The Twinkies

It has been over six months and I still sometimes cry when I think about the caesarean. I cry when I see scenes of vaginal birth with the head coming out, when I see the newborn placed on the mother’s chest.

I didn’t get that. I was cut open. My children were removed from me. I was sick. It was affecting them. It was absolutely the right choice to make and I would make it again instantly. That reality doesn’t mean the caesarean wasn’t a loss.

I didn’t get to feel them being born. I didn’t get to see them being born. I have only hazy memories of their birth. Someone held a baby over the curtain for me to see. Was it J.? Fi.? I think I remember both but I can’t be sure. Can’t be sure. It was the most important moments of my life and my memories are spotty. I remember J. crying. I remember the doctor putting the needle in my spine. I remember B. sitting by my head and me talking about Macbeth. But I can’t be sure whether I remember F. being held up for me to see. I think I can. I think, but I am not sure.

I don’t remember holding them for the first time. I don’t remember feeding them for the first time. All of that is lost to me in a morphine haze. I have bits of memories. I have pieces. I have some scattered photographs. But I don’t have a coherent narrative and, without that, I feel fragmented. Some small part of what it means to be a mother, a woman, I don’t have. And we don’t get to do it again. I will never get a vaginal birth, now. I will never push a baby out. I will never be aware of holding a newborn.

And so I mourn my section, looking at my babies and trying to tell myself the story of their birth, trying to remember what happened next.

OK, I am really, really tired of this false labor nonsense. A contraction here, a contraction there, no big deal, but these nights of several hours of contractions are starting to annoy me. Thanks to handy, online tools I can even track the buggers. Voila:

In other fun news, I had a weird moment of seeing bright sparkles all over my field of vision for about 30 - 45 seconds tonight. Because that can be a symptom of high blood pressure I called the midwife-on-call and she talked me down. Because I didn’t have a headache and because my blood pressure has always been great she wasn’t worried about toxemia, but told me that that swelling, like the kind I have everywhere, can put pressure on the optical nerves.

So…now my eyes are swollen. Great.

Another doctor’s appointment, and no news. I am healthy, the babies are healthy, my uterus is a force of nature that shows no inclination to go into labor.

I know it’s shallow, but I really want my body back. I mean, I am 217 pounds! My feet look like someone hooked up an air pump and overinflated them. I can barely walk on these puppies. My hands are swollen and arthritic. I’ve got brown patches on my neck and skin tags from the hormones. I can’t go anywhere on my own because I can’t fit behind the wheel of a car without great difficulty. Oh yes, and I have to pee ALL the time. As in every 5 minutes. Someone has moved and is resting on (or should I say “rolling around on”) my bladder. Ugg.

So, to sum up: Still here. Still pregnant.

Still here. Still pregnant.

My doctors will induce if I want them too, but, of course, induction isn’t quite as simple as flipping a light switch on. Induced labors hurt more, cause more stress to the babies, cause more stress to the mother, and increase your risk of surgical birth. Human bodies are stubborn things, and if I ain’t ready to go then I ain’t ready to go and all the pitocin drips in the world aren’t going to change that.

So…as long as I can get some sleep, I can keep going on. And on. And on. And….

Still here. Still pregnant. And, after 11 hours of (mostly) uninterrupted sleep last night, I feel SO much better.