A Mason Story

On May 24th, 2008, I was working my usual Saturday night closing shift at the Olive Garden. I was exactly two weeks away from my due date, and the time just couldn’t go fast enough. Work was the hardest part. I waddled around, night after night, on ankles so swollen I could see the indents from my socks for hours after I took them off. Not to imply that I could see my feet or anything, because I couldn’t. My belly was huge, bigger than any pregnant belly I’d ever seen. Maybe I just hadn’t been paying attention to pregnant women in the past, or maybe it's different when you're looking down on it, but I was pretty sure I was carrying the biggest baby that had ever been born.

I don’t remember much about that Saturday night at work. I remember that it was the first night that I had to leave a button open on my men's size large shirt. If I tried to close it the whole way, the button pulled tight, threatening to fly off and fling across the restaurant. I remember that my last table was a party of twenty-five or maybe thirty, and I remember that people at the table kept telling me “there’s no way you’re going to make it another two weeks”. I brushed it off; I’d been hearing that for months. After all, I was the hugest pregnant woman to ever walk the earth. Eleven o’clock rolled around, and as they were leaving I stood with George in the doorway to the kitchen. People were stopping, wishing me luck and handing me five dollar bills for the baby.

I counted my money (I know I made well over two hundred and fifty dollars that night – simultaneously growing a child and carrying around a tray full of food leads to some awesome tips) and George and I headed home. It was already midnight, but we decided to stay up and start painting some letters that spelled out Mason’s name for the wall of his nursery. I discovered my talent for painting and we ended up being awake until around three in the morning. For many weeks after, I thought back on that night and wished I had slept. It would have been the last good night of sleep I’d get for a long, long time.

I woke up at five to pee. Not unusual. Those days, I was waking up to pee five or six times throughout the night. At first it had been a pain to get used to, all that interrupted sleep, but at thirty-eight weeks in, I hardly even realized I was up anymore. I could stumble to the bathroom, pee, and get back in bed without even opening my eyes. This time was different though. When I woke up, I realized that if I didn’t hurry, I was going to pee the bed. I flew into the bathroom, running into the wall on the way there, and sat down just in time.

Relief. But the peeing didn’t stop. And actually, it didn’t feel like peeing. It took a minute, but I realized what was probably happening. I know my heart stopped beating for five seconds as the realization flashed through my mind. My first thoughts were of the dirty dishes in the sink and the half-painted nursery letters. My second thought was to wake up George. I waddled into the bedroom, pants now soaked from the water that was still flowing. “Baby? Umm, wake up? I think my water broke?” He woke up and we turned on the lights, and the water still flowed, but I still wasn’t sure that what I thought was happening was really happening. I mean, it’s not like I’ve had a baby before. It’s not like I really knew what this was supposed to feel like. Nothing hurt. There were no awful contractions. I wasn’t screaming in pain and there wasn’t a huge gush of water like there is in the movies. It was just a slow trickle, and aside from feeling like I was going to have a heart attack, I felt fine. I got embarrassed then; here I was, leaking all over the floor, and I was starting to think that maybe I was just peeing myself. Sure, it would have been a lot of pee, but after only two hours of sleep, nothing was really making sense to me.

By this time, George had gotten out of bed, shed a few tears, and was now aimlessly running around the apartment. I stood in the shower so I didn’t get the floor all wet and watched George take a bag out into the living room. He opened up the list of things I wanted to take to the hospital and was now running back and forth between the bedroom and the bag (which he’d put in the middle of the living room floor). He’d grab a shirt or something from the bedroom, run out to the living room, throw it in the bag, run back to the bedroom, and repeat. I was pretty much cracking up in the bathroom and asked why he didn’t just take the bag in the bedroom. I guess he did. I took a shower and tried to focus on contemplating my next move.

I got out of the shower, after maybe ten minutes, and George was sitting in a pile of papers on the bedroom floor. He’d somehow managed to find the paper from the doctor that said when to call the hospital. Number one on the list was “if your water breaks”. I called. Hands shaking, I talked to the nurse. I couldn’t remember my due date, my birthday, or my last name. She told me my doctor would call me back, and she did, telling me to come right in. By that time, George had finished packing my bag, called a cab, and had composed himself enough to inhale some kind of egg and sausage sandwich in the kitchen. I felt like throwing up. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that I was about to have a baby.

When we got into the cab, the driver made sure to tell me not to have a baby in the backseat. Thanks, buddy, I’ll do my best. Really though, besides my wet pants, I really didn’t feel like anything was happening. I was waiting for contractions. They weren’t happening. I half-listened to the cab driver telling George about the day his kids were born. I think he said his baby was two (or maybe eight? twenty?) but I wasn’t listening; I was picturing myself giving birth in the backseat of a beat up old cab, the scruffy looking driver named Bob or Mac catching my precious baby and cutting the umbilical cord with his Swiss Army knife.

Luckily, we made it to the hospital before I started to get too worked up about about my fears. I’m sure I gave Buddy $20 for a $12 cab ride, but I felt bad that his seat was wet and I was too scared to wait for change. Time started to speed up then - the walk to the elevator, the elevator ride, and the search for the nurses’ station took seconds. Before I knew it I was in a hospital gown answering questions, being poked at, and then, finally, left to wait. I really didn’t think we’d have to wait too long. I mean, I was in the hospital and I was so ready for this. So, what, I'd have this baby by noon at the latest? Fine with me. I called my mom and dad and sent text messages to everyone else I knew. My mom was the first one to get there, it must have been eight o’clock by then and after laying in that bed for an hour and a half I was beginning to get impatient. The nurse came in and gave me some Pitocin to get my contractions going since I still wasn’t having any. I think we watched Clueless on the tiny TV that was mounted on the wall and took some laps around the halls. My dad and Kim showed up, and while we talked and laughed, the contractions started. At first, they weren’t bad. I was asked to rate them on a scale of one to ten (I ended up being so sick of rating my pain that day) and I’m pretty sure I started out at a three. Alright, this isn’t so bad, come on, Mason! But nothing happened. After a few hours of me feeling like everyone was sitting around, staring at me, my dad and Kim left to go shopping, and George and my went down to get some food. I wasn’t allowed to eat anything, but I promised I wouldn’t get too mad at him if he did.

When he came back, my contractions were starting to get worse. Obviously, I’d never had contractions before, and I was quickly realizing that they feel like someone is stabbing you in the belly, over and over again. But I handled it well - I guess I'd rate my pain at about a nine, thanks for asking - and there was no screaming, no sweating or cursing, nothing like what you see in the movies; I only cried a few silent tears when they came harder. Still, I was in a good deal of pain when George took his shoes off and was arranging his chair by me, getting ready to scarf down his delicious-looking hot dog and cheeseburger, while I munched, jealously, on my ice chips. Before he sat down, he apparently stubbed his toe on the leg of the chair. He hopped around, near tears, as I braved the contractions and mentally prepared myself to push out a baby. Somehow, George is still alive (the pain of his stubbed toe didn’t kill him, and neither did I).

After at least three hours of really insanely painful contractions, the epidural guy came in to give me the only thing in the world I wanted at that moment: the pain-relief I had been waiting for. I never looked at the needle, but George told me later how huge it had been. I could feel the point of it pressed against my spine and I closed my eyes, dug my nails into George and waited… until I was informed that I was supposed to push myself back onto it. Essentially, I was told I had to stab myself in the back. It was going to hurt and I had to bring it on myself. I’d never heard anyone say that getting the epidural was the worst part of the whole birth experience. Maybe they messed mine up, stuck it in the wrong place or something, but I can’t describe how much it hurt. Still, somehow, I did it. I’m not sure how, but I am sure that I swore and screamed and cried to the point of hysterics and then… nothing.

I couldn’t feel anything from the waist down. The nurse had to pick up my legs and put them under the blankets because I couldn’t move them. We’d all watch the monitor and see the line that showed the intensity of my contractions go up and up and I couldn’t feel a thing. The strongest ones I’d had yet felt like butterflies in my belly. As much as the epidural had hurt, I knew that for this kind of pain-relief, I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I happily clicked the button that upped the dose, and finally, after being in labor for something like twelve hours, I fell asleep. I woke up a couple hours later, around seven o’clock, I think. George, my mom, dad, and Kim were all back in the room, talking and watching the race on TV. I started to feel a lot of pressure, even over the numbness of the epidural. I’d gone from two centimeters to six or seven, but the nurses were still convinced it’d be awhile. Of course, they were wrong. Within a half an hour I could feel pressure so intense I would have sworn he was just going to jump out on his own. I asked to be checked, and I could tell she thought it was a waste, since she’d pretty much just checked me. Within seconds of checking she realized she could feel his head and went to get the doctor.

Minutes later, at about 8:20 PM, my room was covered in blue sheets and my legs were shaking so hard I was holding them down, trying to get them to stop. The epidural had worn off enough that I could definitely feel what was going on down there, but I’ll skip over the gory details. My legs were up in the air and the doctor was commenting on my yellow toe nail polish and I started pushing. It seemed like it was taking forever, probably because I was so anxious and ready to meet my baby. We’d wait for a contraction, push, wait, push, wait… my mom was watching the race in between pushes and George seemed surprisingly calm. After forty minutes of pushing, the doctor said that if I didn’t get him out on my own, they were going to have to use the vacuum. Scared of the thought of my baby being sucked out of me, I tried harder than I ever thought I could – five minutes later, at 9:04PM on May 25th, 2008, my baby came into the world. They put him on my chest and I held him and that was it… I was in love.

He was seven pounds and twenty inches long. He had the cutest button nose and stuck his tongue out when he was hungry. Conehead and all, he was the most perfect thing I’d ever seen.

And five months later, he's still the most perfect thing I've ever seen. This was difficult to write because I forget how long and painful forty weeks of pregnancy and the sixteen hours of labor were. I forget the intense pain of the contractions and the only thing I remember with complete clarity is seeing my baby's face for the first time, smiling at him, and being so happy and thankful. I think the memories of the pain faded the first time he looked up at me.

Then:



And now:



Happy five months, beautiful.