Raising Blaze Read Free

care if they have room or not. I’ll give birth right here if I have to.”
    There was one other, nonpregnant, woman in the waiting room listening to this frenzied conversation I was having with my sister. She waited for a lull before she said, “Is this your first baby?” I admittedthat it was and she asked me when I was due. When I told her that I was already two weeks past my due date, she nodded sympathetically.
    “They going to induce you?” she asked. I answered that this was my fervent hope.
    “Make them do it,” she said stridently. “I was three weeks late with my first and they did nothing about it. The baby ran out of oxygen in there. He died. My baby died. They could have saved him if they’d given me an induction.”
    I stared at her, horrified. What a thing to say to a pregnant woman! And what was the proper response to such a statement? “I’m sorry?” “Thanks for letting me know?” I felt a panic coming on as I searched my brain for something appropriate to say.
    “Stand your ground,” she added, before I could say anything. “You wouldn’t want that to happen to you.”
    My obstetrician mercifully rescued me at that point. She appeared like a guardian angel at my shoulder and said, “Good news. We’ve got room for you downstairs. Looks like you’re going to have your baby today.”
     
    I was totally unconcerned about the pain of labor, despite what I’d heard from other mothers about the agony of childbirth. I had vowed to avoid any drugs during the process. As far as I was concerned, pain meant that birth was imminent and, therefore, not a bad thing. Besides, my own mother had given birth to all of her children without any pain medication. She’d assured me that her labors had been short and uncomplicated and I saw no reason why my own should be any different. I thought women who complained of endless labors and excruciating pain were wimps who were too emotionally detached from childbirth to appreciate the process. I was actually looking forward to birthing my baby. I felt fearless.
    My family arrived at the hospital in stages. Maya was with me from the beginning, alternately watching TV, eating snacks from thecafeteria, and keeping a running commentary about the shrieks of pain from other women in labor, all of which we could hear through the walls. Our favorite among these was the woman who kept yelling, “Ow, ow, ow-ee, ow-ee! Shit! Shit!” over and over again, her words in the exact same pattern each time.
    “ Ow-ee?” Maya questioned, eyebrows raised.
    “Just don’t let me do that, okay?” I begged her. “Just shoot me if I start screaming.”
    “Ow-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” came the wail from the next room.
    “Yup, okay,” Maya said, staring ruefully into her plastic foam cup. “You know, this is supposed to be hot chocolate, but you’d never know it. Everything comes out of the same nozzle down there: hot chocolate, tea, coffee, soup. I can’t tell what this is. Want some?”
    By the time the drugs I’d been given to induce labor had really kicked in and I was having contractions every minute, my parents and my siblings were all there, wandering in and out of the room, eating potato chips and chocolate and arguing with each other.
    It was then that I realized fully that having a baby is a completely solo effort. There was no way to drag anybody else in and have them take over. I could barely see and certainly could not move with all the equipment strapped to my body. There were several IV lines and a fetal monitor that amplified the baby’s heartbeat to a level that was impossible to ignore. That rhythmic thump was so loud and elemental I continued to hear it hours after Blaze was delivered.
    After three hours of solid one-minute contractions, my legs started to shake uncontrollably and I worried about losing control completely and screaming in agony. I felt as if I were being slowly torn in half, from the inside out, and started to wonder how any woman could