The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [4]
One morning my sister heard me sobbing in the shower. She pulled the curtain back, looked at me holding my empty gutted belly, and stepped inside to embrace me. Fully clothed. We stayed like that for about 20 minutes I think.
Possibly the most tender thing anyone has ever done for me in my entire life.
I WAS BORN cesarean. Because one of my mother’s legs was six inches shorter than the other, her hips were tilted. Gravely.
Doctors told her she could not have children. I don’t know whether to admire the ferocity of her will for deciding to have my sister and me, or to wonder what kind of woman would risk killing her own infants - heads crushed by the tilted pelvis - before they could be born. My mother never believed she was “crippled.” My mother brought my sister and me into the world of my father.
When the conventional doctors voiced their medical concerns to my mother, she went to another kind of doctor. An obstetrician/gynecologist who practiced alternative approaches to health. Dr. David Cheek was best known for his work using hypnosis on patients using their fingers to tell him the subconscious causes of emotional or physical illness. The process is called “ideomotor.” Particular fingers are designated (by the doctor or the patient) “yes,” “no,” and “don’t want to answer.” When the doctor asks the hypnotized patient questions the relevant finger lifts in response - even when the patient consciously thinks otherwise, or has no conscious awareness of the answer.
In my mother’s case, this technique was used to help her through cesarean labor. Dr. Cheek would say things to my mother during her labor such as: “Dorothy, do you have pain?” And she would answer with her finger. He would ask, “Is it here?” And stimulate the area. She would answer. He would ask, “Dorothy, can you relax your cervix for 30 seconds?” She would. “Dorothy, I need you to decrease the bleeding … here.” And she would.
My mother was an important case study.
Dr. Cheek believed we are imprinted with particular emotions even while in the womb. He claimed to have taught hundreds of women to communicate telepathically with their unborn children.
When my mother told my birth story, her voice took on a particular aura. As if something close to magical had transpired. I believe that is what she believed. My father’s telling of the story was equally filled with reverence. As if my birth were otherworldly.
The morning I went into labor with my daughter the sun had not come up yet. I woke up because I didn’t feel anything moving in me. I put my hands all over the world of my belly and nothing nothing nothing but a strange taut round. I went to the bathroom and peed and an electrical shock traveled up my neck. When I wiped there was bright red blood. I woke my sister. She wore worry in her eyes. I called my doctor. She told me it was probably fine and to come in when the clinic opened in the morning. In my belly there was an immovable weight.
I remember crying in great waves. I remember my throat locking up. Being unable to speak. My hands going numb. Child things.
When morning came, even the sun looked wrong.
In my body, birth came last.
Metaphor
I’M GOING TO TELL YOU SOMETHING THAT HELPS. NOT IN the usual way; this isn’t in any textbooks or guidebooks. It has nothing to do with self-help or breathing or stirrups or speculums - god knows that territory has been done to death with its terminologies and systems - first second third trimester, quickening, lightening, labor, expecting, fetal heartbeat, uterus, embryo, womb, contractions, crowning, cervical dilation, vaginal canal, breathe - that’s it, little short breaths,