Birth

I don’t really remember a lot about giving birth so this story may be entirely made up. I do remember that I liked gas and air, which is why I don’t remember much about birth!

I was welcomed to the delivery suite with a cup of tea and six rounds of toast. I was allowed to eat three before a bitch of a midwife took my toast away and told me my waters needed to be broken. Woah, hang on a minute, I’ve been waiting round for five days being fobbed off yet they can’t even give me five minutes to finish my toast?  Talk about double standards.

Delivery rooms aren’t very nice places. There’s no natural light (obviously they’re not going to have windows so the workmen outside can see you in stirrups, but I didn’t consider this and wondered where the window was). They’ve got a toilet – I counted my lucky stars that the toast thief granted me enough time to wee before my waters had to so urgently be broken. The rest of the room is just like a standard hospital room – no calming colours or sensory lights etc – just…functional.

Toast thief put a few holes in my hand. I know one was for the drip, not sure what the other one did. Probably put me on a leash so I couldn’t go within five metres of any food items. When you’re induced you have a drip of Syntocinon. This substance puts you into artificial labour. You don’t get the build up that you do with natural labour, you go straight into ‘established labour’ as you’re only allowed to be on this drip for about 12 hours.

Then she called the doctor to break my waters. We were in such a rush to get these waters broken that he came straight away. Trouble is, they’d been in such a rush to find me a delivery suite for the past five days that I was now day fifteen overdue and there was no water left. So we have an argument where they tell me my waters must have gone the day before. My waters did not go, ever. No gush, no trickle, no water, they’d definitely dried up because they’d left me so long. I won the argument because I wasn’t backing down and they were in a rush. So I said bye to this doctor because I wouldn’t see him for a whole sixteen hours and they set my drip up.

The toast thief left and was replaced by a nice lady working with a student. When you are on a drip, in artificial labour, going mad on gas and air, you really don’t care who sees your bits so this student didn’t bother me at all. They were arranging for my epidural. Let me tell you this; contractions hurt. You don’t win a prize for only having gas and air. You don’t get a prettier baby for only having gas and air. You’re not a better person for only having gas and air. It’s not labour ward sports day, there are no medals, just have an epidural. You do not need to be in that amount of pain so why bother? Unless you’re worried about being paralysed or something, then I can understand. If you have an epidural, good on you. Those women who will sneer at you and say “I only had gas and air” as though they are better at birth than you? Punch them in the face. (Don’t punch in the face the women who tell you they only had gas and air in a normal, conversational manner – they don’t deserve it, they’re merely joining in a birth stories conversation, rather than being condescending).

While epidurals are fab and you can sit there having a chat, doing your make up, knitting a baby outfit, they aren’t 100%. Mine started to wear off after a few hours. It was just a patch as big as a playing card on my back that I could feel the pain in so the midwife got the anaesthetist to move my epidural. Big mistake. It was now just having no effect and I could feel everything. So now I was only having gas and air *smug face* *mum points* *that’s why my baby’s so gorgeous*.

My midwife had also changed over to someone called Rachel. Rachel was lovely. Rachel didn’t care that I was off my face on gas and air, she didn’t try and take it off me, she was lovely and so calming. When her shift ended, I tried to bribe her to stay by offering to pay her overtime. Although by this point, I was convinced I was dying and the new midwife was very unsympathetic of my impending death.

I’d been on gas and air constantly for about six hours. I was just having what felt like one constant contraction for hours so the only thing I breathed was Entonox. I wasn’t really with it when they were concerned about the baby’s heart rate and the flurry of mild panic convinced me that either me or the baby was dying so they should just let me die now. So I’m lamenting my demise and this nasty woman is trying to make me turn on my side. I couldn’t. I physically couldn’t move because of the pain. I tried and just couldn’t. So she shouted at me. Witch. Said something along the lines of I was being selfish thinking of my own pain and not my baby. Er.. I COULDN’T FUCKING MOVE. So, while she was on a roll she decided to tell me off for my gas and air misuse too. I was only meant to have it while I was having a contraction – well I was having one constant contraction so she could piss off with her preaching. I’m so glad someone decided I wasn’t progressing because, if I’d had to endure her for much longer, I’d have kicked her in the head.

My baby wasn’t coming out. Who can blame him when that witchy, miserable face would be the first thing he saw. So I had to have a caesarean section. The doctor who’d come to break my dried up waters was back telling me about the operation. Nothing he said went in as I was still hugging my best friend Entonox. I had to sign a form. I’ve no idea what was on that form. I probably owe him my life savings now or something.

They took me to theatre and gave me another injection in my spine for anaesthetic. They put up a blue screen so you can’t see them hacking you open. It’s a very weird sensation. You can feel that they’re touching you, pulling you and tugging at things but it doesn’t hurt. This time, I wasn’t out of it on gas and air so I knew full well something was going wrong. I decided I was dying again, but rather than calmly requesting to be let go, panic mode ensued. I asked them that many times what was the matter that they showed me the tube that was recycling my blood back into me. I don’t know where from, probably off the floor but I found out I’d lost a litre of blood so that tube had helped keep me alive and it was probably just an old part off a Hoover.

At 10:01pm on 10th January 2015, Jack Dylan Thomas was born. They sort of held him up over the screen and presented his testicles to me. Which was nice. All I remember thinking was, “Don’t babies have big balls?” He weighed 10lb 1oz and, to be honest, I didn’t give a shit. You’re meant to feel this overwhelming rush of love and bond and amazement. I didn’t feel anything. Now, I realise that it was because I’d spent so long imagining his birth and a section never came into it. My birth plan was to have my baby naturally, delivered on to me, cuddle them skin to skin for however long and be amazed that I was finally holding my baby.

I don’t think I coped psychologically with how he was born and the procedures around that. You can’t hold your baby after a section you can only look at it while you lie there with your arms outstretched like a weird crucifixion. I felt so detached from the birth and from my baby. A baby had just been held up over a screen, because I hadn’t seen him come out, my brain couldn’t compute that he’d come out of me. He’d then been taken away and, later, given to his Dad to hold while I just watched. I wanted to hold him too, cuddle him, kiss him, talk to him and I couldn’t. So, rather than get upset, the shutters came down and I felt nothing. Most women are probably baffled, how could I not feel this overwhelming love for my baby? But, if just one person reading this thinks “thank God I wasn’t the only one who felt like that” then I’m glad. Because not all mothers bond straight away with their babies for one reason or another. And that’s OK. Because you will bond in time. It doesn’t make you a bad mother. I used to think it made me the world’s worst mum. But now, at nearly six months old, me and my son have a right laugh and the way he looks at me and smiles at me tells me I’m his world. And I don’t think a mother who was head over heels with their baby instantly has a better relationship than me and Jack do. They’re no better at being a mum than I am. And, although they may have at first, they don’t love their baby any more than I love Jack. I thought I wasn’t maternal, I thought I was too selfish to be a mum, I thought I’d still have things in my life which were more important than my baby. Jack proved me wrong.