On the day, my daughter was born, the heavens began to cry. As people rushed in frenzies in and out, I lay shivering and sweating in between the contractions. I didn’t fancy giving birth on a packed rush-hour commuter train racing along at 60 miles an hour, but sometimes, you are left with no choice. Vancouver was experiencing the hottest summer in recorded history. Keeping cool is hard when you’re pregnant and have a built-in, always-on central heating system of your very own, so I had been taking the subway more often than the bus for air-conditioned comfort.
Of course when I say ‘comfort,’ the term is relative. I suffered hugely from heartburn and other digestive woes all through my pregnancy. I was half the size of an aircraft carrier by my fifth month. My due date was August 8 and I worked right up through the last week of July which entailed a daily two-and-a-half-hour commute back and forth. As my pregnancy progressed, just getting to the station in the morning became an ordeal. I began to feel a growing sympathy from overweight people. Shifting my bulk up the station stairs left me huffing and puffing. The looks I got from my fellow commuters make me want to find a hole to hide, my self-esteem falling to the pits. As early as March, the check-out ladies at our local supermarket began wondering aloud whether I was expecting twins, or maybe triplets. By April, people began giving me their seats on the train, jumping to their feet with looks of great concern; occasionally I got those “Not near me, lady” stares. By May I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat more than a few mouthfuls at a time, and had to pee every thirty minutes. As June crawled and sometimes stood still, July finally arrived, bringing even more oppressive humidity and extreme heat. Walking even short distances became ridiculously arduous. Towards the end of July, comfort was a distant memory.
As it happened, I was barely conscious when I went into labor being tired, hot and utterly miserable. My stop was still an hour away when my labor had started. A concerned commuter who is a nurse, asked me if there is someone to call, I told her to let my husband know I was in labor and GET THE HELL over here!! But despite it all, I felt brave.
The good thing about being in Vancouver is people are nice and compassionate, well mostly. Through the pain, there were more and more people gathered around hoping to help. The subway attendant called for the ambulance and medics were soon crowding around me. I was determined for no epidural anesthetic, natural means no pain relief. A kind medic lady stood by my side and held my hand. At one point, she gently extracted her fingers from my death grip and let me dig my nails into her forearms instead. She stood mutely when a contraction took me, and mopped my forehead with her free hand. The look of compassion on her face as I winced and groaned offers the much needed pain relief and comfort. When I saw her the day after my baby was born, she had long pink welts on her slender forearms where my fingers had gripped her.
The contractions were taking on the intensity of a five-alarm fire, the sweat was rolling off me, and for some reason all I could think about was slave mothers having their babies on slave ships. How horrible it would be to go through such pain only to have your baby snatched away from you. I wasn’t worried. I was in agony; I didn’t have room to be worried. Get this baby out! I had begun to holler. I would scream in the middle of a contraction, then grow quiet as the pain faded, I was laughing at myself, at the whole messy, chaotic, incredible business of having a baby. Every contraction produced a flood of water and blood – I couldn’t believe how much stuff I’d had inside me. Much of the time I was too busy wondering where the hell the father is and in a desultory and haphazard manner, trying to follow the various conversations of the medics around me. One of the conversations discussed the wisdom of installing a dishwasher in a small kitchen. God Damn, I am having a baby!! It was surreal: hairdressers and dishwashers – then they’d suddenly enjoin me to push! Harder! – Oh Mary – we can see her head! She’s got dark hair!
‘I am in hell,’ I told room in general. ‘Hell, hell, hell, hell, hell!’ ‘Oh hurry up and get her out, oh hurry up and get her out, oh hurry up’ – Even to myself I sounded like a drunk. Save your energy for having the baby – enough talking! It was at this point that I decided that I must get into a squatting position. After screaming out, the medics decided to humor me, two of them grabbed one arm each and both of them managed to heave my bulk into a sitting position; I took it from there. Good! Now take a deep breath and push! There comes a point in labor when, although you know intellectually that your ordeal will have an end, your own self – your whole identity – becomes consumed by pain and that end is almost beyond fathoming. Squatting there, my whole body engulfed in wave after wave of shuddering torment, I felt as though all time had stopped. Nothing in the world mattered to me more than getting that baby out. I wasn’t me anymore, either: I was just so much sweating, heaving, oozing flesh. A great hulk of pain, a throbbing, pulsing pod desperate to expel a bloody mess. In fleeting moments of clarity, I remembered how women I knew with babies had laughed and said about their labors, ‘Oh, it isn’t so bad.’ Yes it bloody hell was!
Now push! Then there was a whoosh and an explosion of pain and I saw my baby shoot out into the medic’s arms, a slippery fish, pink and wet. ‘A girl!’ they shouted superfluously, and suddenly I was desperate to see her: Show me! I kept calling out. And then I was holding her in my arms. Even as I held her, though, I saw her begin to turn purple and struggle for breath. At least, someone knew what they were doing; the pediatric help was so fast that I hardly had time to panic: in seconds she had cleared my baby’s nose and before my eyes, I watched as purple faded back into healthy pink. My beautiful baby never cried once – not even when she struggled for breath. She just lay quietly in my arms and seemed to take in her surroundings.
In my wardroom, that night, I was still blaming John for not being there. ‘I’m sorry, you do know its not easy to catch a moving train and find out where exactly you are.’ Excuses. But at that moment, I couldn’t be angry at him. She was so beautiful, laying in my arms.
‘See if she’ll nurse!’ someone advised. Our families has gathered to share our joy. As I drew her close, I could tell she was hungry. Everybody oohed and aahed as she went for broke, latching on with all the eagerness of a terrier, sucking with little growls of contentment. ‘What a clever baby!’ they all agreed, and I felt a moment of intense pride. And relief too. Overwhelming relief.
Then they all left us. We lay there in the dark room, my baby and I. For a blissful minute or two, everything was wonderful. I lay there, listening to her tiny infant snorts, stroking her dark hair, counting her fingers and toes. But slowly I began to be aware of a pain that started off as an irritation, then gradually got worse. This was altogether different from a labor pain in that it was not of a cramping nature. It was a searing pain, like a knife slicing through me. And in no time at all it had gone from irritating to painful to agonizing. Suddenly I found myself screaming again and yanking on my call-button for all I was worth. I hugged my baby to me with one arm, afraid that the pain would get so bad I would either drop her or send her flying. As the nurse rushed in, I pointed with my free hand – Down there! Hurts! The nurse took a moment to examine then – as if from far away – I heard her shrieking for help. A doctor came running.
Hours later, when I came to, they told me that I’d had a haematoma. That a blood vessel had burst in the ‘birth passage’ and I had lost a great deal of blood. ‘You were lucky. If you have had anaesthesia, you might have died. The pain saved you.’. There John was, beside me, hugging my baby with one hand and holding my hand with the other.
