Whoa, Baby!

CHAPTER 1

Is There Anything I Can Do to Make This Easier?

(The Final Stretch)

IF YOU'RE ANYTHING LIKE ME, you're used to micromanaging every single little detail of your life. I like to be in charge of my own schedule and my own commitments, and I prefer to do things on my own terms. That was one of the hardest parts of pregnancy for me—just sort of accepting that there was this miracle taking place in my body, and I couldn't really see it or take charge of it. All I could do was let the mysterious creature grow stronger and stronger inside me. And wait and wait and wait.

When I got tired of waiting, I busied myself with what I could control, like getting the house ready. Well, first there was the little matter of moving—when I found out I was pregnant, Tim and I decided to move to a bigger place that would fit our family of three. Moving was a really great excuse to clean out our closets and drawers and just get our lives a bit more organized in anticipation of the Big Change on the horizon. I went into complete nesting overdrive.

And after we settled into the new house, I got totally OCD when it came to prepping for our newest resident! I was going to Restoration Hardware and every other home store in my neighborhood whenever I got a chance. I worked out every last detail of his nursery, making sure every picture I'd chosen for him was hung in the exact right place at the exact right angle. I washed all of his baby clothes and got them all organized in his little closet. I bought crib sheets and one of those breastfeeding pillows, and I set up a nice little diaper-changing station in his room. I even designated a special stretch of the kitchen counter for him, where I could keep all his bottles and pacifiers and a drying rack. I made sure that corner was always extra clean! In short, I was in a complete nesting frenzy those last few months.

Between visits to home stores, I also took care of myself, of course. Most of the time I just felt happy and thrilled for the next chapter in Tim's and my adventure, but on some days I felt really emotional for no apparent reason. I didn't drink caffeine because I thought it made me too excitable, and I tried to do a lot of yoga and work on my breathing whenever I got the chance.

As I got closer to my due date, I made time for the really important preparations, like getting my hair and then eyebrows done—because, hey, if I couldn't control anything that was going on inside my body, at least I could make sure that the outside was looking dope! I got a pedicure, too, even though it felt like it had been months since I'd last been able to see my feet. I just wanted to make myself feel cute since I probably wouldn't be looking all that cute for a while.

With that in mind, I also bought some really luxurious extra-large pajamas and a nightgown with a matching robe that I could wear in the hospital, and some granny underwear. I made up a smooth playlist with songs by Stevie Wonder and the Carpenters. I made a whole list of songs that would relax me and bought several hours' worth (because I believe in buying music) so I could have just the right soundtrack. But beyond that, what else could I do?

Toward the end I remember being really calm; it was like I'd finally surrendered to the unknown. Ready or not, that baby was on his way out into the world, and no matter what, I would love him till my dying breath. But as I got bigger and bigger, I started to have more trouble sleeping. Tim would feel me tossing and turning next to him and he'd ask me what was wrong, and I would never have an answer for him. There was nothing wrong at all, beyond some pain in my pelvic region; I was mostly just too excited to sleep.

But despite having the number-one greatest pregnancy of all time, I still had trouble functioning in the morning when I'd spent most of the previous night eating cherry pie and watching the movie Knocked Up yet again. I must've watched that movie ten times in the last month of my pregnancy. I'm sure it was because the Katherine Heigl character was pregnant, and when you're pregnant, especially toward the end, you have trouble thinking about anything but pregnancy. That's the only explanation for my other late-night TV-binging obsession, A Baby Story on TLC. One night I shrieked out loud because my own Dr. Bickman was in an episode!

As for the rest of it, I tried just to keep on taking those deep breaths and accept that I couldn't stage-manage or choreograph what was about to go down in the delivery room. I asked Dr. Bickman if there was anything I could do to have, or at least come close to, the perfect birth experience, and she laughed and told me there was no such thing. "As long as you and the baby come out on the other end healthy, that's all the perfection you need," she said, and I knew she was right. But again, it's hard, if you're a take-charge personality like me, to let go of the reins.

"A lot of women come to me with questions about what they can do to make the birth process go more smoothly," Dr. Bickman told me. "The honest answer is nothing at all. You've made every doctor's appointment and religiously taken your prenatal vitamins, and now it's entirely out of your hands, which is not what a lot of my Type A patients want to hear."

PRE-BABY CHECKLIST

Whatever you've read, there's nothing you can "do" to get ready for your baby's imminent arrival, but that doesn't mean you won't try! Still, it's important not to overpack, which I'm afraid most of us first-timers do. I confess that I brought concealer and mascara along so I'd be looking my best for the photos! Of course, these remained in my bag the whole time. Here are the preparations that helped me:

Lucky for me, Dr. B. heartily endorsed my pre-baby salon regimen: anything that made me chill out and feel good got the green light from her. "The only thing you can do once you're nearing full term is just try to relax about what's to come," she said. "It's also helpful to take a little time off to pamper yourself, because even if you don't realize it now, you may not get another chance for the next eighteen years. If you've never had a baby before, do something—anything—to indulge yourself, even if it's just taking yourself out for a massage or going to the movies alone in the middle of a weekday. For the first and probably only time in your adult life, you can completely relax with zero guilt. And trust me, this time will not come again, because if you have a second child, you'll still have the first at home to deal with. Taking some time off will also help steel you for the chaos to come."

Dr. Bickman also warned me against getting too hung up on any exact scenario of how the birth was going to go down. I knew that as long as my baby and I ended up healthy, it didn't really matter how we'd gotten there.

"I recently had a patient in labor with her first child after three years—three years!—of trying to get pregnant," Dr. Bickman told me. "But things got a little messy, as they often do when bringing a child into the world. After ninety-five hours—yes, that is almost four days—of labor and three hours of pushing, it became clear that she needed a C-section right away. But she wasn't having it. In between shrieks of agony, she kept screaming, 'I won't do it—this is not what I wanted!'

"I told her it was no longer about what she wanted, it was about the health of the baby, whereupon she burst into tears. 'This is the worst day of my life, this is the worst day of my life,' she kept repeating. I said to her, 'What are you talking about? You're having a baby. This is the best day of your life.' But she kept saying over and over, 'This is a nightmare, this is a nightmare,' and I kept telling her to get a grip: 'This is the opposite of a nightmare. In twenty minutes you're having a baby. Get a grip, get some perspective!' It was only after she finally saw the baby girl she'd wanted for so many years that she finally started to calm down."

I do understand that it's perfectly natural to have some preconceived notion of how we want the birth to go; we're only human, after all. But in this one instance, we have to just kind of let it roll. After talking to Dr. B., I went in determined not to freak out about factors totally beyond my control, and I think I did a pretty good job.

"Whether it's your first pregnancy or you've gone through this drill four times already, you probably have some sense of how you want your birth to go," Dr. B. said. "I have patients who walk in and say, 'I want an epidural the instant I have my first contraction,' and I have patients who say, 'No matter what, don't ever give me the option of an epidural.' But we can't always plot out how our labor is going to go. Some of my patients who are convinced they don't want an epidural end up asking for one, and some who do want it don't end up needing one. The whole process of labor is just so unpredictable, and the best approach is just to roll with it. Try, no matter how hard it seems, to just go with the flow."

So if you've never had a baby before, you have no idea what to expect. How do you possibly know what you want? You may have envisioned exactly how it should go, and it's fine to establish a nice foundation of expectations, but above all else you should make flexibility a priority. Dr. Bickman, as well as my amazing doula, told me over and over just to let it happen as it's going to happen, and luckily I got close to my dream scenario. And since becoming a mom, I've come to understand that a lot of this new role of mine involves surrendering control of my previous expectations of how things—a dinner out, or a vacation, or even just a trip to the grocery store—are going to be. The adults are no longer completely in the driver's seat, and there's no better time to learn this than during childbirth.

So, I know it's hard, but just trust that your medical providers have your best interests at heart. Your doctor will listen to you and honor your wishes to the greatest degree possible, but the health and safety of the mother and the baby will always come first in their minds—and that's a good thing! "And remember," Dr. Bickman told me, "you're the one we're listening to, not your partner." Tim and I were on the same page about how we wanted the birth to go—we'd communicated nonstop about this in the long weeks leading up to Titan's birth—but apparently that isn't always the case.