Recap

It was a dark and stormy night.

The last of New England's late coming winter was spitting out snow all during the day and I finally concluded I'd have to plow. "Just in case," I told my husband, who, perhaps himself feeling some kind of pending anxiety, was busy clearing up the nursery. So I went out to plow our driveway, nine months pregnant, on our John Deere tractor. Talk about a bumpy ride.

It wasn't until 10pm, when the snow had turned to a sleeting rain, that things started happening.
"Is this it? Do you think?"
"Let's time them."
"On what?" Neither of us wear a watch. This is one of those things you're supposed to keep handy at just this precise moment but they haven't quite caught up with the digital age yet; who the hell has watches with second hands any more? After some scrambling I remembered that the iPod had a stopwatch feature. I doubt Apple had this particular use in mind when designing the extra features of their mp3 player.

Sure enough, the contractions were coming at regular intervals, about 8 minutes apart. We called the hospital.

"Take a bath, wait until they're 4 minutes apart, and call us back." The nurses at the hospital didn't think it was true labor, and I didn't either. After all, I'm supposed to just know, right?

Two hours later, after a long bath and increasingly regular contractions, we headed out in the storm. The normally 40 minute trip took us an hour and half. We were admitted through the emergency entrance, ushered to maternity, where the nurse proclaimed me truly in labor at 3 centimeters dilated.

See? From nothing to 3 in 4 hours? This'll be easy!

Or, maybe not.

We paced the halls of the hospital all night, as walking was more comfortable then sitting still. The morning came and went and someone fed my husband. Then midday came and went and another meal was served. Things were progressing but I was fading; I wasn't hungry but I hadn't eaten anything since the day before. Mostly I was just tired. The midwife suggested a morphine mix drug to dull the contractions and let me sleep.

"Okay," I said, at that point willing to try any new approach. For one thing, the halls were getting very familiar and for another I was beginning to alarm people when they heard me moaning. So I spent the next few hours in a beautiful drug induced sleep, unmoved by the contractions which, supposedly, were still occurring and still progressing me along. Which they did, nicely, now I was at 7 centimeters. But I forgot something: morphine kicks my ass.

Dinner arrived and my husband convinced me to eat something. I did, munching gamely on tuna and sipping on beef barley soup, but soon after it all came up again. A few minutes later I innocently sipped apple juice and couldn't keep that down either. I broke down and asked to have the intrathecal, thinking that the really hard part of labor was going to start any moment now and I had nothing in reserve. I just needed a few more props to help me through.

Maybe I should have halted this process when the first attempt at an IV failed. Or maybe I should have halted it when the second attempt also failed. But I didn't, and for another four hours was pain free. But also, alarmingly, sometimes, contraction free.

"Uh oh." We started pacing the halls again in an effort to get things going. Finally everything came back, stronger than before. It was midnight on Tuesday, and I was still at 7 centimeters.

The obstetrician suggested pitocin (for inducing) mixed with a drug called Newbane which supposedly would take the edge off. I nodded, forgetting again: morphine kicks my ass.

Now I was falling asleep between contractions. There's probably a secret CIA manual on just this kind of special torture; let your victim fall completely, deeply asleep for about two minutes, and then give him severe stomach cramps. I'm pretty sure the victim would tell you anything, because about an hour later I finally called uncle and asked to have what was likely inevitable anyway; a c-section.

Things moved quickly after that, although not fast enough to my taste, as now I was enduring what were, pretty much, completely useless contractions, I was falling asleep where I stood, and my husband, who had been pretty stoic through the whole thing, was suddenly panicking about major abdominal surgery. At one point he decided he wasn't going in to the delivery room with me. The doctor and nurses persuaded him back from the edge, and after assurances from the doctor that I would not die on the operating table, agreed to put on the scrubs offered to him.

I didn't care; I just wanted the damn spinal.

The rest of it? Kind of a blur. I was apparently grinning widely after the spinal was administered, happy that at last something was happening, even if it wasn't the way nature intended. I remember hearing my daughter's first cry. I remember my husband leaving briefly to cut the cord and returning. I remember, paradoxically, the nurse, giving my daughter her first bath and talking to me through it, as though I would remember these instructions through a haze of anesthetic, morphine and pure exhaustion. Maybe she was just trying to keep me awake.

Finally, my daughter was placed on my chest, where she was supposed to be, and everything was well again. And the sun was about to come out for the first time in two days. Things were definitely progressing now.