The Very Long Goodbye (Part 3.4): Loose Ends

Today marks my 95th (can you believe it??) entry on this blog. Entry 100 will be my last, so have no fear, the long goodbye will eventually be a goodbye. Now, onto the show ...

While my regular doctor was off buying eggs to make potato salad for his Memorial Day barbecue, my new doctor was popping in and out of my room to check my progress. This wasn't hard to do, seeing as how I had gotten to 7 cm dilation and stalled. Faced with the image of my baby doing the breaststroke in her own pooh, I opted for the epidural, figuring I'd have the energy to finish dilating and push.

Besdies, I had a pleasant bias towards anesthesiologists since my sister and others had told me how wonderful they and their bags of magic tricks were. I pictured a jovial man with a steady hand and James Earl Jones-ish voice coming to rescue me. The man who briskly walked into the room a half hour later was just like James Earl Jones--when he was Darth Vader. His greeting to me was a sigh, a frown, and an, "Everyone clear the room but him [meaning Tim]."

Why he couldn't have just turned to my mother (the only other person in the room) and said, "I'm sorry, ma'am, you'll have to leave for a few minutes now," I don't know. I knew at that moment that the guy wanted to get in and out of the room as fast as possible, and if that meant I'd have to experience extra pain in the process, oh well. Later, I found out he was late for his shift and was irate, but that information neither then or now means much to me. There's no excuse for being a jerk.

Anyway, he told me to sit on the edge of the bed, hunch over, and drop my shoulders. A contraction hit right then, but he wouldn't let Tim come near me to help, though we hadn't started the epidural at all. All he said was, "Don't move!" and continued prepping my back for the needle. Even the nurse who was with him had the sense to know he was being unnecessarily rude. She kept trying to encourage me and soften the commands he gave, but it was clear he was out of line.

He said "Pinch!" as he poked me with needles (though he never said, "When I say, 'pinch,' that means I'm going to give you a shot"), so the nurse tried to preempt him by warning me gently each time. He kept bending my back forward until I finally gasped, "I can't breathe!" Another contraction hit, followed by a "Don't move!" I thought to myself that it would have been better to have struggled without the epidural. He stuck the needle in, and for the first time during the entire labor I said, "It hurts!" Something felt very wrong. I must've been right, because Mr. Needles said, "That's not going to work. I don't like that." He pulled the needle out to START OVER. I wanted to cry. He did it again, and asked, "Do you feel anything?" I whimpered, "Yes." That wasn't the right answer. He let out a testy sigh, and the nurse helped me onto my back again. After a minute, he said, "Are you having any contractions?"

"Why don't you check the monitor, idiot?" I wanted to say. Instead, I said the truth: "I don't feel any."

"See?" he said, to the nurse, "She doesn't even know if she's having them." With that smug comment, he packed up his gear and left. I determined that even if my back broke in half from the pain, I wouldn't admit it for fear he'd come back.

After five minutes, the doctor came in to check on me. She said, "Take a nap. When you wake up, there will be work to do." A nap? During labor? Sweet!

I rested for almost 45 minutes. When I woke up, I didn't have to be told that the baby was making her way to the Outs.