Deathwish 017: Heather


“He would die soon if I didn’t get him out.”

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As a young child, I was obsessed with birthing. I would cram a stuffed animal under my shirt, and then writhe and howl until the baby popped out, with a dramatic heave.

Around puberty, I decided that childbirth was “gross.” This glib word choice was surprisingly accurate. Birth is profoundly “gross”: Uncivil, crude, scatological. Birth is without manners. It offends the senses.

In my twenties, I had a recurring dream that I was pregnant with a goat. I would wake with the heavy realization still lingering: I’d inevitably have to get this horned thing out of me, and it would be horrific, perhaps fatal.

At age 38, I became pregnant. I spent those nine months in denial of the central fact: I would be giving birth. Me. For real. No way out but through.

And then, it was happening. I labored in an inflatable tub with a rotation of midwives, in a hospital room reserved for waterbirths. A rubber duck thermometer bobbed next to me as agony wracked my body. No drugs, I had vowed, and by the time a sane person would have asked for them, I was no longer human. Rather, I was an animal with no conceptual distance from my own suffering. It didn’t occur to me that anything but death could relieve it.

Then, a worried face, a message through the fog: the baby was stuck. He would die soon if I didn’t get him out.

His head popped out of me and then retreated, over and over, like a timid turtle.

NOW, someone said. YOU HAVE TO DO IT NOW. I pushed with everything, and somehow he broke free.

And then, the cord snapped. Blood spraying everywhere. Someone screamed for a clamp. Hands whisked the baby away.

I felt the life draining from me. I stared at a pale streetlight outside the dark window. This is how I die, I thought coldly, as the tub filled with my blood.

But then, we lived.

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To read the previous installment, "Deathwish 016: Robin," go here. To participate in Deathwish, find details here.

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Heather was born in Omaha, NE, and lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Matty Byloos

Matty Byloos is Co-Publisher and a Contributing Editor for NAILED. He was born 7 days after his older twin brother, Kevin Byloos. He is the author of 2 books, including the novel in stories, ROPE ('14 SDP), and the collection of short stories, Don't Smell the Floss ('09 Write Bloody Books).

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Photographer Feature: Ángela Burón