'What to Expect When You're Expecting' is one of the most encouraging, nurturing, motivating books ever written. Author Heidi Murkoff reminds me of my friend Biene. Biene was the person we'd go to in college, tearful and anxiety-ridden, knowing that our stress would soon be caressed away by her compassionate understanding, wise advice, and unfailing ability to help people just put one foot in front of the other. This book is just like that. There are all of these gentle asides, parenthetical comments that feel like a reassuring hand squeeze, a nudge, a little pat on the shoulder. It's fantastic.
I was reading it in the car on our way to Chicago this weekend. After getting the most I could out of the seventh-month chapter (and finding it cheering and informative), I decided to skip ahead to "Labor and Delivery." I guess my purpose in this was to see if I could make myself pass out. I am squeamish. And all I know about child-birthing I learned from sitcoms.
Well, that section is written in the same gentle tone, but that doesn't change the fact that the physical processes being described border on horrifying. I read along through Early Labor, Active Labor, and Transitional Labor, increasingly feeling faint as the author pleasantly chatted about things like "blood-tinged mucus," intensely painful contractions, cervixes effacing and membranes rupturing. Then I got to Pushing and Delivery. I was especially struck by this line: "Don't become frustrated if you see the baby's head crown and then disappear again." I know babies are born every day. I know it's happened billions of times since the earth was created. But I still can't help but feel that we have entered the realm of the bizarre here. She might as well have said, "Don't be nervous if you notice your right arm suddenly fall off and reattach itself at the elbow." Or, "Don't be alarmed if your feet sprout a few extra toes at this stage of labor." I mean, what's a human head doing down there? Doesn't this sound crazy to anyone else?
But that's how I've felt all pregnancy long. People calmly ask if the baby is kicking or whether she's had hiccups, when I feel like they should stare at me in shock and exclaim, "Wait a second, there's a little person in there? How on earth does that happen?" It's actually kind of funny, isn't it, how lightly we take this miracle?
1 comment:
I believe it's only taken lightly when it's happening to someone else, probably because there are constantly vast numbers of pregnant women walking the earth, and it would be exhausting to maintain a perpetual state of wonder. I think every woman feels the way you do when it's her own pregnancy. Even the things that are supposed to reassure you that everything is normal feel like some unbelievable idea out of a science fiction novel. From the word go every aspect of pregnancy is too miraculous to fully grasp or understand, and even still I sometimes look at the boys and feel shocked that these big, perfectly-formed kids were once growing and glooping around in me. And THEN, somehow, your body just starts generating milk for their nourishment. Just like that. Milk. From nowhere. And then it stops, and you can't ever make it happen again, unless you have another baby, in which case, tada! Milk again! So bizarre, and so amazing.
So...you ready? For blood-tinged mucus and crowning heads and whatnot? :)
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