This gorgeous floating paradise.
On a chance visit to Dr. Matheson, I am just feeling a little weird — no way to explain it really. He decides to check the baby on the fetal monitor. It’s morning. He comes and goes in his usual casual way — the most natural thing in the world — but when he looks at the tape he seems for the first time a little concerned. He says softly that the baby is “not responsive,” and that I need to go immediately to Saint Vincent’s for a sonogram. Count, by the way, on staying, he says.
This child who has never given me even one day of worry. I balk at the news.
A most awful man does the sonogram. Refusing to answer our questions, just staring at the screen, telling us nothing except the baby does not seem to be moving. I drink orange juice to try to get a reaction from her. I move from side to side. He does not speak but in a murmur, and when Helen begs him to repeat himself, he does not. I hate him. Have you felt the baby move in the last few days? I wrack my brains. Yes. When? Yes, I am sure. But not today.
What we learn finally through Dr. M. and Carodean, the maternity nurse, is that there was no respiration, no muscle tone, no movement (they say it flatly, matter of factly) on the sonogram. In this place of healthy babies and faith. The pregnancy must be induced, the baby possibly in trouble. I am shocked. I have not suspected a single thing wrong. Have felt only supreme well-being. Think of my little sister again, about to die on a day I was happy and thought nothing could go wrong. I am calm and hysterical at the same time. I still know she is charmed and all is all right, but the news jars and grates so severely against what I know is true that it makes me doubt everything — every instinct, every hope, every trust.
Dr. M. tries to reassure. Says we will watch for any distress. He explains that some babies simply cannot bear the stress of being born. I will be hooked up to the fetal monitor for the entire labor. I must trust him. There are few options. A C-section can be done if absolutely necessary — and if it will be better for the baby I am ready to have it done right now — but Dr. M. is reserved. We will watch. We will wait and see.
Later we will learn that she scored a four of a possible ten points on her biophysical profile and that this indicated she may not be able to withstand the trauma of labor. All of a sudden we are in the middle of this thing. I must check into the hospital and labor must be induced. I have Helen ask every person we see what the four might mean: the man who mops the floor, the man who rents the TVs, every nurse, every intern. Oh, for God’s sake, she says. She is acting casual in that way that makes me know she is very, very nervous.
no movement
no tone
no respiration
Cervadil to ripen the cervix — it is applied Monday at noon and it starts to act just before midnight. Another interval of just waiting. In the interim I put on my hospital gown — the gown Gary wore while he was dying. I visit with my parents who have come to offer some moral support (I do not tell them about the four), wait for Helen to come with all the props: CD player, fans, lollipops, three kinds of lip balm, plastic slippers for the shower. There will be no labor in the shower — I am on the monitor all the time. It prints out its news — there’s the baby’s heartbeat. Weird to be scribbling in this book right now. I cannot believe something might be really wrong. This perfect child. I cannot think it.
Cervix in Latin is neck.
This life preserver of words.
Cervadil sometimes causes labor to start.
Carodean, my nurse — she must have been named for her parents.
I can’t keep this record up anymore, though. I need now simply to concentrate.
A night of medium contractions, apparently. It hurts, but not like crazy. Helen sleeps. I let her. I watch the fetal monitor as the night progresses and the pain steadily grows. The baby seems to be doing OK, Dr. Matheson says, but “not great.” The fear and sorrow — the strangeness of all this — the pain in comparison feels small, though it grows. One line monitors her heart, the other my contractions. I will watch the contraction graphs through the whole labor. The lines are mild for a long time and then later begin to spell greater things. I see in the curves the hills of southern France. Or sometimes the rounded mountains of the Catskills — my view from a house I once loved. Still love. Time collapsed now. That is later though. This is all being told afterward now, recalled here, as I could not, did not want to write through this. I just wanted to be there. Attentive to all that was happening. Later on the graph I would see Mont St. Victoire. And then I left this world.
She gallops. In the early Germanic languages Rose meant horse. Rose Chloe: Horse, blooming. A star on her forehead. Her gal loping heart hooked up all the time to the fetal monitor. Don’t go anywhere except to the bathroom, they tell me. And where do you think you’re going? they say when I take us off for a little trot. Put your belt back on. The belt that monitors heartbeat and contractions. I promise you we will be free again.
Her tiny heart tapping, tapping.
Helen is upset I can tell but remains strong and relatively calm. Her nervousness manifests itself in the desire for ice cream at 3 A.M., which I will not let her go get, and her inability through the night to stay awake. Sleep always her means of escape. I let her sleep through some of it — sitting up in a chair in room eight on the ninth floor of Saint Vincent’s — the labor and delivery wing. Waves of pain — I ride them into day. There’s not much moving around as I must stay hooked up. None of the intricate ways of making it through labor, taking showers, sitting on medicine balls and the like, that we practiced. The hope is that the Cervadil will do the trick and I will not have to go on to the Pitocin, or Pit as they call it, or Pit Bull as I will come to know it. A ferocious thing. The hope is that it will not be necessary — though I’m not sure anyone really believes this but me. In the morning, sometime around six, they come looking for a vein for an IV to hydrate me — that’s sounds nice, but no vein will hold. Checking the so-called vital signs again and again.
Temperature, blood pressure. For nine months my blood pressure has maintained a cool 100 over 70. Four times now the veins collapse. Time to call for the needle man. I play piano music the whole time on my CD player. The human voice too shrill to listen to.
Finally the magic fingers of the anesthesiologist arrive to put in the water IV and I am afloat. Dr. M. arrives shortly after and announces I am two centimeters dilated and 80 percent effaced. Two centimeters is not a whole lot — we need ten to be born. I will have to have the Pitocin. The baby must come out. I am vaguely troubled by his tone, but I am protected now, filled with fluid, completely high on what is about to happen, on the edge of something clearly so amazing. Such portent, such anticipation, as I have never felt. I feel ready for anything.
At 8 A.M. the Pitocin is introduced. Before that Carodean, my great nurse who thank God is back after being away all night, tells me I should take this time to beautify a little. Wash up, brush my teeth and hair, whatever I like. I don’t like the sound of it. I remember this now from the childbirth classes This is the “collecting yourself” moment before the Pitocin begins to kick in. Time to, as they say, “regroup.” It’s going to be a bumpy ride. Somehow they are able to convey this to me without saying it straight out. Good luck. Are you ready? I am ready.