Secret Subject Swap - When time 🕑 stood still.




Welcome to August's Secret Subject Swap

Again 5 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts.  

Sit back, grab a cup and check them all out:

Baking In A Tornado

Wandering Web Designer
A 'lil HooHaa
Climaxed
Part-Time Working Hockey Mom



My subject is

When time stood still  



It was submitted by: A 'lil HooHaa - thank you, P.J.!

Disclaimer: post contains somewhat graphic content.

When you're pregnant, you're experiencing a multitude of emotions throughout the months. 

Joy and anticipation, but also worry if you were doing everything right, if the baby was healthy.

A lot of uncertainty about what will go down, and how it will go down.

Two things, however, are a given, that much was clear:  
  1. You will endure a great deal of pain. It'll most probably be the worst pain of your life, and if you're unlucky, birth can drag on for a really long time.
  2. It'll all be worth it cause you'll be indefinitely happy and overjoyed as soon as you're holding your baby for the first time. Time will stand still. Violins will play, angels will sing, you'll cry, you'll laugh, it'll be the happiest moment of your life.
I don't know about other women, but reading about what happens in the first, second and third trimester and during labor and delivery, my mental and emotional imagery ended after childbirth. 

What will it be like once the baby is here and you're home? 

Blank. 

I mean, sure, I had been warned about the lack of sleep, and the long days filled with diapers, but what will it really be like to be a new Mom? Will you just love your baby? Will you know what to do when they cried? I had no idea.

On second thought I did have some ideas: I wanted to breastfeed, I didn't want my baby to have a pacifier (I heard they messed up the kid's teeth, plus they were hard to get rid of) and I wanted to keep doing the things I liked to do. Meet my friends for lunch, go to the mall, watch a movie. A stroller wasn't going to slow me down.

Just by reading this, you can tell that I was so going to get disillusioned, and you're right.

Let's rewind to the moment when time stood still, though. The moment you supposedly already have forgotten about the pain, and you're insanely happy holding your baby.

Apparently that's true for some women. Not for me.

I didn't even cry. If I did, it wasn't happy tears, but tears of relief and exhaustion. There were no violins either, and no angels. 

Wait, that's not fair, my midwives (yes, we had two of them. My labor and delivery process expanded over two shifts) and the nurses deserve the status of angels. Next month it'll be twelve years ago that I gave birth, and I'm still blown away by the kindness, empathy and patience of these ladies.

So what am I saying, wasn't I happy to hold baby Colin? 

Sure, he was my sweet baby I had anticipated for such a long time, but to be perfectly honest, I was mostly happy it was finally over, and baby Colin was OK once the blue fingers and toes turned pink. I was worn out and somewhat empty, pun intended. 

I remember distinctly that back then I was surprised that I didn't cry because I had fully expected happy tears. 

I was still wrapped up in the trauma that giving birth turned out to be for me. Not just the pain but the fact that nothing went down as "planned".

Yes, I had a plan, actually I had two opposing plans:

  • A - it was going to be a short, smooth and simple birth. No muss, no fuss, millions of people had done it before me, and millions were going to do it after me. I checked in at the hospital around 10pm on September 16, and somehow it didn't feel impossible that this was going to be his date of birth.
  • B - it was going to be a sensual experience. A water birth, (cue "Orinoco Flow" by Enya) the baby was going to weightlessly float towards me, and I was gonna be full of love and gratefulness.

I did in fact spend a couple of hours in the tub, and at first it felt great. The pounds acquired during pregnancy felt lesser. thanks to buoyancy. Until the contractions became super intense, and I deperately wanted an epidural. Guess what, the anaesthesiologist was not going to join me in the water - I had to get out. 

Getting out of a tub may not sound like a big deal, but if you're the shape of a whale, your back hurts, you have contractions, and now even your legs are giving in, suddenly it is a really big deal!

I am not going into medical details, but this was only the beginning of the ordeal that my birth story was to become.

So yes, instead of crying happy tears, I was happy to be alive. Sounds dramatic, but as I was reviewing things later, I realized things did not go down so well. At all.

My gynaecologist had grossly underestimated by baby's weight (3,300g vs 4,180g); that's 7.27 pounds vs 9.22 pounds) and height. So much so that I should have had a C-section in the first place. 

It's simple geometry: if a woman's birth canal expands to a diameter of 10cm, the baby's head circumference may not be wider than 31.4cm - because of Pi. 

Remember Pi? Multiply the diameter, which is 10cm, with Pi 3.14, and you'll get a circumference of 31.4cm (12.36 inches). 

Now Baby Colin's head circumference was 38cm (that's 15 inches). He was never gonna float towards me. 

The poor boy was stuck. My best efforts of pressing and pushing weren't going to help.









They had to forcefully drag him out using a vacuum pump while cutting me open generously (and I believe, uncontrolled) causing me to lose half of my blood volume, and as a result, to pass out as soon as I wanted to get up for the first time.

This is when time really stood still. 

I don't know how long I was unconscious, probably only a couple of seconds. When I came to, I had to gather myself. 
  • Where was I
  • What happened
  • What was I doing on the floor 
  • Why was I aching so badly
  • Who was that baby I heard crying (Colin didn't fall with me - he was being given his first bath by Daddy.)
Did I mention that by the time they were cutting me open, yanking him out and sewing me back up, my glorious epidural had completely worn off? Yes. There was no time to do anything about that. And as they say, you will forget about the pain as soon as you're holding your baby.







Look at us now though!

May I just say, it feels much better to be out and about with an almost 12 year old than to try and push out a full term baby boy?

Do you share my sentiments? Or are you one of those "it was the happiest moment of my life" people? (No judging, I'm happy for you!) Let me know below. 

Please also visit my fellow bloggers' posts.


Comments

  1. With my older son it was a busy day in labor/delivery so I had to wait for an epidural. WAY too long. And when it didn't take, I had to wait for the anesthesiologist to come back. WAY WAY too long.
    Happy birthday, Colin, hard to believe he was around 6 years old when I "met" you.

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  2. Very similar with #1, better with #2.

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  3. I had three, all were late and had to be induced but I did them all with no epidural or other meds. Fortunately, they were not as big as yours. I don't remember any of the pain but you're right, it was all worth it. Sounds like yours was kinda scary. I had no plan. Didn't even know there was such a thing.

    Janet’s Smiles

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  4. This made me remember having my three daughters

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  5. Me either. My first son, I cried for a few days after he was born. It didn't mean I didn't love him it was just traumatic. The second one was something out of a rom/com and it went a lot easier (I had a C-section) on me at least.

    ReplyDelete

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