Childbirth And Other Things

My babygirl is going to have a babygirl!!  How is that possible I ask you?  No, don't say it, I KNOW how, but really, how could that be???  It seems just yesterday that I held a screaming, blotchy, scrawny little girl in my arms who had really corny looking hair..............and we named her "Kendra."

But alas, tis true........my little girl, Kendra, is going to be a mother.  What does that say for her?  That she is a lovely young woman coming of age..........what does it say of me?..........THAT I'M STINKING OLD!  There!  I said it!  I'm old and I don't care, that's right.  I have accepted the fact that my thighs rub together, I have grown somewhat of a beard, and that certain parts that the good Lord put in certain places have........shall we say......shifted slightly.

The other day while Kendra and I chatted on the phone she began to ask me certain things about my labor and childbirth experiences with she and her two siblings.  As Dorothy, caught up in a Tornado, my mind was transported to 1983 when Zachary, my firstborn, came into this world.........and no, I wasn't in Kansas anymore.

It was June, 1983.  I lay in a skinny bed in a labor room at Memorial North Hospital, Modesto California.  My husband, Tim, stood watching the monitor which printed, on paper, the peaks and dips of each contraction.  Dressed in blue paper scrubs with a white mask covering his mouth and nose, he coached from the sidelines.  At one point after a particularly strong contraction, he patted me on the shoulder and said, "That one wasn't bad at all."  I wanted to scream at him that HE should try pushing something akin to a canned ham through the neck of a Pepsi bottle and then and only then could he judge when it was bad and when it wasn't!"  I wisely kept my counsel to myself.

And then, the pains were coming one on top of another and it was time to push.  I distinctly recall my head coming up off the pillow as I attempted to concentrate and do my breathing.  There, at the foot of my bed were my husband, my mother in law and my mom.....huddled together, looking at me, all of them doing my breathing along with me.  Heads bobbing with the rhythem, they looked like something from a Three Stooges movie.  Had both of my knees not been firmly planted on my shoulders, I would have pulled a "Moe" and slapped them ALL up the side of the head.

And then, finally, I held my beloved firstborn, a son, in my arms.  He had the most perfect cone head that I had ever seen.  His position while lying is my womb was one that caused his cone of a head to rest ever so lightly upon his left shoulder.  The doctors told us that the muscles and ligaments on the left side of his neck were shorter than those on the right, but that with time they would stretch and he would be fine.  I had nightmares of him viewing the world from an angle for the rest of his life........receiving his diploma, head on his shoulder, posing for family portraits with him placed strategically to capture his "better side," images of him repeating his wedding vows, head on shoulder.........on and on the nightmarish images went, but, alas, all was well and his head now rests upright.

"Did you breast feed?"  Kendra asks.  "Are you kidding?!"  I all but scream my answer.  "After hours of having my nether regions stretched to the four corners of the room and snapped back abruptly there was no way I was going to allow a very short, bald person to nom nom on my tata's!"  No way, not me!  God made those rubber nipples for a purpose!  To save mine!  Kendra then went on to ask if I had anything to help with the pain of labor.  At this, I had a vision of myself standing atop a majestic cliff, naked, my wild, fiery red hair blowing in the wind.  I raise my hands above my head, and my chin to the sky as I yell, "I am woman!!"  at the top of my lungs, for NO, I had three children with not one epidural.  And for that, pride burns in my chest.

Of course, hindsight is twenty twenty, and I instruct Kendra.............TAKE THE EPIDURAL!!

How else do I instruct my precious daughter in the ways of motherhood?  It is all trial and error, pride and joy, and yes, at times, heartache and disappointment.  But all in all, I wouldn't trade my babies with their corny hair, cone and lopsided heads for all the money in the world!  So you go girl!  Have that baby and let her Mimi revel in the knowledge that I get to love and spoil her minus the contractions, stretching, bags and sags, and I get to return her to her parents while I lay snug as a bug in a rug anticipating the next time I get to sniff her lotiony head.  :)