I Went a Whole Week Without Talking about Pet Sematary
Maybe my baby doesn't have the Shining after all.
Hello friends!
I don’t think I’m ever going to run out of recalled details from my birth story. I hope they’re more funny than disgusting. I knew I was going to slide into Mommy-bloggerhood and I regret nothing.
I wonder if hospitals like ours deliberately give first-time parents way too much autonomy of decisions so that some of us choose have second babies just to have a chance to redo our most embarrassing mistakes.
“If you have another child, at least you’ll know to get an episiotomy right away,” said the world’s best OB-GYN. She also tried to make me feel less guilty about spraying blood across her glasses by saying that another baby she delivered once blasted meconium into her mouth.
I knew better the first time. I was panning to get an episiotomy, but I guess I had one part epidural hubris and one part sudden fear of getting cut while knowing I was being cut.
One of the best moments, better than even the epidural, was when my husband appeared. I recognized his footsteps, and before I could look to see his shoes below the big pink curtain, I heard him call out. He came around the curtain and set down his big back pack and several heavy bags that we had packed and that I had set in the guest room of our house because I couldn’t carry a single one while I was having contractions.
“I brought your computer,” he said. “Do you want your computer now?”
I had been planning do without my computer for three days.
“You can watch videos to feel better.” No lies detected.
I tried explaining why his decision to pack my laptop was so helpful to my mental health.
“That author I like so much. I think I have the same mental illness he does, or similar. Like your mother has. I can’t stop thinking the same thought.”
I then tried to explain the horrifying incident that inspired Pet Sematary. Since this was all in my husband’s language, and the whole day of birth was a long demonstration of my shortcomings in communication, I don’t think I got the point across. I wanted to express that even though Stephen King succeeded in saving his son from running in front of a huge truck, (in my interpretation of his intro) he couldn’t stop thinking, but what if I hadn’t grabbed his coat? I related so hard to the constant imagining the worst, or regrets. What if I had come to the hospital at 4am? What if I had agreed right away to the episiotomy? It doesn’t matter that I know it’s irrational, until I talk about it or write about it. Once I sublimate it into conversation or art, it frees itself and floats away.
I talked to my husband, and I wrote, and I was able to unwind the worst thoughts. I was able to be present for my little tiny daughter.
My baby is home from the hospital and now, as everyone probably predicted, the entire family’s wild anxiety has been greatly alleviated. I’m trying very hard to identify as a mother, and it’s still just beyond my reach. How did we have a baby? We weren’t trying, and so many of our friends have been trying so hard, and some don’t even have the option of trying. That’s a separate rant for later.
We also found the probably cause of the baby’s jaundice.
“The baby is blood type A, so clearly the father is type A, too.”
“I’m type O,” said the father.
"Have you been tested? Have you ever donated blood? The mother is definitely type O.”
And that’s how we found out my husband is A+.
Also, that the chief doctor of pediatrics is a big ole’ nerd and I got to reminisce about the blood type facts I remember from high school biology. He wasn’t annoyed at all that I still couldn’t remember without prompting that it’s Rh factor that adds risk to a pregnancy, or that I said that folks here don’t have Rh- blood, when in fact there are people here with negative blood, but they’re really rare. I was somehow as excited about science as I was about holding my daughter for the first time in three days.
I’m still angry and embarrassed that I hesitated to get the episiotomy. I’m no longer regretful that I could have had a shorter recovery time and less risk. I’m mad that I could have said, “Make it so!” because, Star Trek.
We finally got to dramatically reveal the longed-for baby granddaughter to my mother-in-law. She found out about the baby shortly after the birth, but before the baby was discharged from the NICU. I think we made the right choice keeping the whole pregnancy a secret because—like all the rest of us—Grandma has persistent, intrusive thoughts that manifest in annoying ways that we are not very sympathetic about.
Here come the trauma rants and the sad stories. They have to be paywalled because as angry and willing to be petty as I am, I don’t want to unload the details of my #metoo in a public blog.
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