So when my son started his descent three days early with a mighty contraction that wrenched me awake at the exact moment all the power went off for the scheduled basewide maintenance outage, a day when our dying Honda was in the shop and our dog was scheduled for complicated X-rays, he was, in effect, making a declaration of war against my Plan. It was a war I needed to lose—trying to choreograph every possibility in a birth, especially as a first-timer, is folly—but that didn’t make fighting it any less desperate for me. I wanted so much to believe that I had learned something from all the stories I’d absorbed, that I could skip the part where I was scared and fumbling and at the mercy of forces beyond my control and instead plan and research my way into a broad, clear plane of totally expected options.
I fought for this (and failed) especially during the times in which Ross had to leave during my labor—the Honda was the only vehicle we owned capable of carrying an infant car seat, and the dog would need to be boarded, and during these two short and necessary errands that required his presence, I crawled alone up and down the hallway of our hot, dark house, dragging my iPhone with me to time contractions and play a carefully compiled playlist designed to stave off mounting waves of panic. My contractions were two minutes apart, ten minutes apart, four minutes and thirty seconds apart, crushing, mild, and moderate, and my water was leaking noncommittally. In other words, no patterns, no logical progressions. My actions were equally nonsensical: I flipped light switches on and off in every room I entered and made a completely casual phone call to Ross requesting a latte and a pumpkin scone, and then another one, weeping, to my mother, insisting that yes, what I really need right now is to hear, in detail, exactly how her dog’s vet appointment went that morning.
Perhaps this much is obvious: things did not go as planned. I scored the Norwegian midwife for my delivery, which felt lucky, until she informed me I had dilated only to five “sontimeters.” Meanwhile Ross kept mentioning the ice we had stockpiled in the extra freezer at home in preparation for the scheduled power outage. It might be leaking all over the floor, he said, and he should maybe go and check. I felt my luck start to turn. I knew he hadn’t eaten all day and was exhausted. I was using him up, my lifeline; I was crushing him under the weight of my need and we weren’t even to the hard part yet—we were barely halfway.
When I let out my strident cry of “Uncle!” it was an unpleasant surprise to find that the anesthesiologist was not, in fact, hovering right outside my door rubbing her hands together menacingly with a giant needle clamped in her teeth like a bowie knife. She had to be summoned. Further unexpected delay, coupled with rankling irony: I needed to provide answers to a detailed health questionnaire, including an inventory of all past recreational drug use (the list had grown: I backslid in college). Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” came up on my phone’s playlist (of course) and by the time they were ready to place the line and had me sitting upright, naked to the waist and painting my back with iodine, I was unable to keep still and was gyrating like a slow top and burying my face in Ross’s chest, moaning and trying quite earnestly to tear a hole in Green Jacket with my teeth. (He wore it, thank God. I will always love him for that.)
Two more monstrous contractions rolled over me before the epidural took effect. Ross waited with me, holding my hand. I kept my eyes closed, doing a mental pat-down of my body. Am I all right? Is everything still there? Will I make it through this next part? I was shuddering violently from the adrenaline, and he asked a nurse if the anesthesia was just local or if it was going to my head. Teeth gritted and only one eye open, I croaked, “What, I don’t look fine to you?” He asked me again if it was okay for him to leave, just for a little bit, long enough to run home, if I was sure I’d be all right. I said I was sure I’d be fine, because this gigantic, complete lie seemed like the thing to say.