Posts Tagged ‘childbirth’

 

Naked

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

The volume on bhalababy has been muted for too long so I have decided to turn it up with a sample of freewriting from baby’s first photograph.

‘Please wipe my cheek’, she asks as another tear rolls down, dragged in the wake of the one that has gone before. Her husband leans in and, as he does so, a tear of his own drops down to meet those he is wiping away. These are not sad tears but tears of relief and joy and love. The mound on her belly has been slit open to release the yell of a tiny baby; and not only that but it has released the anticipation and apprehension that has been mounting for the six months since they had discovered their lives were going to change forever. The theatre, a usually sterile, white, odourless and lifeless place is transformed. Her joy bubbles into laughter; her head flicking from side to side attempting to make eye contact with someone; anyone she can focus on; anyone she can share another anecdote with to disperse these overwhelming emotions. The doctors and theatre nurses squelch in their wellington boots through the river of blood and amniotic fluid which is turning the floor her favourite colour. She takes the swaddled baby and smiles. Her nose wrinkles but the tears no longer flow.

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Too Posh to Push? (Part 2)

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

But, having said that, there are things you aren’t told when schedules are being done and options are being narrowed down and made, and I will have to list them to distance myself as much as possible from these admissions:

  • It’s a totally freaky experience being fully awake and knowing that your insides are spilling all over the operating table and there is blood and fluid flowing like a fountain from your belly – the gynae and theatre nurses have to wear wellies (enough said). Don’t ever look at the overhead light, as you will be terrified by the reflection.
  • You are given your baby at about the same time as a shot of morphine in your thigh – the effect of the drug is not conducive with (a) safety and (b) bonding.
  • It’s fucking sore when the drugs wear off.
  • It’s fucking sore when you have to get up to go to the toilet for the first time after they take the catheter out.
  • You get a suppository – this is supposedly for the alleviation of the pain but, when you are crapping your guts out, it is revealed that it is all a cover and it is really to prevent you clogging up, getting constipated and having to push so hard that your stitches pop out.
  • You are incapable of coping with a tiny baby at home when your husband only has three days of paternity leave (RSA Labour Law sucks … believe me, I know).
  • You are incapable of coping without your parents or in-laws around.
  • You are incapable of coping WITH your parents or in-laws around.
  • It is perfectly normal to have permanent nerve damage in your coccyx – my feeling in that area disappeared totally for over a year and now the pain is making up for the long-term loss.
  • The entry point of the spinal block needle comes back to haunt you by causing the most excruciating pain – this when you are constantly having to pick up a 13kg bundle.

Perhaps the NHS should change their propaganda slogan. Or perhaps they tried … but, admittedly, the above list doesn’t make for a particularly catchy slogan.

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Too Posh to Push? (Part 1)

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

One of the reasons I left the UK was because I could no longer deal with the NHS propaganda that made women feel like they were either failures as women or just weren’t particularly interested in breaking
a sweat during the birthing process. The former touches a nerve in even the most non-maternal woman and the latter conjures up images of a woman who hands her baby to a wet nurse as soon as it emerges from the bloody wound.

Not particularly into the whole maternal, mother nature thing (which, one has to admit, is not so much mother nature as total fad these days), I knew I would have a c-section – it’s unnatural to try and get
something that big out of such a small exit. Whether the gynae was looking after his schedule or my continence is irrelevant. When he told me the head of my foetus was too large to exit ‘naturally’, I was relieved to have the medical back-up for my instinctual beliefs – after all who said a small slice across the lower abdomen to extract a living being isn’t natural.

There are revelations that follow. I do, however, have to pre-empt them with a disclaimer: I still believe in the advances of medical science enough to believe that a c-section is the only way and I would never go back and change a thing.

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The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth

Friday, June 8th, 2007

There I lay, veiled in a drug-induced mist, recovering from the trauma of surgery. I hadn’t learnt anything from my hospital ‘trial-run’ the weekend before and found it almost impossible to ring the bell for help. Friends came and went, my husband was there almost permanently and, even when I didn’t ask for it, I had nursing staff buzzing about checking this and that, taking my temperature, giving me sponge baths … and an unwanted suppository at some point.

Not the type for broodiness and maternal instincts, I none-the-less recollect an almost immediate instinct to nurture. Regardless of all the activity, the exhaustion and the drugs, I insisted that the nurses bring me my baby every four hours through the night … whether he was sleeping or not … so I could nourish him. I returned him to the nursery immediately afterwards so I could get my rest and, come morning, I had him by my side where I could gaze at him sleeping, lift him to feed him and lay him against my skin so he could feel my warmth and feel safe. It doesn’t take any form of maternal instinct to realize the trauma a baby must go through being ripped from the warmth and quiet of a watery womb and into the foul smells, noise and bright lights of the physical world. From a miniscule part of each parent, a body is formed, through which a soul can reach the world. I was intensely aware of the fragility of the situation. And he clung to me, somehow realizing that I was his life-support.

We co-existed like this for 4 days.

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No surprises?

Thursday, June 7th, 2007

I knew the due date and I knew I was having a boy … so no surprises there. But everything else … Let me just say that you can buy a cot, decorate the nursery, book your foetus into high school, but you can never be prepared for what follows after that first cry when that tiny baby is ripped from your belly. They may as well rip your heart out too because from there on out, you wear your heart outside your body.

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On the Couch

Sunday, May 13th, 2007

Everywhere around the world, women are secretly beating up their husbands and screaming into pillows. The reason? Childbirth!

Now, if only they would come out of the proverbial closet and admit that they are terrified of being complete failures, then everything would be OK. Yes, sure there are those mothers who are the true mother-nature types, but this isn’t a given just because they gasp in horror when you tell them of the times you have imagined throwing your crying baby against the wall (with just a hint of a satisfied smile on your face). I know I am not an isolated case and I will tell my story
to as many people as possible until one, just one, other mother decides to come clean.

Not that I need a reason to start a blog – there are, after all, over a million of them floating in the, er, blogosphere – but, if there needed to be a reason, it would be to flush out all those pseudo-maternal types. As you will see, my blog is a working document – a kind of therapy session that will change with time, my moods and how much of the truth I want to reveal at any given moment. If you keep up-to-date with my blogging, you will notice additions and changes along the way until I reach the goal of a completed, comprehensive, er, blog.

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