Just like that! LET’S HAVE THIS BABY. Like, LET’S ORDER CHINESE).

"I need an Eipdural," I said.

"You're ready to go," he said. "We can start pushing now."

Now, there was no way in hell I was doing it without that epidural. No way, no how. It was just too much: the crying and the puking and all of it happening so fast, so immediate. “You’d already DID all the hard stuff!” my friend Julie, my role-model-mother friend has since told me. “Pushing is a relief in comparison to getting to nine centimeters!” but I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I was thinking that I didn't want to have this experience hurting anymore. I wanted to have it joyfully. I wanted to ... float.

"No, really," I said (probably SAID is the incorrect word. GASP? YELL? BEG? I don't know. The difference between the right word and the wrong word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug). "EPIDURAL."

"Just try pushing once," Foley said.

"That's fair," I said.

I didn't know that "once" meant three sets of ten pushes. Those sneaky doctors. Doctors and personal trainers.

"Okay," I said afterwards (during, I ‘d imagined that Ralph Steadman illustration where a guy’s brain is exploding upwards though his skull and the ceiling drips with brain goo). "Epidural now."

So I got it, and float I did. Have you ever had laughing gas at the dentist? It feels like that (except maybe a Much Higher Than Legal dosage). I felt so calm. So … attentive, like none of this was about me anymore, it was about the baby. The baby. The baby. I hadn’t thought about him in the past few hours—only myself—and now I remembered that this little person I’d been talking to for months was about to show up, like when you’re suuuper-excited for some fancy guest to come over and you put on lipstick and clean your house and light candles. Like that. Times a thousand.

I pushed a grand total seven times, and since all I could feel from the waist down was this delightful fuzziness, I watched Christopher’s face. It was, for me, the most amazing way to bring a child into this world: to feel all calm and lovely, but know exactly what was happening because of his father’s eyes widening in amazement, how he gripped my hand, how he kept forgetting to lift up my leg or put down my leg. I knew the second Caleb came into this world, not because I felt it and not because he cried, but because Christopher was biting his lip and grinning and laughing, and it really was this thing that we did together, he and I, and now Caleb, sitting gooey on my chest and yelling his head off.

He was born at 2:26 a.m., exactly four hours from the moment my labor started. I’ve since been told, over and over, how lucky I am. They’re referring, I know, to how quickly the experience was, but that’s not what I think of when I hear that word. LUCKY: my son is healthy. LUCKY: he is beautiful. LUCKY: my husband is a Superhero, patient and calm. LUCKY: as I type this, they are both napping, both on their backs with their right hands at their foreheads. They readjust at the same time, in the same way, and me—I have a front row seat for it all.