Frozen

I plan to start my maternity leave on the Friday that falls a week before my due date.  People continue to give me assignments up through the end of the day on Friday, though I have broadcast my last day – just one last thing, can you have this for me by the end of the day, here is a new file you need to manage while you’re out so get familiar with the deadlines before you go and get your staff to copy the file so you can take it home.  I am frankly astonished at how little my maternity leave seems to impact people’s decisions to give me work.  Apparently – I hadn’t realized this – “maternity leave” means “you still work full time, but from home.”

So I keep working, through the weekend, nine straight hours on Monday,  trying to finish as much as possible so I can be left alone for at least a day or two after Baby comes.  I am without enough snacks to sustain my blood sugar, and by the time I leave I am lightheaded and feeling pukey.  I meet the family at a local joint for dinner, order something quickly and eat it ravenously, do not pass out, though it is a near thing.

Right before we leave I go to pee, and there is blood, and that is good.  I have been contracting all day, of course, but that is standard for me.  I have been contracting all day most days since January 8th, which was three weeks ago now.  I have reached a state of being where I believe, deep in my viscera, that there will never be another day that I am not, that this is every day for me now.  Hanging on the edge, never to quite make it over.  A brief squeeze of pain, 4-10 times and hour, sometimes irritating and sometimes breathtaking, but always there, forever and ever.

But the blood.  The blood is a good sign.

I labor all night.  I pace in my slippers across the dark laminate floor, a slow shuffling circle through dining room,  living room, den, kitchen, dining room, living room, den, kitchen.  When a contraction comes I rest my face on the cool granite countertop, or lean into a wall.  Everyone else is asleep – it is just me and the baby and the timer and the countertop, soothing and cold on my face as I relax my way through the pain.  The contractions are at a 4-5 on the pain scale, a downward pressure, intense, requiring focus, clearly not active labor yet but getting there.  But they remain irregular, too far apart.  Some time after midnight I lie down for a few minutes to rest, and twenty minutes later I wake up – no contractions.  An hour later they return.  An hour later they are gone.  And again and again, round and round, through the night, stops and starts.  The blood is heavier.

The next day is Tuesday.  No real change, except that now ice is coming.  We are about to be iced in, and still I bleed, contract, but don’t move forward.  I call the “I’m in labor” hotline, ask to speak to a doctor.  I want to be allowed to come in and checked and perhaps have a few mechanical things done to move this along, before the sleet sets in.  He does not call me back himself, tells the nurse to call me back instead with an unhelpful message: “If you’re in active labor, come in.  If not, don’t.”

I’m not in active labor.  Contractions are still sporadic.  We head across the bay to be close to the hospital anyway, eat lunch (spicy food!), drive around, everything closed due to the impending storm.  The car ices up, there are icicles on every building’s roof, though the roads are still ok.   The day goes by.  We don’t know what to do.  I call the on-call doctor again.  This time I demand of the nurse answering service that the doctor himself call me back, I want to talk options, I want to be soothed.  A half hour later he does so, and he is horrid.  He will only repeat “If you’re in active labor, come in.  If not, don’t bother.”  I explain again – I’m not quite in active labor yet, but the blood is heavy, third child, quicker, could start any time, sleet.  He repeats his mantra, speaking over me, not listening.  I ask – is there nothing we could try at the hospital to jump start it, since it’s obviously imminent, and there is the sleet coming?  “I will not induce you, I will not do anything to you, if you get iced in it is not my problem.  Only come in if you are in active labor.”  He is, in a word, an ass.  I hang up on him, wipe fat tears, decide I will be writing an angry letter, cry some more.  We are at the hospital, had decided to come and try for some compassion, but we leave.  If this is the man on call I’d sooner have the baby in the parking lot with an EMT then have him touch any part of me.  I try to reach my own doctor but cannot.  I get the ass on call or nobody.  I choose nobody.

So we go home.  Here we are.  The kids are home with us, out of school.  Our car is a block of ice.  There is snow on the roof, on the grass, icicles hanging off the front porch railing.  It has not snowed here since 1996, which is the year I graduated high school.  I continue to bleed, contract, but not advance.  I drink water.  I pace, listless, or I sit on the couch, where I immediately set upon by my children, so inconveniently home and all up in my business right now.

At times the boys are a comfort to me – I look at their bodies huddled up against mine, hold their hands and elbows and rub between their shoulders, trace little circles on their cheeks, and they serve as a kind of proxy for the little baby’s body that I truly thought I’d be holding by now.  They are concrete proof for me that every pregnancy ends, and that sons are worth this trouble.  Other times, when they are crawling all over my belly while I’m having a contraction, or when they are whining or fighting when I’m trying to focus on the pain, then I think I might possibly lose my mind and they HAVE GOT TO GET AWAY FROM ME.  Work continues to email me as well, and I finally write an email to everyone telling them I’m in labor and to just leave me alone, for a couple of days, please, at least.

So here we are.  It is 5am.  My contractions, which woke me up, are 5 minutes apart, but I’m confident they will go away, as they always do.

Out the back window I see the snow on our palm tree, thick ice on the porch.  Our heater is running, round the clock, and for continued power at least I am grateful.  I put on Netflix, huddle under a blanket.  Me and the baby and the quiet house and the rhythmic pain, and the frozen world outside.  Forever and ever.