LANA MASON
I didn't have any expectations for what giving birth would be like. Purposely, I avoided that chapter of the book and I didn't ask Google any questions. I think what I was trying to avoid was reading horror stories about everything that could go wrong between me and the baby. I didn't want to read about how much it was going to hurt or what would happen when it was over. I just wanted to follow whatever the nurses were going to have to say about my individual birthing experience. After all, it's different for every woman, isn't it?
Arriving at the hospital was chaotic. My aunts all wanted to be present for the birth before my dad shut that idea down right away. The nurse would have said the same thing, but he was panicking and told them that they were out of their fucking minds if they thought they were all going to be crowding me while I was pushing a baby out. It was the comic relief I needed while I felt the baby trying to claw his way out of me.
Harry, bless his heart, was also a nervous wreck. He was trying to keep it together, but he had to rush into the hospital from the restaurant with a stained chef's jacket because I was a week and a half early. He asked me if I wanted him to stay home that evening too, but I refused because I felt fine until I didn't. The contractions quite literally came out of nowhere, and the next thing I knew, my water was breaking. It happened so quickly that it felt like a dream and I'm only glad Jane wasn't there so she didn't have to see me panic.
I called Harry, then my dad, then my mom, who then called all of my aunts and uncles to let them know the baby was coming. In the next hour, my entire family was in the nearest Upper West Side hospital with me, taking up the whole labor and delivery wing despite the nurses' protest that they wait downstairs in the lobby. The Jersey girls came out of my mother and aunts after that.
Harry's main concern was me, of course. I don't think he let go of my hand the entire time. He was constantly asking me if I needed anything else. He kept asking me if I was comfortable, if I was in any pain. I felt completely supported by him, but I wasn't surprised in the slightest. He lost it around the time I started crying and begging for an epidural. When he snapped at the nurse and told her I needed a fucking epidural, I witnessed what he must be like while angry in the kitchen for the first time. I was attracted to him and terrified simultaneously, but it got the job done.
The actual birth was...a blur. I didn't understand that once I received the epidural, I would be numb from the waist down. Obviously. That was the whole point. But with that being the case, I couldn't tell if I was pushing or not. It certainly felt like I was, but then the doctor would tell me that I need to push and then I didn't know what I was sweating bullets for if I wasn't already doing that.
I distinctly remember thinking that I would never do it again. The thought of having sex turned me off severely. For the two hours and thirty-six minutes of labor, I no longer thought about sex as a fun activity for two people who are attracted to each other. I viewed it as a torture device for women to end up like me in that hospital bed, screaming, crying, and cursing like my parents.
It made me wish, more than anything else in the world, that I could say thank you to my biological mother for going through hell to give me a life. I wish that I could look her in the eyes and we could bond over motherhood together. I remember wanting that so badly that it made me cry more than the frustration of not pushing hard enough.
I only knew that I was doing enough when the doctor started shouting that I was doing it, followed by the first cries of our baby. The sound was absolutely surreal, if nothing else. Even though I'm incredibly aware that I've spent the last nine months with him in my belly, I could not believe that he was real. He was finally a physical being and not just an idea or a swirly black-and-white outline on a screen. He was a human that would be a part of this world, and he was Harry, and he was me, and he was our ancestors. That meant he was also a little tiny piece of my parents. That realization made me all that more emotional as the nurse placed him on my chest for our skin-to-skin contact.
