And the Democrats stage yet
another opportunity for Trump to cherry-pick nasty comments for the upcoming election with the disclaimer,
Hey! I didn’t say it! A fellow Democrat said it!Three debates—
maybe—are all the Democrats need.
Twelve debates is suicide.
Honestly. I do not understand how the DNC powers that be can be so tone deaf to how badly it plays to the majority of Americans when Democrats knock each another.
It’s like they
want to lose in 2020.
And maybe they do.
###
Work blitzkrieg continues.
Bitchy mood continues.
Yesterday, I was beset by flashes of a particular stretch of the 580 freeway that I drove every day on my way to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, which was the last place I worked as a nurse.
The memories are really smudgy. As if I’m seeing those highway loops from above—which, of course, I never did.
Perhaps connected to RTT’s upcoming birthday?
Because while I was working at Oak Knoll, I got pregnant with RTT.
I also had a
miscarriage while I was working at Oak Knoll. The
timing of that miscarriage and RTT’s subsequent birth have always been a bit of a mystery.
###
I didn’t
know I was pregnant with RTT until I was about five months along in the pregnancy. Willful not knowing? Maybe. But I wasn’t gaining weight. And the D&C I’d had at Kaiser after I started gushing blood and barreling over with severe cramps one day on Oak Knoll’s well baby ward had made my periods very sporadic.
Finally, when I missed two periods in a row, I went to see a doctor.
I thought I might be going through premature menopause.
The kindly doctor smiled. “Well. We can run some tests. But as long as you’re here, let’s do a Pap smear.”
I climbed up on the table, stuck my feet in the stirrups, assumed the position.
The kindly doctor sank down between my legs.
And emerged a few seconds with a strange expression on his face.
“Well, it’s not premature menopause,” he said.
“Is it
cancer?” I screamed. “It’s okay! You don’t have to beat around the bush!” (In retrospect, a most unfortunate metaphor.)
“You’re pregnant,” said the doctor.
Pregnant cervices are a very distinctive grapey color. That’s how he knew.
Since the pregnancy was confirmed so far after its onset, my due date had to be determined by the size of the fetus. That meant I really didn’t
have a due date. I’d give birth
some time. Probably in mid-October.
By this date 25 years ago, I was the size of a beached whale.
Really uncomfortable.
My cervix remained undilated though the baby’s head had engaged.
I desperately wanted to go into labor and tried
everything I could think of—orgasms, chili peppers, raspberry tea. B and I even went for a long walk around Lake Merritt, which was the only exercise I was capable of at that point.
I
think my OB may have finally decided to induce me on October 19.
Think.
I honestly can’t remember.
Booter had wanted to be a birthing coach, but poor Booter is a fastidious, maidenly sort, and she got incredibly squicked by the attendant birthing activities and had to leave before an hour was up.
I’d decided to have a natural childbirth.
With Max, I’d had an epidural, and the result of that epidural was that I could not push. (The labor had been ridiculously long anyway, like 34 hours—I couldn’t believe they weren’t giving me a C-section.) They’d ended up using a vacuum suction device to dislodge him from the birth canal with the result that he was born with a huge hematoma on his head. I think Max must have had a bad headache for the first two weeks of his life; he was really fussy.
I was determined this would not happen to my second child.
###
So. Natural childbirth.
It hurts.
A
lot.
In fact, nothing can prepare you for the pain of natural childbirth.
That ridiculous Lamaze breathing?
Fuggeabout it. It does
nothing.
The pain was like being an animal abandoned on the dark side of the moon. I howled.
And
Ben, who cradled me the entire time I was in labor, threw back his head and howled, too.
You know what?
That
helped.
Immensely. I didn’t feel so
alone.
I also had a super OB nurse who kept doing perineal massage so that I didn’t tear when Robin was finally delivered. With Max, I’d had quite a sizeable episiotomy. I actually had to relearn how to have orgasms after that episiotomy; it was such a dramatic rearrangement of my intimate anatomy.
(I’ve never read anything about having to relearn orgasm after an episiotomy, so I have to believe that this is yet another topic which male-dominated medical science willfully ignores. An awful lot of women have episiotomies, and I can’t believe I’m the only woman whose sexual responses were affected by one.)
I will say that for all the unreal levels of pain, the natural labor went very, very fast: Robin was born in four hours.
In the unlikely event that I had to do it again?
Natural childbirth. Definitely.
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After a long day spent exercising, generating moolah and feeling virtuous, I watched Ghost World. Which meant I had to watch The World of Henry Orient. Which meant I had to think about watching Diary of a Teenage Girl.
