Part IV – Making it to the end
I spent an hour in hysterics after hanging up with the midwife. I didn’t think I would recover from being told no to the induction the ER doctor told me I needed to avoid dying. I called back and asked to talk directly to my OB, and when she called she was willing to agree to have me induced. The big but in the conversation was that I still had to wait two weeks. I was only at 36 weeks, and we couldn’t guarantee proper lung development until 38 weeks. I have asthma – properly functioning lungs are a necessity I understand – but it wasn’t any easier to wait. I wasn’t going to have to do it alone though. Starting the same day, she put me on bed rest and ordered daily visits from a home health nurse.
I don’t even know what the cost of daily home nurse visits were in 1996, but I’m sure it’s much more expensive now. The reason I don’t know what the cost was is because I was lucky enough to have insurance that wasn’t attached to my own job, which was important because I was now out of work again. I don’t even remember leaving my job, or talking to anyone about the fact that I was going to be attached to an IV pole in my apartment for the next two weeks. I just know that I was at home, being hydrated through IVs, and crying. A lot. Like most women in this country, I was planning on working until I delivered. I tried my damnedest to make that the case for me, and there was no notice when the situation changed, which happens a lot with complicated medical situations, which pregnancy is. There’s only so much you can control.
The day of delivery was much easier than the previous 38 weeks of pregnancy, but I was still judged as the young, unwed mom who didn’t know what she was doing. I was started on Pitocin only after the main nurse did an exam and told me we wouldn’t be having a baby that day. I had no idea what she meant since I was in a labor and delivery room for that exact purpose. What she meant was she’d called my OB to suggest sending me home. The nurse didn’t feel I was physically ready to have a baby. Lucky for everyone at the hospital that day, my OB told them not to send me home before she saw me, because they wouldn’t have been able to get me to leave if they’d tried.
A little while after they started the Pitocin drip, I started having intense contractions. There was no easing into it – they were extreme and continuous – and maintained their rhythm throughout the day. And then my water broke only a few hours in, and that was a freaky moment I wasn’t quite prepared for because I was still being treated like what I was expecting was impossible. I called for the nurse and told her my water broke. Her response? ‘Your water isn’t going to break, we’re going to have to do that for you. You probably just peed.’ and she left. I had to send my ex after her as it continued and soaked the bed and pooled on the floor. She hadn’t even checked me before dismissing me from the doorway.
There’s no need to outline the next twelve hours in detail. I felt bad for my ex who had been assigned to hold the bed pan I was throwing up into during the thirty minutes of actual delivery. Don’t ask me how I was still puking but there I was, throwing up with each push. When it was all over and my room was being cleaned up, baby was being cared for, charts were being updated, one of the delivery nurses approached me with the paper ribbon from one of the various monitors. ‘Why did we start your Pitocin so high?’ she asked me. Me. The twenty-year-old who had just done delivery for the first time ever. Me, who barely knew what Pitocin was. I can still hear her reiterating the point – ‘They started you really high.’ Not being sent home, immediate contractions, water breaking,; it was all explained. Thank you, Pitocin.
After 24 hours in the hospital, me and my newborn were released. I had to have my ex bring me a different pair of shoes because the Merrel hiking sandals I’d splurged on before delivery day had disappeared from the delivery room. They’d been expensive but their adjustable Velcro straps were easy to get my swollen feet in and out of, and I’d planned on wearing them when my feet went back to normal, but they were never seen again. It remains a mystery. One thing that didn’t remain a mystery for long was what my newborn’s delivery expenses were going to cost me. Considering the number of issues during my pregnancy, delivery was relatively smooth and that was the luckiest thing to happen during my 38-week ordeal. His bill was right around $1,000. Granted, it was $1,000 that I didn’t really have, but I knew it could have been so much more. I was thankful to only be on the hook for a grand.
The truth that so many ignore is that my experience is not unique. Pregnancy is a complex medical situation that can have life altering, life ending complications. It’s also ridiculous to ignore the impact the nine months has on the rest of your life. Your ability to get up in the morning. Your ability to maintain a work schedule. Your ability to afford the care you need. Not to mention the complicated process of recovering after delivery. Depending on if you have a vaginal birth or a c-section, recovery varies. Some women bounce back quite well. Others face medical complications. Many face emotional and hormonal complications by way of Postpartum Depression, which we didn’t even want to talk about in 1996, and we barely want to talk about today.
To talk about pregnancy as a medical condition instead of a miracle ruins the Disney-esque fairy tale we use to describe it to ourselves as a community. People don’t wan to talk about it as a medical condition, but pregnancy isn’t nine months of communing with bluebirds in your windowsill with frilly, gender-reveling bows on your belly. It can just as easily be nine months of debilitating medical complications and expensive medical bills. We dismiss women in these moments because it’s something easy – natural – that we should just breathe through it. Thinking back as I’ve been putting this together it’s the dismissiveness that stands out, and not just from doctors or nurses. The number of comments strangers were comfortable making because I wasn’t a stranger, or a young woman, simply a pregnancy.
‘Good god, little girl, when were you due? Yesterday?’ said an intrusive guy one day at an ATM. I hoped his day was also ruined when I burst into tears and told him I still had three months to go, then left without getting my cash. The apartment manager who had an available unit I could afford but told me to my face he did not rent to “unwed mothers” didn’t have any remorse for his discrimination. I answered honestly that we were together (true at the time) but not married. That was enough for an instant rejection; I was a single mom after all, and we all know what that means, right? The stigma of being a single mom in this country is intense and maybe for another time, but it came back to me as I was writing, and it’s important to note because for many girls and women it’s an inevitable part of being pregnant. It can be a lot to carry sometimes.
The numerous times I was judged and mistreated, or worse; ignored, by professionals is not foreign to unwed mothers. The “adults” who did not see me as one because I was pregnant. The attempts to let me know this was my punishment for the sin I’d committed were not missed. That is many pregnancies in this country. Too many. Data shows that both infant mortality rates and maternal mortality rates in the US have risen since overturning Roe removed women’s autonomy. Laws have tied the hands of hospitals and doctors and the unserious administration we have in charge is actively trying to take away more of our healthcare options, while bemoaning the lowering of teen pregnancy rates. Their way of thinking is already proven dangerous to girls and women in this country and is just plain cruel. We need to change our way of thinking of pregnancy, and allow girls and women to decide for themselves what they are physically, emotionally, and financially ready for.