I want to die. It won’t matter. If I died, they could cut me up and take out the baby. She would live.
They call in the anesthesiologists for the epidural. I sit on the bed, curve my back into a C-shape, and hold a pillow to my stomach. I stare into Daniel’s eyes and try not to think of what they are doing or of the needle so big that they did not show it to us in the birthing classes. I try not to think of the fact that they are going to jam it into my spine. My spine. I try not to think about the fact that what they’re doing could paralyze me. But I’ll do anything to leave my body at this moment. The shot slams through me, an electric bolt so strong my legs jerk out.
I lie back, ignoring the tube entering my spine. How wonderful to be pain free. How miraculous to have that horror lifted. The monitors show that I am contracting wildly. But I have cheated pain. I’m shuddering all over. The nurse says it’s my body reacting to the trauma of pain. I fall asleep.
*
The nurse checks me. I’m finally a ten. It feels like I have to take the most giant shit of my life. The epidural is wearing off. They won’t give me another because they say I have to feel the pain to push. I’m terrified of the pain coming back full force. My vagina, my ass, it’s all already on fire. I’m on my back with my knees pulled up, Daniel and a nurse holding my numbed legs, another nurse with her hands in me as I’m grunting and crying and pushing as hard as I can.
The epidural makes me disconnected from my body, yet also and at the very same time, I am slammed into it in a way I have never been before. It feels like a war. I don’t want to be here. I want to be anywhere else but here. Any battlefield, any war zone would be better. I fall asleep for minutes and then am jolted back to this place. The nurse looks up at me from between my legs. She locks eyes with me, says, “You’re not trying hard enough. I want you to really try.” What the hell does she think I am doing? She says it louder, almost shouting, “Come on, harder, you can do this. Push your baby out.”
Delirious, I remember a friend in high school saying, “Do you want to see me feed my snake?” I remember her dropping in the mouse, the snake unhinging its jaw, the way it swung open unnaturally wide and open and then sucked up the mouse’s hindquarters, then its belly, until only its mouse face poked out of the serpent’s mouth, a moment before the rodent disappeared into that black abyss. And now my hips are dis-attaching like the snake’s jaw, carving an opposite trajectory, from darkness into light. I picture that curve inside me, the long slide that she must travel, and I push specifically into this place. I feel a wave, some specific energy flowing through me. I feel myself opening up; I feel myself tearing open. Everything is getting big. Pressure and expansion. The nurse says, “She’s crowning. Reach down and touch your baby’s head!” And I do and I’m crying because there she is, her head lodged between my lips. I push and grunt inhuman noises and the nurse tugs and then I open and she slips free from me. I’m crying, high as a kite. Daniel is leaning over me. They put the baby in his hands. He stares at her, his eyes huge, streaming. They put her on me, between my breasts. We watch astounded as she snuggles, moves her head looking for my nipple, smelling for it. When her mouth latches onto it, an electric current runs through my whole body.
*
She is born with her eyes open. Her gaze is regal and composed, like a queen surveying this strange new land she has come upon. Her head is elongated from the pressure of my pelvic bones, evidence of the journey we have completed together. I stare into those eyes, the strange shimmery surface of them.
I can do anything, go anywhere. I have completed this journey that lay unknown within my body all of my life, the ability to open and bring forth life. This secret knowledge held in my cells until the right moment; it makes me feel suddenly aware of the unseen rhythms of the world. I can sense the curved migrations of whales traveling the oceans, the opening of tiny flowers to minute winged pollinators, the pinecones that open in raging flame—all these unknown events and us too a part of it all.
We sleep and eat. She nurses. Daniel holds me while I hold her and it feels like hibernation or burrowing, like we are a nest of small furry animals—squirrels, perhaps, with our tails wrapped around us for softness and warmth. She lies on my belly. Her small face opens in my hands like a flower. She is fair, almost milky white. Nothing of me in her. She is all his from birth.
Later they will say that I didn’t love her, that I had no feelings for her. They are wrong. The first time I saw my daughter, I fell in love with her. I could feel the chemicals running through me. It all worked exactly as it should. I fell in love with her; oxytocin was released in the right amounts. I felt warm and fuzzy. I felt deeply connected. Here was a creature that would love me, despite everything I am. His arms around me, my arms around her. We are perfect; we are beautiful.