Two-by-Four

(Dear Cate, don't read this, thank you)

After Lillian's 8lb., 5oz. body was pulled from a 5-inch incision in my abdomen, the doctor examining me in recovery decided that she didn't like the amount of blood coming from my nether regions.

In fact, she stood between my leaden legs, and said, and I quote, "What is that?", with this crazy, scrunched up eyebrow look suggesting a head-scratching mystery.

I was feeling like a person who had just been operated on (i.e. like a pile of shit set aflame), otherwise I might have been able to come up with any number of comments in response.

"I'm sorry, doc. Have you ever tried to wax around a beach ball?"

"Didn't you learn about vaginas in med school?"

"I call it my pink taco!"

"Careful, it's got teeth!"

The she pulled something from it and immediately decided that I was a suspicious person and required a bit of torture to get me to divulge whatever prized information I had stewing about in my brain. Faster than I could say What the Fuck, I had several pairs of hands treating my belly as if it were some freshly risen dough in need of a serious beatdown.

And if I'd had any secrets, I would have lasted just about as long as Mancow did being waterboarded.



It wasn't a life and death situation. There was no talk of a trip back to the OR. I just had some excess bleeding and it needed to be stopped.

And they did it by treating my abdomen like a Tae-Bo accessory.

Whatever pain medication that allowed them to successfully separate my flesh and extract my child had most definitely worn off, and it felt just like you'd imagine aggressive palpitations on a just operated upon body to feel like (shit, set aflame, again).

It was the most ghastly pain I'd ever experienced. I would take a full 27 hours of my firstborn's labor before I'd go through that single minute again.

After I had time to fully process the medical staff's smackdown -- with a delightfully cherubic baby sucking away happily at my soon-to-be-ravaged nipple -- I was rather irritated with David for what I perceived as not coming to my aid.

I had indignantly decided that he should have reacted to my loud cries of pain by, at the very least, asking "What the fuck are you doing to my wife, motherfuckers?"

When I actually brought this up, like (no kidding) two and a half years later, he defensively explained that it was all he could to stay conscious. Too much thought and he would have hit the floor.

I should have realized this ahead of time, knowing full well about his difficulty merely having a vial of blood taken, but goodness that pain wiped clean any amount of sympathy I had for squeamishness. I was just so traumatized by the horrific sensation of multiple women punching my just-pieced-pack-together stomach. (Am I successfully imparting how painful this was?)

During childbirth class, Dave almost passed out several times. The most dramatic was when my midwife brought out what can only be described as a relief map of the dilating cervix. I remember him turning to me and kind of squishing up his face, as if willing the vision of gaping cervices from his head, in an attempt to stay upright and conscious. God, I love him.

And it was pretty impossible to look at, even for me. I can watch a surgery on TV with no problem, but the representation of how my lady bits are supposed to look in order for a baby to emerge was just grotesque. 10 looked impossible. (Mine stopped at a ladylike 4, simply refusing to go no further.)

Also a problem was the discussion of vaginal tearing, and really, who can fault him for that. I just kind of la-la-laed through that part, trying to conduct a magical thinking experiment in which my vagina escaped unscathed from the peril of an emerging baby head. La la la la I can't hear you. My vagina is totally gonna be fine, la la la.

Sometimes I have trouble believing that all this happened to me. That I survived these two gigantic events and walked away with two gorgeous babies. But contrary to popular mother-speak, I never forgot the pain. I don't think I ever could. If one was given an ice cream cone after being smacked in the gourd with a two-by-four, one might be excited to have the cone by probably won't forget that their head hurt. Ya know? I know, this example doesn't exactly fit here, so sue me.

(I have no idea why I'm thinking about this, but I am. Now the kids are back from Home Depot with their father, who apparently also stopped at the beer store. So the weekend begins. Happy 4th everyone!)