The BIRTH

I texted friends, called my parents and joked with the staff. I met with the anesthesiologist, a nice man who informed me once called, it would take him 1-3 minutes to appear and 3-5 minutes to get the epidural. Sounded easy enough. We agreed I should try to make it to 5 cm.

I was 1cm when I arrived at the hospital. 2cm came, no difference. 3, totally fine. By 4, I was white knuckling the hand rails of the bed and shouting expletives at my husband.

The nice man was called. I waited the the painful three minutes. No anesthesiologist.

Five. Nothing.

Ten. Crickets.

Twenty. The sound of me screaming my head off.

Thirty. Quiet, brooding, seething anger.

Forty. If he doesn’t get his %#*@^(!  *&(@*$% down here right &%(*@&^ now, I will ^&%@ his ^&*#%! %$*#@^!!!!!

What’s worse, my husband, by far the nicer of the two of us, was extra polite, patient and shy that day. When I pleaded with him to do something, anything: call someone, go out and see what was happening, set me on fire, he stammered, rationalized, did anything but take action.

“I’m sure they’re on their way.” “I don’t want to bother them, they’re probably busy.” “I’ll give them another five minutes and then I’ll go.”

“I don’t have five minutes! Five minutes is the difference between us staying married or not.”

I should’ve had my sister in there. She can be a real bitch.

Forty-five minutes. The evil man showed up. Apparently two other women called at the same time as me and there were complications with the first. I was number two. God Bless that poor third woman.

As I was sitting up, holding my husband’s hands, with a bare back, crippling contractions and a needle the size of Texas about to go into my spine, my lovely spouse decided it was the time to play the name game.

“Hey, do you know Dr. X? She works here, she’s a friend of my colleague’s and he told me to ask you.”

Are you KIDDING ME?!?

Luckily, the epidural took and within minutes he was asking me if I “felt that” as he watched the monitor with off-the-chart contractions that mere moments before were sidelining me.

“Felt what?” I slurred in a drug-induced, deliriously happy haze. For the next hour or so, life was grand. I loved that nice medicine man. And everyone else in the world.

Then the itching began. Uncontrollable, head-to-toe, want to scratch my skin off itching.

The evil man was called. This time, he showed up rather quickly.

He informed me that some women don’t react well to the itching agent that’s in the epidural. He weaned me off a bit but I decided not to be removed completely as I would’ve rather clawed off my own skin than had to experience those contractions again.

So I spent the night scratching. And scratching. And scratching. While my husband slept.

Thankfully by 6am, I was 10cm and ready to push.

All told, up to this point, it had been a rather quick and mostly pain-free experience. What was everyone so scared of? Why didn’t more people have babies? Or more of them?