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.

Weeks 22-25: the house guest October 28, 2007

While I am officially down with the being pregnant concept now, I am still yet to completely be jiggy with the idea of welcoming a new person into our home in three short months.

When I think about the baby, I am fine thinking about where it is now, kicking away, fine thinking about giving birth (well, kinda) but it’s the after the birth thing that’s still hard to conceptualise.

The closest I can come is thinking of the baby as a new house guest. It’s not someone we already know, really, more like hearing about a distant long-lost relative coming to stay who we’ve never met before, but know a bit about. We can make some guesses about what kind of clothes and bedding to get ready, how our lives might change in terms of routine, but that’s about it.

It’s hard to explain. There’s just so much mystery, in many ways, mostly because The Beloved and I are so damn curious to meet the little thing, feeling it kick in my tummy, and have spent many hours wondering whose fingers it will get, whether it will have the two little curls of skin behind its ears like its father, hate being woken up, just like its mother … who knows. Will it get my nose?

We have also been talking a lot about how to set boundaries, and what we might do in certain circumstances. Should it get pocket money (yes, for doing extra chores over and above the ones we all get to do as part of the house)? What about clothes and appearance (happy to support whatever fashion or appearance it chooses, even if that means supporting it through gritted teeth)?

I have been reading Gina Ford’s The New Contented Little Baby Book, the first I’ve come across that does away with waffle and says, right. Week 1, when you get home from the hospital, 7am, get the kid up. She lays out hour by hour what needs to happen to ensure the kid gets fed, watered and put to sleep regularly, and all with parents’ sanity in mind. It has been a godsend for my peace of mind. The last thing I think either The Beloved or myself would want is a baby that needs constant rocking to be put to sleep, up all bloody night and is a fussy boob juice drinker. At least, so it seems, we are able to minimise these fussy elements and get things into a routine fairly easily and quickly.

Of course, babies don’t read the manuals. So we shall have to see. Even if the CLB routine doesn’t work at first, we have it as a basis for working towards.

I have had some great ideas for baby clothes, as I have finally given up looking for anything remotely different or interesting at a reasonable price in any of the stores here.

I was in London last weekend with the scrumptious MellaStella, and as we wandered around Portobello Road I came across some really seriously cute baby clothes: all bright colours, each different … each costing £8-£20 a pop. Now, these are items a baby will grow out of in about two weeks, so who-ever was making them was clearly on a winner.

Some of the clothes would be quite easy to copy, I reckon - they were just tie-dyed in really bright colours. So that is my first project. I only need a couple of buckets, rubber bands, baby-safe clothing dye and several different sizes of baby clothes and we’re away.

I figure it’s a project I can take on once we’ve moved after Christmas and I’ve stopped paid work for a while and I’m sure I’ll be busy just getting nesty and ready for baby.

Some of the other baby clothes were stencilled with some very cool graff art and cultural stencils that I think would also look really cute - again I can just buy some baby-friendly fabric paint, some acetate and get cracking.

It can’t be that hard to copy a Sex Pistols album cover in size miniature, can it?

Week 5: holy shit June 11, 2007

Dear sprog,

Holy fucking shit. I’m up the duff. You’re in there. You may only be the size of a grain of arborio rice (mmm, risotto), but already your presence means:

1. I am well and truly backed up. Even farting takes hours, and this from a woman is known around these parts for romantic gestures such as preparing to fart and holding your father’s head under the covers then laughing hysterically as he tries not to gag on her toxic output. Anyhoo, what I wouldn’t give for a decent sesh on the toilet. Gone are the days and you are only a bunch of cells.

2. MY BOOBS. What the hell happened to my boobs? I woke up this morning, only one day after taking a pregnancy test and JESUS, SWEET JESUS, who put those things there? So much for that breast reduction all those years ago. These mamas got minds o’ their own. They ache, they throb, they react and get all tingly at inappropriate moments. Rest assured they are still keeping your father happy. You can get grossed out about that when you’re a teenager.

3. What is with the weeing? Only five weeks in there, you, and I have already worn through the carpet in the hallway at work trekking to the loo every 30 seconds.

4. Everything makes me want to cry. Everything. This morning it was the bunnies in the fields dancing among the bright pink foxgloves, as Arcade Fire’s ‘Neon Bible’ roared in my ears. This afternoon, as I walked along in among the chatter and twitter and beeping horns of peak hour Leeds, it was the thought that the very first voice you will ever hear, my little, eeny-weeny bean, will be mine, and your father’s. And aint that somethin’.