Stressball

Well, Succotash, I fear your mother is being a stressball today. Partly it's a holdover from Tuesday, in which a nurse practitioner delivered point by point rebuttals to all of my concerns outlined on the birth plan that she refused to read, and then sent me to labor and delivery for another several hours' monitoring for preeclampsia. Overall, just not a great day (though you looked lovely on the ultrasound, it must be said. I have appreciated not having to worry about you during this otherwise dreadful process). And then last night we had dinner with your aunt, which technically went well, but among other things she expressed approval of your arriving early because then your birthday won't "compete" with hers. She is almost 40, Succotash, and you are a baby. I don't even know where to start with that one, so let's just leave it aside for the time being.

I never thought of myself as someone who was particularly wedded to having one kind of birth experience. But apparently I had very clear ideas of what I wanted to have happen. I wanted to go into labor naturally, and then stay at home for as long as possible. I wanted to spend early labor on our comfy sofa, or in our nice carwash-level shower, or snuggling your elderly dog, or eating cheese. I even thought I might go get a foot rub at the cheap Chinese foot massage place around the corner. I wanted to be at home until such time as the friendly doula told me yeah, we really ought to be going now. I was open to pain relief, but had this idea that the more calm and comfortable I could be, outside the grip of medicalization, the happier I would be.

Well, that's not what's happening. My hypertension means that they want to induce me, and bring you forth three weeks early. I'm not worried about what this means for you, as you strike me as a hearty individual, you with your high percentile scores and your insistent little baby feet. But I am worried what this means for me. It means pushing my body into doing something before it is ready. It means a lot of monitoring, and medicalization, and those things spell pain, and pain spells stress and anxiety, which makes for more pain. I tried to write up a birth plan that accepted this new reality but still spoke to some of what I think of as my core needs, and the nurse practitioner wouldn't even look at it. I felt dismissed. Unheard. And more afraid.

What am I afraid of? I'm not sure. Pain, of course. Lasting bodily harm. Death, if we're being honest. I know the odds of that are long these days, fortunately, especially as I am an upper middle class woman in a major metropolitan area. But I'm also afraid of loss of control. Of being seen not as an individual person, but as an abstraction, to be dealt with in platitudes and scripts. The tremendous depersonalization of modern medicine. I am afraid of being a statistic.

So today I wrote to my OB expressing these anxieties and sending along a copy of my birth plan, helpfully converted to PDF. I don't know if it will make any difference, but at least I have said - hey. I am a person, who has fears. I have needs. Please listen to me.