Walking the World Alone

I prepared for the labour pains in the best way I knew—read. I am very good at reading, processing and applying what I learn effectively. I had run the scenarios very well and planned my response for each phase. I was ready.

I met my doctor who said I would deliver in three weeks. I told him, “Nah. I think my baby would be born by end of the week.” He was amused. I was sure.

My mother showed up. She was fulfilling a social obligation around mothers being present for their daughter’s first delivery. The evening she showed up I had my first contraction. And I knew.

Quietly I went for a walk, sat on a swing in a garden, ate my fill knowing I would miss these small pleasures of life for a while.

The family was surprised. I ate more than usual.

I knew what I was doing.

And the pains kept coming in slow waves. I knew it was time to put my techniques to practice. I told my then-husband that I was in labour. He dismissed it as indigestion and slept. My mother slept in the other room.

I walked, stopping exactly as the pain rushed through, breathing and being present. And then relaxed when the pain ebbed. In perfect rhythm. I was utterly proud of myself.

I walked the night, timing the difference in pain cycles, observing the changes in my body, focused and calm.

I didn’t cry or panic.

At 5 am, some 8 hours after the first pain burst, I woke my then-husband and told him it was time to go to the hospital. He summoned my mother who decided to show off her wise-woman skills by forcing me to drink a potion. The potion would decide if the labour was real or fake. I rolled my eyes and drank. It was real, she announced.

Neither my mother nor my husband knew where the hospital was. I sat in the auto with my bag, directing the driver as pain came in waves.

We reached the hospital. I had visited it and I knew what it would feel like. I was, as I said before, prepared. I calmly walked up to the reception and told them I was in labour. A resident doctor came to check up.

She scanned me and then announced that I would deliver the baby by evening. I held her wrist and told her, “No doctor. I will have my baby in 3-4 hours.” She was amused. I guess she thought I was one more deluded pregnant woman.

I was moved into a room which housed another woman-in-labour. That lady, a Marwari lady, was surrounded by what seemed like a dozen women. She lay on the bed and held the side rods just like in Bollywood movies and screamed. The ladies massaged her back and wiped her face. I was told she had been in the room for more than 12 hours.

My mother declared that she thought I would deliver by lunch time and that since lunch was important for her she would go home to cook, eat and then return. And with that she left.

My then-husband, nervous by the turn of events, asked if I needed something. I stupidly said – Chocolate. And with that he left to not return until after I had delivered the baby.

I knew how to labour. I had run the process several times in my head. I was, in fact, excited to implement the next part of the labour techniques.

What I was not prepared for was hospital staff and their beliefs about women-in-labour. That they were not used to a calm laboring woman intent on applying her techniques.

Thus started a very different labour, a tussle to get them to agree that I could walk some more, that the full horizontal position didn’t help in the current phase, that I preferred to breathe through pain cycles in a specific way. I was strapped to a fetal monitor which didn’t work forcing me to stay still for 30 mins while they fixed it. I finally wrenched it away and walked out of the room with the nurses yelling at me. I said, “My baby is fine. I know.”

The tussle continued. They thought I was a new admission and hence had ways to go. I, on the other hand, struggled to convince them otherwise.

And in this struggle, I forgot to breathe. I forgot my techniques. All I wanted was someone to listen to what I was saying.

And the pain came sharp and brutal. And I wasn’t prepared this time. I reeled and it hit me again.

The community of women surrounding the other woman-in-labour loaned a lady to me. ”Where are your people?” She asked.  I didn’t say anything. The body hurt too much to think of such things.

I finally convinced them to move me to another room, some form of pre-delivery room. Within the hour I was begging them to take me to the delivery room. “Please understand. My baby is coming out” I cried. The nurse finally relented and I was wheeled into the delivery room.

By the time I reached the room I was tired of the morning struggle, tired of having to convince so many people. In the room the doctors and nurses were all set and ready to deliver. And suddenly I was angry. Very very angry.

Quietly I said, “I have spent the morning telling you my baby is coming soon. None of you listened. Now I refuse to labour any further.” My doctor panicked. “No, Mrs X, you can’t do that.”

But I did that. All contractions stopped and I closed my eyes.

The doctor warned of the consequences.  I told him I didn’t care. The resident doctors and nurses climbed onto the bed massaging my abdomen, injecting me with some stuff to restart the contractions. “Please, just couple more pushes” they begged.

I relented. And rose and pushed. Two or three pushes, I don’t remember. The baby came out. Beautiful. Strong. A boy.

4 hours after admission, I gave birth. It would be another 3 hours before my family knew of the birth.

My mother offered to stay the night of the birth. As soon as night set in, she complained bitterly that lack of sleep made her cranky and that she could not do so. So when the crying baby came, the nurses quickly abandoned him to my arms and left. I sat with him that first night. For 36 hours I had not slept. Nor been hugged. Or congratulated.

The second day my then-husband called to say he had broken his ankle and could not visit me and the baby.

The third day my baby was diagnosed with severe newborn jaundice, sent to neonatal ICU for complete blood transfusion. I returned home alone.

I later visited him in a hospital gown, mask and gloves et al.

He came home on the 8^th day. And cried his stomach out for the next three months.

My mother said she couldn’t deal with the baby. She preferred kitchen duties and faithfully churned obnoxious cooking experiments. A month later she left. My then-husband shuddered and panicked.

I rose to the occasion. Changing every diaper the child pooped in that first four months, holding and walking him for hours at night, singing to calm him. Early morning I woke up to change the diapers again. 22-hour workdays.

In these four months, I received many an advice and was sent to see different doctors to diagnose the child’s condition. I went alone. I bought medicines alone. I fed them myself. My opposite neighbor and the downstairs one shamed me as the woman who didn’t know how to take care of her baby.

I didn’t say it hurt. That I hurt. That I wanted a break. That I refused to change one more diaper. That I was planning to sleep a bit more. That I didn’t want to hold him sometimes. That I was tired of advice.

That I wanted care. That I wanted to be able to cry and complain. That I wanted my family to stand up for me and protect from intrusive comments. That I wanted support. That I was tired.

Instead I raged quietly mostly. And outburst suddenly at other moments with no immediate context. And continued doing what I was doing. At the end of 4 months, I took up a computer course and became an ace programmer. Another 4 months later I took up a job.

Decades later, as I reflect on this patched reconstructed memory, I realise the qualities of strength, courage, patience and intelligence that I was so proud of were the very qualities I ensured were required in the world I had created. That I have since then continued to repeatedly create.

That I had brilliantly planned to walk the world alone.

Guess what? I am tired.

[Note to my non-NLP readers: A relationship is never a one-way street, as much as we would like to delude ourselves into believing. A dynamic in a dyad is sustained by complementary behaviours of the partners in that dyad. Thus if somebody is inefficient in communicating care, the relationship continues because the other person has learnt to take care of herself. Else the relationship would have ended then and there. The above is a case of what Gabor Maté would call as compensatory hyperindependence behavior. To disrupt any unresourceful relationship patterns, one brings to awareness and own self-responsibility in sustaining that dynamic. And no, it is not about blaming self or another.  It is figuring a way to move forward that is not contaminated by past experiences.]