The other night the Dude and I were flipping through channels (I always stop at HGTV, TLC, VH1, MTV, etc. He always stops at SciFi, Nasa, Comedy Central, Discovery and the History channel) Dude was driving so we ended up catching part of "Modern Marvels" on the History channel. It was about the Marine Corps. and they were running through a training exercise called "The Gauntlet". Full battle gear, obstacle course, probably a 20 mile run, that sort of thing. Some of them had to pretend to be casualties, and then there was this part where they had to crawl underneath about a quarter mile of barbed wire. The wire was stretched out about a foot off the ground so you had to belly crawl or slide on your back. In full gear, sometimes carrying the "casualties". It looked pretty tough.
But then it got tougher- They said the Marines could drink water, but for the 48 hours of The Gauntlet, they were only allowed to sleep a total of 8 hours (4 each day) and eat two MREs. And that's when I started laughing and I commented, "Gee, that's more than I got the day Attila was born! I would have loved to have gotten 4 hours of sleep." (not sure I would have wanted an MRE) It was just one of those flippant, funny comments and I didn't really think that I was tougher than a Marine or anything. (I mean c'mon, who would I be kidding?)
Then tonight I went to interview a potential teacher. Since she also has a baby we eventually got off topic and were just chatting. She told me that during her delivery she had a bad reaction to the epidural and started throwing up. Every 15 minutes. All through labor and delivery. And it continued for 26 hours after they removed the epidural. That's hardcore.
From now on, I am going to refer to childbirth as "The Gauntlet".
September 07, 2006
The Gauntlet
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2 comments:
Whew! WAY hardcore!
**warning - labor info ahead** Mine was all over from within 24 hours, but still.. definitely the longest 24 hours of my life. They gave me what they described as "a whiff" of Pitocin (?) to speed up my contractions ... and I started throwing up with _every_ contraction after that 'cuz they were so violent. Not fun. No epidural because they were afraid it was going to slow things down, but some drugs that made me feel all drunk, drifty, and like the white noise on the TV, and lessened the nausea and some of the pain. But still, "The Gauntlet?" Well chosen.
Meimei's birth was definitely the gauntlet. It went quickly, thank god, but man, the longest, most painful 90 minutes of my life.
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