A Basketball Busting Open the World

Today is my baby shower, thrown by Dave's mom and stepmom, and by my dear friends Deb and Loralee. [I'll bet there's going to be cake! I could really go for some cake.] It is a testament to the power of tradition that anyone would throw a party for a 38-year-old mother to help her and her husband outfit their nest for a new baby. I'm not suggesting that the expense involved in acquiring all the baby stuff isn't significant, even for us, nor that I'm not glad of the help, but my situation feels a long way from what I have to assume was the original intent of baby showers, to help a young mother starting out to be able to afford cloth diapers and a cradle for the little one.

Unless the original plan really wasn't about buying things at all, but about disseminating information (accurate and otherwise) from the experienced mothers to the newly preggo. Before the predecessors to The Girlfriend's Guide and What to Expect (would that be Dr. Spock?), I suppose a gal relied completely on her female family members and friends to give her the kind of advice and information that the all-male obstetricians of the time probably didn't know or didn't think pertinent. I certainly have been to those kinds of showers before -- always as a single girl with no immediate plans for motherhood. Single girls with no immediate plans for motherhood should be exempt from having to attend baby showers (sorry Nichola, Ellen, Cara, et al who will be there today). Maybe I was not a typical case, but I always used to feel vaguely sick after attending those advice-heavy types of showers. I was not ready to hear, or think, about those things yet.

Then I had a transforming experience. I witnessed a live human birth. I was living in Charlotte, and my dear friend Andre, a fellow attorney I'd recruited from Duke (we like him anyway), was going to spend two days away in Raleigh taking the bar exam, while his wife Stacey was very pregnant. Their obstetrician assured them it would be at least two more weeks before Baby Jalen was interested in emerging, so they agreed Andre should go take the test. Being a clueless but well-intentioned friend, I told Andre to give Stacey (whom I'd barely met) my phone number in case she needed anything. (I was thinking a pint of ice cream, or some cocoa butter or something.) He did so, although he pointed out that Stacey's best friend was nearby so it would be fine.

Of course you realize I got the call. At work one day, Stacey called. She was having contractions. They were pretty close together, and she wasn't sure if she needed to go to the doctor (the doctor?? what were we thinking??), but she just wanted to give me a head's up in case she might need a ride later -- much later. Her best friend, you see, was out of town for a one-day work event. Knowing enough to know that I didn't know anything (and Stacey seeming equally clueless), I raced down the hall to Sally Higgins, who'd given birth multiple times without even any drugs. As far as I was concerned, she was Mother Nature. After I explained the situation, Sally said I should go get Stacey and take her straight to the doctor -- or the hospital. I called Stacey and told her I was coming.

After finding their apartment (a minor miracle because my car's gas tank was fortuitously empty), I found Stacey on the phone with her mother -- who I've since learned is not the most reliable woman -- talking herself out of going anywhere. By now the contractions were just over a minute apart, which was enough to give me a heart attack, but Stacey and her mom seemed to think that if she just stayed calm, the contractions would stop on their own and the baby would wait a day or two for Andre to come home.

In the end, I convinced Stacey to let me drive her, on fumes, to her obstetrician. I waited for about 5 seconds after she went back inside the office before she came back out and said the doctor told her to go to the hospital (how stupid we were!!). I prayed all the way there that the car would keep running on magic, and half an hour later, I was sitting with a woman I barely knew watching The Fresh Prince, having witnessed her being given an enema and the changing into the hospital gown. Stacey had spoken to Andre at his lunch break, and they decided that as this was the last day of the exam, he would stay and finish before hightailing it the three hours home to Charlotte. I don't remember if I tried to make small talk, or not. I remember what I was thinking, though -- I was recalling cavalier conversations with friends about having a baby by myself, if Mr. Right didn't come along. The air of fear in that room was palpable, and I suddenly very much doubted I'd ever want to have a baby by myself.

Fairly quickly, Stacey decided to ask for the epidural. That seemed to slow everything down, and we watched a couple more sitcoms before the doctors and nurses started bustling around -- I guess she had dilated, or whatever. This girl was tough, let me tell you. She didn't even whimper through those contractions. Maybe she was like me -- loathe to show weakness in front of a near-stranger. Before I knew what was happening, I was holding one of her legs, the nurse the other, and we were really in for it. The baby waited, though, and Andre suddenly burst into the room, looking like the hounds of hell had been chasing him. I made to leave but Stacey, in her drugged-out stupor, insisted that I stay. Now the only place in the room to sit (which I emphatically needed to do) was at, as they say, the wrong end of the table. I sat, and the Jamaican woman doctor was saying, "Get me some better scissors -- these ones are dull." She had started the episiotomy, only to find the scissors wouldn't cut. I watched her get out a hypodermic the size of a knitting needle and aim it down there, and I had to clamp both hands over my mouth not to yelp aloud. Finally, that part was done, and I stared transfixed at all the glop and blood soaking the floor and the sheets, watching that tiny scissored space like it was the sun, and then he came. The words "all of a sudden" don't measure up in this instance -- it was like being hit by a lightning bolt. From that tiny little space, that sore little focus of all the medical attention, that neither Stacey nor Andre could see, came a GIANT, blue head, looking like a basketball busting open the world, and then the rest of him came, and then there was Jalen. My hands came free, and I shouted, "OH MY GOD!" (I'm not proud.) I wasn't thinking of the miracle of life, or praising the God that let Andre get there in time. All I was thinking of was the impossibility of something that HUGE coming out of a place that small.

As the nurse bustled Andre and Jalen over to the examination center for weighing and cleaning and things, the doctor turned to look at me and laughed. She looked a bit like Dionne Warwick, and sounded a little like Sebastian, the lobster from The Little Mermaid. "Ha! Look at you! We'll have you in here soon for your turn, don't worry, young lady." I felt green. "I," I said, shaking my head slowly for emphasis, "am not doing that." And oh, did I mean it. From the bottom of my soul, I meant it.

Afterward, my hands shook for about two hours, even through the bourbon I had when I got home (for medicinal purposes). And for the next couple of years, at every baby shower I attended, I told the story, usually with the rapt attention of the guest of honor. I remember Tracy Stouse, however, a pal of mine, stopping the story early on at her shower. "Shut up," she said. "Some things, I don't want to know."

Well, it's now my turn, just like Dr. Lobster said, but as it turns out, I am not doing that, at least not if things go as planned, because I'll be having a C-section instead. I'll never forget Jalen's arrival, though, and I'm sure that, like Stacey, I'll be a little out of it for the birth of my own child. Nobody better try to tell me any C-section horror stories today, though. Like Tracy, I don't want to know; I adapt to unexpected situations much better than I handle the anticipation of a known, frightening event. I wouldn't mind some advice -- just give me advice about things I can control, like how to swaddle a kid or what kind of binkie to use (and why I'm supposed to call it a "binkie"). You can give us presents if you want. And hopefully, there'll be cake of some kind. We'll all get through it, just fine.

By the way, Jalen's in third grade this year, and Andre is in his eighth year of practicing law in North Carolina.