Kelly, on the other hand, had long ago announced her intention to get her epidural right away—in the hospital parking lot, if possible—and none of Becky’s facts and figures and offer to loan her a videotape of women in Belize giving birth without any medication while they squatted in rope hammocks they’d woven themselves had changed her mind. Kelly’s own mother, Kelly explained, had simply disappeared in the middle of the night five times and come back a day or two later with a deflated belly and a brand-new little bundle of joy. No muss, no fuss, no pain that Kelly had seen, and that was just what she wanted for herself.
“Let’s get this over with,” Becky said, getting slowly to her feet. They started their laps around the park. Kelly pumped her arms vigorously and lifted her knees high. Becky tended to amble and to stop every few minutes to readjust her ponytail. Ayinde kept her eyes on Julian, sleeping in his stroller, and had almost fallen twice because of it.
“I can’t stand this anymore,” Kelly groaned. “Do you know I’m so miserable I actually thought about having sex, just to see if it would get things going?”
“Oh, no,” said Becky. “Not sex!”
Kelly looked at her. “Are you having sex?”
“Well, sometimes,” Becky said. “You know. When there’s nothing good on cable.”
“I just don’t see why they can’t induce me. Or give me a C-section. That would be ideal,” said Kelly, pumping her arms even harder as they rounded the corner on Nineteenth Street, passing a trio of art students carrying portfolios. She waved away the cigarette smoke. “I hate waiting.”
“You know, statistically, the average first pregnancy lasts anywhere from seven to ten days past the medical establishment’s arbitrary forty-week deadline,” Becky said. “I’m forty-one weeks tomorrow, but you don’t see me complaining. And a C-section’s major surgery. There are risks, you know.” She nodded, looking satisfied at having worked another natural-childbirth nugget into the conversation, and glared at a pair of joggers who’d brushed a little too close to her shoulder as they completed another lap. “Are we done yet?”
Kelly shook her head. “Once more around the park,” she said. “How are things going with Julian?”
“Wonderful,” Ayinde said reflexively. She rolled her shoulders, readjusting her grip on the stroller’s padded handlebar, and thought that “Wonderful” was the only answer anyone really wanted to hear from a new mother. The truth was, caring for a newborn was infinitely more demanding than she’d imagined. The baby needed her all the time, and whenever she started to do something—check her e-mail, take a shower, look at a magazine, take a nap—his cries would call her back, and he’d need his diaper changed or he’d need to nurse, which he did at a rate of what felt like once every thirty minutes.
Richard had watched it all with increasing skepticism. “You don’t need to work so hard,” he told her the night before, when she’d left the table after three bites of dinner to nurse the baby on the living-room couch. “We can get that baby nurse to come back.”
Ayinde had told him no. In her view, the only women who were entitled to pay someone else to care for their children were working women. She had no job except for the baby, and she’d been good at every job she ever had. It pained her to think of admitting that she couldn’t handle Julian by herself. “We’re fine,” she’d told Richard. “We’re fine,” she told her friends, as they completed another lap. She reached down to reattach Julian’s teddy bear wrist rattle. “Have either of you ever heard of a book called
Baby Success
?”
“Oh, absolutely!” Kelly said.
“That’s the one that says you’re supposed to have your baby on a schedule, right?” Becky asked. She winced and stopped to twist from side to side. “Cramp,” she explained, as Kelly high-stepped in place.
“That’s the one. My mother sent it,” Ayinde said.
“I looked at it in the bookstore. It sounded kind of rigid,” Becky said. “I mean, I agree with the scheduling idea in principle, but I like the idea of a morning nap and an afternoon nap instead of a nap every day at 9:15 and 3:32. And, did you get to the chapter on working mothers?”
Ayinde had. “Back to Work?” the chapter was entitled, with the question mark built right in. Priscilla Prewitt, unsurprisingly, was not a fan.
Before you head back to the salt mines, think carefully of the consequences of your choice,
she wrote.
Babies are meant to love their mothers and to be cared for by their mothers—it’s basic biology, darlings, and neither feminism nor daddy’s good intentions can fight it. Work if you must, but don’t kid yourself. Remember that the woman you bring into your house to love your dumpling is going to get some of the hugs, some of the smiles, some of the sweet little giggles—in short, some of the love—that any baby would rather give to Mom.
“She makes it sound like you’re a horrible person if you leave your baby with a sitter for the afternoon, and you’re about two steps away from a psycho killer if you hire a nanny. But some women have to work,” Becky said, as they started walking again. “Like me.”
“Do you really have to?” asked Kelly.
“Well, I don’t think we’d starve if I didn’t. But I love what I do. I don’t know how I’ll feel after the baby comes, but for now, working three days a week sounds like it’ll give me a nice balance.”
“What will you do with the baby?” Kelly asked.
“Day care,” said Becky. “Andrew’s hospital has on-site day care that a bunch of the doctors use. I’ll be with her in the morning, drop her off at noon, and Andrew will take her home if he’s done before I am—ha, ha, like that ever happens. What’ll probably happen is I’ll pick her up when I’m done working. But he’ll be nearby. I feel good about that.” She looked at Ayinde and Kelly. “You guys are staying home, right?”
Ayinde nodded. Kelly didn’t. “I was going to,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well.” She looked down at her sneakers, the bows perfectly tied, as they rounded the corner again. “Steve’s decided to make a career transition. He’ll take paternity leave once the baby comes, and probably I’ll go back to work until he finds something. But I’m sure it won’t take long,” Kelly said. She flipped her ponytail and wiped a trickle of sweat off her cheek.
“Are you okay?” Becky asked.
“Oh, sure! I’m fine!” Kelly said.
Ayinde took a deep breath. She didn’t want to discourage them or tell them what it was really like at home with a new baby, but she couldn’t keep from remembering something Lolo had told her about her own infancy, an anecdote her mother liked to break out at cocktail parties. “That baby cried and cried so much her first week home, I swear, if someone had shown up at my front door—some normal-looking person, mind you—and promised me they’d give her a good home, I would have handed her over in a minute!” The guests would laugh, as if Lolo was kidding. Ayinde wasn’t so sure. After almost three months with Julian, her lovely little boy who seemed constitutionally incapable of sleeping for more than two hours or not crying for longer than one, she was starting to understand what her mother had meant and why Lolo had been able to hand her daughter over to Serena at six weeks. Serena was the one who’d sung Ayinde lullabyes, who’d cut the crusts off her sandwich, given her baths, and comforted her the day the mean girls had pushed her into the boys’ room. That was the kind of mother she wanted to be (except for the part about taking the train back to Queens every night, to be with her own children, the way Serena had). “You’re both going to be wonderful mothers.”
“I hope so,” Kelly muttered, rubbing her hands on her belly. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” She looked at her watch again, then over at Becky, who wiped her forehead and said that it was time for gelato.
Becky peered over her belly at Dr. Mendlow as he examined her the next morning. “Anything doing?” She was forty-one weeks and four days pregnant, and even though she’d been telling everyone that her baby would come when she was ready and that patience was a virtue, the truth was she was getting a little desperate.
There had to be something doing by now,
she thought.
People didn’t just stay pregnant forever.
Dr. Mendlow pulled off his gloves and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Becky, but the head’s still up; you’re still not dilated or effaced at all.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself not to start crying before she’d taken her feet out of the stirrups.
“That’s the bad news,” the doctor said. “The good news is, you had a nonstress test this morning, and the heart rate’s still perfect, and the amniotic fluid looks fine.”
“So can’t I just wait?”
He pulled up a wheeled stool and sat down on it as she sat up, holding the gown closed over her chest. “I’m sure from all the reading you’ve done you know that the risks of having something go wrong with the birth, or the baby, increase after forty-two weeks.”
She nodded. Even her holistic, all-natural, have-
your-baby-at-home-or-in-a-nearby-field books had acknowledged that that much was true. She hadn’t paid much attention at the time, though. She’d just assumed that she wouldn’t have that problem, that as a result of her good intentions and strenuous preparation, her baby would be born not only on time but in a manner that was just what she’d planned for and dreamed of. “So what do we do now?”
Dr. Mendlow flipped a few pages in her chart. “Given that we’re this far along, and given what the last ultrasound told us about the size of the baby’s head, my recommendation would be a C-section.”
Becky buried her face in her hands. Dr. Mendlow touched her shoulder gently.
“I know this isn’t what you wanted,” he said. He’d been listening to Becky talk about natural childbirth almost from the day she’d first come to see him, and he was completely supportive. “But pregnancy’s a balance between the wishes of the parents—the mother, really—and what’s going to be safest for the baby.” He wheeled the stool over to the wall and consulted a small calendar taped to it. “How does tomorrow sound for a birthday?”
“Can I think about it?”
“Sure. Think,” Dr. Mendlow said, getting to his feet. “Just don’t think too long. I’m going to go ahead and pencil you in. Let me know by five.”
“Okay,” Becky said, wiping tears off her cheeks. “Okay.”
She called Andrew on his cell phone and met him in the cafeteria for lunch. “I know you must be disappointed,” he said, passing her handfuls of flimsy paper napkins so she could wipe her eyes. “But Dr. Mendlow knows how strongly you feel, and he wouldn’t be advising this if he didn’t have very good reasons.”
“I just feel like such a failure,” Becky wept.
“You shouldn’t,” Andrew told her. “It’s just a case of knowledge outstripping evolution. We know more about good nutrition and not smoking and drinking than any other generation. So the babies are getting bigger, and the moms aren’t.”
“Fine,” Becky sniffled. She knew he understood how she’d dreamed about the birth; how she’d read a book that talked about how women needed to be brave and strong, to be warriors for their babies; how she wanted to be a warrior for her daughter, laboring in water, on her hands and knees, squatting, stretching, doing whatever it took, working in harmony with her baby until her daughter had made her way into the world. And now here she was, facing exactly the kind of birth she didn’t want—a cold, sterile operating room, bright lights and surgical scrubs, nothing gentle or peaceful or meaningful about it.
She walked home slowly along the heat-sticky pavement. She called her mother, who told her that she was leaving for the airport immediately and she’d be there late the next morning. She called Kelly, who tried and only partially succeeded in not sounding envious, and Ayinde, who dropped the phone twice in the course of a five-minute conversation because she didn’t want to put Julian down even for an instant. “In Guatemala, the women carry their babies constantly,” Ayinde said. “And there’s lots of benefits to it. Bonding and all.”
“Whatever you say,” Becky said, and Ayinde had laughed.
“No, it’s not whatever I say, it’s whatever
Baby Success!
says. Call us as soon as you can.”
Becky said that she would. Then she called Sarah to tell her that her doula services wouldn’t be required, and made a reservation for an early dinner at her favorite sushi place. She hadn’t eaten sushi during her entire pregnancy, but now, what did it matter? The baby was practically in nursery school, and a few slices of raw tuna weren’t going to hurt.
Ow.
She rolled over, grimacing, and looked at the clock. It was three in the morning, and her stomach was killing her. She closed her eyes. Her mother would be there in nine hours; she’d be having her C-section…no, she thought, reframing the statement the way her books had taught her, she’d be having her baby in less than twelve hours. She tried to breath deeply, listening to Andrew’s raspy exhales, concentrating on her baby.
Ow!
Okay,
she thought, bunching a pillow underneath her head. It was 3:10 and, clearly, the sushi had been a mistake. “Andrew?” she whispered.
Without opening his eyes or even seeming to wake up at all, her husband reached over to the bedside table, groped unerringly for the antacids with one long-fingered hand, and tossed them across the quilt. Becky chomped two and closed her eyes again. At the ultrasound the day before, they’d said her baby looked to be in the nine-and-a-half-pound to ten-pound range, which meant that the size Newborn clothes she’d bought and stashed at Sarah’s house probably weren’t going to do her any good. She wondered if she could return them. Kelly would know. Maybe she’d even want to take them back herself. It would be something to keep her busy while she waited and…
Ow!
She looked at the clock again—3:20. “Andrew?” she whispered again. Her husband’s hand spidered out from underneath the sheets and started groping on the bedside table again. “No, no, wake up,” she said. “I think I’m in labor!”
He blinked at her, then pulled on his glasses. “Seriously?”
“I just had three contractions in a row, ten minutes apart.”
“Huh,” he said and yawned.
“Huh? Is that all you’ve got to say?” She maneuvered herself upright, reached across him, and called Dr. Mendlow’s service.
Press one for an appointment, two for a referral or a prescription refill, three if you are a patient in labor…
“I’m finally getting to press three!” she announced.
“What?”
She shook her head, giving the answering service her name and her number. Then she eased herself out of the bed and lifted her suitcase onto the mattress. “Nightgowns, pajamas, book,” she said out loud.
“I’m not sure you’re going to get a lot of reading done,” said Andrew.
The telephone rang. Andrew handed it over. “Dr. Mendlow?” Becky said. But it wasn’t Dr. Mendlow; it was Dr. Fisher, his older, grumpier colleague. Becky had seen Dr. Fisher once, at her three-month visit, when Dr. Mendlow had been called away for a delivery. Dr. Fisher had completely ruined her day by looking revolted as he’d palpated her belly. “Ever tried Weight Watchers?” he asked when her feet were in the stirrups. And he hadn’t so much as cracked a smile when Becky had blinked at him and asked, breathlessly, “What’s that?”
“I’m having regular contractions,” Becky said.
“Dr. Mendlow’s notes said we’d decided on a C-section,” Dr. Fisher said.
“Well, that had been my decision,” Becky said, hitting the
had
and
my
with equal emphasis. “But now that I’m in labor, I’d like to go back to my birth plan and give natural childbirth a shot.”
“If you want to try it, that’s fine,” he said in an
It’s your funeral
tone. “Come on in when your contractions are four minutes apart…”
“…one minute long, for over an hour.”
“You got it,” he said and hung up the phone.
Becky’s mother, dressed in a light-blue velour warm-up suit and pristine white sneakers, stared as she saw her daughter and her son-in-law beside the baggage carousel. “What are you doing here?” she asked Becky, letting go of her suitcase and grabbing for Becky’s hands. “Why aren’t you in the hospital?”
“I’m in labor,” Becky said.
Her mother’s eyes darted around, taking in the crowds of travelers dragging suitcases and the uniformed limousine drivers holding placards with names written on them. “You’re in labor here?” She looked at Andrew. “Is that safe?”
“It’s early labor. It’s fine,” Becky said, leading her mother to the car, where she’d already packed her aromatherapy oils, relaxation tapes, a dog-eared copy of
Birthing from Within
and Naomi Wolf’s
Misconceptions
for inspiration. “There’s no reason for me to be in the hospital yet.”
“But…but…” Her mother looked past Becky at Andrew. “What about the C-section?”
“We’re going to give vaginal delivery a shot,” Andrew said. Edith Rothstein flinched—whether from the idea of her daughter in labor, walking around in public, or her son-in-law saying
vaginal,
Becky wasn’t sure.
“It’s okay,” Becky told her, as Andrew started driving. “Really. I heard the baby’s heartbeat on the monitor yesterday, and it’s fine. Ooh, ooh, contraction.” She closed her eyes and swayed slowly back and forth, breathing, picturing the warm sand of a beach, hearing the waves roll in, trying not to hear her mother muttering what sounded like
This is crazy
underneath her breath.
“So you’re just going to stay here?” Edith asked incredulously once they were back in the house and Becky had installed herself on top of her inflatable birth ball. Edith’s pale-blue eyes widened. “You’re not going to have the baby here, are you?”
“No, Mom,” Becky said patiently. “But I’m not going to the hospital yet.”
Her mother shook her head and headed for the stairs and the kitchen, where she’d probably start in on rearranging Becky’s spice rack.
Andrew put Edith’s suitcase in the closet. Then he knelt down and rubbed Becky’s shoulders. “I’m so proud that you want to do it this way,” he said. “Are you feeling all right?”
“I’m feeling great,” Becky said, leaning her head against his chest. “But I know it’s still early.” She squeezed his hand. “Stay with me, okay?”
“I wouldn’t leave for anything,” he said.
Two long baths, one CD’s worth of whale songs, and twelve hours’ worth of on-and-off contractions later, Dr. Mendlow finally called. “Why don’t you stop on in, let us have a look?” he said, so casually that he could have been suggesting joining him for a cup of coffee.
Fifteen minutes later, just before ten o’clock at night, they were in triage.
“Hmm,” said the nurse, looking from Becky to the narrow bed in triage and back to Becky again.
“You all need some BIG GIRL beds!” Becky announced and hoisted herself aboard. Today of all days she was not going to let anyone make her feel ashamed about her size.
The nurse scratched her chin and wandered away. Becky closed her eyes and blew out a great frustrated breath.
“You’re doing fine,” Andrew said.
“I’m tired,” said Becky, as the nurse reappeared and tried to wrestle a too-small blood pressure cuff around Becky’s upper arm.
A resident came in to examine her. “Three centimeters,” she announced.
Becky turned to Andrew. “Three? THREE?!? That can’t be right,” she said, looking past the mound of her belly to the bored resident. “Can you check again, please? I’ve been in labor since three o’clock this morning.”
The resident pursed her lips and put her hand back. “Three,” she said.
Shit,
thought Becky. After all that time, she’d harbored the secret dream that she’d be more along the lines of eight or nine centimeters dilated and ready to push.
“Do you want to go back home?” asked Andrew.
Becky shook her head. “Can’t do it,” she said. “My mother’s about to have a nervous breakdown. Let’s just get a room already.”
“Should I get Sarah to come?”
“Only if she’s coming on a bus full of morphine,” Becky said and tried to smile. “Sure. Go call her.” She raised her voice and called to the nurse. “Hey, me and my crappy three-centimeters-dilated cervix would like to be admitted.”
“I’ll alert the media,” the nurse called back.
An hour later, which was forty-five minutes longer than it had taken with Ayinde, Becky and Andrew were in their room.
“Did you ever think about playing professional basketball? Because I’ve noticed that it really improves the service around here,” Becky said, plopping down on the rocking chair, trying not to notice the way it pinched at her hips, and rocking back and forth in preparation for the next contraction.
Andrew shook his head. “Want me to call your mom?”
“Tell her we’ve been admitted, but tell her not to come yet,” Becky said. “I don’t want her sitting in a waiting room all night. She really would have a nervous breakdown. At least at our house there’s stuff for her to organize.”
He nodded, then cleared his throat. “Can I call my mom?”
“She knows I’m in labor, right?”
Andrew nodded. From his silence, she could guess exactly what Mimi’s opinion of Becky opting for labor rather than the scheduled C-section had been. “Let’s just call her once the baby’s here, okay?”
Andrew frowned at her.
“Oh, don’t make the pouty face,” Becky said. “That was the plan, right?”
“It’s just that it’s a happy occasion,” Andrew said. “I feel bad that we’re not letting my mother be a part of it.”
“If she was capable of acting like a normal human being,” Becky began, before a contraction interrupted her. A good thing, too. Andrew looked miserable every time Becky complained about his mother, which, she had to admit, happened more than she would have liked every time the subject of Mimi came up. “Look,” she said, once the contraction had eased off. “She’s a little anxious, as you know, and I just think it would be better for me—better for the labor, better for the baby—if I didn’t have to worry about her being here. As soon as the baby comes, call away, but for now, I want this to be just the two of us. Well, the two of us, and Sarah. And the baby.” She stared down bleakly at her belly. “Soon, I hope.”