There’s a lot of it around when you become a parent for the first time. That’s perhaps my most profound discovery. Practically everyone knows better than you. Everyone who’s ever had a baby and even those who haven’t. My first and biggest lesson in bullshit was birth itself. I won’t go into the gory details but the birth of my daughter was so bad it was worse than any scenario I had imagined for myself. This, despite the fact I did everything right. I know that I did everything right because I went to the NCT classes and followed the advice given out for a small fee and felt smug because I was so relaxed about the whole birth thing and relaxation, I learned, was key. There was no extremism to be found in my birth plan, just a laissez-faire whatever’s best at the time, man. I went to pregnancy yoga throughout my FORTY-TWO-AND-A-HALF-WEEK pregnancy, I kept exercising at the gym until week forty, I paid through the nose for pregnancy hypnosis classes in Harley Street and when, after a super-duper-snag-free pregnancy I finally went into labour naturally, I was so chilled out I spent the first twenty-four-hours at home, bouncing on my bloody exercise ball with my TENS machine buzzing away, watching my favourite show at the time (Vikings, on Amazon).
Everyone else in my NCT group had delivered their babies, one in a record-breaking 8 hours or thereabouts, and I was ready to go through whatever was thrown my way. Only I wasn’t. Because, contrary to the overwhelming message I’d picked up from NCT classes and my fellow attendees, being chilled out turned out not to be the secret to an ‘easy’ (anyone had one of those??) labour. If it was then I wouldn’t have spent the next 56 hours calmly cycling through the best drugs the NHS could offer (if I’d realized diamorphine was actual heroin I would have savoured being legally off-my-face a little more) while behind my head the midwives frowned and sweated and decided to add syntocinon and more syntocinon before finally wheeling me into the operating theatre for an emergency C-section. And thus I experienced surgery for the first time.
What is my point? I guess I would like to have been a bit more prepared, mentally and emotionally, for the eventuality that my daughter would be born, of all possible scenarios, via emergency caesarean. It’s not rare. Something like a third of women end up with one. Maybe this could have been mentioned to me at some point in my head-in-the-clouds pregnancy. No white-washing please. Give it to me straight. And I would dearly like the people (women) who attribute this kind of birth scenario to me not being chilled out enough, to shut up. This is bullshit. I have a vivid recollection, a couple of weeks after my amazing daughter was born (totally healthy and massive), when I could still not stand up straight or leave my house unassisted, of one of my new NCT ‘buddies’ recounting the tale of her new mother-hero. Another new mother had given birth at home (on the toilet, actually), with no drugs and no medical assistance (the paramedics arrived too late). NCT buddy claimed that this woman, by virtue of her personality and attitude – so chilled out, so amazing, so together – had succeeded where millions of others had failed. I may not be amazing but, you know, I was chilled out too.
Some people are lucky and some are not. Some babies thoughtfully position their heads so they come out right and some (like mine) do not. Some cervixes helpfully soften, stretch, whatever it is they actually do, at the right time and in the right way. I’m no medical expert but I know we’re all different and that there are a myriad of possible outcomes when a woman gives birth. Let’s not pretend it’ll actually be quite fun as long as you learn to bliss out. Sometimes things are a bit more complicated, even for yoga bunnies and mother-heroes.
P.S. That said, I do recommend chilling out. It’s never a good idea to panic your way through a crisis and I can’t imagine birth is any different.