Childbirth as Prism
Childbirth as Love Story
The slumbering house cradles the echo of your footsteps as you wander its sleepy halls. Sleep should have come for you hours ago, but your anticipation has successfully warded off any chances. The contractions come so lightly and irregular that you wonder if it’s even labor. Perhaps it is the Braxton-Hicks you read about.
Morning finally opens its eye, triumphantly. Donya comes into the kitchen to make coffee and get ready for work. She takes one look at you and says, “You better call your midwife and get to the hospital.” Over thirty years of nursing experience means she doesn’t need to time your contractions. Excitement blooms in your chest and you rush to the phone.
There is no time for pain meds. They break your water and less than two hours later they are laying your son on your breast. The love you feel so fierce and uncontainable, it’s like a chasm cracked open your chest, releasing a torrent of churning, white water rapids, as tears stream down your face. You hold your son close and not even a thousand Samuri warriors could pry him from your arms. Your fiery protection would burn every one of the alive.
Childbirth as Horror
A contraction rips through you and you brace yourself, one hand on the door and the other on the dash. The pain lifts you out of your seat. “Hurry up!” you scream. Glen turns his head. “Hon, it’s raining. I can’t go any faster. You don’t want us to crash, do you?” You resist the urge to throat punch him. Barely, just barely.
You arrive at the hospital and they admonish you for not coming in sooner. They get you settled on the table and after a brief examination the nurse lifts an instrument of torture off the tray. She turns it this way and that, to ensure that you get a good view. “What are you going to do with that?” She rams the long metal rod with a fish hook on the end inside you and says, “You’re about to have a baby!”
The pain is immediate. You panic and scream for drugs. You had wanted to deliver naturally, but there is no way you can take the pain. It has intensified since she stabbed that thing into your womb.
The midwife gives you a smile and tells you, “Oh, it’s too late for that, honey.” You beg and you plead and she soaks up your pain, coaxing it out of you as she tells you to push. Your screams bounce off the walls and she revels in them. “Yes! Yes, that’s it. Keep pushing.”
There is movement as a nurse wipe something off the table. “What was that?” you ask. “Oh my God, was that POOP!” Embarrassment rushes through you, as hot and metallic as the blood you are about to spill.
“Scalpel!” the midwife shouts with urgency. “I need to cut her before she tears.”
With great delight she slowly drags the sharp tool over your sensitive flesh.
Just when you think you can’t take anymore, it’s over. You fall asleep, exhausted, only to wake up to a biting pain as they are sewing you up. Every stitch in an eternity. The needle pierces your skin and the thread is drawn through. A tug at the end to make sure it is tight.
Later, when you try to get up, unfamiliar muscles groan from their ordeal. A terrible sting makes you squeal. When you finally stand, you feel your insides slip out. On your way to use the restroom you almost slip on all of the blood on the floor and you wonder how you’re even still standing.
Childbirth as Science Fiction
In the middle of breast feeding your son you feel it. A small flutter in your womb. It is barely noticeable, then you feel it again, stronger this time. There is something alive inside you! You call the nurse and tell her something is wrong. They have missed a baby and you can feel it kicking.
She tries to tell you that what you are feeling is perfectly normal. It is just your uterus shrinking back to normal size. You are not convinced. You look down at your still protruding stomach, waiting for the creature to claw its way out of your belly button. Was that a ripple of movement you see? A hand pressed against your insides, bracing for its escape, perhaps?
A cacophony of beeps and murmurs from the monitors play in the background while you stand in front of the mirror, ready to confront the alien form that has replaced your body. No longer is there pink flesh, instead, a purple so deep it is almost black. The area where they stitched you, swollen and ready to explode. This distended and distorted meat cannot be human and has no place on your body. What kind of hospital is this? What kind of weird experiments are they performing here?
On cue, you feel another kick.
-Heather McKee
Heather McKee is pursuing her bachelor's degree at Eastern Michigan University through the College in Prison program. She has published poetry and cnf in Oakland Arts Review, Minutes Before Six, and Cellar Roots. She is also co-editor of the Behind the Wire newsletter.