That whole birth thing March 25, 2008

Number One Son doesn’t leave me much time for luxuries like writing, eating, or sleeping these days, so I won’t be banging on in great detail about how the kid eventually got born. I will bang on a bit about some of it, though, thoughtfully organised into procedure, followed by commentary.

1. Membrane sweep: did not work for me.

2. Cervix-softening gel (X 3 applications): involves midwife sticking fingers up your jacksie to load your cervix up with this gel stuff, designed to make your cervix all gooey and to trick it into starting labour. The first application did nothing, the second – a double dose – did work. A bit. Not much, but a bit.

3. TENS machine: involves sticking little pads to the small of your back and then giving you this little remote control console, whereby when a contraction hits you, you pump electrical current down into the pads in an effort to convince your body that there is no pain. This does not work. You only convince your mind that you are playing novelty with electricity. It’s a dinky little piece of kit, and probably would have amused me more if I wasn’t trying to squeeze a small elephant out of my vagina at the time.

4. Artificial rupture of the membranes: this procedure is not complete without a ginormous, very long crochet hook (nope, not kidding), brandished by the midwife and inserted fully up your jacksie and way, way up the back of your uterus. You feel a teeny, tiny little tug, and then you panic a little, because the midwife starts leaning very hard against the top of your belly, and then suddenly there is a f l o o d of liquid gushing out all over the bed and the floor. This is very disconcerting. Part of your mind thinks that you must be wetting your pants, and another part of your brain just doesn’t know what to make of it all.

If you’re a normal person, this procedure will bring on very strong contractions. If you are a freak, like moi, it’ll actually stop your contractions altogether, much to the bemusement of the hospital staff. It is at this point you lose any hope of having a normal delivery and resign yourself to not having a waterbirth as planned. Then the midwife and the registrar come in to your room looking very solemn and advise you to get used to the idea of having an epidural, because they are about to hook you up to fake oxytocin to really get the party started.

5. Epidural and related IV drugs: the epidural was the one thing I did not want to have, along with a caesarian, but to be honest it hurt less than having a blood test done. More painful was the canula they inserted into my left wrist, which is kind of like an IV double adaptor that they use to get more than one kind of liquid into your veins at once. That was excruciating; it took weeks for my vein to recover. The epidural involved me crying a lot about the idea of someone sticking a big needle into my spine, a five minute chat with the loveliest anaesthetist you are ever likely to meet and then about 20 seconds curled over a pillow trying not to move at all. One tiny pin prick and it was all over. And the relief it brought me – fantastic. What they don’t tell you is that not only is an epidural a kind of local anaesthetic, it’s also loaded with opiates to relax you, so you pretty much doze off here and there and get entertained by the room going all woozy. Then you ask the midwife to top you up, as it were, and your brain goes all nice and fuzzy. After 24 hours of labour, an epidural was quite definitely the best idea I’d had in a long time. Contractions? What contractions?

6. The dreaded C-section: I really, really didn’t want to have one, but after 10 hours of contracting and pushing the kid just wasn’t coming out. Because I’d already had an epidural, I didn’t need to have another spinal block, they just turbo-loaded me with more local, then wheeled me into surgery. And guess what happened then? Yep. MASSIVE panic attack. MASSIVE. The screen was up around my neck and I had to have my arms resting up around there too, so I felt like I couldn’t breathe and didn’t really know what was going on. I was shaking and trembling and went completely dry in the mouth and then couldn’t talk, which freaked me out even more. Poor old Beloved couldn’t calm me, nothing could calm me and nobody could hear me calling out for a sip of water because my mouth was too dry to talk. And then I threw up all over myself. Did I feel anything? Yes. I didn’t feel Nelson actually coming out, but I felt lots of tugging and pressure as I was being sewn up and that was a fine line between pressure and pain.

And then before I knew what was going on, the doctor was there urging The Beloved to yell out the sex of the baby and one of the midwives was showing me this wrapped up bundle with a red, squishy face at one end. My son. It was all very surreal, in part because you don’t get to connect with the baby until you get back to your room, while they finish sewing you up, and then when you get back to your room you are just drugged out of your mind on morphine and everybody wants to come and stick more needles in you and check the baby over.

It wasn’t really until I got on to the ward and The Beloved had gone home that I was able to take a look over the kid, and marvel at what the fuck I’d done.

Something I still do, that marvelling thing, quite often. Nelson is just so perfect, and so much a product of us both, without either of us really doing much other than having sex in the first place.

Week 41.5: V Day February 16, 2008

V-Day to me usually means rolling out the usual answers to questions about whether The Beloved and I actually give a shit about a day nominated by a card company to make them more money than usual.

This year, V-Day took on a different meaning altogether. This year it became VAGINA DAY, and forever shall be known as such, not least of all because if there’s one thing I cannot stand, it’s a multinational corporation telling me when to tell someone I love them, and calling their nominated day VAGINA DAY is my little way of subverting yet another dominant stereotype but also my charming Australian way of shocking these slightly repressed British by using the word VAGINA on a day commonly associated with wee tiny cherubs and misty lighting. VAGINA DAY is now also known as that day where the midwife stuck two fingers up my jacksie to try and get El Laidbacko in there to shake a tail feather and actually come on out and deign to meet us sometime this century.

And so it was on a nippy day in a valley somewhere in the north of England, we waddled along to said V-Day appointment, cracking jokes about how it was time to start asking for refunds on this whole kid idea, then being distracted (me) by the shiny trash mags in the waiting room.

The procedure by which the midwife does indeed and literally stick two fingers up my jacksie is more professionally known as a ‘membrane sweep’ and just before she gloved up to do it she warned us that there was only a 50 per cent chance it would work, assuming the sproglet’s head was far enough down the downstairs department to complete the procedure in the first place.

The head was not. The midwife seemed indifferent to this fact. The midwife indicated that just having some traffic up that way might trigger labour anyway. The Beloved and I knew differently, we knew differently because this kid is never coming out and I am on the way to holding the world record for Longest Gestational Period of a Human Ever in the Universe.

So, in an effort to prevent me from holding my first ever world record, we are due at the hospital tomorrow, wherein another midwife will again stick two fingers up my jacksie and leave some labour-starting hormonal gel in there. And if that doesn’t work, they try it again, and then if it STILL doesn’t work, they get out the crochet hook to break the waters.

You read correctly. I wish I was joking about that part.

All things considered, The Beloved and I will be parents, godammit, however much this kid doesn’t wish it so, by Tuesday at the absolute latest. Stay tuned.

Week 37: oh, shit January 17, 2008

I am ginormous. Utterly ginormous.

This week I had to check the BBC’s pregnancy calendar to work out exactly how pregnant I was. That’s because my brain has turned completely to mush. Last night The Beloved was very excited to show me his new computer software that enables him to (literally) make beautiful music. I stared somewhat vacantly at the screen, muttered various words of encouragement and all I could really think about was returning to the loungeroom to continue playing MarioKart (look! bright colours! funny creatures! whee!).

As befitting a mammal of such large proportions, my capacity for movement has also slowed down considerably. We have just moved into a three-storey terrace and I have become very proficient at going up and down the stairs the minimum number of times possible. Stairs – they’re hard work, man. Seriously.

The baby’s room is now almost ready for the Wee Wriggler, due really at any time from here on in. We are still trying to decode the puzzle of the disassembled changing table, however. Still, the kid will have somewhere to sleep, and if we have to we can change nappies on the floor.

The Beloved and I started birth classes two weeks ago and they have proven interesting in some respects and quite horrifying in others. I have seen a pair of forceps. I do not want them near my body. The birthing pool, however, I baggsied on the first week. It’s even bigger than the bath in our house, which takes some doing, and if the midwives really will fill it with hot water and give me gas to make me high at the same time while I squeeze a rather large object through a relatively small hole, then, so be it. I can probably live with that.

You can say what you like about gender stereotypes fading into insignificance in this modern age but it all goes out the window when it comes to birthing classes. The midwife leading the class says things like ‘vagina’ and ‘anus’ and ‘10 centimetres dilation’ and the blokes sit there with this frozen expression on their faces, which basically translates as, ‘ohhh … shit … are they going to make me look down there?’. All the while the pregnant people sit there looking slightly tired but interested and clearly wondering when the proceedings would be arriving at the ’session break with chocolate biscuit’ part, and whether said midwife would notice any sly reading of trash mags left on nearby tables.

Yesterday I went into a very large chain store to purchase washable nappies. I’ve talked before on this site about how the maths and the ethics don’t add up for disposables, but when you have £200 in your hand one minute and then a recyclable bag laden with a few bits of absorbent cotton and Velcro the next but minus the cashola you do begin to question your sanity and wonder whether one person’s preference not to add to landfill is really worth it. Interestingly, I did not question my sanity when I dropped £180 on a sexy iPod a few months back before I got pregnant. Priorities, huh? I ended up exchanging a large wad of cash for these particular nappies that are made of bamboo fibre. They are almost guaranteed to give my kid that cute overly big and round baby bum. As well as do all the other things, you know, like not leak poo all over the bedding.

Life currently feels a bit like we are heading towards a (possibly pleasant and vastly rewarding) nuclear meltdown. We are in the process of battening down hatches, in preparation for the arrival of the Wee Disco Dancer, which involves doing truckloads of life administration – organising direct debits for bill paying, buying bits of furniture, practising putting up the pram without losing my temper (harder than you think!!) – and making sure we have everything as ready as we can for said meltdown.

Now the nappies are in, I’m doing the last of the gazillion loads of washing of all the baby’s stuff, and buying the last few bits of things I think I might need before getting around to packing my labour bag and choosing the sproglet’s very first outfit in which it will travel home. And, of course, battening down of hatches involves watching lots of Buffy and Angel and eating very nice reduced price desserts from Waitrose, conveniently located within waddling distance of my house.

It’s weird to think that the next time I write I might very well be a parent. I think that’s about as big a life change as you can get, other than a sex change.

Week 19: zzz September 18, 2007

I have reached a new low.

All the books tell you that the second trimester is when you glow (you sweat), your energy levels return to (somewhat) normal, you’re feeling great, blah, blah, fucking blah. I would like to meet these women, these women who glow with heavenly inward saintitudiness about their state of pregnancy and who haven’t stacked on any weight and still iron their sheets.

1. For about 10 days now I’ve been waking up anywhere between 2am and 4am and been completely unable to get back to sleep. I’ve tried every technique I know, all the while listening to The Beloved snuffle away deep in his slumber, of which I am deeply, deeply jealous and resentful. I just lie there, mind a-wandering, various earworms running constant loops through my head (Nick Cave’s “I Let Love In” is currently on fairly high rotation). The first few times this odd awakening occurred I became increasingly frustrated, as, let’s face it, nothing makes mama more grumpy than a lack of sleep. Now I have come to peace with the fact that this is APPARENTLY my body training me for night-time feeds, and given the size of this child already, I suppose I’d better get used to being awake and stone cold sober in every respect in the dark of night.

2. During one of my recent nocturnal ramblings, I stubbed my toe on the bottom edge of the couch and broke it. I have broken my toes before (attempting a Paula Abdul dance manouvre at age 14, I seem to recall) and they hurt. And the only thing that can be done is strapping, so hobble on I must. And hobble is the operative word because …

3. I have damaged my lower back somehow, either that or the kid has jammed its elbow into the back end of my cocyx, but whichever, BECAUSE I HURT. Sitting for too long, standing for too long, lying down for too long … it’s all the same. Nasty twinges that make me cry out in pain and surprise when I get up and especially when I bend over or bear weight on my right side. This has effectively sidelined me from the workforce, which isn’t great, but the fact of the matter is I can’t actually sit in a chair for longer than ten minutes without significant pain. Hot water bottles, ice packs, anti-inflammatories – nothing has made a speck of fucking difference to my world of pain. This situation is very frustrating as well as painful because it seems that there is nothing much I can do.

This is a classic example of not appreciating what you have until you don’t have it any more. My back has never been great but it’s got me through all kinds of motions, as it were, and now that I can’t use it properly I’d really like to.

In spite of – or perhaps because of – my back pain, I’ve been attending my local expectant mothers yoga class of a Thursday evening. The exercises are very gentle, and it has been excellent to meet some other local pregnant people and seasoned mothers heading into their second or third pregnancy. Now, I’m all for doing exercise and bumping up my pevlic floor muscles, but I’m not so much into the hugging my belly and singing to my unborn child. I’ll just close my eyes and sway a little, thanks, and take the odd peek here and there to check if anyone else is uncomfortable about the procession as I am.

We have our 20 week scan this Thursday and I am under strict instructions from The Mothership to get her a photo or two. These images are surprisingly cheap here (at least something in this country is cheap!!) – only a couple of pounds per image, so I think I’ll stock up on some for all the expectant grandmas and grandpas and possibly for the special aunties and uncles as well.

The Mothership lands on Friday night and Saturday we pack up to go to the south of France for an extremely well-earned two week holiday, but not before I insist that my mother hands over to me my long, long list of items she Must Bring From Australia As They Can’t Be Got Elsewhere. And yes, I know there’s the bloody internet but it’s more fun when you get these items as presents.

1. Bonds boyleg undies. M&S undies don’t cut it on an arse like mine.

2. Twisties, Burger Rings, and Samboy Barbecue chips. Oh! The sheer delicious cheesy taste of original flavour Twisties!!

3. Violet Crumble, Cherry Ripe, Kingston and Tic Toc biscuits.

4. The biggest jar of Vegemite she can get her hands on (they only sell the teeny-teeny jars up here, and I go through one of those a fortnight).

5. As many cloth nappies with velcro tabs that she can fit in her suitcase without going (too far) over her weight limit. At only $6.75 a piece I’ve suggested she should load up and we can just buy her all Mothership-type clothes she needs once she gets here.

So, after I’ve scoffed everything, the three of us will sight the white cliffs of Dover, be visiting a small town on the way called Arras, where my great-grandfather is buried; driving over the latest brightest shiniest and longest suspension bridge in the world; taking a day trip to Barcelona and visiting a place called Carcassonne, home of my favourite nerdy game called, unsurprisingly, Carcassonne.

If I’m not back posting by Friday this week, assume all has gone well and we are tramping gaily all over the sensibilities of the French and having a grand old time.

Week 12: you’re real July 30, 2007

Dear space prawn,

On Thursday your father and I got to see for the first time that you’re really in there, and you have four limbs in working order, a head, a nose, fingers and toes all accounted for and a very cute little wriggle action when you’re woken up.

We had our scans for Down’s Syndrome and to date your arrival properly.

I was a bit nervous before we went in. What if there were two of you in there? (At least that might help explain my gargantuan eating habits).

I lay back on the bed as the doctor spread some cold gel on

Weeks 10-11: my health, my god, the system, philosophies on gender and parenting in general July 14, 2007

My general health

I went through a real phase when I was about 28 of reading pregnancy week-by-week books, partly possibly because I subconsciously thought at the time that it might actually make me pregnant, a state I feared and hoped in equal amounts I’d be at the end of each 28 day cycle for as long as I could remember.

I also read them partly because of what I call the Snot Factor. Everybody has a Snot Factor, some have a factor higher than others. I, personally, have a reasonably high factor. I have no problem squeezing The Beloved’s zits, no problem watching pus or operations on the telly. So I partly read these books for the Snot Factor, thinking at the time: err! that’s gross yet fascinating! my body won’t do that. will it?

It has. It pleases me not.

Heartburn? Tick. Constipation? Tick. Oh, go on then, a bit of reflux? TICK. Indi-fucken-gestion? Tickety fucken tick. Let’s not forget the ever expanding bosoms and the ache they cause me when I move position in the night. Or the constant action in my bladder. Fucks sake. And it’s only week 10-and-a-half.

Having never experienced heartburn before, after my first attack I had to calm myself down (because there’s this part of your brain that goes, oh, shiiiiiit, I’m dying … IS THIS IT? NO BABY? NO WEDDING? Oh, man … aaarrrggghhh!!! the pain! I AM DYING!) then get myself to a chemist quick smart to get some pregnant-safe antacid.

A double-edged sword: the agony I was undergoing with heartburn was equalled only by the really shitty tasting tablets I had to chew to get rid of it, a pint of milk not being within buying distance. I mean, aniseed tasting salty chalk?? What the fuck?

Small sundry health snipes aside, my general health is good. The morning sickness has subsided (mostly) and been replaced with the most gnawing hunger I’ve ever experienced. I wake up hungry, I wake up in the night hungry, I go to work after three bits of toast and a bowl of cereal and I get hungry; this is interrupted only by mild nausea mid-afternoon in combination with the almost completely overwhelming urge to sleep my life away, at least for the subsequent 60 minutes.

My health, according to the system

I endured my first visit from my allocated midwife last week. Madam Too Busy To Be Nice was very busy ticking all the boxes on all the forms and rushing through the asking of questions that she forgot her bedside manner and to be gentle when she took my blood. She was also too busy to take my blood properly, so some of our test results are now a little late in arriving. If she’s like that sticking a needle in my arm, I thought, there is no way she’s getting near my clacker. Absolutely no fucking way.

Not impressed, was my assessment, and after two days of hand-wringing, desperate for some way through the maze of the NHS that would allow me to pick someone who, you know, at the very least acted like she gave a shit I was pregnant and going to squeeze a giant watermelon out of my clacker in about seven months, but for a while there I thought I was going to be stuck with the dragon the “free” system threw my way. Luckily, this is not the case. Luckily, I have a very nice GP who specialises in antenatal care at my local surgery, so after a wee weep with the district nurse, who took my blood properly and gently, my problem was solved. One step at a time. And breathe.

Baby brain: not so much

One of the first signs for me that something was a little up the duff was that the sound of kids and babies crying no longer bothered me. It still no longer bothers me, to the point that I now bother new mums on trains and in the shops to start up a conversation about how I’m pregnant and ooh, so cuuute! The little one! And where did you get that pram from?

My baby brain does not extend, however, to sighing and cooing over baby clothes in shops. In the shops, clothes for babies under six months are in neutral colours like beige (NEVER ON MY WATCH), white (clearly made by people whose babies don’t shit or vomit), pastel pink or pastel blue. Over six months there is immediate and very distinct gender characterisation occurring: clothes are either pink/red or blue. Flowers or trains. Hearts or bears.

WHERE IS THE FUNKY PURPLE? THE CRAZY ORANGE? THE CLOTHING THAT ISN’T CROSS MARKETED WITH A MOVIE/TOY?? WHERE, good people, where?

This antiquated notion of rigid and boring gender roles for fucking humans WHO CAN’T EVEN WALK, let alone think for themselves, my god, what is this? My brain does not understand this need to relate to a boy baby differently to a girl baby. It’s just a baby. *It* doesn’t care what it wears, as long as it’s warm and dry. It’s only a societal, adult perception that babies and toddlers should be immediately identified as either a boy or a girl, leading on, still, boring as it is, to relating and coaxing those little human sponges into continuing this gender stereotyping that I REALLY FUCKING HATE.

I have for quite some time been of the opinion that people should relate to, and treat each other as exactly that, people first, and your esteem for another be based on information, evidence, words and deeds. It doesn’t matter their sex.

Apparently the makers of children’s apparel are of a different opinion.

Fine. Fuck them. I’ll learn to sew my own.

Parenting in general

The Beloved and I have been talking about parenting and how we are going to approach the family dynamic once this sprog comes into the world.

We have talked well into the night about what it means to be happy, and what we think makes a child happy (other than boob juice and swaddling). I think we are united in how we are going to go about things, which gives me confidence going into this thing.

A child cannot be spoiled with too much love. There is no such thing as too much love for a child, I really believe that. You cannot spoil a child by telling it you love it every day. But children are spoiled with toys and other material things and given love in ways that spoil them. I am already committed to making sure that my child will never doubt my love, never question who its family is, or doubt that it can talk to me or The Beloved, about anything. It may doubt my methods, and will probably spend a great deal of its teenage years hating my guts in general for being embarrassing (can’t wait to spit on the tissue to wipe on its face!!) or for not buying that PlayStation X, or whatever the latest game will be by then. But it will never hanker for my time or my (quality) attention.

Unless it’s having a tanty. Then it’ll just get locked back under the stairs, where it belongs.