About 10 minutes from the end of the CD, I just couldn't lie still any more. And I suddenly had a very, very strong need to go to the toilet. I stumbled up and off the couch, and made my way upstairs to the bathroom. On the way, I shed my dressing gown, deciding that clothes were no longer tolerable or necessary. I got to the toilet, where, despite an increasingly strong urge, couldn't make myself poo. And then I noticed that there was blood. Quite a bit of blood, it seemed.
This was about the moment I finally admitted that this wasn't food poisoning. It was absolutely and definitely labour. And I was starting to feel a creeping, irresistible desire to start pushing.
With impeccable timing and the sixth sense for which I love him, Mr Badger had decided it was time to call the hospital. He told them that we'd been having contractions two minutes apart for over an hour. The midwife asked whether she could talk to me, but Mr B, hearing the continuing moos emerging from the bathroom, wasn't sure I'd be capable of that. I could just about hear him on the phone, and, between moos, kept trying to call to him. The blood. The blood seemed very important, and I wanted the hospital to know. Eventually he came upstairs, and I managed to relay the blood message. He in turn relayed this to the midwife, who assured him it was probably just a 'show' (and not an apocalyptic sign of impending disaster, as I naturally assumed), and then said that we should probably start making our way in.
I was now on the bathroom floor, completely naked.
"Right," said Mr Badger, managing to summon a calmness he probably wasn't feeling at all. "We have to get you dressed. What do you want to wear? A skirt?"
A skirt would be great, I agreed (moooooooooo!) And a bra, knickers, a top, shoes (mooo, mooo, MOOOOO!). Using the minute and a half or so I was now getting between contractions, we managed to get me at least reasonably dressed. At the same time as struggling into underthings, I called out instructions for packing the last few things into the hospital bag. I had vaguely thought about doing this the previous day, but seemed to have missed out on the traditional burst of nesting energy required to actually do this (just like I seemed to have missed out on the whole first stage of labour). Finally, Mr Badger went to put the bag (now actually containing some baby clothes and nappies) in the car, and I started my slow progress downstairs. Walking was still possible, but it was a slow, waddling, clumsy process, with many pauses to lean against walls and moo to myself. Out in the garden, mid-moo, I idly wandered if any of the neighbours could hear me, and were puzzling over what a distressed cow was doing in the middle of Temple Cowley.
In the car, I realized I couldn't - or, at least, didn't want to - sit down in the seat, so I braced myself up on my arms. And in this relaxed posture, I desperately tried to go to my 'special place' - the beach in the Maldives where we went on honeymoon (and then had a second honeymoon two years later, because, frankly, we're greedy, and love free cocktails just too much). I managed to go there for about 20 seconds, before the inner cow reasserted itself and required me to do some more mooing. And there ain't no cows in the Maldives, let me assure you.
Abut halfway to the hospital, Mr Badger realized that we had forgotten to bring my notes. These notes are like the talisman of pregnancy, filled with essential details, facts, secrets, and cryptic codes, without which you are not allowed access to any medical attention whatsoever. If we'd dared to turn up at hospital without these notes, they probably would have barricaded the doors and forced me to birth my baby in the gutter, probably pelting me with rotten fruit for good measure. Clearly, we had to go back and get them. But you try telling that to a lowing cow-woman, braced rigid in the passenger seat of an Audi, with a baby threatening to slither out at any minute. Since the only power of communication I had now was the moo, however, I couldn't really argue, so back home we went.
Mr Badger ran in to get the notes, leaving me to lick the windows and look doleful. Soon he was back, and we could start again. I remember this part of the journey only in patches - all the traffic lights (red), the taxi driver who wouldn't back down and forced his way onto our side of the road to get past, and the car park which had no spaces... and OMG, I'm gonna have this baby in the car now... eeeeeeeeeppp, moooooOOOOO!
Finally we found a space, which just happened to be about as far from the entrance as it was possible to be. I set off on the walk there, while Mr Badger got the bag from the car and followed. The CCTV footage from the next few minutes would be entertaining, I'm sure, as I stumbled from car to car, hung off any convenient signs and lampposts, and eventually braced myself on the fence just outside the entrance - you guessed it - mooing. A passing woman asked if she should get someone to bring us a wheelchair, which we politely declined (sitting being something of an issue), before gathering all our strength for the last burst to the lifts.
The Spires Unit is on the seventh - in other words, the top - floor. A lift arrived and we stumbled in, then started jabbing desperately at buttons. Before we could escape, however, several other people piled in, selecting all of the lower floors, then staring in vague horror at the woman daring to be in labour in a lift in a maternity ward. I turned my back on them, rested my forehead on the wall, and struggled to stifle the inner cow.
Fourth floor - DING! {moo} - fifth floor - DING! {moo} - sixth floor - DING! {moo} - seventh floor, ohthankgodatlast, MOOOO!
A midwife met us on the way in. I walked zombie-like towards her, sweat-glazed, and staring-eyed.
"I think you'd better come straight to the delivery room," she said. We agreed.
TUNE IN NEXT TIME, FOR THE LATEST INSTALLMENT OF 'MIGHT ACTUALLY GET TO THE BLOODY BABY BEING BORN THIS TIME. MAYBE. OR MAYBE JUST SOME MORE MOOING.'
Showing posts with label birth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birth. Show all posts
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Sunday, 4 July 2010
Lumpy has landed!
Somebody really didn't want me to have that massage...
Lumpy, aka James William Peter Badger, was born on June 29th at 11.40am, weighing 7lbs 13 ounces. Punctual to the point of being, well, a day early.
So here's the birth story. Knowing my great skill for brevity (ahem) it will probably be divided up into parts (and also, the new boss of the house will no doubt interupt demanding BOOOOOOB). Be warned - there are gory(ish) details, and embarrassing revelations aplenty. So only read on if you're prepared to hear about my lady parts and other related regions. And poo, of course. You can't forget the poo.
So, anyone still here? Then we shall begin.
On Monday, after escaping the daytime TV bizarreness I went for my swim, and managed a respectable mile at a not too slow pace (for a beached whale, anyway. Though a beached whale presumably doesn't swim very fast, being beached. Anyway...) I walked home and settled down to the aforementioned 8 hours of tennis. I kept thinking I should get up and look through the last of the bags full of baby stuff that were waiting to be sorted and put into the nursery. I also thought I should probably sort out some baby clothes, nappies, and so on to put into the hospital bag. It was my due date in two days, after all. Not that he would come on his due date, of course. He was going to be late, no doubt. I'd been fairly sure of that throughout the pregnancy. And I hadn't had any signs of imminent labour - I was obviously in this for the long haul.
Late in the afternoon my nighbour, Jo, came round to drop off some spare nappies. She'd had a baby boy 8 weeks ago, and brought him with her.
"Right," she said, unstrapping him from his carrier and thrusting him into my arms. "Have a cuddle. That's meant to bring on labour. You are keen to hurry things along, aren't you?"
"Um, I guess so," I answered non-committally. I was fairly keen to get things moving - not because I was sick of being pregnant or even desperate to finally meet the little invader in my tummy, but rather because of the looming consultant appointment on Thursday, when I would be one day overdue, and was convinced they'd decide to induce me on the spot. I'd eaten a pot of fresh pineapple at lunchtime, but drawn the line at the second one. I'd upped my raspberry leaf tea intake, too, but only to two cups a day. So, yes, things could get moving, but maybe not all that soon. There was the massage to get to, after all. Lovely massage...
I cuddled Jo's baby, boggling slightly at the thought that I'd have one of these in a few days, and not really believing it. Something was sure to go wrong. The hospital would decide I wasn't really pregnant after all, and send me home, ashamed of the fuss I'd been making over the last nine months. Or the baby would just never come, and eventually everyone would get bored and go away. I couldn't actually have a baby, a real baby. That would be too weird.
Mr Badger came home, and we watched some more tennis and had dinner. These were some day-old chicken kebabs which I'd made for our barbecue the day before, and had been rather excess to requirements. They'd sat out in the sun for a while, attracting flies and other such delights, before I decided it would be better to put them in the fridge. (I have my Basic Food Hygiene certificate, don't you know. My food hygiene is officially basic, at best).
We headed up to bed and went to sleep just as normal. The night passed uneventfully, featuring sleep, mainly (ahh, I remember the days when nights featured sleep. They seem so long ago... But I don't want to ruin the end of the story (SPOILER: it involves a baby. That's all I'm saying.)
At 6.10am I woke up and glanced at the clock. Nothing really unusual in that - I'd been waking up fairly early for most of the pregnancy. There was a slightly odd sensation in my lower stomach - I'd had a couple like it in previous weeks and days, but always dismissed them as wind (my farts have been mighty impressive throughout the pregnancy, if I say so myself. Oh, come on. I'm just warming you up for what's to come. Girding your loins for you, so to speak). No doubt these would turn out to be more of the same. I got up and went to the loo, and had an equally impressive bout of the squirts (gird, gird! Think of it as a mental warm-up). So that was it, then. The kebabs. Food poisoning. The day before my due date. Another classy move by the Badger girl. Nice one.
I went back to bed and had a few more stomach cramps, but they were nothing to get excited about. I'm a bit of a pro at food poisoning, and like to get it at every opportunity. And I've had some major, spectacular cases - in Egypt, for example, where the stomach cramps really were something. In fact, I'd compared them to what labour must be like, at the time. Compared to those, these were pathetic. That kebab had been a wimp. I snorted at its patheticness, and picked up my 'Effective Birth Preparation' book. I was only just over halfway through, and had better get my reading in over the next few days. I would definitely make the massage, too. Food poisoning or not, I was getting my goddamned back rub.
The cramps came and went over the next few hours, but they were fairly ignorable, and didn't follow any sort of pattern. When the alarm went off, I told Mr Badger that my tummy was feeling a bit odd, but that it was probably nothing (and most likely a rogue kebab) and that he should probably just head to work. At a bit after eight I had a slightly more intense feeling. And a couple of minutes later I had another, similar, one.
"Oh ho, Mr Kebab!" I thought to myself. "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough, eh? Let's see what you're made of." (chicken, mainly. With some pepper, mushrooms, onion, and Delia-inspired barbecue sauce).
"Umm, this food poisoning might be a bit worse than I thought," I said to Mr Badger, as I lay on the bed and panted slightly. "And regular. They're getting a bit more regular."
I decided to go downstairs and make Mr Badger a sandwich for his lunch (as a good wifely soul, this is something I do every morning). This took rather longer than usual, as I had to keep stopping and concentrating through the stomach cramps. But I made it (ham salad, since you asked), and packed it up with the rest of his lunch. Then I went to lie on the couch and moan gently to myself. Mr Badger came downstairs, and, seeing me prostrate, decided he'd hang around for a while before going to work. The food poisoning cramps had now been coming every two minutes for over half an hour, it seemed.
We both began to suspect the kebab may not be the true culprit here. The kebab may turn out, after all, to be a red herring.
Mr Badger, being a technology nerd supremo, had downloaded an app onto his new iPhone which could record your contractions and show you how often they were coming, and how long you'd been having them for. We started using the app, and it confirmed how regular the feelings were. Every two minutes on the dot, each a minute long.
"I thought you were meant to get a nice break in between, this early on," I said, in between one of them. "And they're fairly intense, for the excitement stage." I was starting to feel a bit of self doubt. A first labour, I had been assured time and again, would take at least 12, and more likely 24, hours. We'd had it all planned - we'd stay at home for as long as possible. Watch some films, maybe a few of our favourite comedy episodes, eat a nice meal, and listen to the hynotherapy CD at least a few times, getting me into a nice, relaxed state before the real meat and potatoes part of labour began. That was the plan. And it was a good plan.
But I hadn't really bargained on the first stage being this intense, or the contractions this often. I wasn't sure I could handle another 12 (let alone another bloody 24) hours of this. And these were the mild, easy, gentle contractions. It was only going to get worse, surely.
I suddenly didn't think I could do this. It was going to be too much.
"We need to listen to the CD," I said to Mr Badger, slightly desperately. I needed to go to my safe place, our honeymoon beach in the Maldives. I could feel the birth I wanted slipping away. I was starting to feel scared. I couldn't do this, after all. What had I been thinking?
We put the CD on, and I tried to get into a comfortable position lying on the couch. I made my breath as deep and steady as I could and tried to focus in on the voice I had listened to so many times throughout this pregnancy. But I was still very aware of the contractions, and kept coming out of the hypnotherapy session to tap the iPhone and record the latest contraction. I was also finding it hard just to lie still and breathe through them. I was gravitating up to my knees during them, and making a noise which was very, very reminiscent of a cow. It was The Moo. And Mr Badger would become very familiar with The Moo over the next few hours...
TO BE CONTINUED... dum, dum, duuuuuuuuuuuuum!!!
Lumpy, aka James William Peter Badger, was born on June 29th at 11.40am, weighing 7lbs 13 ounces. Punctual to the point of being, well, a day early.
So here's the birth story. Knowing my great skill for brevity (ahem) it will probably be divided up into parts (and also, the new boss of the house will no doubt interupt demanding BOOOOOOB). Be warned - there are gory(ish) details, and embarrassing revelations aplenty. So only read on if you're prepared to hear about my lady parts and other related regions. And poo, of course. You can't forget the poo.
So, anyone still here? Then we shall begin.
On Monday, after escaping the daytime TV bizarreness I went for my swim, and managed a respectable mile at a not too slow pace (for a beached whale, anyway. Though a beached whale presumably doesn't swim very fast, being beached. Anyway...) I walked home and settled down to the aforementioned 8 hours of tennis. I kept thinking I should get up and look through the last of the bags full of baby stuff that were waiting to be sorted and put into the nursery. I also thought I should probably sort out some baby clothes, nappies, and so on to put into the hospital bag. It was my due date in two days, after all. Not that he would come on his due date, of course. He was going to be late, no doubt. I'd been fairly sure of that throughout the pregnancy. And I hadn't had any signs of imminent labour - I was obviously in this for the long haul.
Late in the afternoon my nighbour, Jo, came round to drop off some spare nappies. She'd had a baby boy 8 weeks ago, and brought him with her.
"Right," she said, unstrapping him from his carrier and thrusting him into my arms. "Have a cuddle. That's meant to bring on labour. You are keen to hurry things along, aren't you?"
"Um, I guess so," I answered non-committally. I was fairly keen to get things moving - not because I was sick of being pregnant or even desperate to finally meet the little invader in my tummy, but rather because of the looming consultant appointment on Thursday, when I would be one day overdue, and was convinced they'd decide to induce me on the spot. I'd eaten a pot of fresh pineapple at lunchtime, but drawn the line at the second one. I'd upped my raspberry leaf tea intake, too, but only to two cups a day. So, yes, things could get moving, but maybe not all that soon. There was the massage to get to, after all. Lovely massage...
I cuddled Jo's baby, boggling slightly at the thought that I'd have one of these in a few days, and not really believing it. Something was sure to go wrong. The hospital would decide I wasn't really pregnant after all, and send me home, ashamed of the fuss I'd been making over the last nine months. Or the baby would just never come, and eventually everyone would get bored and go away. I couldn't actually have a baby, a real baby. That would be too weird.
Mr Badger came home, and we watched some more tennis and had dinner. These were some day-old chicken kebabs which I'd made for our barbecue the day before, and had been rather excess to requirements. They'd sat out in the sun for a while, attracting flies and other such delights, before I decided it would be better to put them in the fridge. (I have my Basic Food Hygiene certificate, don't you know. My food hygiene is officially basic, at best).
We headed up to bed and went to sleep just as normal. The night passed uneventfully, featuring sleep, mainly (ahh, I remember the days when nights featured sleep. They seem so long ago... But I don't want to ruin the end of the story (SPOILER: it involves a baby. That's all I'm saying.)
At 6.10am I woke up and glanced at the clock. Nothing really unusual in that - I'd been waking up fairly early for most of the pregnancy. There was a slightly odd sensation in my lower stomach - I'd had a couple like it in previous weeks and days, but always dismissed them as wind (my farts have been mighty impressive throughout the pregnancy, if I say so myself. Oh, come on. I'm just warming you up for what's to come. Girding your loins for you, so to speak). No doubt these would turn out to be more of the same. I got up and went to the loo, and had an equally impressive bout of the squirts (gird, gird! Think of it as a mental warm-up). So that was it, then. The kebabs. Food poisoning. The day before my due date. Another classy move by the Badger girl. Nice one.
I went back to bed and had a few more stomach cramps, but they were nothing to get excited about. I'm a bit of a pro at food poisoning, and like to get it at every opportunity. And I've had some major, spectacular cases - in Egypt, for example, where the stomach cramps really were something. In fact, I'd compared them to what labour must be like, at the time. Compared to those, these were pathetic. That kebab had been a wimp. I snorted at its patheticness, and picked up my 'Effective Birth Preparation' book. I was only just over halfway through, and had better get my reading in over the next few days. I would definitely make the massage, too. Food poisoning or not, I was getting my goddamned back rub.
The cramps came and went over the next few hours, but they were fairly ignorable, and didn't follow any sort of pattern. When the alarm went off, I told Mr Badger that my tummy was feeling a bit odd, but that it was probably nothing (and most likely a rogue kebab) and that he should probably just head to work. At a bit after eight I had a slightly more intense feeling. And a couple of minutes later I had another, similar, one.
"Oh ho, Mr Kebab!" I thought to myself. "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough, eh? Let's see what you're made of." (chicken, mainly. With some pepper, mushrooms, onion, and Delia-inspired barbecue sauce).
"Umm, this food poisoning might be a bit worse than I thought," I said to Mr Badger, as I lay on the bed and panted slightly. "And regular. They're getting a bit more regular."
I decided to go downstairs and make Mr Badger a sandwich for his lunch (as a good wifely soul, this is something I do every morning). This took rather longer than usual, as I had to keep stopping and concentrating through the stomach cramps. But I made it (ham salad, since you asked), and packed it up with the rest of his lunch. Then I went to lie on the couch and moan gently to myself. Mr Badger came downstairs, and, seeing me prostrate, decided he'd hang around for a while before going to work. The food poisoning cramps had now been coming every two minutes for over half an hour, it seemed.
We both began to suspect the kebab may not be the true culprit here. The kebab may turn out, after all, to be a red herring.
Mr Badger, being a technology nerd supremo, had downloaded an app onto his new iPhone which could record your contractions and show you how often they were coming, and how long you'd been having them for. We started using the app, and it confirmed how regular the feelings were. Every two minutes on the dot, each a minute long.
"I thought you were meant to get a nice break in between, this early on," I said, in between one of them. "And they're fairly intense, for the excitement stage." I was starting to feel a bit of self doubt. A first labour, I had been assured time and again, would take at least 12, and more likely 24, hours. We'd had it all planned - we'd stay at home for as long as possible. Watch some films, maybe a few of our favourite comedy episodes, eat a nice meal, and listen to the hynotherapy CD at least a few times, getting me into a nice, relaxed state before the real meat and potatoes part of labour began. That was the plan. And it was a good plan.
But I hadn't really bargained on the first stage being this intense, or the contractions this often. I wasn't sure I could handle another 12 (let alone another bloody 24) hours of this. And these were the mild, easy, gentle contractions. It was only going to get worse, surely.
I suddenly didn't think I could do this. It was going to be too much.
"We need to listen to the CD," I said to Mr Badger, slightly desperately. I needed to go to my safe place, our honeymoon beach in the Maldives. I could feel the birth I wanted slipping away. I was starting to feel scared. I couldn't do this, after all. What had I been thinking?
We put the CD on, and I tried to get into a comfortable position lying on the couch. I made my breath as deep and steady as I could and tried to focus in on the voice I had listened to so many times throughout this pregnancy. But I was still very aware of the contractions, and kept coming out of the hypnotherapy session to tap the iPhone and record the latest contraction. I was also finding it hard just to lie still and breathe through them. I was gravitating up to my knees during them, and making a noise which was very, very reminiscent of a cow. It was The Moo. And Mr Badger would become very familiar with The Moo over the next few hours...
TO BE CONTINUED... dum, dum, duuuuuuuuuuuuum!!!
Sunday, 13 June 2010
Natal Hippy-no-therapy
Like a lot of women, I was fairly petrified of giving birth. I'd heard all the stories, all the catchphrases which seemed to have been invented especially to scare the bejesus out of anyone who would ever consider attempting to pass a baby out of their body. Worse pain than you have ever experienced or can even begin to imagine. Tears, episiotomies, haemorrhaging, howling, weeping of biblical proportions. Oh, and the pain? Did we mention that already? Pain. Pain pain pain. PAIIIIIIIIN.
So, yeah. About 5 or 6 months into this pregnancy I realized that I waas actually going to have to give birth to this baby at some point. Now, Despite the hysterical rantings in the last paragraph, I'm actually not that much of a wimp. I can generally handle pain, and think I have a fairly high threshold. I've done a lot of competitive sport in the past, have hit the wall, and felt the burn, and pushed myself to the point of projectile vomiting more times than I particularly care to remember. And I've had injuries, operations, illnesses, and have lived through them, just about. But still. I had never attempted to pass a bowling ball through my lady hole before. And, hey, wasn't this pain different? Worse then any other? Unimaginable, even? How was I supposed to prepare for that?
At best I saw it as the ultimate physical challenge. My chance to prove just how hard I was. If I could get through it without an epidural, a ceasarean, or dying, I would have won. Otherwise, I would have failed. Failed at birth.
You see, I'm a bit of a twat, at times. An extremely competitive twat. The fact that I'm fit, strong, and can take pain are all closely tied to my self image. So I started to steel myself for this, the ultimate physical trial.
But I was still petrified. Petrified to the point where I secretly hoped something would happen to mean I needed a ceasarean, so that I wouldn't have to face the pain. So I wouldn't have to be responsible for failing.
And all this time, a little voice in my head kept going on about how weird this all seemed. Why were women designed so badly, that this supposedly natural thing, the way we all had to come into the world, was the cause of such pain, horror, and fear. We couldn't really all be suffering the curse of Eve, surely? Just because that silly tart couldn't resist a nibble on a juicy apple, every child that was to be born was doomed to cause his mother unthinkable pain? It made no sense.
And so I went onto Amazon, and tried to find a book to teach me how to do it. I like books. I like knowledge. And I realized I didn't actually know all that much about giving birth, so happy had I been to buy in to all of the horror stories. I don't know whether I really thought I'd find the solution, but I figured it was worth a try.
The first book I found was , I would later discover, a classic. Grantly Dick-Read's Childbirth Without Fear. Linked to it, I came across Hypnobirthing by Marie Mongan. Despite the positive reviews, I was still sceptical. But it was my birthday coming up, so I added them to my list of demands.
I sent my sister this list, slightly bashfully, it should be said. My sister is a pretty no nonsense character, about as unhippyish as it is possible to be without veering into active fascism. But to my surprise, instead of derision, she responded to the birth books with huge enthusiasm. A friend of hers at a previous workplace had done hynobirthing workshops before having her baby, and had had an amazing experience, needing no pain relief, and even enjoying the birth.
Enjoying the birth? Was this witchcraft?
Just hearing that an actual, real woman had got through birth without pain and horror was enough to pique my interest. And I remembered that actually, my strident sister had given up smoking by attending a hypnotherapy course. She hadn't wanted to go (hadn't wanted to give up smoking at all, if truth be told), but her then boyfriend had paid for her, so she'd thought why not? She'd maintained her skepticism throughout the course, and in particular during the actual 'hypnotism' bit. But she walked out of that course and never smoked a cigarette again. Maybe there really was something in it.
So I turned to the Internet. And on one of the baby web boards, hidden amongst the stories of horrible births and hideous complications, I found a mention of Natal Hypnotherapy, the UK version of hypnobirthing. A few searches further and I found they ran courses.
I raised the issue with Mr Badger, expecting derision at such a silly, hippyish, yoghurt-knitting type of suggestion. But no. Once again, my expectations of my nearest and dearest were pessimistically wide of the mark. He was enthusiastic, revealing that he'd actually been interested in hypnotherapy for a long time (stemming from its links with sport's psychology, and his many years coaching rowing). Neither of us expected miracles, but we were prepared to give it a go. We booked in to a class.
And to cut a long story short (TOO LATE!), I'm really very, very glad we did. Okay, I still haven't had this baby yet, and who knows what that experience will be, and how far I'll be able to put what I've learned into practice. But the last few months have been so much calmer and happier than I thought they could be. I actually feel positive about the birth. I don't imagine it'll be easy, I don't claim I won't feel any pain, or even go through moments where I think I can't cope. I may still end up having an epidural, or a caesarean. Who knows? But I don't see it as a horrifying gore-fest that I somehow have to try to survive. It makes sense now. I believe that women aren't actually fatally flawed and badly designed. I understand that the fear of birth is the problem, not the birth itself.
I'm not scared any more.
So, yeah. About 5 or 6 months into this pregnancy I realized that I waas actually going to have to give birth to this baby at some point. Now, Despite the hysterical rantings in the last paragraph, I'm actually not that much of a wimp. I can generally handle pain, and think I have a fairly high threshold. I've done a lot of competitive sport in the past, have hit the wall, and felt the burn, and pushed myself to the point of projectile vomiting more times than I particularly care to remember. And I've had injuries, operations, illnesses, and have lived through them, just about. But still. I had never attempted to pass a bowling ball through my lady hole before. And, hey, wasn't this pain different? Worse then any other? Unimaginable, even? How was I supposed to prepare for that?
At best I saw it as the ultimate physical challenge. My chance to prove just how hard I was. If I could get through it without an epidural, a ceasarean, or dying, I would have won. Otherwise, I would have failed. Failed at birth.
You see, I'm a bit of a twat, at times. An extremely competitive twat. The fact that I'm fit, strong, and can take pain are all closely tied to my self image. So I started to steel myself for this, the ultimate physical trial.
But I was still petrified. Petrified to the point where I secretly hoped something would happen to mean I needed a ceasarean, so that I wouldn't have to face the pain. So I wouldn't have to be responsible for failing.
And all this time, a little voice in my head kept going on about how weird this all seemed. Why were women designed so badly, that this supposedly natural thing, the way we all had to come into the world, was the cause of such pain, horror, and fear. We couldn't really all be suffering the curse of Eve, surely? Just because that silly tart couldn't resist a nibble on a juicy apple, every child that was to be born was doomed to cause his mother unthinkable pain? It made no sense.
And so I went onto Amazon, and tried to find a book to teach me how to do it. I like books. I like knowledge. And I realized I didn't actually know all that much about giving birth, so happy had I been to buy in to all of the horror stories. I don't know whether I really thought I'd find the solution, but I figured it was worth a try.
The first book I found was , I would later discover, a classic. Grantly Dick-Read's Childbirth Without Fear. Linked to it, I came across Hypnobirthing by Marie Mongan. Despite the positive reviews, I was still sceptical. But it was my birthday coming up, so I added them to my list of demands.
I sent my sister this list, slightly bashfully, it should be said. My sister is a pretty no nonsense character, about as unhippyish as it is possible to be without veering into active fascism. But to my surprise, instead of derision, she responded to the birth books with huge enthusiasm. A friend of hers at a previous workplace had done hynobirthing workshops before having her baby, and had had an amazing experience, needing no pain relief, and even enjoying the birth.
Enjoying the birth? Was this witchcraft?
Just hearing that an actual, real woman had got through birth without pain and horror was enough to pique my interest. And I remembered that actually, my strident sister had given up smoking by attending a hypnotherapy course. She hadn't wanted to go (hadn't wanted to give up smoking at all, if truth be told), but her then boyfriend had paid for her, so she'd thought why not? She'd maintained her skepticism throughout the course, and in particular during the actual 'hypnotism' bit. But she walked out of that course and never smoked a cigarette again. Maybe there really was something in it.
So I turned to the Internet. And on one of the baby web boards, hidden amongst the stories of horrible births and hideous complications, I found a mention of Natal Hypnotherapy, the UK version of hypnobirthing. A few searches further and I found they ran courses.
I raised the issue with Mr Badger, expecting derision at such a silly, hippyish, yoghurt-knitting type of suggestion. But no. Once again, my expectations of my nearest and dearest were pessimistically wide of the mark. He was enthusiastic, revealing that he'd actually been interested in hypnotherapy for a long time (stemming from its links with sport's psychology, and his many years coaching rowing). Neither of us expected miracles, but we were prepared to give it a go. We booked in to a class.
And to cut a long story short (TOO LATE!), I'm really very, very glad we did. Okay, I still haven't had this baby yet, and who knows what that experience will be, and how far I'll be able to put what I've learned into practice. But the last few months have been so much calmer and happier than I thought they could be. I actually feel positive about the birth. I don't imagine it'll be easy, I don't claim I won't feel any pain, or even go through moments where I think I can't cope. I may still end up having an epidural, or a caesarean. Who knows? But I don't see it as a horrifying gore-fest that I somehow have to try to survive. It makes sense now. I believe that women aren't actually fatally flawed and badly designed. I understand that the fear of birth is the problem, not the birth itself.
I'm not scared any more.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)