A Free Man

I know that I’m about as far from objective as I am from my homeland, but this week’s installment of Dr. O’C’s recounting of pregnancy and childbirth struck me to the quick. I’m not one to be quoting poetry, but her post this week made me think of a Robert Frost poem that I must have read in college:

I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.Now no joy but lacks salt,
That is not dashed with pain…

The green light to push. SHIT! Now comes the hard and painful part right?  Not so much.  I can’t feel anything with the epidural and am completely reliant on the midwife to tell me when I am in the middle of a contraction and when to push.  So I push for a bit, rest, push etc. I remember doing the breathing thing like they teach you in antenatal class and Chris doing it in my ear with me.  So far so good.  All very calm.  But then in come the doctors, they chat with the midwife over in the corner.  I (naively) assume that they are talking about someone else.  A doctor had been in previously to examine me.  But then they explain that because I had been in labour so long the baby’s heart rate wasn’t recovering at the end of every contraction.  They said it very calmly.  Explained that they were just going to help out a bit with a plunger! (Proper term is a Ventouse).  Turn the babies head or something and hopefully that would do it.  Chris started to get a bit panicky and so did I when I saw the size of the toilet plunger that was about to enter me.  Chris assured me later it wasn’t really THAT big, but at the time it looked bloody enormous.  Then things got a bit scary.  It is all a bit of a blur now, but I remember the panic in Chris’s face when a pediatrician came in pushing an elaborate life support cart.  I tried to reassure him, but was a bit frightened myself.  We later found out this was completely normal procedure.  A few more pushes and out came the baby, it was a boy - Z.  He was whipped onto my stomach for some skin-to-skin contact and then whisked away to the cart for some tests.  He was fine, but I wasn’t.

The long labour took its toll and I was (to put it bluntly) torn to bits.  I lost a litre of blood and knew that things weren’t great when several doctors spent time arguing about whether or not we could get access to an operating theatre.  All that kept going through my head was ‘But the baby is born, why would I need to be in an operating theatre?’  The lovely Irish obstetrician spent the next 55 minutes stitching me up.  I knew how long it took because I could see the clock ticking by.  I remember talking about Ireland, about my Nana who played camogie for Ireland (the OB played as well) and about other mundane things.  I remember Chris asking if I wanted to hold Z.  I mentally couldn’t.  This wasn’t the happy but exhausted holding the baby scenario I had imagined it would be after he was born.  Mostly I remember the OB telling me that it would only take 20 or so minutes and getting scared when it went much longer.  I remember all the bloody gauze that she seemed to be going through.  I tried to stay calm but 45 minutes into this ordeal I couldn’t.  I started to cry. She finished up, I begged Chris to get me a private room (which you could pay for if available).  Finally I was able to hold Z, but to be honest I don’t even remember it now.  I don’t remember the first time I held my baby.

A lovely midwifery assistant brought me toast and yoghurt and washed me down and got me into some PJs.  She helped me feed Z, which was a very strange sensation.  I was wheeled upstairs to a private room thankfully and we just sat and stared at Z.  I could barely move, Chris had to go home and here I was left with a baby who was big and swollen and surprisingly clean.

Chris came in the next morning with bundles of blue clothes.  Clearly excited and besotted and a little better rested than I.  Nurses, Doctors and Physiotherapists came by and checked up on us both.  They garbled a bunch of instructions at me but I was too exhausted to take much in.  We went off to the pediatrician to have him checked over and he peed on the intern.  We registered his birth and I begged to be let go home.  I didn’t want to stay in the hospital any longer than I needed.  In retrospect I probably should have.  I was weak, battered and probably in a bit of shock from the trauma of the birth.  I thought if I went home everything would be normal.  I finally convinced them and left with a bag of drugs to take over the coming weeks, and a kid!  I also left with explicit instructions not to lift anything heavier than the baby for 6 weeks.  I think in retrospect they should have told me to consider my wound as serious as a c-section because then maybe I wouldn’t have been so blasé about the whole thing and maybe it wouldn’t have gotten worse.

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Phantom Planet’s “The Guest” is available from and Amazon.

 

 Phantom Planet - "California" [3:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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With Dr. O’C returning to the ranks of the employed in a few weeks, this feature is likely short-lived. Maybe if we talk real nice to her she’ll continue - or at least get Baby Z born…

September 10, 2007

Chris and I had convinced ourselves that the baby was going to be late, so when my waters broke a week before my due date, I had to keep smelling my skirt to make sure that it wasn’t just a collapsed bladder.  I walked back to the house, leaking as I went, in a bit of shock, giggling almost hysterically.  When I get nervous I have a tendency to laugh.  I think the reality was finally setting in.  Poor Chris has to harass me to call the hospital to find out what to do next.  We call our friends to pick up the dog, load up the car, call some family and head to the hospital.  They confirm that my waters have broken (no shit, Sherlock) and offer us the option of either staying put and being induced or going home to see if things happen naturally overnight.  Two things go racing through my head at this point - 1) There is no way I am ready for this baby to come now and 2) I don’t want my baby to born on September 11th.  So, I convince Chris that we should go home and take the natural approach of wait and see.

We wake bright and early, after a surprisingly good nights sleep (for me anyway).  I call the hospital to see when we can come in but they are busy so we wait.  I have some email conversations with friends and we laugh and things are a bit surreal.  Contractions haven’t started, I am in no pain but I know that we are going to have a kid, like, soon.

We eventually get the go ahead to go to the hospital and get sent to a ward to start the IV antibiotics. Chris and I waste away the afternoon playing scrabble with Chris nervously checking his watch every 10 mins. His patience was wearing thin when we had been waiting nearly 6 hours before they would take us to a delivery room. For me, I would have been happy to wait as long as they wanted!

The next 54 hours are like an out of body experience.

I hate needles, yet I have them sticking out of both arms until I leave.  I hate pain and yet I know that labour was not going to be pain free.  In the words of one of my wise friends “There is only one way out now”.  I am a private person and yet I know that all types of people are going to be poking and prodding me and at some point it is going to get really messy.  I have drips coming out of both arms, a contraction monitor and a fetal monitor strapped to my belly.  Chris unplugs vital equipment to plug in his iPod stereo.  He had been working on the playlist for months!  I explain to the midwife my birth plan, which in one short word is DRUGS.  I further explain that red heads are scientifically proven to be more sensitive to pain and when she had a minute she should line up the epidural.  A natural birth was NEVER EVER an option.  Personally I don’t see the point.  The kid ain’t going to remember or care.

They start pouring the oxytocin into me. Contractions finally start and I cope well for a while.  They wire me up to a TENS machine which does nothing but distract me from the pain because it is inflicting another more annoying type of pain.  Some crazy substitute midwife (whilst the normal one was on a break) offers me a lavender footbath to relieve my increasing pain and I nearly tell her to fuck off, but restrain myself.  I start calling for an epidural but it was a few hours before they would let me have that and when they do the relief is immediate.  I love modern medicine- the whole keep-still-whilst-I am-shoving-this-needle-into-your-spine is a bit scary, especially when the contractions are coming hard and fast every minute or so.  But damn that needle is a godsend.

The next few hours are a blur - a mix of sleep, epidural top-ups and internal examinations.  But over forty hours after my waters break I am finally given the green light to push. Now there really is only one way out.

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Phantom Planet’s “The Guest” is available from and Amazon.

 

 Phantom Planet - "California" [3:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Shortly after I told my friend Robert that Dr O’C was pregnant, he said “You’re doing the NCT classes, right? You must do those, they’re brilliant.” This was about 12 weeks on, so I hadn’t realized that 1) everyone who’s been near a child has an opinion about pregnancy and child-rearing and 2) they are usually wrong. Thus, since 12 weeks we have been calling and hassling the NCT lady about getting in to a class.

The National Childbirth Trust has been providing ante- and postnatal care to nice middle class families in Britain for the last 50 years. It was my job to sort out the NCT antenatal classes and I approached it with verve and gusto - from 12 weeks. It was with a fair bit of chagrin that after my 19th phone call that the frustrated NCT lady explained that classes don’t start until about 32 weeks, of course had she told me that earlier on I might not have called so often.

Despite all the anticipation and preparation, for the last week both Dr O’C and I have been dreading these classes. For both of us, I think, that fear was due largely to the idea that we would have to watch multiple and horrifying childbirth videos - akin to the “Hostel” movies, no doubt - something neither of us are interested in doing. I know for myself, that I prefer the actual birth to be the proverbial black box and I intend to see as little of that as possible when the time actually comes. This is the kind of thing that was going on in my head when we sat down with six other couples at the Jericho Community Center on Monday night.

So, it was with a huge sigh of relief that we heard the NCT lady announce that she would show no such videos. Actually, I think it was a collective sigh of relief from the room, with the possible exception of the one woman who admitted to being addicted to the Oxygen TV: Birth Stories program, but that’s a whole different kettle of fish.

The NCT lady asked lots of questions, one of which was directed to the fathers. “How many of you plant to be in the delivery room?” - seven resigned hands. Now, I recognize and have accepted that I will be in the delivery room - that doesn’t mean I want to be in the delivery room. The miracle of birth doesn’t seem all that miraculous to me. It would be miraculous if I were sitting out in the waiting room with “The Sun” and some cigars and a lovely nurse in clean white linen brought me out a shiny new baby. It wasn’t that long ago that most fathers were not present in the delivery room, now you’re looked upon as a demon if you even voice a little concern. I blame the 90’s. It was reassuring, though, in the class to see that other men felt the same way.

Having gotten important business out of the way, the nice NCT lady got down to business. Started the long process of list making and throwing about of terms like “Braxton-Hicks” and “3/5 engaged” that I never thought I would need to know about. I discovered I can bring music into the delivery room, yet another playlist to work on! And it was OK - I didn’t panic and didn’t freak out when she started talking about, er feminine things. The thing is, if you come in to things with a negative attitude you can only be pleasantly surprised. OK, I’ll admit this isn’t the best attitude. But I’m betting that all my trepidation about the actual delivery is going to be for nought as well.

I think Dr O’C enjoyed the class as well. The one thing that got under her skin was the list of things that we should take to the hospital. This list included two wash clothes to this she objected. “You’d think that the hospital could provide these!” I reminded her how much it is costing us to have the child here - nothing - as compared to what it would cost in the U.S. - $10,000 0n average and as a bonus, apparently Gordon Brown is going to give us £250. God bless socialized medicine

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For those of you that know Dr O’C, thought you might be interested in seeing how she’s blossoming.

Goteborg, Sweden - December 2006 Continue Reading »

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“Girls who are boys
Who like boys to be girls
Who do boys like they’re girls
Who do girls like they’re boys
Always should be someone you really love…”

-Blur “Girls & Boys”

One of the first things Dr. O’C said when she found out she was pregnant (after she stopped crying) was: “I don’t want to know the sex of the baby.” Now, I disagreed, but in the six plus years we’ve been together I’ve learned to pick my battles. In this case, I was planning for a battle over surnames, one I thankfully didn’t have to fight. At any rate, Dr. O’C reckoned that the sex of the baby was the only surprise available in pregnancy and childbirth and thus, she wanted to keep it that way. Seems to me and my limited knowledge of physics that having a small human come out of you could be pretty surprising, but again picking battles.

I have not fought the battle, but I have been doing subtle reconnaisance. During both of the scans I was looking hard for the presence or absence of sex determining organs. There are several websites that offer hints on how to determine the sex of your baby. Everyone who has ever borne a child or known someone who has borne a child has a little tip about how to determine sex. A very colorful woman with whom I work is always asking me - “Which way is she growing, wider or further out, that will tell you the sex.” Because Dr. O’C reads this blog, its best that I not reveal my answer.

One of the more entertaining ways we’ve used to attempt to divine the sex of the baby is Turkish gypsy magic. One of our friends who is Turkish, but not to my knowledge a gypsy, remembered an old-wives tale that says if you dangle a ring on a string over the pregnant woman’s bump, the motion of the ring will tell you the sex of the child. Up and down means boy and circular motion means girl, or vice versa. As you can see in the picture above, Dr. O’C subjected herself to this and revealed that the baby is in fact a girl. So your shopping may now begin. Oh, and if your curious, K, our friends’ four year old daughter, is having a boy.

I’m often asked which I would prefer, and with the knowledge that the Turkish gypsy magic may be slightly inaccurate and my son may one day read this, my honest answer to that is I would prefer a girl. This is primarily because nearly all girls are Daddy’s girls and who doesn’t want to be the favorite parent.

That being said, it doesn’t really matter. I am absolutely thrilled either way. As long as he/she has his/her mother’s nose, I’m happy. And her eyes, probably mouth, and hopefully her hair…

I’d like to point out, that recently the decisive Dr. O’Connell has begun to wish that we did know the sex of the baby so we could buy the right color muslins or something. I always win.

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“The foetus may be startled by loud music and start kicking you when it hears a certain tune. Or maybe its dancing. This is a good time to play it music, talk to it and see if you get a reaction.”

(The Rough Guide to Pregnancy).

Say no more, I am on the case! I’ve had very little to do thus far in the pregnancy other than cooking and cleaning and general slave tasks. Now, however, my first opportunity at a fatherly duty. The musical education of my child! Those of you who know me well will know that I am a music geek. Shortly after we found out Dr. O’C was pregnant, I began to dream of musical interactions with my first born. Most of these ended with me saying something like “Now, Dr. O’C, our baby is NOT listening to that annoying kids’ music. I will not have Baby DVD listening to some crap europop version of “YMCA” or something.” To which Dr. O’C, as with all my rants, smiles bemusedly.

Thus, selecting and playing music to the baby was a task I looked forward to relish. But how to approach it? Most books suggest melodic classical music. While I think this is probably snobbery, I can see that “Anarchy in the UK” or Nirvana’s “Aneurysm” may not be the place to begin. After several days (yes, days) of scanning my iTunes library, I fell upon Van Morrison. Not just any Van Morrison, but the finest in his (very fine) discography - “Astral Weeks”. If you do not own this album, stop reading, go out and buy it now. If you do own this album, play it while you read. It was recorded over three days in 1968 with a quintet of jazz musicians and its the spontaneity that these musicians bring to the table along with Morrison’s ethereal lyrics that make this album very special. There’s something absolutely beautiful and spiritual about this album that is beyond the power of this writer to explain. All I know is if my day has turned bad, I put “Astral Weeks” on my iPod and go for a walk in the nearest park and by the time I’m back, it’s usually OK.

“Sweet Thing” was in my opinion, the most baby friendly song on the album. So, armed with the beginning of my child’s musical education and my iPod stereo, I was prepared. Dr.  O’C had been feeling the baby kick quite a bit, but try as I might I could never really feel it. But, when I sat down with Dr. O’C, hand on tummy, and Van’s gravelly soulful voice began:

“And I will stroll the merry way
And jump the hedges first
And I will drink the clear
Clean water for to quench my thirst…”

Baby DVD began kicking up a storm, quiet little flutter kicks. Dancing to the Irish minstrel music. I choose to interpret it as dancing, I guess it could be “Leave me alone with that loud rock n’ roll. I’m trying to sleep!” But, I think she was dancing. A truly wonderful experience and one that makes me like this album even more.

“We shall walk and talk
In gardens all misty and wet with rain
And I will never, never, never
Grow so old again.

Oh sweet thing, sweet thing
My, my, my, my, my sweet thing
And I will raise my hand up
Into the night time sky
And count the stars
That’s shining in your eye…”

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