My Body(53)
I pedaled harder, pushing through the discomfort. My thighs burned. I swallowed a chunk of spit. I saw the road ahead and watched Barbara’s body bounce on the seat of her bike as she crossed back onto the asphalt.
They slowed down to wait for me, and I felt a rush of tenderness as I registered the familiar shape of their backs hunched over their handlebars. It doesn’t matter what I look like, I realized. Blood pulsed up through my thighs and I thought again of the tiny life housed in my body. My closest friend and my husband grinned at me lovingly. Without saying a word, we rode on. My eyes welled with tears. I wanted to cry out: Thank you! What a joy life can be in this body.
* * *
As a child, I was terrified of stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, anxious that I might “break my mother’s back.” I believed that my thoughts had an effect on everything from the role I would get in the school play to what my future would hold or how tall I would grow.
This habit of magical thinking has persisted into adulthood. Some of my superstitions: If I plan a trip, I will be sure to get a job. If I dream of someone, I expect to hear from them soon. If I share good news with anyone before it’s official, the fortunate event will not happen. My latest is the belief that if I keep my son’s name on my body (on a necklace or a bracelet inscribed with his initials), he will remain healthy.
If there is something, anything, I can do to steer the outcome of events, then I am less powerless. I am less afraid. This notion is so deeply ingrained that even as I confess this, I worry about the jinx I am placing on my rituals. Will my tricks no longer work now that I have shared them?
I often struggle to delineate what is my gut instinct and what is my hypervigilant, superstitious mind playing tricks on me. Audre Lorde wrote, “As women we have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge.”
A logical part of me knows that events are not affected by supernatural forces dictated by me. Still, I don’t want that to be true, at least not entirely. I want to believe in some kind of magic, in some kind of power, even one that is outside of my control.
* * *
No one knows what exactly triggers a woman’s body to go into labor. During my pregnancy I learned that despite the confidence of doctors who act as if there is no mystery or magic in our physical lives, this is something for which we have no clear explanation. At one of our final appointments, S asked our OB who decided when it was time: the baby or my body.
“Probably both?” she’d answered vaguely, studying her beeper.
Six days before my due date, nearly midnight on a Sunday in early March, my water broke. Earlier in the day, we’d driven to the Upper West Side for our favorite bagels and whitefish salad as a reward for putting the finishing touches on the nursery (we’d also finally hung paintings that had been leaning against walls for years, as if the baby would be judging our interior design).
On the drive home, I’d asked S if we were ready. “Hell yeah we are,” he’d said, squeezing my knee.
“I know it’s scary,” I hummed later, sitting alone on our red couch, my hands on my belly. “But we’ll do it together.” I wasn’t sure if I was addressing my son or my body. Probably both.
* * *
THE RUSH OF warmth between my legs interrupted my sleep, and I sat up straight in the bed. I threw the covers off to reveal a growing wet spot on the sheet. The soft light of the TV cast a shadow on my belly, making it look like a crescent moon.
“It’s happening,” I exclaimed, leaping up.
As S scrambled to get everything ready to leave for the hospital, I labored on all fours, staring at the checkered tile of our bathroom. My body felt like it was cracking open; the pain was all-encompassing, rippling through my core and spreading to every corner of my being. The contractions were coming without a break, and as one peaked, I felt gripped by sudden panic. I was desperate to make the pain stop, but I was trapped. I bit down, clenching my teeth.
“There is no going back,” I said to myself, resting my forehead against the cold floor and lacing my hands behind my neck. I tried to remember to breathe. What would happen now to me and my baby? Our lives were on the line, but there was nothing I could do to ensure our safety. Our survival now depended on the mysterious mechanisms of my body.
Someone had told me that in order to dilate, a woman’s brain waves have to slow down and reach a similar state to orgasm. It was odd to think about sex at the moment of childbirth, but as another contraction seared down my spine, it was a relief to remember that my body was capable of pleasure and release. I tried to fill my mind with blankness. I let the contraction consume me.
Suddenly a new sensation: trust. My body had gotten me this far, hadn’t it? It was resilient. It had sheltered my growing son for nine months and kept his heart beating while his entire, complicated self developed inside me. Now it was opening up, right on schedule. I knew then that I had to let go. Despite my fear, I calmed. I surrendered.
When we arrived at the hospital, I crawled through the lobby and contorted against the elevator wall. At the delivery ward, a woman asked me my name while I crouched down next to a chair, pushing my head against its arm. I was there but not really. I was inside my body, a machine that was tearing along viciously with no regard for anything or anyone. I concentrated, refusing to let my brain interrupt my body’s workings from functioning. It knew what to do. I just needed to stay out of the way.