“First I’d like for you to roll over onto your left side if you will.”

Right. Back to reality. The land of no choices.

“We’ll be giving you a small shot to numb the immediate area and then we’ll be inserting a catheter along the lower spine that will allow us to keep a nice steady drip of anesthetic going during surgery. This will numb you from the waist down so you won’t feel a thing during the actual operation. But you’ll be fully awake throughout the procedure and will be able to talk with us.”

I was so excited about the prospect of getting a shot in my back, becoming numb from the waist down, and having my stomach sliced open that I could barely contain myself. If I had been in any kind of normal shape I’m sure I would have catapulted off that gurney and danced around the room hugging everyone in sight, my gown flapping wildly half open at my back. Of course lying there like a flipped turtle I couldn’t do that. So, being basically an accommodating person, I tried to roll over onto my left side, as Dr. Gonzalez had requested.

“Uh,” puff puff (I am still having those contractions every seven minutes) “I’ll try.” So I try.

“I can’t.” Puff Puff. Contraction over. Calmer breathing.

“Perhaps we can get a nurse to help you,” said Dr. Gonzalez. I spotted a needle on the tray table he had moved next to my bed. It looked large. Then I noticed a really long slender plastic tube-like thing. With a point at one end. The nurse rolled me over with some difficulty. She checked the tubes leading from me to the monitor that was still showing fetal heartbeats.

Dr. Gonzalez was behind me. I could feel his body heat but of course I was facing the other way.

“Now this will just feel like a little bee sting.” I heard the rustling of his white doctor coat as he bent down to his work.

“Yeeeoooowww.” He neglected to ask if I was allergic to bee stings. I am. But the sting of the injection passed quickly and I kept my mind on the ultimate goal. To get these babies out of my body and into this world.

After a few minutes another anesthesiologist, presumably a resident, arrived. Together, the two doctors attacked my back with the catheter and – I know this is hard to believe – a hammer. I never actually saw this hammer. But as my lower back began to accept the catheter inserted down my spine, I could hear the distinct sounds of hammering as my body felt the blows that drove this plastic tube down under my skin.

The hammering got more intense as the doctors started muttering about this and that, the unmistakable sounds of frustration as their work progressed with less than complete ease.

Finally, after what seemed like at least thirty minutes had gone by, but it was actually a short time, they stopped. I sensed something in my back but couldn’t really feel it, until suddenly I was aware of a sensation of cold under my skin behind my backbone radiating down and sideways.

Dr. Gonzalez said, “I am just giving you the epidural that will numb you below the waist.”

Still lying on my side facing the opposite wall I pictured what waist used to mean. In a few minutes I realized that even if I wanted to, I could not possibly roll over as the stuff took hold of the will in my lower body.

In marched the nursing squad. They rolled me over onto my back and pulled off my gown. They walked away leaving me naked, the curtain around the bed pulled completely back. In walked another nurse carrying a tray and some other stuff that I couldn’t see. She pulled over a table on wheels and placed the tray down. She unwrapped a razor. She soaped me up somewhere below my belly out of my range of vision and sensation and started shaving me. The sound was familiar. She shaved my entire belly, down my crotch and over the sides of what should have been my waist but was now just part of the great blob that was me. She packed up and then took out a long plastic hose and a plastic bag and started fooling around somewhere down below my belly. I saw, but could not feel, my legs being spread apart. Even if I were not numb from the waist down, somewhere inside you go numb when people in white uniforms begin working on you as if they are mechanics and you are the car high up on a lift, your greasy, road-worn under carriage exposed, dark gray with lots of mileage on it.

“I just have to catheterize you,” she said.

“Great.” My thoughts tend to the bizarre now. I’m a grapefruit being squeezed for its pale yellow juice. They’ll pack me up and put me in a big jar and I’ll reside on a shelf at Safeway until one day a health conscious and svelte suburbanite will take me home and then I’ll sit in her pantry for ages until someone finally goes on a crash diet and drinks me down in one sitting.

Next she picked up a big bottle and started swabbing my belly with Betadine, which is a bright orange red. Splayed out on my back like a whale, legs wide apart in an inviting stance, I now looked like an overripe naked pumpkin.