What I Thought I Knew: A Memoir by Cohen Alice Eve

Author:Cohen, Alice Eve [Cohen, Alice Eve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2009-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

Scene 10

Labor

Sunday morning, after two days off bed rest, I woke up at 6:30 a.m. with contractions every five minutes.

This was going to be okay. I didn’t know what would happen the day after the birth, but this was today, I knew exactly what was going to happen and what I was going to do. I wasn’t waffling or ambivalent, thinking of alternatives and ways of backing out. I was absolutely clear that I was going to have this baby. It was December 11, not December 31. I wouldn’t have to face the Y2K global meltdown.

We hadn’t chosen a name yet, because we couldn’t agree on one. We had agreed to choose a name after the baby was born.

Tomorrow was my solo theater students’ end-of-semester performance. I asked my substitute to cover.

I called Barbara. Alas, today and tomorrow were her days off. I was assigned Dr. Tara Carson—a gorgeous young doctor whom Michael and I had met at the clinic’s open house. Tara had chatted with us at the open house, and made us both nervous when she bragged that she was dating a New York Mets pitcher, and had stayed out partying all night before working a two-day shift. All the doctors at the New York Hospital obstetrics department looked like glamorous TV actors—understudies for the cast of ER. Tara would be appearing tonight in the role of my ob-gyn.

Per Tara’s instructions, I called her with updates on the contractions throughout the day. She told me to spend Sunday night at home and come in Monday, or when the contractions were really hurting, whichever came first. Michael brought Julia over to Sophie’s, where Susan and Mark would take care of her.

I had a sleepless night—every contraction woke me. Monday at sunrise the contractions were quite painful. Michael and I cabbed to New York Hospital on York Avenue and Sixty-seventh Street.

“Your cervix hasn’t even begun to dilate,” Tara scolded, as if I hadn’t turned in my homework on time. Without warning, she dilated me by hand, using her fingers to stretch open the os, the hole in the cervix.

“OW! OW! THAT HURTS,” I screamed, as I felt my cervix ripping.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet. Now you guys walk back to the West Side, and keep walking. You got to get this thing moving. You’re nowhere near ready to deliver. Don’t come back until the contractions hurt so much you can’t stand it anymore.”

We walked the width of Manhattan, from the hospital by the East River, to Riverside Park on the Hudson River. Every few minutes, as a contraction rolled through, I groaned and doubled over, using Michael’s shoulder for support. We walked in Riverside Park, with a halting rhythm—walk, contraction, groan, double over, walk, contraction, groan, double over—punctuated by conversations with curious and congratulatory passersby, my spontaneous nosebleed, and a sunset over New Jersey.

We went to a coffee shop on Broadway for dinner, an absurd place to be in labor but Michael was very hungry, and in the ever-shorter moments between contractions, so was I.

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