The Backup Plan
I'm an alpha's alpha. A second-best friend. Always a bridesmaid, never the maid of honor. I'm content to sit on the sidelines and be on a B team. As in: Put me in, coach! Nope? Okay, cool. I'm not your in-case-of-emergency contact, but if yours doesn't answer, and you call me, I will show up and give you my all.
I' m number two, I'm number two!
The person I went to help on a drizzly February night in Manhattan was my friend Michelle, who was on her way to Mt. Sinai Hospital because her doctor had told her that due to her headache, high blood pressure, and vertigo she might give birth to her baby two weeks early. Michelle's best friend, Tal, was supposed to be her birth partner, but Tal was visiting her sister on a long-planned trip to Florida. Michelle had asked me to be her backup plan, and I, of course, had said yes despite that fact that I am notoriously averse to childbirth.
I don't want to watch it in movies or on TV. I don't want to look at iPhone video footage or photos. But, oddly enough, I do like to hear about it because I've never given birth, and to me listening to you relay all of your gory details is like cozying up to an old radio show like The Horror! or Suspense! I like to imagine how a surgeon pulled your uterus out of your torso like I wrestle a suitcase out of the back of a closet, but I don't want to experience it live and in person. I would rather spend the night in an abandoned lunatic asylum.
The first day Tal was gone, I went to sleep with my cell and home phones by my pillow. On the second day, at 4:30 in the afternoon, I saw Michelle's name on my caller ID and answered, "Are we having a baby?"
Michelle said, "Maybe so."
Michelle is fifty and sunny. She has blond curly hair and a bright smile, made brighter when she wears her favorite color, hot pink. She's a licensed clinical social worker working for the New York City Department of Education, and has been an auntie to Tal's two sons since the day they were born, the eldest twenty years ago. Tal, too, is sunny. She's got that Eagles' peaceful, easy feeling and wears prairie dresses so that she looks like she's drifted out of a 1970s "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" Coca-Cola commercial. When Tal and Michelle are together, their bond is so electric they glow in the dark.
Michelle has always wanted to be a mother, but never met the right man. So, at forty-eight, she took unconventional steps to start a family. At forty-nine she was pregnant and had herself a very merry pregnancy; no morning sickness, no problems of any kind. Tal was by her side every step of the way and pooled funds from our group of friends to buy her a top-of-the-line stroller, which was delivered to Michelle's apartment building an hour before I walked through the front doors.
On my way to the hospital, Michelle had asked me to swing by her place and pick up her eyeglasses.
"Oh," she said, "but you don't have the keys."
I said, "Don't worry about it, I'll get in."
People stationed at doors and gates don't question me because I look like I'm someone's executive assistant. Or mom. I'm nice. And I lie. Very easily. Because my lie isn't going to do anyone a lick of harm. And my southern accent don't hurt none.
I said to the doorman, "Hey, I'm Helen! Michelle's in the hospital. She havin' her baby! She needs me to get her eyeglasses. Would you please give me her keys?"
He handed them over faster than a valet.
At the hospital, Michelle was not in the computer system yet, so I convinced a security guard, a complete stranger, to let me get past him to go into a place where I did not belong to see someone who did not exist. I found Michelle in what I'll call triage. A floor where there were many closed curtains, and once I got behind hers, I found out that she can lie as well as I can.
She told the nurse who was taking her blood pressure: "This is my sister."
And I lied: "Mom's pissed."
The nurse didn't question us.
When the nurse left, Michelle thanked me for coming and confessed why she'd chosen me to be her backup plan. She said, "You don't have a day job, so I thought you'd be available. But it's mostly because I know you'll be a cheerful, calming presence."
I felt so proud of this description, I made it my mantra. I'm a cheerful, calming presence. I'm number two! I'm number two!
It's amazing how quickly hospital decisions are made.
A doctor, wearing scrubs and a diamond eternity band on a chain around her neck, pulled back the curtain. She had the body of a woman who sprints for fun. Short hair, don't care. She was born ready to get on with it.
She said to Michelle, "I don't need to wait another four hours to see if your blood pressure spikes to know you have gestational hypertension. Baby is thirty-seven weeks and in perfect health, so your options are: we induce for vaginal delivery, but if Baby goes into distress, we do a C-section; or we skip the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours of labor that could end in a C-section and do a C-section now."
Michelle chose option one.
She told me my job was to make sure she got an epidural and the umbilical cord for stem cell research.
I imagined a nurse offering the cord like a boiled lasagna noodle. I asked, "Do I just hold out my purse like a trick-or-treat bag?"
"No," Michelle said, laughing. "I have a kit for it at home, I should have asked you to get it."
"Don't worry about it, I'll get it."
I called Tal's husband, Scott, who will always give you his time and do you a favor. The man is generous.
I said, "The umbilical kit's in a purple-and-white box in her living room."
Scott said, "On it. Need anything else?"
"A Subway sandwich, please and thank you."
"Text me your order."
When it came to the epidural, Michelle's choices were to first get Pitocin (a drug that's piped into your veins to induce labor like charcoal lighter fluid starts a grill fire) and then get the epidural (a needle to the spine to make way for a fishing-wire-wide tube of painkiller that numbs your vagina, surrounding areas, and legs so you can't get out of bed until your baby is born; which means you also get a catheter to pee in a bag); or Michelle could get the epidural first, then the Pitocin, feel no pain, and sleep through the night.
Michelle chose option two.
We moved into a private room, and I made myself useful. I unpacked Michelle's bag, changed the TV channel to The Bachelor, and group-texted her birth plan to Tal, our close friends, and Michelle's parents, who had booked a flight to arrive tomorrow afternoon.
When Scott showed up with my sandwich and two dozen doughnut holes, I knew from my husband's grandmother's hospital stay with pneumonia to take one doughnut hole and give the rest to the nurses as a bribe. From Mama's cancerous colon polyp removal, I knew how to turn a second hospital gown into a robe to cover the gaping slit of the one that exposes your butt. When Papa had open heart surgery, the only thing he asked for was a good pillow because hospital pillows feel like unpopped bags of microwave popcorn, so I brought Michelle one from home. Michelle said, "Oh, thank you. I'll dry-clean it and return it."
I said, "It's my gift to you. When you leave, have them throw it in the incinerator."
This is my idea of taking one for the team. The B Team. I am shameless, organized, and I take copious notes.
At 9:14 p.m. a nurse with cat eyeliner and a high pony found a vein for an IV in Michelle's arm after sticking her for twenty minutes. At 9:43 p.m. a tall drink of a resident reiterated that a C-section was possible and had Michelle sign documents that swore she wouldn't sue the hospital if
something went wrong. At 9:57 p.m. the anesthesiologist walked in and was so flawlessly good-looking, I felt the same sense of safety I feel when I walk onto a spanking-new airplane. Yes, I know this is a false sense of security, but I'll take what I can get when I'm handed a blue surgical bonnet and mask.
Michelle was positioned to sit on the side of the bed with her legs hanging off. The nurse stood between her legs and braced her shoulders. I held Michelle's foot, the one part of her body I could reach, and petted the top of her hot pink fuzzy ankle sock.
I locked eyes with her and through my mask said, "You're doing great."
I could not see what the anesthesiologist was doing behind her back, but I imagined the spinal-tap scene from The Exorcist.
Don't faint, I told myself. Don't you dare faint. Be a cheerful, calming presence. You're number two! You're number two!
Michelle didn't flinch. The anesthesiologist did whatever he had to do to her on his first try. It was over in less than five minutes.
"You're amazing," I told Michelle.
I asked the anesthesiologist and nurse, "Is this how it normally goes?"
"No," they both said.
The anesthesiologist said, "There's usually a lot of screaming and crying because people are scared and don't understand how to curve their lower backs so I can get the needle in."
I asked, "Do you mean women don't understand?"
"Yes." He blushed.
Michelle said, "I take Pilates. I know the C curve."
At 10:23 p.m. another resident, this one with a Matthew Fox five-o'clock shadow, arrived to insert a balloon in her cervix. The balloon would mechanically inflate to three centimeters overnight, then roll out like a gumball. The resident asked her to lay back and sit crisscross applesauce. And then he proceeded to shove his hand wrist-deep into my friend while looking directly at me.
I found this more disturbing than the epidural. It took him forever.
He said to Michelle, "It's a good thing you had the epidural, otherwise you'd hate me."
I said, "You shouldn't say that to her."
But Michelle didn't mind. She was an excellent patient. Everyone said so, including this guy, who finally got the balloon in and then got out of the room.
Michelle said she doesn't complain or make a fuss, that she's easygoing with the maternity ward staff, because at our age she's experienced pain. She's had surgeries and medical procedures, plus the everyday aches of being fifty years old. So pain is not unfamiliar to her. She knows that pain will pass. And the pain of childbirth and all that comes along with inducement is a pain that she has chosen. For Michelle, this pain is better than the agony of never having a child.
She was fearless. And her courage made me less afraid.
So I steeled myself. I silently took an oath that I would hold Michelle's knee while she pushed (apparently stirrups are a thing of the past) or brave the operating room if that's what she wanted.