On New Year’s Eve I wake like a bear, grizzly and annoyed. I feel horribly house bound and tell Ricky I will simply die if I don’t get out. We pack tea things and some zoo biscuits and have tea in the park before catching a movie at the cinema. I eat popcorn and drink Coke, neglect to have my afternoon nap, about which I’d been very diligent up till now, and stay up late. I get in bed at 10pm then wake with the midnight fireworks. At 3am on New Year’s Day I have my first contraction.
They are mild and 10 minutes apart, very manageable. I don’t wake Ricky. Some days before I’d had a similar experience, contractions in the early hours which turned out to be prodromal labour, petering out at dawn. I decide to keep an eye on the timing and see what happens. At 6am I go to the toilet, but when I get back in bed I seem to be leaking. I wonder if I’m somehow wetting myself, then I realise it’s my waters breaking – just very slowly. I will drip amniotic fluid for hours. I tell Ricky and call my midwife. She answers after many, many rings and sounds very hungover.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I say, “but my waters have broken, I’m pretty sure.”
“Are you sure or are you pretty sure?” she asks.
I’m not sure of the difference.
“Er, I’m sure?”
Then I get a contraction. It is suddenly very strong, a wave moving through me, filling me with pressure and a kind of body horror that squeezes into a weird, indescribable pain. I suck in air, double over. Oh, crap. After a minute I can talk again and say I just had a contraction. My midwife says to let her get some more sleep and to call again maybe at around 8am. I agree. But I’m scared now. I call my doula, the cheaper one Ricky and I agreed on. She is sick and cannot make it. I suck in breath as a contraction comes and pull my focus away from her, from her apologies and plans. I breathe as a wave of sensation rips through me. Oh, God, I think. Oh, no.
“That was very good breathing,” she tells me, and rings off to call her back up.
The contraction timing app is open on my phone. I’ve been pressing start and stop at each contraction, or trying. As 8am creeps around the contractions are closing down, first five minutes apart, then four then three, two.
“Call the midwife!” I tell Ricky, starting to panic. The pain is just bearable, but only if I have some time to recover.
It’s happening too fast, I think.
Everything I’ve read and both courses I took gave me to believe that labour progresses on a nice curve. During early labour the Amish bake bread. I have all the ingredients ready for a cake. I have a birth playlist, preferred clothes, candles, my blessing way necklace. But none of this is relevant if I’ve zoomed straight through to the active stage, which I seem to be in. As per the powerpoint slide, active labour starts when contractions are about three minutes apart. It means I’m six centimetres dilated. We call the midwife back and she tells Ricky to ready the birth pool. Holy crap, it’s happening!
I’m in a pair of Ricky’s Watford football shorts and a string top covered with a gown. I pace our room slowly, moving alongside the bed up and down for the minute I have between contractions. I feel it coming on – the sensation is not unlike a mild electrocution, a kind of unpleasant buzzing that heralds a wave of power and pressure unlike anything I’ve ever experienced – and bend over the bed onto a pile of pillows, breathe and breathe, trying to keep my body absolutely relaxed. This is like trying to relax while a chainsaw moves through you, but if you tense, what is a very painful pressure becomes an unbearable searing. At one point I ask for a bowl.
“Which bowl?” Ricky asks.
“What?”
“Which bowl? What for?”
“A bowl, a bucket, I’m going to vomit.”
He brings the dustbin we put our dog hairs in. I reject it vehemently before contracting again.
“You want, like, a ceramic one?”
Finally he brings one and I throw up.
The birth team arrives, my midwife and the back up doula. They unload urns and pumps and bags of medical equipment, an oxygen tank, a suction machine (which is missing its seal. Ricky has to MacGyver one using a seal from an old pool pump in the garage). The midwife tells me to lie down for an examination. I’ve tried lying down and it is sheer agony, but there is no other way. I lie back, contract and have to sound out long deep moans to manage the pain. The midwife tells me not to, but I can’t stop. It is the only thing that makes it bearable. She hooks me up to a non-stress test. I’m stuck under wires for 20 minutes. The doula holds one monitor in place while I lie awkwardly on my side. I ride the surges as they come, growling and writhing. Then my midwife checks my dilation.
“You’re in early labour,” she says.
“No, I’m not,” I manage, before buckling over under another contraction. When it finishes, I continue. “I’m contracting every minute. I must be in active labour. Is something wro…”
But I’m under again.
Later I find out that at 9am I was one centimetre dilated. In my birth plan I had said not to tell me numbers, because I would just obsess. I am so grateful for this. Had I known, I would have crumbled. The midwife, Karen, tells Ricky. Everyone settles in for the long haul. Except me. I am convinced there’s been some sort of error that will resolve itself shortly when the baby starts crowning.
The doula, Bianca, tells me this is a “variation on normal” while giving me counter-pressure on my hips. It feels slightly better when she does, but I’m still so confused. It’s happening too fast. I can’t find my rhythm, can’t catch up as this blast ripples through me over and over without reprieve. I’m in the bedroom for four hours like this. The dogs come and go. Ricky takes over for Bianca pushing on my back. I try to tell him how to do it but can’t speak or gesture. It’s hopeless trying to do anything. Everything inside me is being sucked up into this. Karen gives me an injection for nausea and vomiting and tasks Ricky with getting me to drink. Ricky can’t tell when I’m contracting because I’m breathing pretty heavily when I’m in my minute rest period. He keeps talking to me or offering me things while I’m surging. I can only just talk, but I manage to tell him to fuck off. Karen tells him that if I don’t drink we’ll have to go to hospital to get put on a drip. He keeps putting the water bottle to my lips. I keep being extremely rude to him. I cannot understand how he can’t see this wildness, the need for my absolute, total concentration, which he keeps interrupting. Finally Karen checks me again. Again it is agony and again I’m told I’m still in early labour. (At this point I am four centimetres, but I don’t know that.) I feel I will go mad.
There is also the matter of my waters, which are still ever so slowly breaking. I’m wearing a pad that quickly feels soaked and uncomfortable. I can’t stand to make the journey down the passage to the bathroom every half hour, never making it there before contracting, or contracting on the toilet with my pants down, so finally I decide to simply stay in the bathroom. I had seen other women labour on the toilet, a place where one lets go. I’ve also been listening to Karen and Bianca, the doula, who is her daughter-in-law, and Ricky chatting in the kitchen. The chatting infuriates and confounds me. Here I am doing the most extreme thing, pulling on the absolute depths of my being to simply survive the next moment, and these people are shooting the breeze.
Ricky defrosts a curry for lunch. The smells waft my way on the toilet with a pillow behind me. He starts listing ingredients. I start seeing a grid of bright blue in front of me overlaid on the red towel. It is not unlike what you see when hallucinogenic drugs start coming on. I realise I’m very, very high on endorphins. On the toilet, the surge comes and I focus on making my body completely loose and limp, breathing slowly and deeply, resisting the powerful urge to inhale sharply and crunch down against the pressure exploding downwards. As it washes over me I say in my mind, All sensations are welcome. All sensations are welcome.
I begin to be able to follow the flow of this. I am less panicked. At one point Ricky comes in and puts something wet and slimy on my lips as I’m surging. I bat him away. It is a slice of mango. I must take an antibiotic for some reason and have to eat. I can’t follow his explanations; I am so deep inside. He leaves and I eat two forks full of mango and gulp the antibiotics. Then I settle back into the waves. It feels as though I’m on the toilet for another four hours, but later I’m told it was only an hour.
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