Birth - What They Don't Tell You!

8/9/2019 Birth - What They Don't Tell You!

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Birth what they dont tell you!

By Claire Hennessy

When I became pregnant with my first child, I was a front runner

amongst my family andmy friends. No-one had any children or

even looked as if they were about to in the near future. I have two

sisters, the eldest of whom had sworn off ever having children

and the youngest, being a Buddhist nun, was not likely to give me

any support in this direction either.

To make matters worse, two of my closest friends decided to up

and leave their husbands soon after I announced I was pregnant.

They were young, single and thin while I was married, up the duff

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and getting fatter by the day. I felt trapped and beyond the point

of no return.

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 and so was in denial for quite a while

until I went for my first scan.

There, on the screen in front of me, very clearly, was this wriggly,

maggot-like creature, which only looked sort of human. It felt like

I was watching a film and not the insides of my own body. There it

was squirming and moving around and I couldnt even feel it.

For the next few days all I could think about was that film Alien

and the scene where it burst out of the womans stomach. Yuck!

As the birth date grew closer and closer, I got so fed up with

lumbering around like a beached whale, not being able to bend

over to pick something up or put on my shoes, and taking five

minutes just to roll over in bed, that all I wanted was to get the

little monster out of me.

I went into labour while having lunch in my local pub, much to the

amusement of the landlady and the other customers. After

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hobbling home hunched up against the pain of ever increasing

contractions, I attempted to strap on my TENS machine. No, this

isnot

a marital aid but a particularly complicated pain relief

contraption recommended by my midwife.

Designed by sadistic, probably male, bondage freaks, 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 then trip over the bloody

things every five minutes. The hand-held controls are basically

just a means by which you give yourself electric shocks to distract

yourself from the labour pains! And dont get me started on going

to the loo every 10 minutes without weeing on it and accidentally

electrocuting yourself!

Finally we made it into the hospital, gasping in pain and expecting

our baby to be born at any second, where a tall, severe doctor

stuffed what seemed like her entire arm up my vagina. I nearly hit

the ceiling it was so painful. Apparently, I wasnt even a single

centimeter dilated, she informed me in a voice that suggested

that I was a bit of a wimp to even be in hospital so early on in

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labour. I was left wondering what on earth I had been doing for

the past 10 hours. Obviously I wasnt very good at this giving

birth thing.

Another 24 hours went past before my daughter decided to

honour us with her presence, during which time my husband

managed to find a lovely comfortable bed nearby, snored through

the rest of my contractions and then complained of an achy back

when he eventually woke up - poor love!

As the night wore on, I ripped up my neatly written Birth Plan that

I had made on the advice of the teachers at the Natural Childbirth

Trust, 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 anesthetist eventually

showed up and promptly announced I was now too far along in

labour for me to have an epidural. My only option left was the

dreaded Pethidine, which was supposed to make you throw up.

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I dont 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 decided to emerge into the outside world, my

daughter didnt hang about. I got the most tremendous urge to

push, gave three or four big squeezes and, slippery as an eel, she

shot out, the midwife almost 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 also get ejected with the afterbirth, otherwise I would NEVER

have gone through the whole awful process all over again with my

son!

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Birth - What They Don't Tell You!