Well, motherhood has officially slapped me upside the head and left me with a big, lethargic blob for a brain (and a beautiful little boy called Henry). Despite being confident that sleep deprivation has left me incapable of stringing a decent sentence together, I have resolved to finish this first post-baby blog entry if only to prove to myself that some normality from my pre-baby life still exists.
As the gory flashbacks of Henry’s arrival begin to fade, I feel I should at least acknowledge the trauma of childbirth before baby-love hormones zap my memories into mummy goo, and I end up, like many other mothers I know, recalling the event with a deluded, fuzzy-edged fondness.
Of course, I could wow you with tales of how I spent the labour in focused silence communing with the baby and charting its journey out telepathically, or tell you that I refused all drugs offered to me with a serene inner strength rarely seen in women today, but the truth is - I wailed, I groaned, I begged for drugs with a desperation seen only in hardened drug addicts, and I absolutely would have taken the strongest epidural available if there’d been enough time for me to have one. My only advice for any mothers-to-be is to keep an open mind, as nothing can prepare you for the event, and don’t be deceived by wet-eyed clucky mothers telling you differently - childbirth IS that bad!
Overall, the experience of giving birth in a public hospital was clinical, fast, and fairly impersonal, and a long way from the transcendent experience I’d secretly (and naively) always imagined. Due to the shortage of beds, Al and I were shifted from room to room as my induced labour rapidly progressed, only to be allowed into the revered ‘birthing suite’ about two hours before I squeezed Henry into the world. No time then to burn the lavender oil I’d packed, put on the soothing playlists I’d prepared, or to soak away the pain of contractions in a warm bath.
With hindsight I realise that childbirth is really just a means to an end, and that the amount of time I’d spent thinking about it and imagining how it would be was nothing more than a waste of time and energy. No one can possibly know how things will play out during labour, and when it happens, the only thing you’ll be worried about is that your baby arrives safely. There’s no choice but to put all expectations aside, and if that means saying yes to drugs, c-section, episiotomy, forceps…and the myriad of other medical interventions, then I think most people would do it all in a heartbeat. I’m sure though, that women left to labour naturally in a birth centre or at home with the support of midwives may well have an entirely different experience, and if I’m ever foolish enough to do it all again I think I’ll be exploring those options too.
I’m now, amazingly, five weeks into motherhood, and I will say that while nothing prepares you for childbirth, the first month of parenting a newborn has without a doubt been the greatest upheaval of my life. There have been countless sleepless nights, hours of inconsolable crying (mostly from the baby that is), and moments of pure love like I have never known.
So far I’ve learnt that changing nappies really isn’t that bad and I am able to control my natural gag reflex, sleep deprivation is absolutely a form of torture, and no matter what you do, there will always be good and bad days in every week. But more on all that later…I can hear the dulcet cries of my baby calling me.
Mel
