The Beginning of the Beginning

Draft # 2 of my Narrative

It’s 8:15 a.m. on April 4, 2019. I wake up early after 3 hours of      all night. AGAIN. I am so ready for baby Kylie to make her debut. Pregnancy isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. But it still hasn’t been amazing. Those comments people make about glowing, that’s just sweat from carrying an extra 30 pounds around for months. And I can’t stand it when people say “you carry it so well”, like thanks, but I had nothing to do with how my pregnant belly appears. Do other people carry it differently? Or my favorite, “you look amazing!” Never mind their wide eyes when they haven’t seen me in a while. Do I look this amazing when I’m not pregnant? Because you never used to tell me how amazing I looked then…

In the kitchen, I pull out a bowl and set it on the counter. I pour my maple cheerios and they make tiny clinks as they hit the ceramic. The suction breaks from the refrigerator as I open its door and grab the cold handle of my vanilla almond milk. I don’t have anything against regular milk, I just love the sweet and creaminess of almond milk more. I pour the milk over my cheerios and select a spoon without any water marks from the silverware drawer. I always end up using the silverware with the water marks, but I avoid it when I can. I bring my breakfast into the living and sit down to eat. I watch the cars passing by and eat my breakfast. After I finish, I peruse Facebook for a few minutes catching up on the latest videos of babies laughing and pictures of people’s last meals. I take in the peace and quiet knowing that these moments are numbered.

What was that? Time slows down for a second while I process this strange pop that I felt in my enormous pregnant belly. I even heard it. It sounded kind of like when you squeeze a water balloon until it pops in your hands. Immediately I realize that my water has broken, and immediately I internally laugh at how hilariously wrong I’d been last week when I thought my water had broken. “Oh shoot”, I say out loud as I jump up off the couch. I teeter as quickly as I can to the bathroom. At least, as fast as I can move with my legs squeezed together like a four-year-old doing the potty dance.

I sit on the toilet, but of course it’s too late. The fluid was sitting in puddles on our hardwood floors, it soaked up the bathroom rug, and most of it sat right on my legs in my sweatpants. I take the warm and sopping wet pants off and throw them on the already wet rug. After a minute it seems the leakage has stopped so I dry my feet as best I can by stepping on the dry spot of the rug, that I’ll have to wash anyways, and walk to the bedroom to slip into some new pants.

I call my husband to tell him that “todays the day!” He asks if I need him home right away, but I felt fine and thought it might be a little while before the contractions start. I told him to take his time, I figure I’ve seen women in movies have their water broken a million times. No big deal. I’ll just clean up and get my bag together while I wait for him to get home.

I get down on my hands and knees and my belly which sits on the floor while I clean up the puddles from our hardwood floor. I try to stand up, but am instantly paralyzed by an intense aching in my belly. I instinctively take larger breaths like you do at the doctor when she’s listening to your heartbeat. I blow out the air slowly and smoothly as if to blow out the candles on a birthday cake. The pain increases with every breath and I start to panic. “How long is this going to last?” I think to myself, just before the pain disappears like some sort of sick magic trick. I finally get to my feet as more liquid trickles down my pantleg.

That’s it! I laugh to myself as I throw my pants in the dirty laundry bin. I decide that I might as well walk around in a towel.

You never see this part in the movies. You see a quick leak of water and the hospital. But what happens in between? Well so far, it hasn’t been pretty for me. So, I’m guessing that’s why they leave this part out.

I figure I’ll wait for my husband to get home before I shower, just in case. I would hate to fall or have anything crazier than what’s already happened happen while I’m alone and naked in the shower!

Instead I refer to my list of last-minute items to grab for our trip to the hospital and…AH! Not another one! Gosh it hurts. Wait a minute? How long has it been since my last contraction? It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago. I lean on the counter over my list. Here we go.

Reflecting on my writing.

When I was given a few minutes in class to free write, and knowing we’d be writing a narrative soon, I went for it. I imagined a creative epic detailing every event in my experience giving birth to my daughter. And while I may still attempt that tall order at some point, I realized it wouldn’t be favorable to me to attempt to do it now.

As a teacher of writing, I imagine that some of my students will face similar issues. In my Teaching Writing class we read a chapter from our class text on focus. I can focus quite easily while reading. But boy do I lack that in my writing.

During my first revision of my narrative I had to determine what it was exactly that I wanted to write about. And it made the most sense to me to keep the beginning of my story about my water breaking, and to alter the way it was told so that that could be the topic. As mentioned in our class text, I wanted to tell about a “slice” of the story, without getting sucked into trying to tell the whole “pizza” version. I can see myself making this a funny metaphor for my students by asking if they typically eat the whole pizza-although there will probably be a few young guys that could and would.

After determining the topic of my narrative, I had to decide on a theme, or the “so what?” part of my piece as our teacher would put it. Something that struck me from my early drafts was the quotes I wanted to include. I kept adding more of them each time I revisited my narrative and thought they must have some meaning or I wouldn’t keep writing about them.

As I sought cohesion between sentences and paragraphs of my draft, it dawned on me that I could write about the physical experience I had as labor began as well as the internal quotes of unsolicited advice I’d heard thus far. I recalled thinking the two were equally painful. One physically, the other just obnoxiously painful to listen too while being deprived of interaction involving conversation based on anything other than the fact that I was pregnant, what it’s like to have a baby, or early parenthood. (I’m a bit less bitter now that my daughter is all I want to talk about.) These thoughts lead me to create what is my current version of my narrative entitled: The Beginning of the Beginning.

I began writing this piece during one of our writer’s notebook entries. I wasn’t really sure where I was going with it, but I included several details, imagery, present tense, and first person point of view to try to create a piece that my reader could feel a part of. I wanted to share this incredible experience of becoming a mother, especially because the story of my daughters birth was more fun than scary (like some other experiences I’ve heard about).

I quickly realized that if I were to write about her birth, I’d end up writing an entire novel. Which isn’t a bad thing, but certainly didn’t fit the purpose or time restraints of writing a piece for our class. As we discussed in our writing course, I knew I had to pick just one moment to write about. Because I had begun writing about the point at which my water broke, I decided to go with that. Instead of continuing on into what unfolds after my water broke, I went more in depth into my thoughts and the small things that were going on right before, during, and after my water broke, like having a bowl of cereal. I wanted to stress how uneventful that day had been leading up to my water breaking, and my life changing forever. The calm before the storm.

The action that unfolds is quick, and I had a hard time keeping to present tense while writing. It’s always been so natural for me to write in past tense, and I wanted to try something different. I was inspired by one of the pieces I read in our class, I think it was the article from the New York Times about peas, which was written really well and in present tense. While using this element in writing I had to really consider my reader. And I’m still not sure the piece reads as well as I’d like it to.

Word choice is another issue. While reading the piece I notice so many statements that begin with “I”. Since I’m writing in the present tense, this just seems to be the most natural sentence starter. Some of the descriptions are not quite right yet either. The words I used were what came to me quickly as I wrote this draft. I didn’t spend enough time on the piece yet to really rack my brain for some quality adjectives and transitions.

There is still plenty of room for revision with this piece and I’m looking forward to spending some time deep in thought about how to better communicate the story to my reader.