You see, as much as the midwife, the doctors and the hubby will be there to help us through, the rest of bringing this tiny human into the world safely – the most important part, in fact – is up to us: Team Vagina.
Therefore, in exchange for you keeping up your end of the bargain, I will make a couple of promises to you. I promise to do my best to keep you as informed as possible about what’s happening (though I’m guessing that because you will have a front-row seat you will be more in the know than me!).
I promise to be as brave as I can be without being too proud or ashamed to ask for help if or when the pain gets too much to bear.
I promise to work with you as much as I can to get this baby here as safely and as quickly as humanly possible (the sooner it’s over for both of us, the better).
I apologise now for any ‘work’ you may need post-baby.
However, to make up for this work, I promise that after the arrival of the tiny human I will have ice packs, a rubber ring, perineum cream and a cocktail of painkillers at the ready.
Most importantly, I do so solemnly declare – for the sake of us both – that I will not rush you into getting back to business as usual. I will give you time to recover and the R-E-S-P-E-C-T you deserve for being such a Vagina Rock Star!
Yours forever grateful and in awe of the wonderful work you do,
Me, the lady upstairs
MY FIRST BIRTH EXPERIENCE – ‘NEVER ask me to do THAT again… EVER!’
Childbirth happens, I’ve discovered, when you’re busy making birth plans.
I had a feeling my first baby was going to come early. I remember getting to seven months pregnant and looking at myself in the mirror clad in big pants and an unwired maternity bra (I know, what a vision, right?) and proclaiming to my husband: ‘Jesus, I don’t think I can get much bigger.’ He laughed as only a man that has not been stretched beyond recognition can, and told me that I still had a long way to go yet (cheers, love!). However, that’s not really what I meant. I wasn’t on about the size of my tummy, so much as trying to describe how I felt. My tummy was heavy and low, I was feeling stretched as far as I could possibly stretch and, without sounding like a weirdo, my body just felt like it was getting ready to give birth.
Luckily a few days after this stretching epiphany, I was at the gynaecologist for my thirty-two-week checkup, which involved not only looking at the baby but also checking out my cervix too. From how I was feeling in my body, I just knew that he was going to tell me that something was up.
‘Have you been having contractions?’ came the voice from between my stirruped legs.
‘Hmm, well, I don’t know, as I don’t know what they feel like [obvs!].’
‘Well, have you been having any pains?’
‘Now you mention it, for the past week I’ve been waking up in the middle of night in pain, like there is an earthquake going off in my tummy and it wakes me up.’ (Oh, Jeez, Liv, I wonder what those could have been?)
‘OK, well you’ve been having contractions and I know this because your cervix has shortened. It is a lot shorter than it should be at this stage. It may calm down and stay where it is and be OK. However, we need to monitor it and you need to start taking it easy.’
Shit.
I felt scared but also freaked out that I’d been so spot-on about my own body and how I was feeling. He told me that I could still work, but that I would have to work from home. Driving the long distance to work every day would bring on more contractions. So I agreed to stay put and set about working from home and taking it easy.
A week later, sat in the kitchen working from home (as promised), I was taken over by an overwhelming wave of pain. It took my breath away and filled me with a cold and prickly fear. A fear of realisation that this pain meant something. Jamie was in the lounge next door and I sat in the kitchen letting these waves of pain wash over me, whilst I took deep heavy breaths, not daring to voice my fears in case it made them real. I stayed exactly where I was, silent and thinking through the excruciating waves of pain for about five minutes. When my mind started screaming to me: ‘You need to get to hospital’, I called Jamie into the kitchen.
‘We need to go to hospital,’ I said calm as anything.
‘What, what, what do you mean, what’s wrong? Are you OK?’
‘No, I’m in a lot of pain and have been for about five minutes.’
‘Oh my God. Do you think they are labour pains? How painful are they?’
‘Hmm, well I can’t stand up.’
‘Shit, right, I’ll get the bags and the car.’
It was the middle of December in the Alps, and it was snowing (of course!). We lived up a mountain. The hospital was down the mountain and along lots of windy mountain roads. None of these facts were lost on me as I sat in our kitchen, unable to stand due to the pain I was in and watching the snow fall thick and fast outside. By the time Jamie had managed to get me into the car, I was doubled over in pain and panic was setting in. The baby was only thirty-three weeks, I could not give birth to a premature baby at the side of the road in the snow.
Driving in a full-blown snowstorm, Jamie was trying his hardest to calm me down whilst also trying to time the contractions. We hadn’t got a clue what we were doing; we just knew we had to get to the hospital as soon as possible.
So there we were, the two of us and bump, me unable to speak properly through the pain and Jamie ashen-faced trying to navigate the winding roads, windscreen wipers going ten to the dozen as we were bombarded with big fat snowflakes. Every instinct in our bodies was telling us to get to the hospital as quickly as possible but then we remembered we had to drive slowly so as not to go skidding off the mountain roads. It was terrifying. All the way down, I was speaking to our baby, telling them to hold on, to stay put, to keep calm, it was not time yet for them to come.
The drive from hell finally came to an end. The attendants took one look at me half waddling, half bent in pain and trying to walk into the hospital reception, and they rushed me up to the maternity unit. The monitor confirmed that I was having strong contractions, so they explained to me that they would do all they could to calm them down and keep the baby put. The baby was checked over and we were told all was fine, and I was hooked up to a contraction machine for the rest of the night and given anti-contraction pills. The doctor also told me I was going nowhere (fine by me).
The contractions eventually died down, and after a night of monitoring, I was told that my cervix had shortened further and that I was going to have to have a steroid injection to help the baby’s lungs develop in case the baby arrived prematurely (every sign was indicating as much). With the injection done and the contractions gone, I was allowed home but put on strict bed rest. The doctor warned me not too walk far (I was allowed to walk from my bed to the toilet and back, but that was it), I couldn’t lift anything, I had to stop work immediately and I wasn’t allowed to drive or go in the car for long distances. Effectively I was under house arrest, ordered to rest until the baby arrived. God, I wish I had appreciated this time more and let myself relax. Don’t get me wrong, I was strictly feet up and bum on sofa, but my mind was racing all over the place, thinking of all the things I should be doing, watching my hubby take receipt of all the things I’d excitedly ordered for the nursery but which now I could not help set up, and feeling – what was that I was feeling? A little bit restless like I should be doing more and, dare I say, a little bit guilty because I couldn’t. Oh yes, you never forget your first taste of mummy guilt – and I wasn’t even officially a mummy yet!
I managed two weeks of sitting still and struggling to relax, worried about the baby constantly, knowing every day counted when it came to a baby coming prematurely. My nephew had been born earlier the same year at thirty-two weeks,