Body

Another question I am often asked these days is some variation of "How do you feel -- physically?" 

Physically, I feel great.  Astonishingly well.  Amidst all the things that were clearly horribly tragic and wrong about this experience, labor, delivery, and recovery were conspicuously smooth and healthy.  I felt strong.  I felt able.  I felt well.  I felt that incredible sense of my womanhood and the rite of passage of the event.  I found myself thinking, "I want to do this again sometime."  -- Only different.  Obviously, different.

My first birth was not easy.  Labor was long and arduous with lots and lots of vomiting.  I became exhausted.  I was physically numbed and detached from Elsie's delivery by an epidural (though still engaged emotionally).  A few hours after the birth, I hemorrhaged and might have bled to death without an extremely painful and invasive intervention.  I remember sitting on ice packs for days because of a tear and a few stitches.  I experienced stress incontinence (aka, peeing when you sneeze) for about two weeks.  The catheter they use for the epidural and my emergency left me with a UTI.  The antibiotics left me with a yeast infection.  Recovery sucked.  It took me months before I would consider doing it again.

This time, none of that.  No epidural.  No catheter.  No major blood loss.  No tearing.  For all my fear of inductions, it was considerably easier than my previous labor.  No contraction was more than I could handle (though I did throw up twice).  I labored for two hours, almost exactly.  I listened to my body and followed its instructions.  I knelt on the floor.  I didn't make much noise, just spoke quietly to myself, "down down down" as the contractions got intense.  I accepted a dose of demerol during what I did not realize was my transition, when it was almost over.  (They don't worry about doping you up when your baby is already dead -- and neither do I.)  I walked myself into delivery pushing. 

I came away from the experience with a strange and potent hodge-podge of emotions, thrown into bleary-eyed muddle by the narcotics:  accomplishment, wonder, sorrow, disappointment, relief.  Then there were the vivid dreams of the demerol which I drifted in and out of for the next few hours.  But physically, I felt very well.  I didn't even have to take a tylenol when it was all over. No stitches to ice.  No infection to deal with.  Not even a weak pelvic floor to mend.

***

I didn't know what to expect when the doctor brought me my baby.  I expected something small and shriveled like a fetus.  She must be small, I reasoned, for birth to be that quick and easy.  I worried that she might be malformed in some way, or bruised from the forceps that they often use when a baby can't help push her own way out, or perhaps even decayed from a few days still in the womb.

When my doctor brought in the box and lifted the blanket corners -- one -- two-- three -- four -- I saw a baby.  My baby, full-sized and covered in waxy white vernix.  She had perfect little hands and perfect little feet and a perfect little face. She looked like Elsie after all.  I placed my finger in her tiny limp grip.  She was still warm-ish, warm with my body heat.  But not quite warm enough.

***

I reserved a special hatred for my body in the days after the birth.  I am not immune to the womanly distress of a few pounds of extra baby-weight, but this discomfort was far greater than just feeling a little fat.  This was the hatred of a body that still looked pregnant, a body that still threatened to ambush me with well-intended questions from strangers, "When are you due?" 

This is the hatred of a body that undermined my distribution of bad news, that confused the neighbors and confused friends and tricked them into not hearing, "Our baby didn't make it." or "She was stillborn." This body that made me have to say it again, more bluntly.  "She's dead.  Our baby died." 

This is the hatred of a body that painfully produced milk for no reason. 

This is the hatred of a body that built my baby wrong.

The pregnant look didn't last long.  I'm two weeks postpartum now, and nobody would dare ask me about my pot belly.  My doctor and assorted other medical professionals are impressed.  "Not that it's any consolation, but you look great!  Like you were never pregnant at all"  I tell them, "I'll take it."  And I mean it.

As my mom says, "You don't look like you're pregnant anymore.  You just look American."  I strive to look a little less "American," but at least this is an identity I can live with. I have 10-15 lbs to lose.  It makes me nervous, trying to lose this weight without the automatic system of breastfeeding to suck it right off of me. 

I'm trying to cut myself a little slack, to have some patience.  I've lost weight before, and I'll do it again, one healthy choice at a time.  It's more than my figure I want to get back.  I want to get my fitness and nutrition and fertility in top shape.  I want to do better next time. Perhaps, by feeding my body good health, I can feed my psyche the faith it needs to believe that I can make a healthy baby.  In reality, I think I'll have to hold a healthy baby in my arms before I ever believe that again.