American Wife (6 page)

Here's a guy who is totally calm under fire, who can deal with all sorts of difficult physical situations, to say nothing of severe wounds—but put a pregnant belly in front of him and he turns to timid mush.

Men.

“I don't know what that thing is,” he said, trying to explain his squeamishness. “When the baby's born, that's my baby.”

There's a reason women are the ones who have the babies. Though I will admit that seeing my stomach move and poke out on its own did remind me of the movie
Alien.

We waited. The due date arrived . . . and passed.

We waited some more. And a little more.

And a tiny bit more.

The doctors decided it was time to induce. I made an appointment, packed everything, and got ready. Chris and I rose early that morning and made our way to the hospital. I was very calm and maybe even a little blasé.

Or just naïve.

I hadn't taken Lamaze or any of those fancy birth classes. “There are girls in third-world countries giving birth without anesthesia all the time,” I told friends. “I can handle this.”

It also helped to know I was getting an epidural, which would mean much less pain.

I won't feel much, I'll get the shot, I'll push. Done.

Piece of cake.

They prepped me, then started me on an IV with Pitocin, which is a common drug used to speed nature along. And things did move. Within what seemed like seconds, my water broke and the contractions started. Bubba was pushing to get out.

I said to myself,
This is going to be quick.

I also thought: I'll take that epidural now! Because the contractions were starting to demonstrate what the pain of birth is all about.

The obstetrician came in. I smiled, ready for my shot.

“I don't know how to tell you this,” she said. “Your platelets are really, really low.”

“Okay,” I said. I knew what platelets were—blood cells whose job it is to stop bleeding—but I had no idea why that was significant. “So, my epidural?”

“You can't have any medications.”

“Come again?”

“No drugs, no medications,” she said. “No epidural. I've called around to different anesthesiologists, and no one will touch you.”

“No epidural?”

“Nothing.”

There are girls from third-world countries who do it with no drugs, I reminded myself. My mother elected for natural childbirth. How bad can it be?

I got this.

It started to hurt. I thought to myself, I am not going to cuss.

Hell no! I am about to be a mother. I am bringing our baby into a positive environment and must be a good role model.

Wow!

The contractions built up quickly. My pristine vision of perfect, calm, quiet childbirth disappeared. A banshee snuck into the room and took over my body.

Arrrgggh!!!

No cursing!

There was a rocking chair in the birth room. I went over and sat in it and began moving back and forth. Chris put on a CD by Enya that we'd brought to listen to: peaceful, pleasant music. I took a deep breath.

Jeez, Louise! That one was a monster!

Then, a breather.

I'm doing goooooood! Breathe. Breathe . . .

Wow!

Then I said some other things. The banshee had a mind of her own.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!” I apologized to the nurses as I recovered from the surge of the contraction.

“It's okay,” said Chris.

The pain surged again.

Dang!

Jiminy!

And other things.

Chris would watch the monitor. Suddenly he'd turn to look at me.

“What?” I asked.

“That was a strong one.”

“Uh-huh.”

The funny thing is, the stronger the contractions were on the monitor, the less they seemed to hurt. Maybe when things are really bad you focus more on being tough. Or perhaps my brain's pain mechanism simply went on strike when the agony got too much.

Labor had started quickly, but now it went into slow motion. And I mean s . . . l . . . o . . . w. Hours passed. My nurse reached the end of her shift but received permission to stay with me the whole time; to this day I'm grateful.

At some point I tried willing things along, mentally focusing on a rapid delivery. That didn't work. I got up to walk around—walking is supposed to help you progress—then quickly got back in the chair.

“Argh!!!!!” I groaned. And other stuff.

The way I saw it, my baby should have been out by now, shaking hands with his dad and passing around cigars to the nurses. But he apparently had other plans. Labor continued very slowly.

Very slowly.

We were in that room for eighteen hours. That was a lot of contractions. And a lot of PG versions of curse words, along with the X-rated kind. I may have invented a whole new language.

Somewhere around the twelve-hour mark, Chris asked if I'd mind if he changed the music, since our songs had been playing on repeat for what surely seemed like a millennium.

“Sure,” I said.

He switched to the radio and found a country station. That lasted a song or two.

“I'm so sorry,” I told him. “I need Enya. I'm tuned in to it, and it calms me . . . ohhhhh!”

“Okay. No problem,” he said calmly, though not quite cheerfully. I'm sure it was torture.

Chris would take short breaks, walking out into the waiting room where both sides of our family were waiting to welcome their first grandchild and nephew. He'd look at his dad and give a little nod.

“She's okay,” he told everyone. Then he'd wipe a little tear away from his eye and walk back to me.

Chris said later that watching me give birth was probably the most powerless feeling he'd ever had. He knew I was in pain and yet couldn't do a whit about it. “It's like watching your wife get stabbed and not being able to do anything to help.”

But when he came into the room with me, his eyes were clear and he seemed confident and even upbeat. It was the thing he did when talking to me from the combat zone, all over again: he wasn't about to do anything that would make me worry.

I, on the other hand, made no secret of what I was feeling. An alien watermelon was ripping my insides out. And it hurt.

Whoooh!

Suddenly one of the contractions peaked way beyond where the others had been. Bubba had finally decided it was time to say hello to the world.

I grabbed the side rail on the bed and struggled to remain conscious, if not exactly calm.

Part of me was thinking, You should remember this, Taya. This is natural childbirth. This is beautiful. This is what God intended. You should enjoy this precious moment and remember it always.

Another part me was telling that part to shut the bleep up.

I begged for mercy—and painkillers.

The obstetrician had been researching my situation, calling other doctors for advice and trying to find some way of easing my pain. Finally she came in and said she might be able to give me nitrous oxide—laughing gas.

“Will it affect the baby?” I asked.

Now, the answer I heard was:
No. The baby will be fine.

Chris heard something different. He thought he heard:
There's a chance it will.

Probably the obstetrician included the standard disclaimer to the effect that there is always a minuscule chance something bizarre will happen. But I'm sure she never would have offered it if a real danger existed. And having worked in the pharmaceutical industry, I knew that low-percentage side effects weren't likely to be an issue, even though doctors were required to state them.

“What do you think, Chris?” I asked.

“Whatever you need, babe,” he said, hoping against hope that our baby wouldn't be damaged.

They wheeled me into another room and placed a mask over my face.

“Breathe,” someone said.

I did, and instantly I felt a little less . . . everything. The pain retreated far enough across the room that I no longer felt like my pelvis was going to rip into a million pieces . . . only three or four hundred.

“Push!” the nurses told me. “Push.”

I did. In my memory, I pushed three or four times, Bubba popped out, and we all lived happily ever after again.

What really happened, apparently, was a little different. I spent forty-five minutes pushing. I would push, then pass out. They'd wake me and I would push again. Again and again.

Allegedly, I soon reached a breaking point. “Pull him the @#$#$ out!” I am supposed to have said.

Now you know that has to be apocryphal, because I do not use unladylike language like that. But the First Amendment does entitle people to render their own memories, I suppose.

Whatever I said, the obstetrician decided to use a device that helps the baby come out. In layman's terms, they put a big suction cup on its head and pull.

Also in layman's terms, the device can cause a temporary side effect—the baby's head gets a little misshapen.

They duly explained this to Chris, who nonetheless approved of the procedure.

Oh my God, he was thinking. I'm going to have a disabled cone-headed laughing-gas-addicted baby.

I'm sure if that had been the case, Chris would have loved him just as dearly. But in truth Bubba was born in perfect health. He was a big kid—eight pounds, six ounces. And no ill effects from the laughing gas.

His head was a little compressed, but it wasn't a cone head and it did get better.

They laid him on my chest.

This is what it's all about, I thought. This is so perfect.

I memorized everything I could about my little boy, to make sure that I knew who he was—no one was going to accidentally switch my kid on me. In fact, I demanded that they keep him in my room with me throughout the entire stay.

Our families came in and took turns holding him. He was an instant celebrity. A little later, the nurse came in with a diaper. Chris took Bubba and laid him on the table nearby.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Changing his diaper.”

“Really? How do you know how to do that?”

“I just do.”

He did. It was Chris—taking care of things without a fuss, even if it meant dealing with poop.

MOTHERHOOD

The first thing Bubba's feet touched when we took him home from the hospital was Texas soil, which his folks had brought west at our request. No child of Chris Kyle's was going to be anything
but
a Texan. He smiled contentedly before nodding off back to sleep; clearly Texas was in his genes.

When I look back, the first months at home with Bubba were as close to bliss as I ever experienced. The first week, though—that was a little rough. I was afraid I wasn't getting him enough milk and was sure he was going to starve. I slept downstairs in a recliner with Bubba on my bare chest so he wouldn't suffocate from any stray clothing and so Chris wouldn't be bothered by the crying when he would wake up to feed. I watched every season of
Alias
on DVD as I fed my son.

(
Alias
—there's a connection there. We'll catch up on that one later.)

Bubba and I bonded despite the fact that I gave up breast-feeding after only a few weeks. He had a voracious appetite, and my breasts and nipples were so tender I couldn't keep up. He'd latch on like—well, no metaphor here is going to do it justice, let alone be proper. Let's just say my son had
no
issues when it came to feeding.

I remember telling the breast-feeding consultant that I wanted to alternate with formula. She gave me a look that said,
Wimp!

It worked for us. I breast-fed, pumped, and supplemented with formula. A few weeks later I stopped breast-feeding all together. There was a certain amount of guilt—it's hard to escape it when you're a new mom, since you so desperately want to do the best for your baby. But the logical side of my brain argued that Chris had been raised on formula, and he turned out just fine; practicality and comfort won out.

Bubba was such a happy baby that it was impossible not to be energized just watching him. I'd put him on the changing table and he'd start punching the air with his little arms. Then his legs would get going. He was a ball of adrenaline. He'd laugh and I'd laugh, and together we'd face the day.

I had him in my arms pretty much from morning until night. My arms would ache, but I'd never put him down. Slowly starting to get back into a work routine from home, I'd sit at the computer, typing with my right hand while holding him with my left, stopping only to switch him from one side to the other. He was so easy and so happy, it would have been impossible not to love him, or not love being a mom.

I remember saying to a friend, “I don't see why people say being a parent is so hard.”

Ha!

I certainly had a lot to learn.

I was determined to do my best. My pediatrician recalls that not only did I ask her more questions than any other patient she has ever had, but I documented every development carefully—not just growth spurts but every bodily function possible. I was amazed that she wasn't interested in my son's poop schedule. And on the rare occasions I had someone else mind him, the sitter would receive a list the size of a telephone book on what to expect, not to expect, possibly expect, and never expect. I had all the bases covered.

At that point, being a mom was the bomb. My son looked so much like his dad, and I was so in love with both of them, that I just didn't think life could be any better.

Well, it certainly could have been better—Chris was away at war. He'd gone back to Iraq within a few days of Bubba's birth.

This was the first deployment Chris spent as a SEAL sniper. As such, it was the beginning of his “legend.” In November 2004, while Bubba and I were negotiating nutrition and breast-feeding, Chris was heading to Fallujah to help Marines retake the city.