I was feeling pretty confident about the whole labor and delivery gig. I felt like I knew my options post-hospital confinement and that I was ready to labor as long as I could (before succumbing to an epidural).
There were still things that I didn't know/hadn't decided/was unsure about going into class. Then, we watched another birthing video. (Seriously.) In this one, the woman is delivering naturally (of course...those are the only videos they showed...I guess a woman lying on a table dead from the waist down isn't as interesting). Once she gets to the end stages of active labor and moves into "transition" (when the baby comes out), the midwife brings in a full-length mirror. No kidding. She proceeds to set up said mirror at the "business end" of the bed so that the woman can watch her child enter the world.
As this is happening on screen, I elbow Dan forcefully and run my fingers across my neck while shaking my head from side-to-side emphatically. No way. Unfortunately, we were sitting in the front row of class this week. Everyone in the back saw what had happened and giggled. I heard one mamma say, "Oh, Liz.")
One thing about delivery became abundantly clear in that moment. There is no way in hell I will have a full-length mirror display the miracle of birth for me to watch. No way. I'm planning to keep letting it live on like a mysterious miracle.
And, though it's no doctorate, after three sessions, I feel like I earned this:
No comments:
Post a Comment