Transitions

No choice but to push through.

Transition, as any obstetrics textbook will tell you, is the most harrowing part of childbirth. After the first stage of labor, the dilating of the cervix from one centimeter to seven, the transition stage takes a woman’s lady business from seven to ten. The whole thing is insane, but the only way to get the baby out is through the birth canal. I don’t recommend it without major drugs. In fact, I told my daughter to demand an epidural the second she entered the hospital.

For me, my second baby, Jake, happened so fast there was no time for drugs, so transition was something I experienced. It was, in a single albeit compound word, godawful.

Did I learn from it? No, though I suppose it was instructive that I knew I never wanted to go through it again.

Yet, I find myself again in transition: the shift between summer and fall. While lacking the torturous process of squeezing out a child, there are moments I’m still pretty miserable.   

See, I crave light and warmth, which late fall/winter in New England lacks. Every year the onset of cold weather feels like something I (rationally) must endure, and something that (irrationally) might kill me.

So, what to do? Every year I try to distract myself with the things I enjoy about fall. Apples! Sweaters! Hot chocolate! I am reminded how dearly I love my space heater.

It feels pathetic, this grasping at prosaic straws, not unlike the stupid Lamaze breathing they kept telling me to focus on during my undrugged childbirth experience.

Had I known when I was going through transition with Jake what an amazing person he would turn out to be, how deeply I would adore him, would my experience have been less horrific? Sure, but the thing giving transition its terrible power was fear of the unknown. I didn’t know I wasn’t about to die, because there’d been no precedent. I had time to scream for an epidural before producing Hannah, my first-born, so with Jake, I was certain something had gone terribly awry. If I knew the agony was merely a sadistic, physiologically punishing means to a standard reproductive end, endured by females since the dawn of time, I would have been resentful, but resigned.

Anyway, I approach this seasonal transition knowing winter is not only survivable, but the natural precursor to spring. I fucking hate it, I’m not going to lie, but I accept it, and refuse to flip out. Dread and anxiety just make what’s already the worst season even worse.

So it would seem that upon reflection, all these years later, childbirth’s transition stage taught me about the nature of things, endurance, and eventual joy. I never in a million years thought I’d say it, but thanks, baby Jake, for your impatience.