Giving birth

When my doctor told me I was 3cm dilated at 37 weeks and that the baby could arrive “tonight, tomorrow or next week,” I called Y, dropped by the office to put in my medical leave, gathered some essentials so I could work from home and went straight back to the house to pack my hospital bag – which I’d been putting off. Then we waited. And waited. And waited.

One week later, I went back to the doctor, just as she was starting to get worried, and told her I’d had a few contractions here and there, but nothing major. She pronounced me 4cm dilated, said she was admitting me and declared that baby would be out by evening.

I don’t think Y and I even had a chance to register what was going on; everything happened so fast. And it’s one thing to know this day would come, and quite another to finally come face to face with it. Before we knew it, I was in a delivery ward, the doctor had broken my waters, and Y and I were taking silly videos of him breathing the gas that was supposed to be my pain relief.

The gas didn’t work. Not for us, anyway. I don’t know if it was an equipment malfunction or we just weren’t doing it right, but thank God for pethidine (which is a painkiller and sedative according to the midwife) because three hours in, I was just 6cm dilated, contractions were really starting to hurt and I was doubting my decision not to take an epidural.

Pethidine knocked me right out for the last hour and a half of labour so I only woke during the worst of contractions to complain that it hurt, ask Y if it was too late to take an epidural, demand a single room (hey, I was in labour!) and announce that I was too sleepy to push, not necessarily in that order.

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried about being too drowsy. At 5.30pm, four and a half hours after my waters broke, I woke in a panic and told Y to call the nurse because I was feeling the urge to push. Baby may have taken a heck of a long time to get from 3cm to 4cm, but once she decided it was time to come out, there was no stopping her. Half an hour, a local anaesthetic and (I think) four pushes later, she was out.

I was so drugged up the first thing I thought when they put her on my tummy was, “So this is what a newborn looks like.” I didn’t even think to check baby’s sex even though we’d kept it a surprise right to the end, I was just amazed that this gooey little human being actually fit inside me like a minute ago. That was when Y cut the umbilical cord and announced, “It’s a girl!”