UPFRONT:IT'S NOT LIKE we didn't prepare for a natural birth. First off we reclined on beanbags for a two-day-long, eye-opening birthing workshop in Dublin's Elbow Room. Empowered by green tea and group sessions, I came straight home and lectured my mother on the new, enlightened birthing methods we'd just learnt.
Buzzing with knowledge, I gave her the low-down on visualisation techniques. The kind where you picture the cervix as a flower about to open its petals. I may also, in my zeal, have mentioned the benefits of perineal massage. I certainly told her of my plan to squat on the floor for the whole thing if I fancied it, no matter what the midwives said. I certainly wasn’t going to be forced next nor near anything as old-fashioned as a hospital bed.
When she tried to give me her take – “the midwives are the most amazing people you could meet, they do everything they can to help the mother, you can trust them to be on your side and do what is right for you” – I was deeply sceptical.
I mean, she’d only done this giving birth lark eight times and that was in the dark days when they whipped the baby out of your arms to be baptised in the nearest church. I, on the other hand, had attended a two-day class complete with inflatable birthing balls.
Another week, another ante-natal demonstration. We watched closely as the highly entertaining Margaret in Holles Street, a woman with one-liners sharper than Graham Norton’s, squeezed two “babies” through a “pelvis” while fielding increasingly hysterical questions from first timers, one of whom may have been me.
The only side effect from a Tens machine is the pain of paying to rent them, quipped Margaret, who also suggested Please Release Me, Let Me Goas appropriate birthing music.
In other preparation, my boyfriend has been reading Adam Brophy's wickedly funny Bad Dad's Survival Guide, which he says is essential reading, especially if the father-to-be role has left you feeling a bit surplus to requirements.
I, meanwhile, dutifully ploughed through The Irish Pregnancy Bookand What to Expect When You're Expecting, and scanned endless internet accounts of twin births until my head spun. Regarding the latter, can I reiterate for people just starting on this adventure that when it comes to pregnancy, Google Is Not Your Friend. I plan to have a load of maternity T-shirts made.
Now it turns out that all this knowledge, the recipe for a herbal drink called “labouraid”, the visualisation techniques, the breathing exercises, are going to count for nothing when in a few days’ time a deep incision is made across my belly and two babies are pulled out of me while I lie behind a tent screaming blue murder or staring into my beloved’s face chanting Sanskrit, depending on which way I eventually face the procedure.
YouTube Is Not Your Friend either in these matters, by the way. You might think watching Caesarean operations would be a healthy way to acquaint yourself with the ordeal ahead but having watched three I wouldn’t recommend this approach. There are things one just doesn’t need to see, video footage the proud dads might better have left on the cutting room floor. I’m talking about what looked to me like intestines.
“Whoo-wee, this one’s a real hoss,” declared a surgeon in one of the videos I watched as he pulled a giant baby out of some bewildered-looking woman’s abdomen. Nice.
At this point I will recap on my own situation with apologies to those with zero interest in pregnancy/childbirth/major abdominal surgery:
At first Baby A was breech and the lovely scan man in the twins clinic said a C-section was the only way. A couple of weeks later Baby A had somersaulted, so it looked as though the head was engaged ready for a “natural” delivery. In the last few weeks, the little one turned again and adopted the bottom-stuck-in-pelvis position, which it has inhabited ever since.
All this time Baby B has lain transverse across my middle, waiting patiently, happy with its lot. (I’m thinking that one is going to be more like its Daddy.)
At my last hospital appointment the scan man lays it on the line. There’s no more room in that uterus. They are not moving anywhere now. So he sets the date. Shows me roughly where the incision will be. Tells me to fast from midnight and come in to the hospital at 8am. It’s like we are talking about a dental appointment instead of a procedure where I am going to be CUT WIDE OPEN ACROSS THE BELLY WITH A KNIFE.
Oh and if labour starts before then, I am to come straight into the hospital – don’t bother ringing first – where an emergency C-section will be performed.
All that preparation down the swanny. Now I know it’s all about mental acceptance, trust and equanimity. Its about believing my mother’s counsel, that the men and women in the hospital are on my side. I read the supportive e-mails from women who have been through it. I laugh again courtesy of the woman who says “on the upside, a C-section means you stay honeymoon fresh”. I also re-read the e-mails from women who have done it the natural way and not for the first time am moved by what a leveller pregnancy and childbirth appear to be.
I talk to my friend, she of the lowest pain threshold on the planet, who had a Caesarean three years ago and lived to tell the tale. Apparently when the KNIFE is going through you, it only feels like a biro is being dragged gently across your stomach, thanks to the epidural. There is some comfort there.
And anyway, says absolutely everyone, at the end of it there will be two babies placed in your arms and everything else, even the KNIFE and the FIVE LAYERS OF STITCHES, will pale into insignificance. I know they are right but still, I don’t mind telling you that by the time you read this, a few days before C-Day, I am still more than a little bit terrified.
Thanks for all the good wishes over the past six months. See you on the other side.
r
