Birth Stories, Not the Usual Sort
Oct. 5th, 2007 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
porphyryI have this idea that while humans generally don’t fit neatly into categories, the human mind, nevertheless, seeks order—at least, mine does—and so I attempt to generalize sometimes about others in regard to thought or behavior. I have my own idea, for instance, that people are of two types: “thinkers” and “feelers”. This is not to suggest that people who feel don’t think, or that people who think don’t feel; nor is one mode superior to the other, but that overall a thinker will tend to look at situations rationally and not become overly emotional whereas a feeler will allow emotion to govern a situation.
Malkhos and I are for the most part thinkers. The experience of becoming parents was one that I thought might make me more emotional and perhaps him, too, but it didn’t quite turn out that way. During each pregnancy, for example, Malkhos never accompanied me to visits to the doctor, nor did I want him to—this notion of “bonding” strikes me as a bit overdone—you either want the child or you don’t; we had no baby showers (those, in my opinion, are for people who want everybody else to buy the things you ought to be buying yourself for the baby, to say nothing of the undignified, stupid games one might be subjected to at these types of gatherings); we didn’t buy the name books or the how-to books, etc. We adopted no parenting theories, and neither of us regarded the whole process as a “miracle.” It is a natural event and nothing more; why sentimentalize it? One time, we were at a bookstore and discovered, to our horror, that parents-to-be could buy a series of classical music CDs under titles such as “Baby Needs Bach” or “Baby Needs Mozart.” Malkhos nearly had a stroke.
“What kind of bullshit is that?” he exclaimed. “I’ll tell you what it is. What kind of a house isn’t already full of Bach CDs? But if you don’t have them for yourself, why would you want them for your children? It’s nothing other than kitsch! If it’s supposed to make the children smarter, as it claims on the label, then it indeed would not take much to make them smarter than such parents!” The pregnant women in the area quietly moved away, except me, having heard him expound on this kitsch-themed idea before.
As A.’s due date drew near, however, the subject of Malkhos’s presence for the delivery came up.
“Ancient Greek fathers never attended the births of their children,” Malkhos said. “That’s a modern concept. You know how I feel about modernity.”
“True,” I said. “If you don’t want to be there, you can wait in the waiting room. You can go to the bar and drink and smoke cigars like they used to show men doing in old movies. You could even pace around a bit for effect. I don’t want you frightening the medical staff with your analyses anyway.”
“You’ll harbor resentment against me for the rest of our lives if I’m not there,” he accused.
“No, I won’t,” I answered, with what I thought was honesty, but somehow that decided the matter that he would be there. I was mildly apprehensive because one never knows what Malkhos might say.
And so I went into labor with my water breaking at 3:00 in the morning.
“It’s a deluge!” Malkhos exclaimed. “Aprés moi, le deluge!” he cried, leaping out of bed, as if this were the time to quote Napoleon (or was it Louis XIV?) “Do you think it will stain the carpet?”
“I’ll worry about it later,” I said. “Will you take me to the hospital, please?”
And so we went. Everything progressed well and quickly, and A’s delivery drew near. It progressed so well, in fact, that A. crowned sooner than the doctor thought. The nurse checked me, saw A., and ran to get the doctor. Meanwhile, Malkhos examined the situation.
“Oh, my God! It’s his head!” he exclaimed.
“What did you think it would be?” I asked. “Something else?”
“What should I do?”
“Don’t do anything,” I replied.
“But his head’s half out! What if he falls out onto the floor? Should I leap around there in case I need to catch him?”
“I don’t think he’s going anywhere,” I said.
“No, wait—he’s gone back inside,” Malkhos said, looking relieved, and the doctor arrived.
And so A. was born. And Malkhos, true to his nature, said, upon laying his eyes for the first time on his son: “Ewww.”
“What does he look like?” I asked, tearing up a bit myself as I heard A’s first cries.
“He’s all bloody and slimy,” Malkhos said.
“Goddammit,” I bawled, still possessing enough energy to get aggravated. “What did you expect? That he’d come out dressed for the opera?” (After days of browbeating over the inappropriateness of the remark, Malkhos defended himself. “You asked what he looked like, but seem to have wanted to know how I felt about him. What a strange miscommunication.”)
Next, A. started screaming when they washed his eyes with an antibacterial solution. Malkhos told me and the nurse standing nearby, “Of course he’s screaming! He’s trying to say, ‘My mother does not have syphilis!’” The nurse looked askance at him, and I said, “He’s screaming because babies scream. He just left a nice, dark, quiet place for the world.”
As we held the baby before they took him to the nursery, Malkhos observed his son’s boyness. “Are you sure you want him circumcised?” he said. We must have had this conversation a dozen times after finding out A. was a boy. “Ancient Greek baby boys didn’t get circumcised. They would have thought that was crazy. There’s a well known vase painting showing Herakles massacring a hoard of Egyptians—the whole point is to show their huge, ugly, circumcised phalloi flopping about. They thought it hilarious.”
“I think you’re crazy,” I said. “He’s getting circumcised.”
Now we were parents, and life became a series of feeds, baths, and diaper changes. We suspended many of the activities of our old life—“researching, reading, writing, going to films, drinking, smoking, traveling, and fucking” Malkhos would sometimes say with a bit of nostalgia—but to his credit, I want to say now for the record, he metamorphosed into a wonderful, helpful father, and he did it willingly. He became better at swaddling a baby than I ever was, better than any Russian peasant mother: “You’ve got to wrap the baby more tightly so as to firmly pin the offending arm,” he’d instruct, waving his forearm to mimic. “If the baby’s arm comes out, he won’t calm down.”
When A. was about one-and-a-half years old, I became pregnant again. The months passed quickly and soon M.’s birth approached. When labor started this time, though, and we arrived at the hospital, things didn’t progress nearly so quickly. My labor kept stalling and wound up being twenty-three hours long. It wasn’t that unbearable, just slow, and of course Malkhos was there the whole time. I had warned him in advance that he needed to bring a book to keep himself amused (Borges, I think). He did pretty well until about two in the morning, three hours before M. was actually born.
By this time, I had been in labor for about twenty hours. I was tired; I was hungry; the pain was getting worse and worse, but I knew it couldn’t be much longer. As the hour passed and the contractions sped up and intensified, I was lying on my side, whimpering a bit from what seemed at the time like agony. I heard Malkhos chuckling in his recliner chair.
“What’s so fucking funny?” I asked, but you need to understand I had about been stretched to my limit by this time, fully understanding why sleep deprivation is used as a torture technique.
“That’s just what you sound like when we have sex,” Malkhos said, unable to suppress his mirth.
Now, I must confess, that comment undid the thinker in me and the feeler took over for about four minutes. I won’t repeat what I said here, but the whole scene ended with the nurse coming in to see if I were all right.
“I’d be all right,” I said, “If he weren’t here. It’s all his fault I’m going through this anyway.”
The nurse asked Malkhos if he’d like to go get some coffee, and he agreed.
Two hours later, the doctor arrived. “You’re almost fully dilated,” the doctor said. “But despite all your labor, she still hasn’t settled down to zero station, meaning her head isn’t resting on your cervix.”
“Now what?” I said.
“I could do a Caesarean,” he said. “Otherwise, you’ll have to work really hard to get her out. I can’t help get her out until her head is through your cervix.”
“What do you think?” I was truly bewildered, truly exhausted.
“I think you can do it,” he said, and I found the energy to do it.
Midway through, Malkhos commented, “It looks pretty strange to see the doctor’s hands up in you like that. He’s almost up to the elbow.”
“Please don’t embarrass me now,” I begged.
“At least he’s not using forceps,” Malkhos said. “Those things look like medieval torture devices.”
According to Malkhos, M. was “pulled out like the internal organs of a turkey, though not wrapped in a neat paper package” with much matter splashing into a large pan put down there for that purpose.
“Did you hear that disgusting splash?” Malkhos asked me, but she was born and I was relieved, so I let it pass.
And that is how Malkhos and I became parents. We won’t be having any more children. We were cured all right. Cue the Beethoven.
Malkhos and I are for the most part thinkers. The experience of becoming parents was one that I thought might make me more emotional and perhaps him, too, but it didn’t quite turn out that way. During each pregnancy, for example, Malkhos never accompanied me to visits to the doctor, nor did I want him to—this notion of “bonding” strikes me as a bit overdone—you either want the child or you don’t; we had no baby showers (those, in my opinion, are for people who want everybody else to buy the things you ought to be buying yourself for the baby, to say nothing of the undignified, stupid games one might be subjected to at these types of gatherings); we didn’t buy the name books or the how-to books, etc. We adopted no parenting theories, and neither of us regarded the whole process as a “miracle.” It is a natural event and nothing more; why sentimentalize it? One time, we were at a bookstore and discovered, to our horror, that parents-to-be could buy a series of classical music CDs under titles such as “Baby Needs Bach” or “Baby Needs Mozart.” Malkhos nearly had a stroke.
“What kind of bullshit is that?” he exclaimed. “I’ll tell you what it is. What kind of a house isn’t already full of Bach CDs? But if you don’t have them for yourself, why would you want them for your children? It’s nothing other than kitsch! If it’s supposed to make the children smarter, as it claims on the label, then it indeed would not take much to make them smarter than such parents!” The pregnant women in the area quietly moved away, except me, having heard him expound on this kitsch-themed idea before.
As A.’s due date drew near, however, the subject of Malkhos’s presence for the delivery came up.
“Ancient Greek fathers never attended the births of their children,” Malkhos said. “That’s a modern concept. You know how I feel about modernity.”
“True,” I said. “If you don’t want to be there, you can wait in the waiting room. You can go to the bar and drink and smoke cigars like they used to show men doing in old movies. You could even pace around a bit for effect. I don’t want you frightening the medical staff with your analyses anyway.”
“You’ll harbor resentment against me for the rest of our lives if I’m not there,” he accused.
“No, I won’t,” I answered, with what I thought was honesty, but somehow that decided the matter that he would be there. I was mildly apprehensive because one never knows what Malkhos might say.
And so I went into labor with my water breaking at 3:00 in the morning.
“It’s a deluge!” Malkhos exclaimed. “Aprés moi, le deluge!” he cried, leaping out of bed, as if this were the time to quote Napoleon (or was it Louis XIV?) “Do you think it will stain the carpet?”
“I’ll worry about it later,” I said. “Will you take me to the hospital, please?”
And so we went. Everything progressed well and quickly, and A’s delivery drew near. It progressed so well, in fact, that A. crowned sooner than the doctor thought. The nurse checked me, saw A., and ran to get the doctor. Meanwhile, Malkhos examined the situation.
“Oh, my God! It’s his head!” he exclaimed.
“What did you think it would be?” I asked. “Something else?”
“What should I do?”
“Don’t do anything,” I replied.
“But his head’s half out! What if he falls out onto the floor? Should I leap around there in case I need to catch him?”
“I don’t think he’s going anywhere,” I said.
“No, wait—he’s gone back inside,” Malkhos said, looking relieved, and the doctor arrived.
And so A. was born. And Malkhos, true to his nature, said, upon laying his eyes for the first time on his son: “Ewww.”
“What does he look like?” I asked, tearing up a bit myself as I heard A’s first cries.
“He’s all bloody and slimy,” Malkhos said.
“Goddammit,” I bawled, still possessing enough energy to get aggravated. “What did you expect? That he’d come out dressed for the opera?” (After days of browbeating over the inappropriateness of the remark, Malkhos defended himself. “You asked what he looked like, but seem to have wanted to know how I felt about him. What a strange miscommunication.”)
Next, A. started screaming when they washed his eyes with an antibacterial solution. Malkhos told me and the nurse standing nearby, “Of course he’s screaming! He’s trying to say, ‘My mother does not have syphilis!’” The nurse looked askance at him, and I said, “He’s screaming because babies scream. He just left a nice, dark, quiet place for the world.”
As we held the baby before they took him to the nursery, Malkhos observed his son’s boyness. “Are you sure you want him circumcised?” he said. We must have had this conversation a dozen times after finding out A. was a boy. “Ancient Greek baby boys didn’t get circumcised. They would have thought that was crazy. There’s a well known vase painting showing Herakles massacring a hoard of Egyptians—the whole point is to show their huge, ugly, circumcised phalloi flopping about. They thought it hilarious.”
“I think you’re crazy,” I said. “He’s getting circumcised.”
Now we were parents, and life became a series of feeds, baths, and diaper changes. We suspended many of the activities of our old life—“researching, reading, writing, going to films, drinking, smoking, traveling, and fucking” Malkhos would sometimes say with a bit of nostalgia—but to his credit, I want to say now for the record, he metamorphosed into a wonderful, helpful father, and he did it willingly. He became better at swaddling a baby than I ever was, better than any Russian peasant mother: “You’ve got to wrap the baby more tightly so as to firmly pin the offending arm,” he’d instruct, waving his forearm to mimic. “If the baby’s arm comes out, he won’t calm down.”
When A. was about one-and-a-half years old, I became pregnant again. The months passed quickly and soon M.’s birth approached. When labor started this time, though, and we arrived at the hospital, things didn’t progress nearly so quickly. My labor kept stalling and wound up being twenty-three hours long. It wasn’t that unbearable, just slow, and of course Malkhos was there the whole time. I had warned him in advance that he needed to bring a book to keep himself amused (Borges, I think). He did pretty well until about two in the morning, three hours before M. was actually born.
By this time, I had been in labor for about twenty hours. I was tired; I was hungry; the pain was getting worse and worse, but I knew it couldn’t be much longer. As the hour passed and the contractions sped up and intensified, I was lying on my side, whimpering a bit from what seemed at the time like agony. I heard Malkhos chuckling in his recliner chair.
“What’s so fucking funny?” I asked, but you need to understand I had about been stretched to my limit by this time, fully understanding why sleep deprivation is used as a torture technique.
“That’s just what you sound like when we have sex,” Malkhos said, unable to suppress his mirth.
Now, I must confess, that comment undid the thinker in me and the feeler took over for about four minutes. I won’t repeat what I said here, but the whole scene ended with the nurse coming in to see if I were all right.
“I’d be all right,” I said, “If he weren’t here. It’s all his fault I’m going through this anyway.”
The nurse asked Malkhos if he’d like to go get some coffee, and he agreed.
Two hours later, the doctor arrived. “You’re almost fully dilated,” the doctor said. “But despite all your labor, she still hasn’t settled down to zero station, meaning her head isn’t resting on your cervix.”
“Now what?” I said.
“I could do a Caesarean,” he said. “Otherwise, you’ll have to work really hard to get her out. I can’t help get her out until her head is through your cervix.”
“What do you think?” I was truly bewildered, truly exhausted.
“I think you can do it,” he said, and I found the energy to do it.
Midway through, Malkhos commented, “It looks pretty strange to see the doctor’s hands up in you like that. He’s almost up to the elbow.”
“Please don’t embarrass me now,” I begged.
“At least he’s not using forceps,” Malkhos said. “Those things look like medieval torture devices.”
According to Malkhos, M. was “pulled out like the internal organs of a turkey, though not wrapped in a neat paper package” with much matter splashing into a large pan put down there for that purpose.
“Did you hear that disgusting splash?” Malkhos asked me, but she was born and I was relieved, so I let it pass.
And that is how Malkhos and I became parents. We won’t be having any more children. We were cured all right. Cue the Beethoven.
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 08:42 am (UTC)We have a commercial classical music station over here called Classic fm which has produced a 2-CD set of music for babies. It seem that that your record-producers are trying to feed them on too narrow a diet. Here is the menu:
Disc One
1. Wiegenlied (Lullaby) Opus 49 No. 4-Brahms
2. Cantata No.156: Sinfonia-Bach
3. Gymnopedie No. 1-Satie
4. Intermezzo Removed (From Cavalleria Rusticana)-Mascagni
5. The Swan (From Carnival Of The Animals)-Saint-Saens
6. Piano Concerto No.20 In D Minor: 2nd movement-Mozart
7. Lisa Lan-Traditional
8. Touch Her Soft Lips And Part (From The Henry V Suite)-Walton
9. Lascia Ch'io Pianga (From Rinaldo)-Handel
10. Romance No. 2 In F Major-Beethoven
11. Cantique De Jean Racine Opus 11-Faure
12. Nocturne In Eb Major Opus 9 No. 2-Chopin
13. Variations On The St. Anthony Chorale: Theme-Brahms
14. Pie Jesu-Brunning
15. Concerto In D Minor For 2 Violins: 2nd Movement-Bach
16. Stargazer-Hawes
Disc Two
1. Carnival Of The Animals: Finale-Saint-Saens
2. The Marriage of Figaro: Overture-Mozart
3. Dance Of The Swans (From Swan Lake)-Tchaikovsky
4. Piano Sonata No. 11 In A Major: 3rd Movement ''Rondo Alla Turca''-Mozart
5. A Midsummer Night's Dream: Scherzo-Mendelssohn
6. Coronation March-Meyerbeer
7. Dance Of The Hours (From La Giaconda)-Ponchielli
8. Flight Of The Bumblebee-Rimsky-Korsakov
9. Petite Suite - Ballet-Debussy
10. Piano Quintet In A Major ''Trout'': 4th Movement-Schubert
11. English Folksongs Suite: 3rd Movement-Vaughan Williams
12. Concerto For 2 Violins In A Major RV.519: 3rd Movement-Vivaldi
13. Orchestral Suite No. 2 In B Minor: Badinerie-Bach
14. Waltz In Eb Major Opus 18 ''Grand Valse Brillante''-Chopin
15. Hoedown (From Rodeo)-Copland
16. Gold & Silver Waltz-Lehar
I approve of the Satie; Satie seems very suitable for some reason. But I'm not sure about the Cantique de Jean Racine. They actually rather give the game away in the blurb, which makes it clear enough that all this is really aimed at the parents:
'Classic Fm present their brand new collection of music for babies. This 32-track 2CD set is the perfect musical accompaniment for parents and their new arrivals. With classical music known to be both stimulating and calming, the excellent recordings selected here can be enjoyed whilst spending time with your baby or for adults to relax and unwind.
The CD booklet also includes useful top tips from Classic FM's resident doctor on how to care for your baby.'
(Would you have thought that a classical music station needs a resident doctor? And how can a doctor 'reside' at a radio station anyhow?)
They have carried out tests to find out if cows produce more (or perhaps better, I'm not sure) milk if classical music is played to them at milking-time, and Mozart apparently works very nicely. Not Bach, that is too intellectual for cows, and for babies too I should have thought. Can one divide composers into thinkers and feelers too?
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 01:38 pm (UTC)When I first went to graduate school I decided I would susbsist on the local radio and just 4 90 minute home-made cassetes, but even those were not this chopped up.
One of the items, I msut confess, on those cassets was another sort of kitsch I admit I found quite amusing. There evidentally exists a suite (if that is the right term) of classical pieces turned into popular dance music in the 1920s, and I was able to get a recording of one of them--the Tannhauser Two-Step--that a radio host named Garrison Keilor once had performed on his show.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 06:00 pm (UTC)Now, at times, Shostakovich makes me nervous because sometimes his pieces go in too many directions at once, so in my mind, he tends to be more emotional rather than orderly. This isn't to undermine his genius, but as I said, my mind loves order.
So naturally, if you've ever heard Phillip Glass's composition for Koyanisquatsi, it nearly drove me crazy. Perhaps because it's so minimalist.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-07 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 03:43 pm (UTC)I think one of our friends gave us one of those baby classical music CDs. It annoyed me slightly that they hadn't noticed the 500 classical CDs on clear display in our living room.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 05:23 pm (UTC)Plus, the advantage of preserving this is that so when the children get older, they can read it and petition Rome to begin the process of my canonization :)
As for the gift from your friends, your friends are your friends and they mean well. One thing Malkhos was adamant about was sports-themed baby clothes. When one of his oldest and best friends gave A. a little outfit with a St. Louis Cardinals (baseball team) theme, a note attached which read: "Let the indoctrination begin!", Malkhos took it in the spirit it was meant and was gracious about it.
Do you ever attend births in your line of healthcare work?
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-07 01:39 am (UTC)I wonder what "normal" people's children's births are like?
no subject
Date: 2007-10-07 09:56 pm (UTC)Part I
Part II
I didn't write the third because she's shy and probably wouldn't have appreciated it. But we had her at home too, and my husband also ended up delivering her, as the doctor was in the middle of another birth at the time. It all went very well, although I did yell out at the end, "It's like birthing a brick!"
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 06:56 pm (UTC)http://www.cirp.org/library/history/hodges2/hodges29.jpg
no subject
Date: 2007-10-07 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-08 09:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-09 12:57 pm (UTC)Part of my character flaws include a lack of competitive spirit and ambition. Quite simply, it's laziness. People who want to write for a living do it, and that's all. Obviously I don't want it enough.
Damn shame.
But who knows? Sometimes I compose paragraphs or lines of poetry in my head and I think, "I must write that down" and never do. Perhaps one day, though, I will.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-09 12:58 pm (UTC)