Blue Line

I tried to take comfort in the fact that one in three first time pregnancies end in miscarriage and got straight back on the horse. (So to speak!) I bought my husband a whole new draw of extra loose boxer shorts and brought my marker pen out of temporary retirement for that all important task of marking my ovulating days.

After a few months I was cautiously hovering over the toilet trying to hold a pregnancy test under a tiny drip of wee. Under normal circumstances, my bladder is weaker than a new born kitten, and with Tena Ladies quickly becoming a reality in the not too distant future, I was miffed to find, at one of the very few times I would ever actively call on my bladder to perform, it had dried up like a parched camel!

After some ten minutes (and the onset of cramp), I sat back down on the seat and began imagining waterfalls and tidal waves to entice the timid flow. Nothing. Eventually, I drank a large glass of water and left the tap running in the hope that would induce a gush. Success! Not only did I gush, I was positively torrential! I was now in danger of missing it altogether, so I resumed my hovering stance and tried to thrust the test into the flow which was now spurting in all directions like a wayward hosepipe! After splashing the seat and the backs of my legs a few times, I managed to hit the test long enough - I hoped. The next few minutes were charged with more tension than waiting to find out who shot JR. (No, I didn't have the T-shirt!) Heather offered her head on my knee as a comforting distraction and we waited. Finally I watched the blue line appear and I ran to the phone to call my husband.

"It's positive!" I screeched.
"Great," he said, "I suppose that means no more sex?"
"Yep."

I ignored the groan on the other end knowing that his excitement mirrored my own really, and a postponement of sex for a while was a small price to pay. Yes, I know it was cruel and unnecessary to deprive him, but I was taking no chances.

We made it through the first trimester - the longest twelve weeks of my life, while I did everything in my power to make my body the happiest, most comfortable environment for my baby to grow in. I took my Folic Acid religiously and began charting the baby's growth. "Hey, it's the size of a grapefruit today!" I bored all my younger friends whose biological clocks had not yet ticked with tales of uncontrollable flatulence and searing heart burn. I attended every ante-natal class to learn how to breath, discover the horrors of child birth and meet mums-to-be just like me. I was in a weird twilight zone. As I puffed and panted my way through the nine months I
became totally unrecognisable to myself. Obsessed with babies, pregnancy, nesting - nesting? Birds make nests! I usually made a mess and then paid a cleaner to tidy it up once a week; but there I was, fastidiously folding bibs and babygrows while neatly filling draws with nappies and Sudocrem.

My due date came and went while I drank more raspberry leaf tea and ate more curries than a person ever should, until a day came when I felt my waters break; at least, I thought they'd broken, I wasn't entirely sure I hadn't merely wet myself, so we went along to the hospital to check. They had indeed broken, but my contractions hadn't started, so I was sent home until the following morning when I would be induced if still no contractions. I spent my last baby free night at home (last night of peace in other words) wide awake fearing every twinge was a contraction, but more often than not, it was a bubbling fart wrestling for room with the baby.

The morning dawned and we headed for the hospital full of wind but no contractions, (I had eaten a lot of curries!) to find the whole of South West London had come to the hospital during the night with emergency births, meaning I would have to wait. And wait. And wait. Eventually, eight hours later, I finally started having contractions. So painful were they that I immediately slapped on my tens machine and cranked it up to the highest setting. I paced the corridors of the hospital using my husband as a crutch, doubling in agony every couple of minutes while he diligently measured the time between each contraction. "What do you mean 10 minutes? Your watch must be knackered you bastard! It's coming, it's bloody coming, get help!" He left me writhing in excruciating pain while he ran to get a midwife. I had been at this contraction business for hours, it felt like a Tasmanian Devil was trying to claw its way out of my womb! I had to be at least eight centimetres dilated, at least!

The midwife came with soothing words and examined me. "You're two centimetres," she said.

"WHAT?" All that bloody pain and I was only two bloody centimetres! "I think I'm going to need an epidural," I said defeated. There went the idea of a natural birth, it transpired I had the pain threshold of a computer geek. But then, the human race hadn't made such advances in medical science for me to still suffer like a cave woman. "Nurse, hurry up with that epidural!"

I had gas and air, my tens machine and a drug to stop me being sick before I was eventually given the blessed relief courtesy of an epidural, the anaesthetist quickly becoming my new best friend. I was now granted a few snatched moments of sleep before the action started, and boy did it start! (Any male readers, look away now!) The midwife tried to time my dilation with the epidural wearing off to enable me to feel when I needed to push. However, although lovely, she was newly qualified and I was her first case, leaving her timing to seem more Jamaican than Big Ben. I couldn't feel a thing. I held my breath and pushed in the direction I thought was correct. I was ever so slightly off. It wasn't the baby I was bringing any closer to its first breath but my faeces! I only became aware I was popping poo rather than a baby, when the sensation returned and I felt the midwife wiping my bum! "Don't worry, we see it all the time," she offered reassuringly to my horrified expression.
"But you're new!" I pointed out.
"Ah, yes, well, so I'm told," she tried. I caught a glimpse of my sniggering husband and threw a sick bowl at him. Sadly, it was empty.

My husband was conscientiously exercising the one and only task he felt capable of, the act of drenching my forehead with a wet sponge. No calming words, no reminders to breathe or even whale noises; just a wet sponge which he used to great effect. I was soaked. I suppose it was a distraction of sorts, while I wiped the water from my eyes, but eventually the sponge had to go; I launched it across the room, sad that my husband was at an awkward angle behind me, making a direct hit impossible.

More agonising time passed in which I remember getting onto all fours at one point, (not my best idea) before an excited midwife announced, "I can see the head!" And I screeched, "Why didn't I stick to dogs?" for the whole corridor to hear!

With one last heave and a scream the baby came tumbling out like storm water from a drain. She was quickly wrapped in a towel and placed on my chest. I tried to fight the wave of exhaustion now consuming me as the last dregs of adrenalin ebbed away, but I literally couldn't keep my eyes open and I feared I would drop her. The midwife rushed to my rescue and that was the last I knew until I woke up some hours later gripped by an alien fear. What if I don't like her? What if we don't bond?

When I felt brave enough to open my eyes, (the temptation to keep them closed and pretend it had all been a dream was strong) I tentatively looked around my immediate environment while trying to adjust to my new situation. What if I can't do this?

I saw my husband sleeping in the armchair and a fresh vase of flowers surrounded by cards on the windowsill, but there was no sign of my baby. A new fear squeezed at my throat, what if she's been confiscated because I fell asleep? I sat up in alarm, suddenly convinced the NHS had deemed me a bad mother and my baby was on her way to a foster family. Oh no! (I know, it's called baby brain, mine took a hold instantly and still hasn't left me!) It was then that I saw the transparent, hospital issue cot with the tiny bundle of my sleeping daughter, wrapped in the white blanket I had carefully chosen from Mothercare. I saw her little pink, perfect face and matchstick fingers curled into a tight fist resting on her cheek. As my heart melted and oozed like a Cadbury's Caramel, I said to myself, "That's why I didn't stick to dogs."

Check next week's blog for more dog v babies comparisons.