Painful Equality - Part 14

    Our journey of conceiving, carrying and giving birth to our child comes to an end today. Frank is still sleeping, but in an hour or so a nurse will come in and wake him up to start prepping him for his c-section. Normally I would have woken him, but since he couldn't eat breakfast, I let him sleep. The past twenty-two months, three weeks and five days have gone more or less the way I expected. The slight cancer scare from before we even really started anything, wasn't something we would have even considered happening.

    Frank has earned a new level of respect from me from not only wanting to do this, but how he weathered everything it threw at him. I even surprised myself at how my attitude has changed from the moment he brought up the topic, to now where I'm feeling nervous at meeting our son, and looking forward to helping him grow up. I'm not going to think to hard about it since I can already feel some of my old points starting to come back about why I was against this is the first place. But I'm set on being happy. On being optimistic. On being there for the both of them.

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    I felt like a cheap birthday gift all covered in disposable scrubs and mask with gloves, while walking down the hallway holding Frank's hand as he was being wheeled towards surgery. As funny as I felt, I was more concerned for Frank. His hand was cold and I'm sure it was shaking too. It's the first time that he has really shown any fear concerning what we were doing. I squeezed his hand as I looked down into his face. I smiled reassuringly but still saw some worry as he smiled back. It was something to be worried about, so I wasn't surprised that it wasn't so easily alleviated.

    When we arrived at the room we were taken right in, but separated as a swarm of hospital personnel descended on Frank to inject tubes, set up the table with the dividing curtain, and drape his lower half in green paper after washing him down with disinfectant before they moved away to position themselves at their respective stations. Once I could see Frank's face again I moved to his side and held his hand as I sat down on the chair that I believe was placed there for me.

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    “Is everyone ready?” I heard the doctor ask before I looked over the curtain and saw him looking around at this team for confirmation. When no one voiced a protest, he bent down and cut along some lines that someone had already marked on Frank's body. I turned away and looked at his face again to see that he had closed his eyes, and was breathing through his mouth, as if he was preparing to feel pain. I kept my head down and continued to watch as he only showed mild indications of feeling anything.

    “And we are out,” the doctor proclaimed about fifteen minutes later. I looked up to see him handing a large, round smooth mass off to another team, while he himself turned back to my husband's body. I followed his movements before I quickly sat down from what I saw. I held my hand over my mouth even as I breathed deeply. I was only slightly aware that Frank was look at me while I did this. It was when he squeezed my hand did I remember and realized how I must look to him.

    “I shouldn't have looked,” I simply said. I smiled weakly with my hand now away from my mouth, but the image I saw of him still had me feeling queasy. He smiled back at me with understanding.

    “Mrs. Teal, would you like to cut to cord?” was a question that came from the other side of the room. I didn't think they would have asked me, but then I didn't think of it at all. I looked down at Frank and he nodded his head for me to go just as I smelt burning flesh.

    “It's alright. I can't really feel anything outside of some tugging,” he tells me as he lets go of my hand.

    “Alright,” I told him before I stood and walked over to the table that was surrounded by three people. If one of them was a doctor also, I couldn't tell. When I was within five feet of the table, they parted and I saw a baby laying in the middle of an open... organ. I took that to be the artificial uterus that I saw as a smooth mass a few minutes ago. On the baby's left side was what I believed to be the placenta which was joined to him via the umbilical cord. The same cord that I was now handed a scissors to cut. I saw the two clamps marking off where I was suppose to cut and I did it quite easily. As I sliced through the element of sound came back to me. I don't know when it went away, but I was very aware of its return. The baby crying as it laid open under a heating lamp and blind to the world. At least four types of beeps going off in the room reporting what it had to. People talking as they gave orders or gave conformation back about a task that was requested. I was starting to feel lost and very out of place since I had already been moved aside so they could take care of the baby, until I remembered where I was before.

    I avoided looking at Frank's lower half again as I walked back to his side. When I made it back to my seat, he seemed calmer, even a bit bored as he looked up at the ceiling.

    “They could add a mirror or something up there,” he commented once I was holding his hand again.

    “No, you really don't want to see what is going on down there,” I told him as the image re-imprinted itself on my eyes.

    “How does he look?” Frank asked. For a moment I had to actually think who 'he' was. Then I realized he meant Lawrence.

    “Pissed,” I remarked. “Can't you hear him?” I asked fully knowing that he could. He was the loudest sound in there. At least he was. He seemed to have calmed down too.

    “I thought that was just normal,” he said “He could have been scared,” he added.

    “If he was, I didn't see it,” I told him as I touched his forehead. It was a little warm in the room.

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    Four days later and all our friends had descended on our house to see Lawrence. They said hi to Frank and I, but Lawrence was the reason they came. A few more bears, frogs, giraffes and hippos, showed up to keep his other stuffed toys company. We are thinking of packing up half of them and waiting until he's four to reintroduce him to them one at a time as the years go by. A few of our friends remembered to bring us food, which we all shared, while they took turns feeding Lawrence.

    We get our delivery of his milk everyday between seven and ten am. Frank's mammary glands never reacted to the hormone treatment, to my relief. So he doesn't get to experience the “joy” of breastfeeding our son? I told him it wasn't that big of a deal. But our friends delighted in the fact, since it allowed them to walk around with a new baby boy and feed him, while he looked at each of them as if they were now the most interesting thing on the planet. So far Lawrence has shown himself to be a very calm baby. He hasn't cried that much, and seemed to be fine with how often he was passed around and moved.

    Frank has commented that our son has picked up some of my calm that he remembered me having more of when I was younger. And by younger, he means ten years ago when we first met. I was just out of college and looking for work, but I wasn't stressed or worried that I wouldn't get one. The worry and stress came a year later when I was still looking. I seemed to have hid that from him far better than I thought.

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    “He's a great looking kid,” Patrick said as Frank walked him to the door. I rocked Lawrence a little as I started up the stairs to put him in his crib. “You have good baby making genes. Both of you do,” I heard him say before Frank's voice became muffled as I moved out of earshot. I'm sure he said thank you.

    As I stepped into his room I dimmed the lights, that were already on, a little. Just enough to see where I was going but not so much to keep him awake if he opened his eyes. And as I laid him down he did. He looked up at me with sleepy gray eyeballs, but very quickly he closed them again before turning his head to the side and going back to sleep. I rubbed his tummy that was under the shirt that Patrick had changed him into when he also changed his diaper less than an hour ago. The pile of diapers wasn't less than I expected, and those got picked up every two days thankfully.

    I turned to leave when I was satisfied that he was content and completely asleep. As I did, I saw and was reminded of the mess that our friends had left behind, and started to clean up. We didn't need to fall, trip or have something puncture us as we show up to feed him in a few hours. Most of his clothes were also out of place if not just mixed up. I was halfway done when Frank came to see what was keeping me. He first checked in on Lawrence before he helped me at the changing table. We restocked the diaper dispenser while we were at it and emptied the diaper genie as we prepared to leave.

    My hand was on the dimmer as I turned back to see if he was moving, and I saw his little hand as it twitched a little, but he was still very much asleep.