A New Year's Baby

Filed under: Newborn, Going into labor, Pain, Birth complications, Hospitals, A Little More I was terribly pregnant that long ago winter--swollen, overdue, miserable, doubtful, tired, always tired. I remember driving through the snow, the wipers thumping at full-speed, barely scraping 2 half-moons in ice on the windshield, our car slowly inching toward the hospital in what was becoming a blizzard. I remember being mesmerized by the thick, heavy clumps of snow falling, falling, bright in the headlights then gone, swallowed up beneath us and the slow, steady turning of the car's wheels--the unstoppable progression forward, like the baby I could feel turning inside me. My water broke an hour earlier. Despite all my pre-pregnancy reading, I wondered what had happened, why was there so much wetness? I called the hospital and spoke to a nurse, who called my doctor. He called me back, asked a few questions (Was there any color to the fluid, or was it clear? Was I having any pain? Could I feel the baby kicking?) then decided I should begin the drive to the hospital, because of the weather. The snow, falling. Down and down, inevitable, as gravity pulled it toward the earth; inevitable as the shifting that was occurring within my body, the parting of muscles and tissue, the making-way. I'd always prided myself on my ability to manage pain, but this pain was nothing like what I knew. I could feel it in every part of my body--even my eyelashes hurt. What I remember most about that trip was the cold, 30 degrees below zero and falling. The night was so dark--no moon, no stars. A baby would be born to my husband Tom and I. It seemed impossible. That the snow would ever stop falling; that the pain would ever stop; that I would know any other moment than the one that seemed to keep repeating itself--wiper thump, snow bright in the headlights, darkness, pain so deep and black it felt as if it might suffocate me. "Breathe," Tom was saying, his voice like crumbs of bread marking a path out of the wilderness. Again, "Jen, breathe." I wished, then, that we'd paid more attention in the birthing classes; wished I'd not been so smug and self-assured; wished we hadn't giggled our way through the "hee-hee-hee" and the "ha-ha-ha" and the outdated video of a man with long sideburns supporting his groovy wife. I'd take anything back, do anything, say anything to make it all better. It was the night before New Year's Eve. If I'd been able to have a coherent thought, I might have imagined the world turning with me, the planet slowly spinning toward a new year. Across the globe, people were making preparations. In New York City, a crystal ball lit with hundreds of twinkling lights, each of them tested and ready to shine. On the other side of the world, a million Australians watched the fireworks soar above Sydney Harbour. Trumpets sounded in India. In Spain, a grape is eaten at each chime of midnight. But I was not able to escape my own black hole. I felt like a grape grown too big, ready to split my skin. We made it to the hospital. I was wheeled into a room, lifted onto a bed, strapped to a monitor. An IV was pushed through my skin into a vein on the back of my left hand. I remember none of this--except the pain, that stayed with me like an ink stain. The edges of my vision were black. Days and weeks and years seemed to pass--I mumbled nonsensical things, worried that the pizza was burning and asked Tom to take it out of the oven. Drugs--stahdol and pitocin and finally, an epidural. When the baby came, it felt as if I'd crossed the finish line of a marathon in last place. Still, I was euphoric. I saw the nurses whisk my newborn son away from me and for an instant, it seemed as if my eyes locked with his. He was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen, and all else faded away--the fluorescent hospital lights, the nurses bustling about in their blue-green scrubs, the haziness and fatigue, even the pain. Later, one of the nurses remarked, "Too bad, a New Year's Baby." I suppose she meant that my son, born on New Year's Eve, would never have a day of celebration all his own. But I saw it differently. I saw it as a sign that for the rest of his life, there would always be a party on his birthday. That he would never be lonely; he would never be alone. Fireworks sparkling across the globe, dawn spreading to each new continent, everywhere, faces rising to greet the sun.Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments