Sunlight on My Shadow (17 page)

The way my belly expanded on a daily basis frightened me. I didn’t think there was any more “give” left. There was no place to put the chewed-up food so it sat there in my throat for hours after eating; the belly skin was tearing along the underside and itched; the baby’s little feet got stuck under my ribs and some kicks brought tears to my eyes. Maybe the little thing was getting back at me for what I had done when I was 3 months along. My body was really too fresh, young, and small to accommodate this pregnancy, but yet it kept on.

Linda P. told me about Mother’s Friend. It was this magic liquid that could prevent stretch marks from forming if you used it faithfully. Linda said that once you got stretch marks, they never went away. Then you would be haunted with the telltale signs of your pregnancy for the rest of your life. I kept a steady supply handy and spread it on faithfully every night after I marked off my calendar and before I crawled into bed. It was the consistency of olive oil and smelled like pine and lanolin.

When the baby dropped and settled into my pelvis, my belly became long and protruded straight out. I could have rested a dinner plate on top. I could breathe easier and swallow food better, but the stretching and burning got worse all of a sudden. Now, red marks like a rooster’s tail showed up on the underside of my belly. This freaked me out—and then I noticed them on my butt and regretted my negligence for not smoothing the lotion on my derrierre. I was sick about it. But now it was too late. A red rash covered the underside of my belly. I scratched until my skin was bloody and raw.

My back ached. I felt heavy and out of balance. When I walked I got a knife-like jab in my groin, every now and then, that stopped me flat in my tracks. I wondered if my body would ever recover from this.

I only had one pair of pants that still fit me. How I missed my little light and skinny body. At least my legs hadn’t ballooned out. From the back, I looked like I did two years ago, but sideways or frontward, I was a freak. I was still the same person inside, but I looked totally different. I just couldn’t wait to give birth and be light again. I thought that if this kept up, my body would burst. I took great pleasure in crossing off the days at bed-time. The horrid thing was that the calendar number was now minus three, which meant three days past my due date. With each passing day, I thought I might explode.

I don’t think my body had matured enough to be having a baby. I perceived the changes as violent, and I watched as my skin, breasts, and belly suffered permanent changes. When you are married and have planned for a baby, these changes are taken with resolve because you know it is what you have bargained for and a small price for the glory of becoming a mother to a new baby. But when you are trying to ignore your changes and want no lasting effects because you have a secret to uphold, each passing day of increased growth is a horror.

I knew there was no turning back, and I had no control as I stood by and watched the changes with each passing day. “If only the baby would be born,” I thought, “I would be spared more stretch marks and it would be easier for my body to spring back to normal.” I felt trapped and very frightened.

On June 27th, 1967, I went to the bathroom and a glob fell in the toilet. It was the plug they talked about, the bloody show. What a welcome color from down there. I had been praying for this since last October; it was a pretty sight, even if it was nine months late. Somebody had told me the bloody show meant that the baby was coming soon. I gave a shudder of anticipation, knowing my time at the home had an ending in sight. I went back to my room and lay down. Nothing happened that day. Nothing happened the next day.

Finally, on June 30th, I awoke from the night with a gripping pain in my groin. I thought this might be it. I lay there for another hour or so, until it hurt enough for me to get scared. I waddled down to the hospital floor.

The Martha Washington Home for Unwed Mothers was an all-inclusive facility. Our second floor was fully equipped with labor and delivery rooms and a nursery for the babies. There were no resident doctors because we weren’t that busy, but a local doctor was on call when needed. The hospital floor was off-limits to us until our time came. So once you were in labor it was like you had a rare and coveted ticket. You finally got to see what it was like on the second floor, and best of all, it meant things were coming to an end. Girls who had access to the hospital floor were looked upon with envy and longing.

I was finally in labor and not sure what was to come, but I was more than ready for whatever it took to be done with my stay here and resume my normal life. I was a full ten days past the due-date indicator on the pregnancy wheel. I thought it was ironic that it was the day I had always expected, exactly nine months to the day from when that rubber broke and Mick shot the egg to life. I’d stopped scratching off the days on the calendar once I got to minus three—what was the point? For the ten days I was past due, I thought, “This is the day!” I was wrong ten days in a row, but now today was the day and I was finally doing it.

First they checked me to see if I was dilating. They said I was in the early stages of labor. They told me to take off my clothes and put on the white linen hospital gown. It tied behind my neck and let the cold air swirl around my backside. Next they took a razor to my tender parts. It pinched and pulled. Then I got an enema. I thought my innards would burst as I tried to hold the water in. Now that I was poked and prepped, I was ready for action. They walked me over to the labor room and told me to get in bed and lie down, that I should try to rest. The contractions were still coming, but not so hard that I couldn’t doze off.

Soon enough the pain awakened me and I buzzed the nurse.

“It hurts,” I said.

“How bad on a scale of one to ten?”

I didn’t think I knew enough to give it a rating, but I said, “Seven.”

“OK,” she said, “we’ll give you something.” She came back about a half hour later with a hypodermic needle and told me to roll over. She shot it in my butt cheek. It was a narcotic to settle me down. It made me very sleepy.

There was nothing on the walls. No windows. A green-and-pink paisley curtain hung in the doorway to close off the room. The bed was hard and narrow. Sometimes, when I rolled on my side, I got too close to the edge and startled myself, afraid I’d land on the floor. Then, I would quickly roll onto my back so I wouldn’t fall off. I was afraid to scoot over to the middle of the bed because any repositioning seemed to bring on the pains. They came in great waves, like whitecaps breaking on a rocky shore. As the pain crested, I involuntarily held my breath and clenched my fists. I wondered if I would make it through. Each one seemed worse than the one before, and I became engulfed in fright as the clock ticked on and the pains built to new heights.

I had to fight the impulse to push the call button. There wasn’t anything that I needed, specifically, but mostly I didn’t like being alone. The pain didn’t seem right. It hurt more than I thought it should, and I was sure something was terribly wrong. I wanted some reassurance. A human—any human—would do.

The drugs put me in a state of delirium. I forgot where I was until I was jolted awake by another contraction, and then I’d look around and see the white walls, the gray steel cart by my bed cluttered with gauze pads and white puffy paper packages. Strings of reality coagulated into a vision of me in the home on the hospital floor and I would realize I was having a baby.

My skin felt numb to the touch. The narcotic kept me in a drowsy fog and I would be half asleep until the pain came back. Just like clockwork, the pain ground into me. It felt like a red-hot poker was being squeezed between the bones in my spine and their nerve endings. With some of the pains, I’d tighten into a ball and grip the sides of the bed and somehow make it through. Other times I would feel it coming on and I would panic and press the call button again. By the time the nurse got back in, it was over and she’d say something like, “What now?”

I would make something up, then, like “Can I have a blanket?” I wondered myself why I even called her. The pain was over and now things were tolerable. I was a pest and a baby. I didn’t think I was handling this very well. I don’t know what I thought anyone could do for me, but I wanted someone, anyone. I didn’t think the pain should be this intense if everything was okay. I thought the baby must be stuck. I felt claustrophobic and unable to get enough air.

I guess I kept buzzing to be sure they hadn’t forgotten about me in this lonely room. I worried that I might just lie there in my own fluids and die, and no one would notice until they wandered in and were shocked that they had lost a patient.

I reached for the call button again, but stopped myself. No, I couldn’t bother the nurse again. Last time she seemed perturbed at my beckoning. I wanted to jump out of my body and run away from this place, but I hurt so terribly that I could never walk. And where would I go?

So I told myself that there was no way out of this but through it. I was strong. I could handle this. I reminded myself that labor meant that my time in limbo would soon be over. I comforted myself with these fleeting thoughts in between the catastrophic contractions. But most of the time I was in a puddle of panic.

The squeeze in my belly made me want to puke. My hair was matted into a nest of snarls from tossing it back and forth. Sweat had dampened my neckline and forehead, yet I was shaking like I was cold. My mouth felt like it was lined with cotton balls. I wanted water like a kid wanted Christmas. When I rang the buzzer and asked for a drink, the nurse told me that I couldn’t have any liquids. She said it was because if there was an emergency and I had to have general anesthesia, they wanted my stomach to be empty so I didn’t throw up and choke myself to death.

“Can I have something for this pain then?” I asked.

“It’s not time yet for your next dose; just try to relax.”

I thought she was nuts. Relax? I tried to think good thoughts. I thought about summertime at Bond Lake. I imagined myself lying lengthwise on the seats in the fishing boat with the cushion under my head, the waves gently rocking the boat side to side. I thought I could hear the rhythmic slapping of the water as the crests rolled under the boat. I thought about the sun shining on my face and warming my body. Then the next contraction came and I thought I would die.

I was dreaming that waves were breaking on shore and then I realized it was the sloshing sound of a mop going in and out of a bucket. It came from the hallway. I heard it slurp and then slide along the floor, up and down. A caustic smell of ammonia mixed with Pine-sol wafted into my room and triggered my stomach contents into a tight ball. The bolus in my gut rose and forced itself up my throat and out my mouth and nose. It splattered onto the linoleum. Then the smell of regurgitated pizza caused another upchuck. I said out loud to no one, “Oh God, please help me.” The words gave me a hopeless feeling. I felt unheard. I wished Mom was here to tell me what was going on. I remembered her holding me when I was a little girl after I had fallen and scraped myself up. She wrapped her arms around me so my entire body was in her lap. I could hear her saying, “There, now, it’s okay. Hush, little one.” I could feel her smoothing my hair away from my face as I nuzzled up close. She made it okay.

I laid my sweaty head back on the pillow and closed my eyes. I swiped the back of my hand across my mouth. My stomach settled. Then I dozed off again. Sometime later, the nurse came in.

“My, what happened here?” she said as she looked at the slop on the floor. “Why didn’t you call someone?”

“I don’t know. It just happened too fast.”

The nurse left and the janitor came in with the smelly pail to mop up my mess. I felt like I was going to lose it again. I laid my head back on the pillow, and the ceiling spun like a carousel. I put my hand over my nose to block the stench and breathed in slowly, in and out. I wanted to get up and run away from the smell, away from the pain, away from this place. My body had betrayed me. I couldn’t get up or even move around; the hot poker in my lower back wouldn’t let me. The drugs made my head woozy and light. I hated how my belly had just taken over my body and grown to enormous proportions. I hated the sick feeling in my stomach. I hated the stab in my back. I hated it all.

My eyes landed on a steel-rimmed clock fastened to the wall opposite the foot of my bed. I watched the second hand creep. It seemed frozen in a time warp. I closed my eyes and waited for the next inevitable rush of pain. The clock didn’t tick ahead but the pains kept coming.

I buzzed again. “Please, I can’t stand this anymore. How long does this take?” I asked the nurse.

“Labor can take a long time, especially for the first one.”

It was midafternoon and the pains had started the night before. I must have been into it fourteen hours by now.

When the nurse told me we were waiting for Dr. Wigglesworth to arrive, I thought he sounded like he busted out of a Daffy Duck cartoon. I pictured a mad scientist type with Einstein hair and thick glasses. Soon afterward, two nurses came in with a wheelie cot.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Delivery room,” she said, as she put the gurney alongside my bed.

Even though I had been laboring all night and most of the day, I thought, “I’m ready to deliver?” I was shocked because I didn’t feel any baby coming. I just had this horrible hot and sharp pain in my back that cranked up a notch with each contraction. I was elated to be moving out of this hospital cell and that humans would be with me.

The nurses grabbed hold of the sheet under me and slid me onto the wheelie cot. Then they rolled me down the hall and turned the corner into the delivery room. Spotlights with metal shades hung from the ceiling. I squinted as my eyes tried to adjust from the dimly lit labor room.

They put the wheelie cot next to the delivery table and said, “Judy, we have to get you on here. Scoot over and get your body close.”

“I can’t. It hurts too much.”

“Sure you can. Just move your bottom over to the edge and we’ll lift you.”

I scooted over. It felt as if a boulder was grinding on my backbone; every movement pushed harder on the raw exposed nerve. Whether I was ready or not, the two nurses grabbed my arms and hoisted me onto the table. It was stiffly padded. I thought my back would break as it settled into the hardness.

I felt naked and exposed with the lights aimed at my body. I wanted to scramble around and find a dark hole to crawl into, but I lay there prostrate, under full view. I imagined myself as a bug under a microscope, being peered at and poked. The heat from the lights warmed my face and chest until I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath. Beads of water collected on my temples. I felt light-headed and the room began to spin.

“Oh, I don’t feel so good,” I said.

The nurse was busy setting things on a steel table, but turned around and said, “Well, of course! You’re in labor. That never feels good.” I laid my head back, closed my eyes, and felt another contraction coming. I moaned with the pain. I wanted her to know how much it hurt; maybe she would do something.

Dr. Wigglesworth came into the room, but he was not like I pictured him. He was a big man and, unlike Einstein, bald except for a few tufts on the side just above his ears. His skin was smooth and cherry colored. When he walked in, he had an air of serious concern on his face. He stretched white gloves over his large hands and reached inside me.

“This baby is posterior,” he said as he withdrew his gloved hand. We might have to use the forceps.” I didn’t know what posterior meant. I had been in labor now for half the night and most of the day. Stuck. It must be stuck.

“Now, Judy, I want you to roll over on your side. The doctor is going to give you a spinal.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a shot that will make you numb. You must lie perfectly still,” the nurse said.

“Oh, I can’t roll over,” I said. “It hurts too much.”

“Just try. You’ll feel a lot better soon. We can’t proceed unless you roll over.”

I grabbed her arm and slowly rolled a quarter of the way. They grabbed my body and finished the rotation so I was on my side. It felt good to be off my back, but my upper leg started to cramp.

“Ahhh, oooh!” I screamed out in pain. A doctor came in and walked around to the back of the table. An icy wetness was smeared on my back. It seeped all over the middle and sides of my body, and then the cold liquid spilled down onto the delivery table; I was lying in a glob of wetness. I felt the needle prick into my back: at the same time a contraction started to build.

I wanted to move my body. It seemed like it was going to hurt more than ever with me in this position.

“Just lie still. You must not move.”

“Oh, I have to move my leg. My leg, it hurts. It hurts.” The cramp felt like a dagger in my thigh.

“Hold still, Judy.”

One nurse had her hands on my shoulder and the other on my legs. Their grip was strong, like they were holding down a squirming dog. Within seconds I felt the needle go in, and then a rush of soothing numbness eased into my back and through my legs. The analgesic smoothed the jagged nerve endings and quieted the pain.

My eyes filled with tears. It was gone. The pain was gone, not a shred of discomfort. Within minutes I was numb from just below my chest to the tips of my toes. That stabbing, searing pain had left, whisked away as easily as dust bunnies under the bed. I imagined Bond Lake now, glassy and serene after a storm had passed. I felt like the sun came out and the birds started singing again. I became calm and receptive. I was so grateful. I loved everyone in this room with me. I wanted to do whatever they asked. The pain was gone, and I felt like a dancer who loves the music and knows the steps.

They rolled me onto my back again. The needle doctor packed up his spinal apparatus and left, along with Dr. Wigglesworth.

They took these long metal arms with foot holders on the end and screwed them into the end of the delivery table. They took my legs and set them inside the stirrups so my feet were higher than my head, way in the air, with my knees slightly bent. It was a strange position, like a bug stuck on its back, flailing to turn over with its legs straight up in the air. I didn’t care, though. The pain was gone and I was golden.

The nurse said, “It’s time to push. You hold your breath and push like you’re having a bowel movement.” Then she showed me. She took a big breath, then put her head down on her chest and acted like she was trying to blow the breath back out but couldn’t because her mouth was closed.

The nurse put her hand on my belly, and when the contraction began she gave me the cue to start the push. I couldn’t tell. I was too numb.

“OK, here it comes now.”

I inhaled, but it didn’t feel like my lungs could expand much. I held my breath and tried to imagine that I was pushing against the pain that I used to feel down there. Some air escaped through my lips as I pushed against nothing.

“No, no,” the nurse said. “You have to keep the breath in; don’t let it out.”

On the next contraction I tried again, holding my breath for longer than my lungs wanted. I got light-headed and had to let the breath out. It seemed fruitless. It was all dead down there. I couldn’t feel anything to push out or where the muscles were to tighten.

I did it anyway, on cue. I was happy to be a good patient. I felt good, pain free. I was a lousy actress, though, tensing my face and holding my breath as I went through the moves, trying to imitate the nurse’s example.

“Do I still have contractions?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. They’re there. I can feel them.”

I liked that she had to tell me when I had a labor pain. All I felt was sweet numbness. I felt like I had a round-trip ticket to hell and returned home to heaven. I was just along for the ride now. I pushed on cue for two more hours. The nurse did an internal exam and walked out of the room. When she came back in, Dr. Wigglesworth was with her.

I felt an overwhelming desire to be cooperative and helpful. The doc was here: I was hopeful that the baby would be coming soon.

“Should I scoot down?” I asked.

“Just stay put. You can’t scoot anywhere. You’re numb.”

“Well, I knew that, but I was just trying to help,” I thought.

The doctor did another internal check of the baby’s position and shook his head with disappointment. A second nurse walked in with a tray of shiny medical instruments and set them on the table. Wigglesworth put on a new set of gloves and took two silver slats off the tray. He put one side of the forceps deep inside me and then the next. It seemed like they clicked together like salad tongs.

Then he said, “Now on the next contraction, I want you to push like you have been doing.”

Wigglesworth said to each nurse, one on each side of me, “I want both of you to apply fundal pressure at the next contraction.”

The nurse had her hand on my tummy and gave me the cue to push. I inhaled, put my head down, and held my breath, pushing with mushy effort as both nurses placed their hands on the top of my belly, leaned in, and pushed the mass of baby toward the opening. At the same time, Wigglesworth pulled with the forceps. My body slipped along the table toward the doctor as he strained to extract the baby.

Now I got scared again. The force was so great, I wondered if the child would be okay. I also wondered what they were doing. I thought the baby must be wedged in there so tight that it wouldn’t come out. What if it didn’t come out? What would they do next? Each time the contraction waned, the nurses told the doctor it was subsiding—I stopped pushing and he stopped pulling with the forceps.

Nobody was reassuring me or giving me encouragement. No one said “We’ll get this,” or “We’re making progress.” Not a word. Just serious, intense looks on their faces. I wondered if my insides were ripping out with each pull of the forceps. I wondered what was wrong with my construction. Why wasn’t the baby coming?

This procedure with Wigglesworth pulling on one end and the nurses pushing from the other continued for about four more contractions. Each time, my body slid closer to the edge of the table, and each time they grabbed me under the arms and pulled me back. Finally, all of a sudden, something broke loose and I felt the pressure give. The nurses left my side, and there was a flurry of action. The doctor was doing something below. I heard a suction noise. A minute later, out it all came. I couldn’t see anything, but I felt all the thickness release. I heard a sputter and a gurgle and then quiet. The silence was pronounced. “There should be a cry or something,” I thought. The baby was out. Then at last, after what seemed like minutes, a loud wail.

I could not have anticipated what happened next. I started crying at the sound of its insistent voice. My body softened with a spiritual connection and love for this little human. Although my head knew a baby was in there, my heart didn’t know it until I heard it cry. I wanted this child.

I was ashamed to ask, like I had no right to know. It wouldn’t be my child, after all, but I asked, “Is it a boy or girl?”

“It’s a girl,” he said. I wanted her. Her cries were a call for me. I wanted her close to my skin, to swallow her up to my chest and keep her warm and safe. My heart ached for her. We had been through this together. I wanted her so bad. But I was ashamed that I wanted her. I had no claims.

I did not ask to see her: I thought I didn’t deserve to see her. She was in a baby bed on the other side of the room, but I couldn’t see inside. They didn’t say anything about her, like, “Oh, what a beautiful baby!” You know, the normal delivery-room banter. Just silence. I suppose they thought they were protecting me. I suppose they thought I didn’t care, since I was giving her away. But I cared. I cared way too much.

“Is she okay?” I asked.

“Yes, she’s a little bruised up, but she’s okay.”

I was thankful. I wondered why I was thankful when I had been telling myself for nine months that I didn’t care.

They took her away. They sewed me up. “You might be a little sore down there,” the doctor said, “but we will give you some icepacks and medication to help with the pain.” He also told me that if I have another baby, I might tell the doctor that this one presented posterior.

“What does that mean?” I asked.