An unexpected side effect of a difficult delivery is that watching TV can sometimes send you into a tailspin. All those adorable birth scenes in movies and TV are suddenly less so and more like instruments of torture. That great couple banter? Imagine complete silence as you and your partner realize that something is very wrong with your baby. Mom’s look of pure joy as she looks at her little one for the first time? Replace that with tears as baby is whisked away for treatment.
After an experience like Charlie’s birth, a movie like Knocked Up is a lot more like a punch a in the gut. I remember watching it with my husband and in the end he got up, cursed at the TV, and walked out. You can be handling things fairly well, and then BAM! something like that can remind you of what you didn’t get to have.
The other night, though, Hubby and I were watching the season finale of Bones–last season when Angela had her baby–and we found ourselves chuckling at this improbable TV delivery. The chatting, the complimenting. I mean, I wasn’t in labor for long, but GOOD LORD was that business painful. Like any strong, brave woman, I spent the time up until my epidural for the twins crying. I was thrilled to have them stick a needle in my spine.
It probably took me twenty-four hours to realize we’d made it through our first birth scene without wanting to kick someone. It’s really interesting because a lot of people would not consider the twin’s birth ideal. There was the whole six weeks too early thing, and the NICU stay, but they let us examine each boy when they were born and even gave a minute with each before they took them over to the NI. Seriously, when they presented us with August we weren’t even sure what to do. It was all so. . . foreign.
But it’s good too. We got to have a positive birth experience. It doesn’t erase the first, but it softens it. Provides us with another perspective.
I must say, I think it’s a Mommy Milestone.
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