The post before the C-section

It's so hard now to not feel so melodramatic. I'm trying to convey everything to you in the way that I can remember, the way that I remember feeling. But it's seven months later, and while I'm dealing with PTSD from the experience, I keep feeling like I'm so close to that line I first wrote about, that line between ridiculously wrought and true grief.

They're going to end this pregnancy and I can do nothing to change it. There is no going back from here, only forward into a void. Forward into fears and forward into no more decisions and forward into reliance on methology I fought my life against, against the few goals and dreams I'd allowed myself to have about this pregnancy and birth. From the beauty of a natural, drug-free birth where my sister cut the cord and my son whispered the baby's name into his or her ear, I would be physically dressed out with wires running to and from me like an electric box, and strapped to a narrow board with my arms splayed like Christ, unable to move.

Those hours from the visits until the medical staff began the surgical preparations are mostly lost. Maybe they'll surface at some point, but I suppose it's unlikely. The confusion and disbelief have erased reality, blessed compensation for the horror of overrunning nature's plans.

Several times I was told what would happen — I'd be shaved and prepped for surgery — and what would happen during the surgery and after delivery. Several times I was asked if I had support at home. I said yes, of course. I was lying, because although my sister did and does support me, how can you not help but go through something like this completely alone?

I knew my dad and sister would show up as I was being shaved, and damned if I wasn't right. Thankfully my sister came in first, and I repeatedly hollered to keep our dad out! And thankfully he stayed put until the pubes were razored away half way down the top — this totally ridiculous stop spot that left me half woman, half girl.

While the shaving was going on, I could hear my dad and sister and their comments to everyone. My sister kept reassuring anyone who would listen that "I watch 'Baby Story' all the time!" as if she'd be able to jump in and help with the operation:) And my dad. Oy! He had the nurse shaving me in stitches (no pun intended.) He was telling medical staff who walked by how the delivery would progress: After the baby was out, they'd need to slap him or her to make him or her cry.

And the hours progressed past 4, past 5, past 6, past 7. This agony of keeping me waiting, because more C-sections had to come before. And the doctor who wanted to perform the procedure went off shift and couldn't do it after all. How could they do such a thing to someone? Telling me every half-hour or less that it would be soon, very soon. How could they prolong this?

I decided to be conscious for the operation. I had to know if my baby would be a boy or a girl. And I had to know if the baby would live.