Birth

I’ve been wrestling with how to tell my birthing story. After such a build-up, it’s destined to be an anti-climax. My fear of the event was so much larger than the event itself. Given that I most feared dying in childbirth or having a stillbirth, the headline is that me and the baby are very much alive. Even better, there was no moment when I felt that either of our lives was in danger. I truly expected that moment. I thought that to give birth was to face death, yet the Grim Reaper didn’t so much as glimmer before me throughout labour, despite being a looming spectre for weeks leading up to it.

As a wise friend observed, this has been an object lesson in the fruitlessness of anxiety. The things that I most feared never came to pass, and lesser things I had never contemplated took their place. Already the event is becoming a blur, bearing out the truism that we’re programmed to forget. There are also parts that I’d rather not share. All this makes it rather difficult to write about. It also seems largely irrelevant now that I’m on the other side. But I feel I ought to say something about the birth, given that I aired all my anxieties about it.

I was over my ‘due date’ (which I put in inverted commas because it is a very unhelpful notion). I still felt healthy and hoped that labour would start naturally when the baby was ready. However, as I approached 42 weeks pregnant, which is considered 2 weeks ‘overdue’, the pressure mounted to get the baby out. The NHS want us to deliver our babies before 42 weeks because they say that after this point evidence suggests that the placenta works less effectively and the risk of stillbirth increases. My midwife repeatedly offered me a ‘sweep’ to try and encourage labour to begin. This would involve her putting her hand up my vagina and wiggling it around my cervix. I declined, repeatedly. She recommended induction, which is where they force labour to start via medical methods. I resisted and was then referred to the hospital to discuss my options.

The conversation didn’t go as I’d hoped. I wanted to come to an informed and reasoned decision about whether to allow induction. In the event, a doctor appeared and confirmed how overdue I was. He then asked me what I wanted to do. I asked what he’d recommend. He said, “I recommend induction days ago. We’re on your time now. How long you want to wait? 50 weeks?” I wasn’t prepared for the glib sarcasm. I didn’t want to be responsible for the increasing risk of stillbirth if the worst transpired so I agreed to induction the next day.

Having wanted to have a natural birth with minimal intervention, I was now on track for a heavily medicalised labour. At this point I asked for a caesarian. My reasoning was - ‘If you want this baby to come out now, and you don’t trust my body to do it naturally, then just cut it out and get it over with’. The doctors and nurses disagreed and encouraged me to try for a vaginal birth. They inserted a pessary to release hormones to attempt to kickstart labour and kept me in hospital for monitoring. My waters broke that evening. This was such a weird sensation. I always imagined a flood of water but actually it was constant leaking. All night, every time I moved, I’d feel a wave of water flood out and trudge off to the loo to change my underwear. I had intense stomach cramps, which felt like bad period pain. I passed this long night by focussing on my breathing and repeating lines from We’re Going on a Bear Hunt as a mantra: ‘We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. We’ve got to go through it!’

In the early hours of the next morning I was moved to a private room. As things weren’t progressing, they put me on a drip to induce contractions and gave me an epidural. I could still feel my legs and retained sensation. I controlled how much pain relief I had by pressing a button if I wanted more. I was bed-bound and hooked up to all sorts of things, but BFG was holding my hand and brilliant midwives were caring for me. At one point I felt something slip on my back. My epidural had fallen out. I then had to decide if I wanted another epidural put in before the pushing stage. I didn’t know how continuing without pain relief would feel, having been shielded from the sensation of contractions. We proceeded without a second epidural. My contractions weren’t strong anyway and I don’t recall any increase in discomfort in the hours after this. I was mainly excited to be nearing the final stage and I’m sure adrenaline kicked in.

Pushing was the best bit. That’s something I never thought I’d say. I finally had an element of control. I felt strong and determined to push the baby out. I didn’t need to scream or yell. The midwife and BFG could see the baby’s head. But the baby’s heart rate was fluctuating and a doctor appeared and said that he wanted to make a cut and use a ventouse to get the baby out quickly. He said, ‘You’ll do it in another ten pushes, whereas if I help we can do it in one, and we want the baby out now’. I didn’t realise that he would make the cut whilst I was pushing. It was the strangest and most counterintuitive thing, to forcefully push your baby in the direction of a man wielding a knife. I felt blind panic but did what I was ordered to. It all happened very fast, I didn’t feel any pain and suddenly there was a baby being placed on my chest.

I didn’t cry. Again, this surprised me. I cried watching Bridget Jones hold her baby for the first time. Heck, I even cried when she had her scan. But not for my baby. I felt relieved and happy and strangely calm and kept whispering things like ‘hello darling’. BFG cut the cord. The baby pooed all over me. Babies’ first poos are thick and black like tar. They don’t show that in films or on TV. BFG cleared up all the poo. This was a fitting introduction to our new life of wonder and cleaning up shit.

The final saga was that my placenta didn’t come out. It’s meant to swiftly follow the birth but it wouldn’t come, even with the doctor tugging. So then I was wheeled off to theatre, given a full spinal block, and they extracted the placenta and stitched me up. Not a great finale, but I was soon reunited with my family. I cooed over the baby and marvelled: I did it, I did it, I did it.