Approaching the Battle Front
The wife and I spent the majority of our weekend in
birth preparation classes. We learned all about dilation,
effacement, contractions, pain medication, and much more.
10 hours of birth talk does something to you: it makes
your butt hurt. Well, it was that or the seriously
uncomfortable chairs.
Some of it, I knew. I knew there would be pain.
I knew that something quite large was going to exit
the wife’s body.
Most of it filled in the blanks. What
will grow to ten centimeters? How long are the
contractions? When should we head to the hospital?
What does an epidoral involve? How does the baby
get out? I guess there were a lot of blanks.
I don’t believe I pictured birth to be such a long, involved
process. The television always forces the parents-to-be
to spring out the door to the hospital. There’s always a
rush. It’s always coming right now.
Let’s hope the taxi driver knows how to deliver a
baby.
Apparently, most births aren’t like that at all.
They take a while — sometimes a long while. There’s
time to relax (in fact, it’s encouraged). There’s
even time to catch some football on T.V. (note to self:
edit this out before the wife gets to read it).
The videos weren’t nearly as graphic I had thought,
or hoped, they would be. No placenta graced the screen.
None of the aftermath was filmed.
The view of epidoral was obstructed. The cesarean
was mostly viewed from the mom’s side of the sterile cloth.
I don’t want to say that I wanted see to blood, mess, sweat,
and tears. I just wanted the videos to shock any of the
impending horror out of me. I didn’t think the
Discovery channel
had already done such a good job.
I couldn’t help but compare the whole process to a soldier
approaching the battle lines. Sure we’ve thought, and talked,
a lot about it, but all the facts kind of hit you head on.
All of a sudden, you can hear the bombs dropping in the distance.
Lights flash over the horizon. The roar of the transport
drowns out the shouts from your commander. You are well on
your way. You check your watch. Your heart rises just a bit in
your chest.
We have our battle plan. It’s all written in a little booklet
we took home from class. Our expectations have been rounded
into to place. Don’t have too many. Each pregnancy, and each
woman, is quite different. Knowledge is now our weapon.
Practice your breathing. Get your rest. Drink lots and lots
of fluid. You do have your bag packed — don’t you?
Somehow the other side of the hospital door no longer feels
so far away.
Tina
December 9th, 2002 at 4:50 pm #
The real shocker for me was realizing just how _long_ labor was going to be. And the worst part was, even their estimates didn’t prepare me for how long it really ended up being! (But their pain estimates were a bit too high for much of it, too, at least in my experience.)