Perfect Ten

(Warning: This post contains birthiness. Birth stories are always gory and bloody, and not in a cool Vin Diesel movie kind of way. If overly-personal information and general goriness make you queasy, get out now. Sissy.)

So I would like to answer a question posed to me by my very fabulous friend A, the day after Little One's arrival. i would like to answer it because it is a good question, and because some of you out there are pregnant and have therefore been exposed to horror stories from friends, family, and strangers on the metro, and I'd like to add my two cents now that I have had a baby and get to join the ranks of women who suddenly know everything. The question was:
"So...was it the worst pain of your life?!?"

Which the answer is Yes, Yes it was.
But let me explain. I knew all day Monday, as I cleaned and worked on the house that the contractions I was having were different. Like, "hey, that one had some kick to it!" like a little tobasco sauce thrown in there. So it's not like I ignored them, I wrote them all down just in case, like they tell you to in the otherwise pointless childbirth class I dragged J to a week earlier. But I mean, come on. We've all seen the movies, where women are screaming and throwing things and writhing around, and their heads turn 360 degrees and they curse their husbands and use very non-maternal language. That's labor, right?
Well. I'm a little sorry to say, it was not like that. (Which means I've pretty much blown my chance at a get-out-of-jail free card for totally inappropriate behavior, which is too bad.) So I thought, hmm...maybe not. Still, by the time J finally got home, about 13 hours later, I was pretty sure we'd be making a trip to the hospital, at least to check it out. At around 8pm, we decided to drive over. I called the baby people on the way to let them know I was coming, and here is what happened. The nurse said, "What did you say your pain scale was?"
You know the pain scale, right? It's that little chart in the doctor's office that they stole from your 7th grade school counselor. It has the little happy face over by the number 1, and then the little happy face looks less happy, then rather ambivalent, then kind of disgruntled, and finally turns all frowny over by the 10. I have been told, many times, by medical professionals trying to decode this advanced technological monitoring tool for me, that zero (happy face) means NO PAIN, and 10 (frowny face) means the MOST PAIN EVER. Ever.
So, I thought about the little faces, and as I considered what number to tell the nurse, I thought about mideival torture. Because, really, I think those people set the standard for frowny faces on the pain scale. And I compared the contractions to, say, being stuck with a hot poker, or having eyes gauged out, and I thought, well, surely, this is not so bad, you know, in the scheme of things. So I told her seven.
And she told me to go home. What? Yep, go home and wait awhile for my pain scale to get worse, and then come back. So we did, and I couldn't help but say to J, "oh my gosh...I think labor is really going to hurt". Which we laughed about later, and you'll see why.
Well a couple of hours later, I popped up from the bed and told J we were going to the hospital NOW and screw the nurse. (Which was for emphasis, not a directive, mind you.) When we got there, they asked me my pain scale again. Hmmm......"eight?"
So, the nurse, clearly (annoyingly) unconcerned by this, told me they would just monitor me for a while, and to tell them if things got much worse. This is where J stepped in and used all his future doctory skills and saved the day. He said, "you know, C, 10 on the pain scale is supposed to be the worst pain you personally have ever felt. Not, like, the worst pain imaginable." Oh. Well then.
So I looked at the nurse and said, "Right. Ten. Definitely TEN". Well, apparently, ten is a magic number. Nurse Unconcerned rushed a doctor in. Doctor asked what kind of pain relief I'd like, and I said I'd like to try none, and all the people in scrubs looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. The doctor did an exam, and the eyebrows went up again, this time even higher, and she said, "well, if you want a natural childbirth, this is the way to do it, because you are dilated and going to have this baby RIGHT NOW." So, apparently, I had been in actual labor all along. Which meant, I realized, that it was almost over. You know how on TV, there are these moments where the character gets bathed in a spotlight from above and the choir goes "aaaaahhhhhh!!!" That can happen in real life.
So they rushed me right over to the delivery place and Little One proceeded to make her entrance. And I'm not going to lie, I think I might have hit and 11 on the frowny face scale a couple times, but then something amazing happened. Little One was here.
Here is my hypothesis. I think labor hurts for a reason. Let's consider newborn babies. They cry, a lot, they poo, a lot, they look kinda funny and they don't even say thank you. Evolutionarily, there has to be something to keep us all from getting tossed down a well by the age of three days. I think labor is it. I mean, imagine an ice cube (work with me here).
If you hold an ice cube in your hand, it is not a particularly pleasant sensation. It's cold, and kind of slimy, and it even stings a little. Now. Imagine that you have burned the bejeezus out of your hand trying to get your cookies out of the oven. Suddenly, holding that ice cube is the best thing your hand has ever felt. The ice is heavenly, thank goodness for the ice! Do you see what I mean, here? I think the reason that labor hurts is for that moment that they hold up the baby and say "look at your baby!" It makes something great and amazing into something miraculous. Which is what it was. And you fall all in love with the crying, pooping baby on the spot, and rather than throwing it down a well, you spend all your time for the next 20 years trying to keep it alive. Evolution is smart, people.
Granted, I had a relatively easy time of it, so I'm told. And I had J there with me, every second, being amazing like he does, so I knew that at some point it would all be ok. And the cool thing about birthiness is that, unlike say, gout, it won't last forever.
So look, the long answer to the question is that, sure, it was the worst pain I ever felt in my life. But come on, what does that really mean? Most of us have never been drawn and quartered, or burned at the stake, or eviscerated. What's the worst pain you've ever felt in your life? Was is really that bad? And at the end, it's all so, so worth it. Because in one second, you jump right off that pain scale onto the happy scale. And you get to start right out at 10.