Meg Ferrill | Not in the Plan | SF GrandSLAM 2017

please like And subscribe to our Channel and click the Bell icon to get new video updates when my wife was pregnant we jumped knee deep into planning the birth we did this because I'm a project manager and I'm a freaking great project manager I'm a great project manager because I'm pre-programmed to anticipate Danger some people just call it anxiety but I call it my superpower so we jump right into the planning and Jen wanted this birth plan which is this document you create with your preferences for the labor I mean she didn't want any drugs she wanted to hold the baby with all its wound juices intact she was even debating eating the placenta she was going all cave woman in on this and because of a bad labor-class experience she planned on having a doula now doulatists to me were mythical creatures much like fairies I thought they could be found wherever Patchouli or hemp was sold but my wife convinced me that in order for this baby not to be born into a freshly broken home we needed a doula and last we took a tour of the hospital of where my wife would give birth to complete the planning and the tour was rather uneventful there was a tour of the facilities a q a and most importantly they validated the parking and now my wife hadn't felt good during the tour in fact she hadn't felt good since the night before but she was also 38 weeks pregnant it's really hard to feel good at that point and so now though we had found ourselves five hours after the tour ended and my wife was bent over sobbing in pain and to be clear this was not labor and it felt like only seconds but we moved so fast and we got to the hospital and they put us in the smallest birthing room and our nurse hooked Jen up to a blood pressure machine and it started beeping immediately and it was beeping so loud that it actually brought in three other nurses and our nurse looked at the machine and she said this is impossibly high it must be broken and hooked her up to another machine but the machines weren't broken in fact they thought Jen was broken and so now all the nurses quickly gathered around Jen and they were acting like one energy entity from one brain they were like this octopus of sorts engulfing her one tentacle put an IV one tentacle took her temperature another one put on monitors and they were moving so quickly and the octopus was not saying anything and it didn't have to because it was very clear that something was really wrong with her and I just sunk back into the corner and just stood there because there was nothing I could do I couldn't stop this no matter how many times I closed and opened my eyes the octopus was still there and I was looking at my wife who is carrying our son and because of my superpower all I can think is that I might lose them and I am terrified at the thought of not having another day with my wife or even not having just one day with my son because some tiny part of me thought that because they existed I would be given full lifetimes with each of them but in this moment it is just really clear that you're not promised a lifetime you're not even promised today and that each day we are living we are just stealing from death because death is the only thing that has been promised in this equation and I can feel the room getting smaller because people are coming in and out and I know that I am just in the way and so I leave my heart in the room and I move my body through the doorway and as I do I can see our doctor approaching and I know he's talked to our nurses but this is the first time I'm seeing him and I just run to him and I say will our baby be okay says yes and I feel my lungs expand with relief but then he says your wife though will die if we don't take the baby out and he ushers me back into the room so that he can talk to both of us but I am just in this fog of these words that he said and I can hear him telling Jen that she has severe preeclampsia and that she needs an emergency C-section and she needs it immediately and I can hear her pleading with him to let her just push and asking him to wait for the Doula and I know that she's doing this because she has no idea what he has just said to me and I can see that Jenna's heart broken that this is not the birth she wanted that a C-section was not in the plan that none of this was in the plan and I am just so angry with the plan for this illusion of control that is provided and our doctor can tell that we are just both cracking Jen at this birth that she's being robbed of and me at my inability to make things right and he just says look this is the beginning of your life as parents there will be UPS there will be Downs and you just have to remain flexible a little over two hours after we arrived in the hospital we heard our son Gus cry for the first time and we were tucked behind a curtain so we heard him before we saw him his cry was his first sign of him in this world and I love his cry even today because it will always remind me of what it did then that he's alive and every time I look at my wife and my son I'm reminded that we might not have a tomorrow together but we do have a today and maybe my superpower shouldn't be planning maybe my superpower should just be loving them so hard today that there is no room to plan for tomorrow

Channel: The Moth

Views: 1,474

Keywords: The Moth, The Moth Radio Hour, The Moth Podcast, story, storyteller, storytelling

Id: 5-riLa6EcEM

Length: 7min 37sec (457 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 14 2023