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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-10-09 12:58 pm (UTC)