The Momoir Project

Anything but the C-word

I didn’t even want to consider a cesarean section, but the baby wasn’t budging. One of us had to call uncle.

By Nancy Vye

Published in the Globe and Mail, March 17, 2009

Hooked up to a half-dozen machines spitting out information in beeps and ticker tape, I waited to be told when my next contraction had started.

“Now!” the nurse shouted.

My dutiful husband counted to 10 - so slowly I thought he might have forgotten how - as I bore down like a contender for the strongest person alive, straining every last muscle in my body until I felt like my eardrums would burst.

After almost three hours, though, the baby wouldn’t budge. Over the past nine months, this child of mine had been rearranging organs like a feng shui master, but was now obstinately declaring squatter’s rights over my uterus. Equally determined, I refused to relent.

My eyes on the nurse, I awaited her progress report. “You’re doing really well,” she lied. “Let me get the doctor.”

All of a sudden receiving an epidural seemed like a bad idea. Surely if I had toughed it out and chosen to do this naturally I could at least feel myself push. Then my child could be born the way I expected. The way I wanted.

But now, with my body failing in its attempts at superhero strength, I worried about how much longer I could continue to battle.

The thought made my chest tighten. Turning to search the pea-green walls of my hospital room for answers, I silently prayed. Please, I begged, please, please, please, no one utter the C-word.

The mere notion sent me back with a shudder to Grade 9 religion class. Our very single and easily embarrassed male teacher was charged with the tormenting task of teaching 20 tittering 14-year-olds about the miracle of birth. He decided everything we needed to know about how babies are made could be learned from watching a dubbed Swedish film.

The low-budget movie began with beauties Ingrid and Eric at the beach in all their blond splendour, laughing and splashing in the sea. Cut to scene two, where Ingrid was suddenly nine months along. The absurdity of the story wasn’t lost on a room full of rowdy, know-it-all teenagers. We heckled our scarlet-faced teacher and mocked how little the film assumed we knew.

That was until the birthing scene began.

As if witnessing a catastrophic collision - unable to avert our eyes from the goriness - we watched the lens zoom in as the most intimate details of Ingrid spread across the screen. A serene voiceover calmly described the horrific scene while our faces contorted in tandem with Ingrid as an alien being burst from her vagina as if exiting a waterslide.

If that wasn’t traumatic enough, our omnipotent raconteur then graphically detailed the only possible alternative - the cesarean section.

Images of a shiny scalpel, bright lights and a nameless woman strapped to a metal slab flashed on the screen - straight from a Stephen King novel.

I left that class feeling numb, stunned. The only lesson I learned that day was abstinence. If there was one reason I didn’t have sex in high school, it was the Swedes.

I swallowed back resurfacing images of the real-life horror film. I would have this baby, but not by surgery. Not a chance.

The hospital room felt like it was shrinking. Four nurses, a doctor, a resident and my husband all focused on me, or more truthfully, on the baby hiding inside me. They were waiting for one of us to do something. One of us to call uncle.

Reviewing the ticker tape of my contractions the doctor turned to me. “We need to make a decision. Your baby’s heart rate is progressively dropping each time you push and is still too far up to use forceps or the vacuum. We really need to consider taking you into surgery now.”

But there’s still time, I pleaded. Like in the movies, just one more try was all I needed for my happy ending.

Begrudgingly, the doctor allowed me my Spielberg moment. Looking and sounding every bit the savage warrior, I pushed, summoning the furthest muscles in my big toes and pinky fingers to use every last drop of energy. After minutes that seemed like hours, my body collapsed onto the bed as I deliriously searched the many sets of eyes trained on me, waiting for the victorious high fives to start.

Nothing. Their expressions were frozen. Unmoving. Just like my child.

This offspring seemed to have inherited our combined stubbornness and tenacity. Apparently, what I wanted didn’t matter any more.

And then it dawned on me. It didn’t.

Like the climax of the after-school special, I finally understood this life lesson. Whether I liked it or not, my world had officially changed. This had never been about me.

A torrent of tears storming my cheeks, I turned to the doctor and nodded, unable to say the word.

Within the hour, a stranger cloaked in surgical garb rested my daughter on my chest, and I gasped as I gazed for the first time into her tiny, beautiful, flawless face.

Softly pressing my lips to her forehead, I realized there is nothing I wouldn’t do for her.

Written for The Momoir Project Toronto Writing Class