I'll have what she’s having

Mainlining Pitocin, I settled back to practise that useless breathing technique they sell you in Lamaze class. With ovine determination, I puffed and hallucinated my way through another five excruciating hours. I watched as a door handle morphed into an old man, a bridge, a rabbit . . . then I remembered how the woman next to me in triage ordered off her birthing menu like she was at Susur Lee’s.

     “Right,” she says to the nurse, “I want nitrous oxide and a vacuum cap.” This was Mount Sinai in the mid-nineties, after all. Not earthy-crunchy-manage-the-pain-through-nipple-stimulation-and yoga-St. Joe’s.

     So I got me the epidural. 

Inspired by In a Pink Room. Image from Open Clipart.