Birth: What they don’t tell you!

When I became pregnant with my daughter, I was a front runner amongst my family and friends, so I had no clue what to expect. I have two sisters, the eldest of whom had sworn off having children and the youngest, being a Buddhist nun, was not likely to give me any support in this direction either.

Looking back now, I realize I had an effortless pregnancy, but at the time I was terrified about what was happening to my body and what the future held. I was in denial for quite awhile, until I went for my first scan.

There, on the screen in front of me, was this wriggly, maggot-like creature, which only looked sort of human. All I could think about was that film ‘Alien’ and the scene where it burst out of the woman’s stomach. Yuck!

As the birth date drew closer, I got fed up with lumbering around like a beached whale, not being able to bend over to pick something up, or put on my shoes. All I wanted was to get the little monster out of me.

I went into labour while having lunch in my local pub, and after hobbling home hunched up against the pain of ever-increasing contractions, I attempted to strap on the TENS pain relief contraption recommended by my midwife.

A TENS machine consists of numerous wires which attach to the base of your spine and then dangle dangerously, allowing the lumbering whale, already in agonizing pain, to trip over the bloody thing every five minutes. The hand-held controls are just a means for administering electric shocks to distract yourself from the labour pains! And don’t get me started about going to the loo every 10 minutes without weeing on it and accidentally electrocuting yourself!

Finally we made it to the hospital, expecting our baby to be born any second. A tall, severe-looking doctor stuffed what seemed like her entire arm up my vagina! I nearly hit the ceiling, it was so painful. I wasn’t even a single centimeter dilated, she informed me in a voice that suggested that I was a bit of a wimp to be in the hospital so early in labour. What had I been doing for the past 10 hours then?

Another 24 hours went by before my daughter honoured us with her presence. By this time, my husband had found a lovely, comfortable bed nearby and snored through the rest of my contractions. He then complained of an achy back when he woke up – poor love!

As the night wore on, I ripped up my Birth Plan, which naively stated that I wanted to have as natural a birth as possible, with little or no pain relief.

“Give me the bloody epidural NOW,” I screamed, red-faced from another prolonged cramping episode. An anesthesiologist eventually showed up and announced I was now too far along in labour to have the epidural. My only option left was the dreaded Pethidine, which can make you throw up.

“I don’t care if I projectile vomit into next week, just give me some damned pain relief,” I shouted at the midwife, my polite British reserve disappearing entirely.

When she finally emerged into the outside world, my daughter didn’t loiter. I got the most tremendous urge to push, gave three or four big squeezes and, slippery as an eel, she shot out, the midwife nearly having to catch her before she hit the floor. Unfortunately, she also had to catch the bit of poo that I very embarrassingly squeezed out at the same time!

As those of you who have given birth know, most of your memory cells get ejected with the afterbirth, otherwise I would NEVER have gone through the whole awful process all over again with my son!