Birthing MonkeyBoy

My son Nicholas (my sweet adorable little Monkey), was born two weeks before Christmas 2003. He is a 5 year old bundle of constant energy, with a hilarious sense of humour, and a contagious smile on his face 24/7. He is typical boy – LOVES Lego, Star Wars, Batman, Indiana Jones and of course, video games. He loves books and he loves to draw and he is constantly scribbling. I utterly adore him.

I have to admit that I really wasn’t all that nervous about becoming a mom. I had a great pregnancy (sick as dog the first trimester, but other than that, just peachy). I knew I could handle being a mom – always been very independent (read: LONER) and I came from a big family, so I was used to being around babies all the time. And even though the labour was an unknown to me, I knew I had it in me to push that little sucker out without too much complaint.

Then again, I knew what I didn’t want to have happen, and I had a specific frame of reference – my older sister. I wasn’t really worried about repeating her performance though. My sister gets a papercut and she screams bloody murder – actually she makes those people look quiet. So imagine what she was like during labour. It was bad. It was really bad. The nurses had to tell her to pipe down because she was scaring all the other pregnant women. That was one hour in, and it lasted HOURS. I know one of the other women that gave birth that day, and she still talks about it – 19 years later. Yes, 19 years later, and that crazy pregnant woman impression remains. No thank you.

Happily, I am her polar opposite. I prefer to suffer quietly – its my thing. But when I needed a birth coach, and my husband was too chicken to help me, I had to ask her. She was the most annoying part of my labour. She kept asking me why I wasn’t screaming. If I could have kicked her in the teeth, and blamed birthing reflexes, I would have. I won’t lie – I cried the entire time – the tears flowed for 23 hours straight. But I’m the type of person that is most relaxed when I make others laugh, so I chose to be funny between my contractions (Vegas, here I come).

My husband was actually in the room the entire time, but he sat in a chair in the corner, and made nary a peep, until the very last hour when I started to push. In fact, the only time he got up from the chair was to use the bathroom or eat the food they ordered in. Yup, I hadn’t eaten in over 25 hours, and my sister and husband ordered food and ate it right in front of me. If I wasn’t trying to birth a child at that moment, they both would have died that night.

One of the funnier aspects of this birth was my parents. They are old school, emotional, and very Greek. They refused to come to the hospital with me because they couldn’t handle the stress of it all. Lucky for me, they were able to find the phone number to my labour room, and every 30 minutes or so, my parents would call to see how it was going – (eight hours in that room – you do the math!)  They would cry, weep and howl during each conversation. My father couldn’t even come to the phone, because he was crying so hard in the background. I kept reminding them that I was having a baby, and that they were supposed to be happy about it. But they’re Greek, and to them that means its their job to contemplate every possible negative scenario in their head, until they make themselves sick (think devil’s advocate meets priest meets party pooper).

So fast forward, I eventually pushed my Monkeyboy out (quietly I might add – thank you epidural, hour 20) and he was healthy, happy and sausage-like. PERFECT. In fact, I think now would be the perfect time to officially acknowledge him for those 30 stitches that I needed to fix my broken goodness, and for the hours that I sat on that sad, plastic doughnut. You were absolutely worth it, and if I could do it again just to prove my love for you, I absolutely would. Then again, I’m sure you would much prefer a video game, as would my lady bits.

Tagged as: childbirth experience, Greek Family, kids