Well, this story takes off where Part I ended. In my last post, I recounted the story of Margot’s birth – an intervention-free natural
water birth, which was far and wide the most profound and empowering experience
of my life. I had an iron will and a driven outlook on a woman’s body’s
capability to rise to the challenge of childbirth; and after 14 hours of active
labor, my sweet squirmy girl was born.
Shortly after her birth, I was moved from the birthing pool
to a hospital bed in the room we were in; the hospital’s protocol was that the
placenta must be delivered on land, so to speak, in order to accurately gauge
the amount of potential blood loss. Fair enough, I thought, and waddled over to
a bed. My midwife, Edie, who I can’t tell you for certain is not an angel
walking among us, kneaded on my belly to engage my placenta; out it came, and I
think the population of the greater Midwest heard me howl. Once that was over,
though, Edie praised me for my hard work in getting Margot here, said that I had
achieved my goal of a drug-free birth, but that I needed to know that I had
sustained a severe laceration when Margot flew out of me, and as a surgical
team was on its way down to perform the repair, she was offering me drugs to
withstand the pain of surgery.
Well, I may be a hardcore advocate of natural
childbirth, but please don’t paint me with the wrong brush – medication-free
surgery is just not my jam. So bring on the drugs, I said, with the
understanding that they wouldn’t interfere with my tiny nursing newborn, who
happened to be clamped on to my breast at that moment.
It was less than a minute before everything went loopy. I
remember being told that whatever it was they were giving me wasn’t going to
knock me out, but that it’d numb the pain in spite of the fact that I’d still
be conscious, and still able to hear and speak. Now, I haven’t spent a lot of
time on the operating table – at that point, actually, it had been zero time
whatsoever – but I can only liken the effects of those drugs to what it feels
like to have consumed a bottle of wine or two (or four) on one’s own. My
eyeballs were swimmy, my speech was slurred, and it felt a bit like everyone in
the room was talking in low, slow-mo voices. (I can only assume I’m factually
wrong about this.)
I distinctly remember a number of people shuffling in (how
many, I can’t be sure – three? Four?), and only learned in retrospect that this
was a small team of medical students being led by one proper surgeon. Why I was
never asked permission before I was made into a hands-on guinea pig I’ll never
know, but I will always be resentful of this.
The team assessed the situation, and I could hear them going
back and forth over the final consensus of my laceration. “Fourth-degree, would
you say?”
“No, third, I think.”
“Yes, third.” Said someone else. Okay; so they had agreed it
was a third-degree tear; now to work on a plan of attack.
Everything that ensued is all wrapped up in my mind as
vividly clear enveloped in a fuzzy outer shell. From the moment they started
stitching – no; from the moment they injected me with some further layer of
pain-numbing medication – I realized this wasn’t going to be pain-free at all.
I felt every needle prick, every poke, every pull. I was, as I said in my
earlier post, floating somewhere between the precipice of hell and snug within
the heart of pure bliss. My focus was entirely on Margot nursing on my chest,
and on Daryl, standing bedside, holding my hand while I squeezed the very life
out of his own. And yet I couldn’t shake this team of surgical workers who were
stitching me up, and going over what I can say confidently was all too much
back and forth about what needed to happen with regard to proper repair. They
weren’t sure, and I was suffering immensely.
As it goes, though, it finally came to and end. I remember a
doctor named James (“Hey! That’s what Margot’s middle name is!”) telling me
that while I needn’t be alarmed, there was a piece of hymenal tissue that had
torn during childbirth, that I was going to see if and when I looked at the
…construction site, should I say. Since I was still looped up on drugs, I’m
sure I managed nothing more than an, “Oh-kay…thahnkyou..vurrymuch.” And it
wasn’t until a few hours had passed that I understood the gravity of what he
had said. A piece of live tissue – something that was meant to be snug and safe
and sound up IN my body – was not in it at all.
Now, anybody who’s given birth can attest to what a horror
scene a vagina is like immediately postpartum. I don’t need to write about it
in order to convey just how terrified I was of my own body in the hours and
days that followed childbirth. And to add insult to injury, I had a piece of
tissue prolapsed and veritably snapping its jaws at me every time I looked down.
I took what Dr. James SomethingOrOther said to heart, though, and trusted that
this tissue would retreat, and that my body would heal on its own time.
Suffice it to say, though, days and weeks and months passed
and I was in chronic pain. The tissue eventually did retreat, but still
remained visible, and it caused me pain in all areas; I couldn’t walk or sit
comfortably, and don’t even mention sex. I’d burst into tears just thinking
about it. Five months went by and I grew ever weary that I’d ever have enjoyable
sex again, let alone be able to conceive another baby when the time came. I
slinked into a depression over this as well as a Molotov cocktail of other
factors – namely sleep deprivation, an untimely end to my maternity leave, and a case of eczema that swallowed up one of my fingers on my left hand, leaving me without a fingerprint, even; it was a physical manifestation of the debilitating stress and anxiety I was feeling every day. So
I decided I needed to address my situation, and I made an appointment to talk
to my doctor about what I was going through. She confirmed what I’d been afraid
of – that my body wasn’t likely to heal any further, so if I was experiencing
pain, we were going to have to pursue some sort of reparative surgery.
Within minutes, I was scooped up under the wing of the
surgeon who gave me my hope and my life back – Dr. Ruth Merid – she couldn’t
have been much older than me, if at all, and exuded confidence and strength.
And without a doubt, she was my saving grace. Within two weeks, I was lying on
her operating table while she effectively undid the work of that surgical team
five months prior, and put me back together again. It was a long road back from
that surgery, though, since I was essentially recovering from childbirth for
the second time in a five-month span; but recover I did, and even though it
took a year from start to finish, the advent of Margot’s first birthday saw me
finally dusting off my knees and seeing my future and my present with hope
rather than fear.
The fact that Margot’s first birthday coincided with her
forays into experimenting with temper tantrums and other such toddler behavior,
though, was a different battle altogether. One, though, that at least followed
afterward instead of crashing head-on into my broken body and spirit. Onward
and upward I went, and in spite of newfound challenges being thrown at me from
every direction, I was unspeakably blessed at my recovered ability to, you
know, put on a pair of shoes and walk to the end of my driveway.
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