Newsflash: New Specimen Unearthed!

9:00AM Atch and I trek all over downtown doing errands. Three hours of walking and my left bakya breaks in half.

11:00AM Head home to change shoes. Damned inconvenience. Spend rest of morning traipsing the mall.

4:30PM Internally probed by OB-Gyn yet again. Forty weeks today, no sign of contractions. Head back downtown. Maybe catch a movie.

5:00PM Was that a contraction? Nah. Probably just gas.

5:30PM Convinced Atch to buy me a pair of Happy Feet sandals (have pity on this poor pregnant woman who just broke a bakya). Am at boutique when...

5:45PM Whoa! These ARE contractions. Sales girl looks on worriedly as I make selection, hunched over. Breathing. People start to stare.

6:00PM Forget it, Atch, this is embarassing. Buy them for me next time. Let's eat, am hungry.

6:30PM Atch & I get some hot steaming batchoy to go. Contractions every 15 minutes. Breath. Breath.

7:30PM Eating batchoy at home with Atch and Woog. Hunched over soup. Contractions. Breath Breath. Whoosh. Whoosh. Woog asks: “Is the soup really hot, Mom?”

8:15PM Decide to go to hospital. In bathroom, drop soap at every contraction. Was that my water breaking? Nah. You're in the shower you paranoid fool.

8:45PM Arrive at hospital. Beg OB-Gyn for epidural. OB-Gyne laughs. Doesn't help she's my sister-in-law.

9:00PM Oh, the paaaaain....! (Go with the pain. Breathe. Don't fight it.) Who...who said that? Is somebody there? ........ ?! That you, Papa God?

9:17PM Delivery room. Pitifully whine to student nurse if I could hold his hand. Human touch and all that. He nods yes and I mash his hand to a pulp.

9:18PM Pushing. Pushing. Pushing. Puuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuush!!!

9:23PM Baby squirts out. Four heaves. World record. Oh... hi! HI! My precious! My pokey bear! *Sniffle* Its me, its Mom! (pause) Some nose you've got on you!

Auntie Nat after pulling out her new nephew

9:40PM 7.8 pounds. APGAR score 9:9. Dark as twilight. Hear Atch outside snapping pictures. “Look at your nose!” Atch exclaims, laughing.

10:00PM On gurney on the way to room. Pain? What is pain? I want to see my baby again.

Pressure tank survivor and his amazing nose

Tired and Terrified

Atch winced mightily as his wedding ring cut across his clenched fingers. The pressure was growing intense, but he silently endured the pain just as his wife bore down unceasingly on his hand. This was his role, after all, and he dutifully soaked everything up like a sponge.

This is not a scene from the delivery room. Or even the labor room. This incident is set around a routine check-up of a full-term pregnancy. The OB-Gyn withdraws her latex-gloved fingertips from the violated orifice of this red-faced algophobe. Freed at last, said algophobe's husband shakes his poor mangled hand gingerly, perhaps hoping to get some of the circulation back.

The OB-Gyn is shaking her head. The mucus plug is still too thick, the uterus still too high up. For a second pregnancy 38 weeks old, this is a bit unusual. And I've been 3 centimeters dilated for the past week.

Atch starts getting a determined look on his face, and I could almost imagine him hectoring me through a regular exercise regiment of power walking, squats and lunges. Anything to get my uterus contracting and the baby descending. Anything to avoid a costly cesarean section. As one, we blink away the image of hundreds of peso bills flying out the window. This is probably one of the reasons we fell in love – the irresistible primal call of one skinflint to another. *Sigh*

On the way down, we take the stairs. I am so tired. I can feel the clenched muscles in my aching lower back and Eli's weight pressing sharply down on my bladder, incessantly grinding against my pelvic bones. My thighs are trembling from exertion. I am snorting like a fire dragon out of steam.

Stoically, I have borne this for the last few bloated months.

I am so tired. And so terrified.

Four years ago, I nearly became a permanent occupant of the labor room. I lay for three agonizing days in induced labor before some sympathetic senior resident burst my amniotic sac with a wicked-looking plastic probe. After that, I lost all remaining shreds of dignity as I clawed my way through my husband's shirt and the drenched sheets. I fancy if I had any more strength left, I would have bent my IV stand in half. As it is, Atch tells me he has heard carabaos with a more mellifluous bellow.

Four years after pushing out a 7.11-pound Woog, I am back at square one.

I am so tired. And so terrified.

And so, undoubtedly, Atch and I will be pounding the pavement, son and dogs in tow. Muttering our prayers, shoring up a courageous front, and hoping to raise a low pain threshold.

We'll see...

27 June 2006