Birth – the untold story

I want to describe that small hook she used to break my waters, how I could feel each and every tug on that super strength sack. Reminding me of pigs skin.

I want to tell you about those hours alone, in a darkened room, just me and my bump as it started to get going. The pacing. The breathing. The relaxing soundtrack which every so often convinced me that dawn was descending with it’s bird noises. How, for a few short hours, I thought everything was going so well. I want to explain the pride I felt in myself at that point. Making this baby alone, now birthing it solo. I didn’t need anyone else. What a start this would be for us both.

I want to talk about that idiot doctor claiming, “this doesn’t look like labour to me”. Fuck you and your dictionary definitions.

I want to tell you how when the contractions got stronger I felt my baby drop lower and a second water break. How my hips started to hurt and I could feel my bones pushed outwards.

I want to tell you how hard it was to decide when to go ahead with the drip, how I called my backups back – my mother and my douala before I allowed it to enter my veins. How I’ll be forever grateful I negotiated a lower dose of the medicine.

I want to talk about the shit show that ensued as soon as they hooked me up. How my skin turned to ash and my head flopped backwards as I indicated to those around me I was about to pass out. What happens when you pass out in birth, I wondered, certain it couldn’t be good.

I want to describe the pain, ripping through me like a tornado-earthquake ravaging my body in its wake. How when hands touched my back no matter how loud my screams, they could not portray the pain they were causing me.

The waves rippling through my body. Fierce angry waves of agony, exploding from nowhere, smashing into me and pulling me under. Releasing me just in time to allow air to re-enter my body. Only to then aim higher and harder on their next shot, sending the pain crushing through my body, reverberating through my entire being, only stopping when they reached my knees.

The contractions; almost non stop. Building to a crescendo of pain as the tsunami storms through my body with such force even my thighs are contracting. How the fuck can thighs contract? My whole body contorts and squeezes in waves of unbelievable pain. I want to tell you how it feels to have 4.33kg weight of baby pushing its way through my insides, bruising them as it goes. How, in turn I pulled my entire weight down on my mother’s hand. Reminding me that this birth is the start of a relationship where there is no end to the giving.

I want to tell you how the urge to scream, “does this look like fucking labour now,” was overwhelming when an hour later the doctor re-entered the room; scissors at the ready. Gone the calming music and dimmed lights; this shit show was in full swing. Instead I focus on the women in the room. Three generations of strong, invincible women, cheering me on. “You CAN do it”. They repeat over and over. Their rallying cries help me through the hardest thing I’ve ever attempted. Over and over, as I doubted my ability, their voices reassure. Their strength, omnipresent, keeping mine alive. The pain in the room, juxtaposed against so much fortitude.

I know I have to do this. I can’t let the sisterhood down. Or this baby.

I want to describe what happened when IT happened. How the contraction ended and I was waiting patiently for the next one. “Keep pushing,” they scream. “I can’t.” It seems I have no choice, the midwives are clear on that. Clenching my entire body. Squeezing out my insides with every ounce of strength left in me. My body rips apart. Then the release: A babe is born.

I want to describe the colour of his skin, a deathly greyish black-blue hue, lying lifeless on the bed. I want to depict how I saw him laid on the bed between my legs, hands reaching from all sides, expertly and quickly unwrapping that cord from the baby’s neck – my baby’s neck – clamping and cutting with an unnerving efficiency and whisking him away. I’m sure he’s dead. There is no delayed cord cutting for us. His life more important then some cord blood.  Their work is seamless, each one knows what the other is doing. Are they talking? I can’t hear.

I want to tell you how it feels to learn you have a son, a son not a daughter, as the medics shout amongst themselves of what to do with the baby BOY.

I want to explain how terrifying it was when I thought the doctor was covering his face with that hospital towel – a sure sign of death, as I scream repeatedly, “is he dead, is he dead?”

I want to tell you how lucky that doctor is that I wasn’t with it enough to punch his lights out when he gently tapped my leg and said “well done love,” as he witnessed me push out my 4.33kg blue-grey baby with the cord wrapped twice around his neck sans contraction. I want to tell you how proud I am that I got him out alive and alone. Without the dip-shit doctor’s scissors coming anywhere near me.

I want to tell you how it feels to birth a baby you don’t recognise. I’ve never even met the ‘father’. How I’m engulfed with a fear of any question concerning who he looks like; I haven’t got a clue.

I want to talk about trying to push out the placenta and realising all my insides have been obliterated, the process of birth like an apple corer removing my central part.

I want to tell you how I shook uncontrollably for an hour or so after the birth, laying there in a pool of blood, unable to move, my white vest turning to a pinkish brown.

I want to tell you what it was like eventually being handed the baby, MY baby, after I don’t know how long. How he rooted and immediately latched like he’d done this all before. Yet I can’t describe the feelings I wasn’t privy to; too spaced out to know anything.

An hour later. Two hours later. Still covered in blood. So.much.blood. A shower, they suggest. Aided I stand, more blood pours from me onto the floor beneath. I collapse at the first hurdle; even fully supported I cannot take a step, my core is absent.

Another few hours later, I’m taken to the ward. I need a bed near the toilet I beg, unsure how I will even make it two steps without someone to hold me. Luckily my bladder capacity just increased significantly.

I want to tell you how it is to not feel you’re bonding. To ponder, detached from everything, how easily people can mistake breastfeeding for bonding. The former satisfies a need, the latter builds a love. I want to tell you how I couldn’t bear to look at the cot in the hospital for fear he might be gone. In the first few hours on the ward my mother was there, I’d turn to her with utter anguish petrified he’d died, yet unable to check, insisting she did so instead. How every time I closed my eyes in the first 24 hours all I could “see” was another fucking fist inside my vagina. How I could feel the tugging on my baby’s sack like it was happening all over again.

I want to describe the feeling a few days later when I finally manage my first post-birth shower, and catch a glimpse of my postpartum body in a hospital mirror. My empty, used body. Discarded now, never to be full again. How much that hurts. How I’m overwhelmed by a desire to birth another being.

But I can’t tell you that.

These are the stories we aren’t supposed to say.

These are the words we leave unspoken.

The start of a lifetime of being unheard.

Instead there will be a Facebook post announcing the time, sex and weight of the baby. If I had a partner he’d announce that mother and baby are doing “just fine”. If I was lucky he might allude to the super human feat I’d undertaken, but beyond that – the details – the screams, the tears, the emotions; they would all be overlooked. Brushed away.

But if you look deeper, if you ask me kindly, I’d love to tell you more. To release the feelings swilling and swelling inside me; to chronicle these tears still flowing after all the visitors have dried up. Perhaps then I may make sense of it all, and the baby that now lies beside me.

If you have experienced a traumatic birth in the UK there are services you can access including the Birth Trauma Association.