July Birth In The Fjords

Since it’s July 1st…and I found this old post while looking through my dusty blog book, I thought I’d resuscitate it for prosperity. Here goes nothing!

We arrived in Oslo, Norway on March 28, 1983. I remember it well because it was the day before our third anniversary…I was five months pregnant…and it was snowing.

First, let me say, I have nothing against socialized medicine. It is a beautiful thing that all people are treated the same no matter what their economic status. That being said, I have only one fairly important tidbit of advice to offer.

DO NOT GIVE BIRTH DURING THE MONTH OF JULY IN NORWAY!!!

You see, during the month of July, doctors drop their scrubs like migratory birds with a good tailwind and head to the seaside for some well-deserved and long-awaited midnight sun. I learned this trivial fact the hard way…at around 8-dialated centimeters…with one hand grasping a gas mask and the other swinging a fist in the general direction of the third midwife I’d had the pleasure to meet during the last twenty-eight minutes of a thirty-two hour delivery.

So during the months that I waited for our daughter’s appearance, I listened to Norwegian foreign language tapes, ate vats of rich chocolate ice cream, and watched my damn Laura Ashley dress pull tighter and tighter over my belly, stretching the petunia pattern into steroid-induced sunflowers. How’s that for a long-ass-run-on-sentence!

I should have read “Delivery for Dummies” and brushed up on a few birthing techniques. Instead I decided to wing it. I convinced myself that women had been doing it for years, with varied degrees of success, and I was going to grin and bear it.

I wasn’t completely naive. I’d seen a movie once about the ultimate “birthers”…those Navajo women who got off their horses to drop a 9-pound warrior-to-be onto a hand woven blanket only to remount their stallions and ride roughshod bareback into the sunset. So how bad could my Viking adventure be, right?

On July 17th, the night before our daughter’s birth, my ex took me out to dinner. Afterwards, he drag-raced back and forth on the cobblestones of Oslo in hopes that it might initiate something. I don’t know if we loosened our daughter from her vaginal moorings, but we definitely ruined the shock absorbers on his car.

Around 10PM, I started to experience the first signs. Lying there in the darkness I felt a rumbling that I could only assume was our daughter’s arrival. Each time a contraction hit, I turned on the light and jotted down the sequence. The pain was uncomfortable, much the same as cramps, but not horrible.

I became rather smug as I lay there. What were all these women bitching about? I made a decision right then and there that I was going to ace this delivery thing…only I was having a hard time escaping the visual of popping a mini-me out of a garden hose. I still couldn’t quite wrap my brain around that one. I assumed that the whole area down there opened up like the retractable roof at Wembley Stadium and then miraculously closed up again after birth.

At 4AM the next morning we drove to the nearby hospital. I wore a pair of flip flops since they were the only footwear that could remotely contain my Hindenberg feet, and of course…the same Laura Ashley dress that I had grown to hate…and vowed to burn postpartum.

A covey of nurses checked me in…and shortly after…sent me home.

Not one centimeter had I dilated. Six hours and nothing to show for it!

“But that’s impossible! I HAD contractions!” I screamed at my ex, motioning for him to translate.

The words came out of him slow and methodical, as if he were sipping wine and rating the grapes. I had no idea what he said, but the nurses gave him a sympathetic grin, as if to say “Is she always this dramatic…and clueless?”

So, we went home, and after building myself another pyramid of butter pecan, rocky road, mocha almond fudge, cheesecake swirl…I maneuvered myself back onto the couch…shovel ready.

The pains grew in intensity with a shorter span between each, so we returned to the hospital at 7:30 the next morning. The new staff checked me in, even though I had only dilated a mere two centimeters. I was starting to understand why women bitch. Actually I had turned the corner…FULL TILT… and was beginning to think they hadn’t bitched enough!

After being plucked and feathered (I will not elaborate,) a nurse waddled me toward a scale. I stepped onto the girth gage triggering radical convulsions from the kilo meter. It finally slowed…and eventually landed on a horrifying number. No queston…I should have lightened up a little on the industrial strength ice cream tubs, but did I mention that it was HOT!…VERY HOT! I was in a foreign country with no knowledge of how to take care of a baby…and there were midwives…young women resembling Victoria Secret models who were going to pull that child out of me whether I liked their methods or not. Trust me, it was an “out of body” experience. Don’t you think you’d power down a tub or two of ice cream?

We followed a pubescent-looking midwife to a delivery room that looked out over a graveyard. The realization hit me that this is a country of convenience.

I glanced around the room and quickly assessed that those pale green walls and pink striped curtains were literally begging for an IKEA makeover. Even more surprising was how vacuous it seemed. The room echoed. I tried not to panic and instead decided to focus on the gurney, which I assumed was for me….and a miniature crib…for whatever was coming out of me. On a bed stand was a glass of water and a small wooden instrument that looked like a horn. I had no idea when or why I was going to need to play a bugle…but after a day of charting contractions, I would have considered learning a Sousa march if it jump-started that baby’s coming out parade!

But then reality slapped me upside the head. Considering a human being was going to pass through my body into this 8’ X 10’ room with only the help of a pretty midwife, a gurney, a crib, and a horn… I cursed myself for not brushing up on the subject, or at the very least talking to a few mothers. I mean, I’d spent more time listening to the flight attendant’s safety spiel than the miraculous birth of our child. I believe this is when I began cursing (repeatedly) the overachieving Navajo women for setting the bar too high.

The pain elevated to a new pitch and I soon learned that those stunning midwives who wandered in to smile every few hours could only speak four words of English. “How-are-you-doing?” Then they were gone, moving like Stepford goddesses to the next room before I could answer. This was somewhat of a dark revelation since the ex had promised that communication would be the least of my worries.

Finally at around 9PM I hit five centimeters and they rolled in a gas mask. I immediately suction-cupped it to my face. Waves of nausea swept over me and I hurled a few times in pursuit of equilibrium, but what did I care, right? Hell, I would have swallowed it again if it meant I could keep the gas flowing.

My thoughts bounced off those chartreuse walls until the vapors kicked in and I began seeing misty visions of my Grandma Tillie. A woman slow on the uptake…who hadn’t a clue how babies were conceived. In the midst of labor with her only child, she screamed at the doctor, “How did THIS happen to me?” He confirmed her worst fears… It DID have something to do with all those late night All Star Wrestling take-down reenactments with her husband Sophus. From that day forward she cut him off. No more falderal.

Meanwhile, there were screams coming from down the hall so the midwife raced from my room to follow the sound. A short while later a new nurse entered. I asked if I could have an epidural. I watched her perfect lips move and then stop, which the ex translated. I needed to wait a little longer. At midnight, that midwife’s shift was over and a third candy striper entered the room. As one might imagine, I was in no mood for a changing of the guard. Again, I asked for an epidural, and when her lips stopped moving my ex gingerly informed me that it was NOW… too late.

At 12:28AM our daughter was born. It was lovely to be introduced to the child who had been kicking the hell out of my ribcage and giving me indigestion and heartburn for months. But our intro was short as the midwife handed our baby over to her dad and the two of them trotted off to another room to congratulate themselves.

This is when the real fun began. I was told I needed to clean up, which didn’t seem like an unreasonable request, although soon after I learned that they didn’t mean a sponge bath while reclining on my gurney.

A midwife pointed down a long corridor to where the showers were located. I set off walking…leaning against the walls as I inched my way down the endless passageway that led to the bathroom. Once I was able to get my hospital gown free, I let the water run over my body. A red chord dangled from the stall which supposedly I was to pull if I felt faint. By the time I finished and got back to the room, I was exhausted. My ex and I had a photo-op minute to hold our daughter, but then I told him to go home and get some rest. I was fairly confident that all the excitement was over.

A short while later two women entered the room and pointed at the baby in my arms, my belongings, and me. The hand gestures lasted for some time before discovering that I was to follow them. I picked up our newborn, grabbed my backpack, purse, and whatever else I’d brought and followed the ladies down the elevator and out the front doors of the hospital onto the street. Two other new mothers were curbside with babies and belongings. We stood in a straight little line, pale and lifeless, waiting for our ride. When the van finally arrived, I stepped up into the bus and moved toward an empty bench. I don’t know what was left inside of me to lose but it felt like I’d dropped my remaining innards somewhere between the driver and the seat.

From there we were transported to an old army barracks set up by the Germans during World War II. It was rustic, minimal, and overcrowded. We waited patiently while they readied a room and rolled in a few beds. Forging a common bond, those two other mothers and I traded “in the trenches” delivery battle stories. In sweltering heat we ate bread and goat cheese for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but what I remember most was the way we laughed. Great bouts of C-section busting hysteria.

Obviously things have changed since then. I can only imagine health care has improved and the army barracks are gone, although July is still the month Norsemen close up shop to frolic in the fjords. That fact alone should make one cross their legs.

So the next time you find yourself in Norway, remember my little story…especially if your partner is in the mood for an ice-breaking romp during the cold, dark month of October.

You’ll recognize the signs. 1.) When foreplay is moving faster than a Norwegian summer 2.) If one eyebrow is raised, he’s drinking beer and singing love songs while channeling Tom Jones in Vegas 3.) If he starts acting like a Hemingway bull in Pamplona…chasing you around the granite kitchen table, horns locked and loaded… that’s a pretty good indication that the fish balls and moose jerky have skyrocketed his testosterone levels into a frat-boy frenzy.

Good luck out there…watch the ice!