Of Agony and Redemption

My personal trainer is a very nice young lady even when she's trying to kill me. We meet up once a week for a torture session (that I pay for!), and she instructs me to do various things with my body that leave me agonizingly sore for days after. Fortunately, her nefarious plots on my life have so far been unsuccessful, and I might even be building some muscle.

This last appointment, she had me doing all kinds of leg work. To distract myself from the full-length reflection of the chunky middle-aged woman unattractively lunging about and dripping sweat off the end of her nose, I struck up a conversation about pain. In particular, the pain of childbirth.

Lindsey, my personal trainer, is young, extremely cute, very fit, and newly married. She's so excited because she and her husband are closing on their first house in a week or so. We've discussed gardening and being addicted to HGTV shows, and I told her about the book Compost Everything, which I bought a few weeks ago and read in one night.

So, this last appointment, as I valiantly did pull-ups, squats, lunges, and planks, she admitted she'd never broken a bone or anything. Of course, I had to tell her the story about snapping the bones of my foot right across the top during the Nutcracker ballet dress rehearsal when I was 12 or 13 and how the adults told me it was just a knot and to walk it off, which I tried to do by shuffling up and down the hallway, shivering and shaking with the pain, and when it was time to go on stage to dance, I took the first step of that first balancé and fell into a quivering, tearful heap and ended up with my foot in a cast and not able to perform that year (and got a lecture from the director the next year about not breaking anything, as if I was just looking for attention by snapping some bones and ligaments) .

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the conversation soon landed on the topic of childbirth. Pain, childbirth: the two are inseparable. To speak of one is to speak of the other. It is the way of mothers. But she was eager to talk about it, so what could I do? Besides, it distracted me from the way my muscles were trying to dissolve into mush during the first 30-second plank.

"Midwives," I said with a wise nod as I struggled to catch my breath. "I love midwives."

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Did you prefer having a midwife to an OB? I'm really interested in this topic!"

"Absolutely," I said. "I had two male OBs before I got clued in to midwives. They were good guys, but they've got exactly 10 minutes to talk to you before they have to go to the next patient. They've never actually given birth. And they show up to catch the baby when you're in labor, while it's the nurses who stick with you the whole time. But midwives, they've got time. They answer your questions. They wait with you during the labor."

We stopped our conversation for a moment while Lindsey demonstrated the next activity designed to make my already strained thighs so noodly that I wasn't likely to be able to walk out of the gym without the assistance of canes.

"Midwives let you move around during labor," I panted at her a minute or two later. "OBs want you on your back with sensors strapped to your belly at all times, which is the worst way to go through labor and give birth. With the midwives, I got to use birthing balls and the tub, and I could walk around if I felt like it."

"I've heard of birthing balls," said Lindsey. "Did the tub help?"

"Best delivery ever," I assured her, waving away her helping hand as I struggled to get to my feet after collapsing into a pile. "I sat in the tub until it was time, knelt on the bed, and a couple pushes later, the baby was born."

Lindsey was obviously impressed. Her eyes had gone big as she ordered me to do another 30-second plank. I got into position on the mat and gritted my teeth, determined to hold my shaking body in a solid line until the end of the longest half-minute in the history of time.

"I want to go completely natural. No drugs," she said dreamily about 15 seconds in. I started laughing, but I held my plank position through sheer stubborness and force of will until Lindsey said, "3..2..1..You did it! Way to go!" She hopped up, ready to order me on to the next exercise, but I told her I needed a moment to actually breathe. She squatted down beside me again while I curled up helplessly on the mat--not quite in the fetal position.

"Make no mistake: labor is the worst pain you've ever felt," I gasped. "You'll want drugs. You'll want anything to stop the pain." I looked up at her through eyes bleary and stinging from the sweat that had run into them. I was too weak to reach over and grab my towel or my water. I glanced at them longingly, but Lindsey didn't catch the hint. She was inspecting the floor, thinking about what I'd said.

My tongue felt swollen in my mouth. I considered vomiting. I swallowed hard.

"You had all yours naturally?" she asked.

"Four of them," I admitted. "I had epidurals on the first and the last one.  I desperately wanted an epidural on the fifth one, but the only anesthesiologist in the hospital was already in surgery, so I was out of luck."

"Never," I continued, shaking a limp finger at her, "go into labor on the weekend."

She nodded.

"On the other hand," I continued, somehow not vomiting, "going through that pain makes holding the baby that much sweeter. You bond faster, I think. It must be all the oxytocin or something, but when you've given that final push and it's all over and they lay that sweet little baby on your chest and you're sort of half sobbing and totally exhausted, you realize the pain was worth it. It was the crucible you went through for that tiny little person, a person you'll love so fiercely that you can't believe you had all that love in you."

We were silent for a moment. I finally caught my breath and struggled up to my knees and then to my feet. The torture was over for the week. Lindsey grinned at me.

"Great job!" she said. "I'll see you next week!"

Surprisingly, I managed to shuffle all the way to the parking lot and collapse into my car. I knew I would be hurting for several days after this, and I still needed to come back and complete my cardio later in the day. But somehow, it was perfectly okay. I had survived Lindsey's malicious attempts to kill me off once again. There's a certain thrill in that.