The miracle of life (via many tools of modern medicine)

Last night, I read two articles that I probably shouldn’t have during my middle of the night haze. The first one was about how lack of sleep will kill you (rats dropped dead after 2-3 weeks of total sleep deprivation. Humans get diabetes and heart disease with deprivation. I assume they would also die with total deprivation). The second one was about the futility of breastfeeding and how it might be a way to oppress women, much like the vacuum cleaner in post-WWII US. Truth be told, I read all the celebrity gossip during the day, so my reading options at night are, by default, not as fun. I got NWB a Kindle Fire for Christmass ™, and it’s my constant companion. If I’m going to spend 8-10 hours a day as a milk factory, then I need to be able to read on the job.

So here are some facts about my labor and delivery:
--It was induced and lasted a total of 36 hours.
--I was obviously extremely sleep-deprived, in pain and on the verge of begging for a C-section when they told me I could push.
--As it was induced, I had contractions 3 minutes apart for 24 of the 36 hours.
--I got my first (of three) epidurals when I was only 1 cm dilated, but after 10 hours of 3 minute apart contractions.
--The first epidural was taken out and reinserted immediately because the first anesthesiologist wanted to redo it.
--That epidural didn’t work at all, so the second anesthesiologist came and gave me a third one. Which worked! For about 6 hours.
--After that epidural wore off, there was a near hourly visit by a third anesthesiologist to try to get it to work again, by upping the medicine and giving me a shot directly into the catheter.
--My epidural ALWAYS worked on my legs!
--At the point at which it was clear that the epidural was useless, I could not speak. I did EXACTLY what I always do to manage pain—closed my eyes, grabbed the hospital bed and started to silently shake (I am not a screamer).
--An induction means you are hooked up to many monitors, making anything resembling a natural childbirth impossible. In the beginning, I had to call the nurse in order to be unhooked to walk to the bathroom. At the end, I was completely bedridden with a catheter. $80 and 8 hours of childbirth classes were rendered completely useless.
--I think I got to experience many of the drugs utilized for the child birthing process during the course of my M-F hospital stay (cytotec, pitocin, epidural, vicodin, fentanyl, magnesium sulfate, ibuprofen, stool softener). It was a potpourri of medicated experiences!
--I gave birth in a training hospital, so there was both an intern and a doctor present at the birth. When it came time to, ahem, repair my lady bits, the intern was practicing under the watchful eye of the main doctor (I have never watched doctor shows, so I don’t know what they are official called. “the attending”?). NWB informed me that she had to redo her stitches 3 times because she was “training” on “my body”. It took like 45 minutes, but I was too tired to really ask any questions (which was also how NWB managed to slip in two middle names).
--In the end, I learned a lot about myself and my dear life partner. First, he was an awesome pushing coach, who got really into counting down the pushing seconds and held my leg like a champ (much better than the nurse who was there for most of the time. There was a nurse shift change right in the middle of pushing, which is a little disconcerting. The good nurse took off and all the sudden there was a new nurse (just on the clock!), holding my leg and offering tepid words of encouragement.).

Secondly, I am going to be the absolute worst old person in the world. I hate hospitals and sickness. They turn me into the grumpiest human being on the planet. I hate needing to rely on others to help me and not being able to do exactly what I want to do when I want to do it. I am going to do all kinds of angry yelling when I’m 80.

Here’s a cute picture of my mom and Theo.