A quick glance at the title of my blog and my screenname should clue readers in that I'm a runner. Yep, I'm still running more than halfway into my pregnancy, albeit taking it a little bit slower and sticking a little bit closer to home than I did before. And if you've been reading my blog for a while, you've probably stumbled across Isaac's birth story, which could be subtitled "The Hardest Race" or something like that. Anyway, with the birth of our daughter looming in the not-so-distant future, I've been thinking about what I'm hoping for from her delivery, and I can't help but look at the whole labor experience from the lens of a runner.
I've run a couple of half-marathons. In theory, I love them. I love training for them, I love finishing them, and there are parts of the actual running of the 13.1 miles that feel pretty amazing. Last fall I ran in a half marathon. I trained with some friends in my neighborhood, which is flat, flat, flat. When I got to the race location, I was a little bit surprised to find that it was hilly, and not just a little bit hilly. The entire last mile of the race was straight up a HUGE hill (at least by coastal Texas standards). For the first 10 miles, I felt awesome. I knew I was running a personal best time, and I was pumped. I think I had a permanent smile plastered on my face. But the last three miles were hard, and the last mile was a killer. I passed several people along that last mile who were pulled off to the side of the course, puking their brains out. I got through the last mile alternately praying and singing to myself "don't let anybody break my stride, nobody's gonna slow me down, oh no, I got to keep on movin.'" But when it got so hard I didn't think I could do it anymore, I was almost done. I finished, placed 3rd in my age group, and beat my previous time by almost 15 minutes.
Ok, so why the extended race report, ten months after the fact? I've been thinking about this race a lot because I'm feeling really scared about my upcoming labor and delivery. I've had three kids, that should put my mind at ease, right? After two kids, I felt confident and invincible, but Isaac's birth has made me doubt myself. I spent 32 hours in a bat cave, pretty much chained to the bed, without any food (sounds like prisoner torture, doesn't it?). I told them that if they gave me the drug they wanted to that bad things would happen, and they did it anyway, and bad things happened (including having my naked derriere paraded all the way down the hall as they wheeled me to the operating room).
So, to psychoanalyze myself a little bit, I feel like I have something to prove with Maren's birth. I feel like I need to reconnect to the strong woman inside me. I'm determined to have a drug-free labor (which I did, almost by accident, with Annie) and I'm equally determined to do what I want to do (within reason, of course) during the labor. But I'm still feeling terrified.
On the race course, I know that I can finish the race, even when I want to quit and take the van back to the finish line. With my upcoming delivery, I really want to keep mile 13 of my last half-marathon in mind. At the time, it felt like the hardest thing I had ever done. I wanted to quit so badly. But I got through it, and felt a tremendous rush of adrenaline when I crossed the finish line and my mom and my friends were standing there. I've had a natural delivery before, and know I can expect a similar, even better rush when the baby is born. I want that, I need that, to heal. As a runner, I know I'm strong enough to push through the pain. I just hope that as a laboring mother, I can draw on that same strength.
--originally published 8/21/06
No comments:
Post a Comment