One Day You'll Thank Me

by Cameran Eubanks Wimberly

  Clearly, my baby was running the show and she was NOT ready. The ob-gyn on call told me the next step was to break my water in hopes that would jump-start labor. When she left the room, Jason turned to me and said, “We aren’t doing that.”

  “What do you mean ‘we aren’t doing that’? What do we do, then?” I asked him, practically in tears.

  “We are going home,” he said.

  I looked at him wide-eyed. “What? Go home? Without a baby? Huh?”

  “Yes,” Jason calmly said. “The smartest thing to do is go home and let your body go into labor naturally. If they break your water and the baby isn’t ready, you increase your chances of an emergency C-section.” I wasn’t aware of this at the time, but once your water breaks in full-term labor you have about twenty-four hours to get the baby out.

  “Am I allowed to go home?” I asked the nurse when she came back into the room.

  “Absolutely,” she said, before adding, “that’s what I would do.” Of course I trusted Jason’s point of view and the nurse’s, but boy oh boy was I disappointed.

  “Your baby will come when she’s ready,” my doctor told me as she signed my hospital discharge papers. “You’ll just have to wait.” Easy for her to say. I’d been pregnant for what seemed like forever. I was over it and on my last nerve. I was more than ready to have this kid living on the outside, but it was out of my hands. Even from the womb, this baby was not doing things according to MY grand plan. It was all her own, which is pretty much the essence of parenting, so maybe God was trying to tell me something.

  After the nurse unhooked my IVs, I packed up my bag and left the room. In the elevator, I encountered a woman holding her newborn in a car seat, which made me feel awful. I was doing a walk of shame out of the hospital WITHOUT a baby. Twenty-four hours earlier, I never would have imagined leaving the hospital holding only my pillow.

  So we went home… and I bitched and moaned for another week and a half. During that time, I was pretty much housebound and eating everything in sight. (This included a giant barrel of cheddar cheese balls I found at Target. I’ve had a long-standing love affair with these fluorescent orange, Styrofoam-like snacks ever since I was a child, when I used to take my allowance money to the grocery store and buy them.) Well, eating and sitting around just made me feel large and NOT in charge. In case you have not had a baby and you’re wondering, it feels like you’re constantly bloated and constipated with a big poop that you just can’t get out. (Sorry if that’s TMI.) Of course, that poop is actually a baby. I was also bored, because there was not a lot that I could do. My biggest excitement was forcing myself to take a shower every day so I felt somewhat human. To say I was going a bit stir-crazy is an understatement. It didn’t help that all my friends were going to Hilton Head for the weekend. So while they were working on their tans at the beach and getting wasted, I was home googling “vaginal tears.” Boy, how quickly life can change!

  Now I was forty weeks pregnant, and did I mention that I was OVER IT? Hoping to light a fire under this baby’s butt, I tried every old wives’ tale in the book to get labor going. I’m glad that standing on your head and chanting the Lord’s Prayer while drinking spoiled goat’s milk worked for women of yore, but it didn’t work for me. I did jumping jacks, I ate chicken parmesan and spicy food and I bounced on my birthing ball. Nothing. Nada. No action. I even did a lap down Labor Lane with my friend and castmate Shep Rose driving. Labor Lane is actually Chalmers Street, a bumpy cobblestone road in downtown Charleston. It’s old Southern lore that pregnant women back in the 1800s would ride down this bumpy street to induce labor. I thought a couple of laps would dilate my cervix, but all that happened was I peed. For real. At first Shep just laughed, but then he kind of freaked out because he didn’t want pee on his car seat. Thankfully it wasn’t that much, but it was enough that when we went to lunch afterward, I went in the bathroom and threw my underwear in the trash can. Oh the joys and beauty of pregnancy.

  It’s funny that before I was preggers, I worried that I couldn’t properly carry a baby to term. Was I wrong, wrong, wrong! I carried Palmer over my due date to forty-one weeks. My bun in the oven was cooked and she was well done. The bottom line when it comes to pregnancy: there is no such thing as normal, so be prepared to be surprised. And hungry. Very, very hungry.

  Chapter Six LABOR DAY

  The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before.

  The woman existed, but the mother, never.

  A mother is something absolutely new.

  —BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH

  I think one of the reasons I debated getting pregnant for so long was the dreaded delivery day. No joke, y’all. I was so worried that I was going to have a nervous breakdown when I went into labor. I know, I know—women have been giving birth since the beginning of time and almost four million women a year have babies in the U.S. But when it’s your first time and your body that’s got to do the work, statistics just don’t matter. I was terribly worried that my experience would be like that of several friends who pushed and pushed for hours but then ended up having to have a C-section. What to do? When I was pregnant and I would worry or get anxious about birthing a child, I would tell myself over and over, Cam, get a grip. Cavewomen did this and if they could do it, you can, too, so calm the f*** down. Someone said this to me early on in my pregnancy (I wish I could remember who it was and thank that person profusely) and, man, did it stick with me. I mean, come on. If a woman who lived in a cave—a frickin’ cave—could successfully give birth, what the hell was I worrying about? All they had to rely on was instinct, while I was going to have a team of nurses and doctors at my disposal and a bed that reclined. I was going to have a soft pillow and medicine that would numb any pain… and ice chips and apple juice. This really put things in perspective. So every time I got riddled with anxiety, I imagined a pregnant cavewoman hobbling around her cave and instantly felt better.

  Well, what do you know… just like pregnancy was totally different than I expected, so was labor and delivery. (Lesson learned: worrying can be a real waste of time and usually just stresses you out even more.) By the time delivery day rolled around, my anxiety had pretty much dissipated and I was uncharacteristically focused. So here’s what happened.

  At my forty-week appointment, my ob-gyn responded to my frustration by saying, “Start walking. Walk, walk, walk… and when you feel like you can’t walk anymore… keep walking.”

  So at forty-one weeks on the dot, I looked at Jason and said, “Today, we walk.” We drove to my mom’s house, which was only five minutes from the hospital where I would deliver. At about 1 P.M., we started walking… and walking… and walking. We walked several neighborhoods. Then my mom joined us. After about four hours, she and Jason were tired, but not me. So we kept walking. Once we got back to my mom’s house around 5:00 that evening, I started feeling crampy. Nothing unbearable. OMG… are these contractions? I wondered. We started timing them, and they were indeed. I decided I was going to try to tolerate them as long as possible before going to the hospital. Since I had already been in that hospital bed for my false alarm, I knew I didn’t want to be in it any longer than I needed to be. A couple of hours later the contractions got pretty intense, so I got into my mom’s tub to try to get some relief.

  “Maybe we should head to the hospital, Cam,” Jason said. I could tell he was getting a little antsy.

  “Nope… let me see if I can take it a little longer,” I said. At that point my teeth started chattering.

  “Cameran, get in the car. It’s time.”

  The ride to the hospital was not like what you see in the movies. I wasn’t screaming. I wasn’t crying. I stayed very calm, but I was holding on to the door handle and trying just to breathe.

  We arrived at the hospital, I got checked into my room and the first thing I said to the nurse was, “Give me the epidural.” And I meant it. Let me tell you, I bow to the women who do this all natural. But unless you want to scream like
a dying horse, my advice is to get the epidural. Once my epidural was in, around 8 P.M., I was in heaven. Then I was in labor for about twelve hours waiting for my cervix to dilate ten centimeters, which is what tells your ob-gyn that it’s go-time and your baby can fit through your vag. Side note: Do you know what ten centimeters is? I had no clue until I saw a “Cervical Dilation” chart using well-known items for comparison. One centimeter is a blueberry, four centimeters is a lime, seven centimeters is an apple and ten is a cantaloupe. Yes, a frickin’ cantaloupe-sized hole in your cervix! And that is why mamas need all those presents on Mother’s Day.

  Speaking of mamas, my mother-in-law and mother were also in the room to witness me giving birth to their new grandchild, sitting next to each other on the right side of my bed. It wasn’t planned that way. They had both come to the hospital when I went into labor the night before and had been in the waiting room for hours and hours and hours. Around 6 A.M., they came into the delivery room to see me and just never left. It was my mom’s first grandchild and my mother-in-law’s seventh, although it was the first one that she actually got to see being born. I think it was a really cool experience for both of them.

  Anyway, after I was finally dilated, I started pushing and pushing. For Jason this was basically just another day in the office. As an anesthesiologist, he’s the one pregnant women scream for in pain and also the one they want to hug afterward. Several women have actually offered to name their children after him once he’s placed the epidural and they’ve felt immediate relief. So when I was in labor, he understood way more about giving birth than I did. Jason’s personality is also cool and collected to begin with, so when I was laboring, he was calm as could be. He was just sitting and observing the whole thing, and maybe even a bit numb. The nurse finally encouraged him to be a part of it and hold my leg.

  “Sir, maybe you want to get up and help your wife,” she said. It’s almost like as a doctor he forgot that this time it was different, it was HIS wife and HIS baby being born. But that snapped him out of it. He sprang into action and held my leg.

  I pushed for about an hour before my little peanut popped out. It was relatively fast, but here’s another thing that no one told me. Friends talked about the joy of getting their epidural and how, after just a few pushes, their babies were out. Not me. During the last twenty minutes, I actually started hyperventilating from pushing so hard and, as a result, this increased my heart rate to the point that the alarms were going off on the monitor. This is called tachycardia, when your heart rate is way, way above normal. My blood pressure started dropping as well, which made me feel like I was going to pass out. For a split second, I thought, Well, this is it. I’m about to be rolled back for an emergency C-section.

  “What do you think we should do?” the ob-gyn asked Jason.

  “She needs to slow her breathing and take a break,” Jason replied. So they gave me a paper bag and told me to breathe into it. Jason came to my side and started massaging the carotid artery in my neck to slow my heart rate. I had no idea why he was doing this at the time and didn’t even ask; I figured he knew what he was doing. LOL. After about three to four minutes, everything calmed down and I was able to push again.

  The truth is that I actually didn’t want Jason to see what was going on, um, down below, because I didn’t want him to have that memory of my vagina wide open. But he was the one who cut the cord, so he saw everything. Oh well. Ladies, just get ready to poop yourself in front of your husband… everybody does. And if the nurse tells you that you didn’t, she’s lying. Yes, you typically will poop the bed when you have a baby. (Yes, even you, Jennifer.) Why? Because when you push that hard, any and everything that is in your colon will come out. There is no getting around it. As the old saying goes, “Shit happens.” Yup. It sure does. Also, you will be totally oblivious to the fact that you just shit yourself if you have an epidural. I only knew this happened to me because I straight-up asked Jason if it had happened yet. So if you are one of those women who always closes the bathroom door when taking a number two… well, you have another thing coming to you. Maybe tell your significant other to wait outside the labor room until the coast is clear.

  When I was pregnant, I would watch these YouTube delivery videos that showed little bundles of joy popping out headfirst from their mamas’ vaginas with cone heads. Contrary to popular belief, a lot of newborns come out not so cute and then pretty up later. I was totally prepared for Palmer to be funny-looking, so it took me by surprise to look down and see a perfectly round little head. No cone in sight. “Oh my God, look at her head,” I said to Jason, feeling a sense of pride. “It’s so perfect.” Then it hit me. Oh shit Something had to give for her head to be that perfect! I thought. That’s when Jason told me about the tear. And I didn’t just have a tiny tear. It was a bad one that required several stitches. As I was icing my vagina later that day, I made one definitive decision: Nothing is coming out of this ever again! Luckily the vagina is a very resilient organ due to good blood flow and it bounces back pretty quickly… so ladies, don’t fret if it gets injured. You’ll be alright.

  When I was pregnant, I told Jason not to be one of those guys who say that “we” are pregnant or “we” are in labor, because “we” are not pregnant and “we” are not in labor. And that was before my labor experience, when I didn’t really know what I was talking about. Now I feel even more strongly about this, and I will tell any guy who says “we” are in labor to check himself, because it’s NOT a team thing. The woman is doing the heavy lifting.

  Anyway, about twelve hours after getting my epidural, Palmer Corrine Wimberly finally touched down at 8:32 A.M. Although everyone thinks Palmer is a family name, it’s not. Jason came up with it when I was around five months pregnant. I honestly have no idea where he got it from. I didn’t like it at first. I wanted to name her June or Larkin, but I finally caved and agreed that it was a strong name for a girl. Now I can’t imagine her being named anything else. Her middle name, Corrine, is the same as mine, which was my great-grandmother’s name. She was seven pounds three ounces and twenty inches long. It was the wildest experience of my life, and so were the days that followed. Labor, delivery and post-pregnancy recovery was a total shock to my body and mind. How you feel when you go into labor and immediately after having a baby is something that I was not prepared for. I finally understood the expression “I feel like I’ve been hit by a Mack truck.”

  Before I had Palmer, most of the moms I talked to said they felt a connection the first time they held their babies. But there were no fireworks for me. As soon as the nurse placed Palmer in my arms, I was so drained and exhausted from labor and in shock from how tiring it was for my body that all I wanted to do was sleep. Yup, that sounds really awful, but it’s the truth. I kept my eyes open long enough to count her fingers and toes, and then I passed out. I’d never heard anyone say that before. All I’d seen were sweet pictures of mom and baby posing for the camera—or at least mom posing, baby snoozing. I’m not sure if it’s a Southern thing, but before I had Palmer, I really wasn’t made aware of the negative aspects of having a baby. When I would ask other women what it was like to give birth to their first child, the overwhelming majority would say things to the tune of, “It’s the most love you will ever feel,” “Your heart will grow ten times” and “You will want to bottle up the feeling of holding your baby for the first time.” Yes. All of these things are very true… but it can also be a huge shock to your system. When the baby is born, the mother is born, too, and it’s a side of yourself you’ve never met. Honestly, though, I get why women fib a little. We don’t want to scare other women, and we don’t want to sound weak. But I would have loved a little heads-up about certain things.

  So to say that I wasn’t prepared for labor to be so exhausting and draining is an understatement. I also wasn’t prepared for the hospital. I basically packed my whole house for my room, including an aromatherapy diffuser and a brand-new, cute little monogrammed robe that I thought I’d wear. Yo
u name it, I had it. All of it useless, except my toothbrush. (When you’ve got a tear the size of Texas, a fluffy robe, no matter how cute, is not going to help the situation. A flimsy, open-backed hospital gown is much more practical.) Now, the hospital had all the delightful things I really needed: maxi pads, mesh undies, ice packs, Epsom salts, a sitz bath and diapers for me. Yes, me. I wish someone had told me that not only would my child be wearing a diaper, but I would be wearing one, too. I remember seeing Kate Middleton coming down the stairs of the hospital after her first baby, Prince George, was born. She was wearing heels and hose, with her hair coiffed to perfection. I thought for sure that was going to be the same way I’d be walking out with my baby. That’s a crock of shit. God bless her, but Kate was wearing a diaper for sure. It was probably a royal diaper, not a Depends like I had on, but the Duchess of Cambridge was wearing a diaper.

  It’s kind of messed up and ass backwards that after being in labor for hours and then giving birth, you have to go through this major recovery at the same time you’re caring for a newborn. And if it’s your first time, you have no idea what you’re doing because you’ve never experienced it before! I mean, come on. I don’t know when things changed, but it used to be that when a woman had a baby in the hospital, they would take her little one to the nursery at night and the nurses would bring the baby to her when the baby needed to breastfeed or have a bottle. This way the mom could rest and get her much, much-needed sleep. Today, it seems like most hospitals—including the one I delivered in—have changed the protocol to what they call “baby friendly.” Instead of taking the baby to the nursery during the night, they leave the baby right beside you in the room. Here you have just given birth. Your body is traumatized, you’re in shock and healing from either a C-section or vaginal birth, and you’re expected to have this baby lying next to you all night when you desperately need to snooze. To me, that’s just a mind-blowing setup. However, when I talked to other moms about this baby-friendly situation, the opinions on it were pretty much split. Lots of moms said they would have loved the break of a nursery taking the baby so they could sleep, but others said they would have been freaked out for the baby to leave the room. I totally can see both sides, but I think it would have been nice to have had the option.