In Pieces(58)
I put him to bed, made him drink some water, pushed him to eat some soup, while I kept telling him he was home, he had a family who loved him, no one was going to send him away. He was safe, he was safe. And he went to sleep.
Steve’s flirtation with drugs, which had begun with pot in the midsixties, was now becoming a slightly more serious relationship, and it bothered me. I remember lying underneath Peter’s crib, listening to the rattle of the toddler’s breathing and the rumble of Steve’s friends milling about in the other rooms of the house. Some of the guests I knew, others I didn’t, and all had been invited that night to drop acid, along with a mix of other drugs, I suspected. But since I was frightened of hallucinogenics, or any chemical that might trap me in my head, plus the fact that I was newly pregnant, I felt comfortable sleeping under my asthmatic two-year-old, listening to him breathe, feeling the butterfly-like movements of the new baby.
Two things made this pregnancy different from my first: I wasn’t working all day, every day—although taking care of a toddler is its own kind of twenty-four-hour-a-day job. And Lamaze, or natural childbirth, had appeared on the scene, offering classes for expectant mothers and their partners to learn about the birthing process, along with techniques for handling the pain. I didn’t want to be placed in a room alone and clueless again, so six weeks before my calculated due date, I gathered a notebook, a pillow, a stopwatch, and Steve, and off we went to learn about visualization, breathing, and relaxation, about listening to the body and letting go. Tools I’ve used all the rest of my life, though how much I used during the actual birth, I’m not really sure.
My teacher was the soon-to-be-famous Femmy DeLyser, who in 1982 joined Jane Fonda in her book and video Pregnancy, Birth and Recovery. The Dutch-born maternity nurse and childbirth expert was part of the newly formed Lamaze International and in 1972, when I met her, she had just started teaching night classes at the old Cedars of Lebanon Hospital on Fountain Avenue in the middle of Hollywood. She lovingly explained the three stages of labor and how to recognize each of them, the last being transition. Hitting that final stage of labor, she laughingly told us, we might start demanding that everyone back off or become overwhelmingly irritated with a “let’s call the whole thing off” feeling.
Like the good student I never was, I practiced the breathing techniques every night. Knowing now that most contractions lasted only a minute, Steve would start the stopwatch, then call out the passing seconds, which allowed me to know how much longer I had, and at the same time he’d pinch my leg as hard as he could in an effort to provide pain for me to breathe through (though the pain of him gripping my thigh and that of my cervix yawning open are not on the same Richter scale). But with whatever pain level we did or didn’t replicate, eventually we were a well-rehearsed team and ready to take the act on the road.
At three thirty in the morning on May 25, 1972—one week before the due date and shortly after I’d been stabbed awake by a bright, unmistakable feeling—I stood in my mostly darkened bedroom before the full-length mirror with my nightgown held up. As the first contractions began, I could see the miraculous movement of the baby inside, shifting down toward his new life. Femmy had told us that Lamaze was still rather controversial in most American hospitals, that the staff might not easily cooperate, much less participate, so it was best that we wait at home, away from the hospital’s rules, until signs of the second stage of labor had begun. She also coached us that once we were in the hospital we should repeat to everyone constantly, “I’m Lamaze. I’m Lamaze.” I had it all in my head while I stood there, marveling at the process, feeling totally in control, not a single piece of me afraid—though I’d begun to notice that the contractions were intensifying.
Steve had gone to wake Baa, who’d been staying in the tiny guest room for just this reason, while I took my time dressing. I moved nonchalantly, making sure we had everything, including a collage I’d made of fabrics and ribbons, pictures of Peter, and a poem Steve had written to me when we were kids, the focal point that Femmy instructed us to have. I could smell coffee brewing in the kitchen as Baa stood in the doorway with a nervous smile, and when I finally started to walk out the front door, I felt the next contraction beginning to build. My disciplined, rhythmic panting abruptly stopped. I slid to the floor as if I’d been shoved and immediately got angry at Steve, saying, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” When this monstrous wave of a contraction slowly began to pass, we looked at each other: I was in transition. How could that be? This was too quick; the house was a good forty minutes from the hospital. But forty minutes was not very long, surely I could do that. Our leisurely pace cranked into double time, but no sooner had I pulled my bulk into the car than I yelled out as if sighting Moby Dick rising to the surface, “… Here it comes!” Steve started both the car and the stopwatch, keeping track of the seconds and the winding road at the same time. “Ten seconds,” he called. “Twenty… thirty…”
And at that, my breath suddenly caught, forcing me to grunt out a barely audible “I’ve got to push.”
“No,” Steve firmly shot back. “No. Blow… blow. Don’t push.”
While riding in a car that seemed to have Mr. Toad at the wheel—flying down Bel Air Road and onto Sunset Boulevard—I planted my feet on the windshield and rose up out of the seat like some levitating demon, all the time forcing air out of my already airless lungs. If the contractions ever diminished I was not aware. It seemed they came faster and faster, tumbling over each other, while the intensity sent me climbing higher and higher on the windshield. I remembered Femmy saying, “If ever it becomes impossible to keep yourself from pushing, allow your body to push just the tiniest bit with each release of the forced breath. Don’t worry if you poop in your pants, who cares, you’re having a baby and you’re allowed to break all the rules of polite society.”