The newest one is so tiny to me, the smallest baby I've had. I call her Baby Gollum, because her limbs are so skinny and she is constantly spreading her hands out really wide. Also, she gives crazy eyes quite a bit.
The reference might seem mean, but it's actually appropriate considering I was thinking of The Hobbit the moment she was born.
I'm a huge fan of Lord of the Rings, the movies and the books. And I liked the first Hobbit movie. But while I was watching the second, The Desolation of Smaug, I couldn't help but think that Sauron's Eye looked like a giant, flaming vagina.
That image is what having a baby feels like.
Earlier I had posted that I wanted a natural childbirth, but knew I wouldn't be able to do so because I was being induced, and God knows the contractions created by pitocin are painful to the extreme, for me anyways. Well, as fate would have it, I got my natural childbirth regardless.
Never again.
Hear me: Never again.
Two and a half hours into my induction, I asked for an epidural. The contractions were coming one on top of the other with no break and I was actually crying from pain. Contrary to what the man thinks (his view is that I have the lowest pain tolerance on the planet because when my appendix burst I told him I felt like I was dying. Turns out it was septic and I was dying, but he still views me as overdramatic), it actually takes a lot for me to cry from pain. So at 0545 I asked for an epidural. At 0615, the anesthesiologist came in to give me one. First I had to endure the five minutes of questions, which I could barely comprehend at that point.
At 0620, he told me to sit up on the bed, hold onto a pillow and curl forward. He began prepping my back, and though I know it was in my imagination, I swear he was whistling a tune while he painted me with iodine, taking what I thought was his sweet old time about the whole process.
Suddenly, my water broke. For two glorious seconds, I felt absolutely no pain. And then...
There are no words for how I felt. Pain upon pain and sheer, bloody panic.
My sweet nurse gently reminded me, "You have to hold still, ok?" while I am the child from every horror movie, crawling up the walls like a human spider, with my head on backwards, yelling like a banshee, "I CAN'T! Must push NOW!!"
The anesthesiologist said, "Alright, sweetheart, just lie down." Sweet nurse said, "I'll go ahead and check you." There was no lying down, there was no sitting. There was only levitating on pain. My nurse did check me and actually sounded really surprised to find a baby's head.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, "You're at a ten and there's the head."
Shocker.
All the while I'm yelling over and over, "I have to push, I have to push, I have to push, I have to push!" They didn't even get the bed broken down. My doctor came in, told me to take a breath (seriously?) and then said, "I'm here, you can push." I did, and what flashed into my head in that haze of pain? There was no focus, there was no lamaze breathing, there was no guided meditation or rainbow relaxation or any of the hypno-birthing techniques I'd practiced religiously for the last three months.
There was only Sauron's Eye.
They say childbirth and babies are a miracle, and they are. But I think the real miracle is how one moment your body is splitting as wide as the Grand Canyon while something that feels like the size of Jupiter is trying to push itself out, but the next moment when that baby is finally out all that pain disappears the millisecond you see them.
So her birth was the most painful experience of my life, to date. But just like every woman says after she has a baby: Totally worth it. If there is a next time, though (don't count on it...), I'm going to numb the Shire before anything else comes out of the Hobbit hole.
Hopefully I didn't ruin Lord of the Rings for everyone.
