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Ramona's Ramblings

A long ago Labor Day

Ramona Jan
Posted 9/6/22

In between waves of nausea, I suddenly realized I could no longer breathe. I was facing a blank white wall in my bathroom and gasping for air, telling myself, just breathe, for God’s sake, just …

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Ramona's Ramblings

A long ago Labor Day

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In between waves of nausea, I suddenly realized I could no longer breathe. I was facing a blank white wall in my bathroom and gasping for air, telling myself, just breathe, for God’s sake, just breathe.

That’s when everything went dark and I started going down. I tried grasping the wall, but my fingertips slid past it onto slip- pery cold ochre and black tiles; I must’ve been fainting. In a last effort, I pushed hard against the wall and drew in a very large breath. I was back, but it was just a matter of luck, I thought.

Andre, my husband, was in the next room phoning the nurse. He informed me, she was on her way to our Manhattan apartment from New Jersey, but first she had to stop in Brooklyn. That’s absurd, I thought, but what could I do?

Andre had no idea the extent of what was happening, and I didn’t want him to know because I was determined not to go to any hospital. It occurred to me that it might have helped had we gotten the requisite tank of oxygen in advance, but we didn’t. We had planned to get it that weekend, but now it was too late. I would have to keep breathing on my own.

I staggered out of the bathroom, delirious, as I headed toward the bed lovingly readied with blankets and plastic sheets. It was supposed to be comforting, but it repelled me now. I was an animal – roaming, sniffing, and scanning the room purely on instinct. My eyes landed on a chair, low to the ground with a horseshoe-shaped seat that had an opening like a toilet. Borrowed from a wealthy neighbor, I always thought it in-appropriately covered in white leather. I crawled to the chair and hoisted myself upon its gaping form where I’d have no choice but to surrender to the know-how of the body.

I started shivering even though it was the middle of summer; a hundred degrees inside and out. The shivering turned into fits of convulsion causing me to fall off the seat and onto the hardwood floor. There, I started howling like a wolf while Andre stood, back against the wall, with eyes open wide in disbelief. I thrashed about for some long moments before pulling myself back onto the chair and ordering him to put on the gloves.

“What gloves?” he asked.

“Miriam’s gloves. They’re in her kit.”

Miriam, the nurse, left her kit with us a week ago. “It’s in the other room,” I yelled. He disap- peared and didn’t return. I called his name.

“I’m looking out the window watching for her car!” he called back.

“Do you have the gloves on?”

“No,” he answered adding some statement about how guilty he now felt for making this all happen. “It’s too late,” I said and then, thank God, the buzzer sounded. It was Miriam.

“Let me in!” she said and then in what seemed like one motion she entered the room and knelt by my side. Our eyes locked. We said nothing and yet there was some kind of communication. I started to howl again. She listened in- tently and then said, “That’s not low enough.” I was taken aback, but okay, I started howling in a lower tone.

“How much longer?” I asked.

“Two more,” Miriam informed and then a mere two contractions later, our daughter was born. I was no longer an animal, I was now a new mom.

The next day, my neighbor said she heard me practicing labor through the door, and asked when the baby was due and in what hospital I planned to give birth. “Practicing? It was the real thing,” I replied.

I could see she was a bit shocked and even perturbed. She never knew I was planning a home birth. No one did except Andre, our midwife, Miriam, and perhaps our new arrival.

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