What could be more domestic than motherhood? I picture a serene and showered mother rocking her baby in her arms and singing lullabies as she glances at her perfectly kept home. A smile crosses her lips as she smells her homemade bread baking in the oven.
I’m only in the second week of motherhood and here is my reality. I roll out of bed, hair coming undone from my nightly ponytail. I pick up my screaming infant and hope my morning dragon breath won’t permanently scar his olfactory system. I stumble over to the rocker, “I thought I cleared a path during the last feeding,” and position my child. Then I pray this prayer: “Dear Father, please help this child latch on, and please help me resist the urge to smack his face when he chomps on my bruised and battered breasts. Amen.”
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How I came to associate “serene” with motherhood shows just how naïve I was about the whole process. Labor itself is anything but serene, although mine was a close to that as I could hope. For those of you who are interested, here is Caleb’s birth story:
I had a dream pregnancy. No morning sickness; I kept active and feeling good, even through the heat of the summer. Because things had been rolling along so smoothly, I knew something was up in early August when I started to feel crampy – like my period was on its way. At my 36 week check up, the doctor informed me that I was 2 cm dialated and 25% effaced. My initial thought was “Wow, I could go into labor any minute!” After talking with other mothers, I learned that this was not uncommon and many people stayed 2 cm until their due date or were even late. With this in mind, I convinced myself that I would have to be patient until the end of August and maybe even after his official due date of August 31st.
My dad’s birthday was August 13th – a Saturday. We went to the evening service at our church that day, and I left the service because I felt awful. Now that I know what contractions feel like, I can say with confidence that I had my first contraction right then, during the 5:00 pm church service. But it came and went and I started to feel better. We celebrated my dad’s birthday on Sunday night at the Elgin Pub House and came home for ice cream cake. That was, I realized when the nurse asked me, the last thing I ate before I arrived at the hospital.
I started feeling sporadic contractions around 10:00 pm on Sunday evening. I went to bed thinking I was finally getting some Braxton Hicks contractions, which I hadn’t felt at all during my pregnancy. By 2:30 am, I was wide awake and starting to think it might be the real deal. Everyone was asleep, and the house was quiet and dark. I marked a pacing path in the basement and walked back and forth for the next two hours, breathing my way through the contractions and trying to time them. I was feeling good. These were manageable contractions, and I realized I really liked working through them by myself. In the dark. In the quiet.
Paul woke up at 4:00 am and found me pacing. When he asked if I was ok, I told him I was in labor. After a few shocked moments of back and forth: “Are you sure?” “Yes, I’m sure.” “You think this is the real thing?” “Yes, . . . [inhale, exhale] this is the real thing!” Paul realized I was in labor. We had talked about me wanting to do some laboring at home before going into the hospital, so at my request, Paul drew me a bath. The warm water was relaxing, but when I got out, the intensity of the contractions had doubled. I told Paul I wanted to go to the hospital. By that point, my mom was awake (we’re currently living in my parent’s basement) and the three of us grabbed our things (I had only packed my hospital bag the previous night!) and got into the car.
When we arrived at the hospital, my contractions were coming quickly – every two minutes. I measured 6 cm at arrival. Once I was on the hospital bed and strapped to the monitors, it took all of my focus to make it through each contraction. I didn’t want anyone to talk to me or touch me. I just wanted to close my eyes and focus on breathing. When the nurse asked if I wanted the epidural, I looked at Paul. (I didn’t have a birth plan, except that I wanted to make it through as much of the laboring at home as I could and then I would play it by ear on pain management). The nurse told me it would take 45 minutes before the anesthesiologist would be in because they had to run labs, yadda, yadda, yadda . . . Yes! Please stop talking, lady, and hustle. By the time the anesthesiologist arrived, I had moved into the groaning stage of labor. They were involuntary, and I tried to focus on my breathing, but I could hear it. I could hear myself groaning when I exhaled.
Of all the impossible things one might instruct, this seems most absurd in the moment: “You need to stay still during your contractions so we can get the epidural in.” No matter how difficult it was to stay still, it was worth the result. Pain free! Unbelievable. Seriously, unbelievable. I could relax. I could hold a conversation. I could enjoy the view of the lake out the window. All while the monitor next to my bed recorded each contraction, contractions that just moments before had racked my entire body. It was the perfect epidural. The pain was gone, but I could still feel pressure, so I knew when I was contracting – this helped immensely at the pushing stage of the game.
Once I got the ok to push, I refocused my energy, feeling rejuvenated from the rest that came with the epidural. I had Paul on one side and my mom on the other. I pushed for approximately one hour. The pressure increased until Caleb came out. Relief washed over me, and I sobbed when they placed him on my chest. There were too many tears to even see him clearly. It was over. I had a son. My life would never be the same, and the beginning of motherhood would definitely not be easy.
