I have been meaning to write this for ages and was finally urged to do so by my lovely friend Bec, as she wants to include it in her soon to be published book!
The 20th of October 2005.
I never expected that I would arrive at the hospital ready to birth my first born with my perfectly straightened hair and neatly packed overnight bags in a calm unhurried manner and announce to the lady at the entrance desk, “I am Prof’s 3pm cesar….’
I always imagined a dramatic trip to the hospital; a panicky husband speeding through red lights and me in slight discomfort but reciting mantras and calmly reassuring panicky husband that all would be fine. For some reason I had even pictured my waters breaking in the middle of the kitchen floor. I would have been in the throes of cooking something delicious and nourishing. The reality of Nicholas’ birth is quite different to how I imagined it to be though.
I was 31 weeks pregnant and had a standard antenatal appointment at which it was discovered my blood pressure had suddenly shot up. I felt fabulous, I was glowing with health and couldn’t believe it when I was being rushed off to have blood tests, all day fetal monitoring and chats about pre-eclampsia. I was also booked in for an ultrasound to check the baby’s growth and the state of the placenta. The sonographer performing the ultrasound immediately said to me “my your baby has a lot of hair” and then she looked over my enormous belly at me and asked “did you know the baby is breech?”
I left the hospital that day 5 hours later. Pregnancy so far had been an absolute breeze and suddenly after one little blood pressure reading everything seemed to have changed. I was to report to the hospital twice a week for monitoring and encouraged to investigate natural ways of getting the baby to turn. We had always cheerfully called the baby “naughty baby.” As I drove home from the hospital, inwardly lecturing the naughty baby on his naughtiness, I vaguely remembered some parenting book warning against labeling your children. The book had pointed out that they would invariably live up to your label. Alarmed, I started to think of new nicknames for the baby and decided to re-read all the parenting books again. Clearly, we were not off to a good start with this parenting caper as our baby in utero was already defying us by refusing to flip over (as intended by nature) and remaining obstinately upright. My husband decided that the baby was brilliant. He believed that baby’s choice to remain the wrong way round was in fact an early indication of genius, as the baby had obviously realized that the rest of us were also upright and not floating about upside down in amniotic fluid.
Over the next 6 weeks my blood pressure steadily rose and the baby did actually attempt to roll over but seemed to have got stuck. At 38 weeks my blood pressure was 190 over 110. This is dangerously high. The OB decided that was that, the baby was coming out and as he was refusing to get into the right position or was unable to, he would have to be removed manually. As the OB was running through the procedure for Cesarean births to me I was sort of paying attention but on another level I was inwardly cheering. I had noted that the day the OB had picked for the cesarean, two days time, meant that the baby would be a Libra, not a Scorpio. I had always wanted a Libra baby! At the back of my mind part of me was also thinking… no this is not what I imagined at all. My imagination however is notoriously mistaken when it comes to the nitty gritty though and so yet another part of me was thinking… "unreal, I don’t have to go through hours of horrendous pain and panting to get the baby out, hurray!”
Thus two days later, during which I could not sleep, concentrate or indeed focus on anything but the fact that I would shortly be meeting my precious new baby, I turned up at the hospital with freshly blow dried hair, (I thought it would be important to look nice for the baby in the photographs afterwards…) and my bags. I was so excited about it all being over shortly and so fed up with the constant monitoring of the pre-eclampsia that I hardly had the opportunity to feel nervous about the cesarean. As the anaesthetist was sticking a needle the size of a knitting needle into my spine I had a few moments of panic but then felt quite relaxed (probably the drugs freely flowing up my spine). I even had the presence of mind to take some incriminating photos of my husband in his hospital scrubs and shower cap.
The surgery probably only took about 30 minutes but it seemed like forever. I can remember looking up into the theatre lights that were made from very shiny stainless steel and I could see a hazy reflection of myself lying on the table, my husband and the anaesthetist sitting at my head and the OB and his assistant on the other side of the curtain bent over my body. They seemed to be taking such a long time that I started to seriously panic and asked if the baby was ok. “Everything is fine” the OB said “but I can’t get the baby out of you”. Apparently my extremely obstinate baby was still refusing to leave the womb despite the OB having opened up an exit route for it. R stood up and looked over the curtain and as he sat back down I thought he might have been about to pass out. Afterwards he told me that he now understands why they put the curtain up and that is all he had to say about what he saw.
After what felt like an age, but wasn’t more than 20 minutes they managed to evict Nicholas from the womb. He was immediately held up for me to see and the OB announced “you have a son”. “I knew he was a boy” I shouted and then burst into tears. The midwife wiped all the vernix off him, wrapped him up snugly in a blanket and then carried him over to me. She held him close to my face so that I could see him properly. He was perfect, I truly thought that he was the most beautiful baby that I had ever seen. I was then told that it was time for me to go to recovery and that Nicholas needed to be checked over by the peadiatrician. As they wheeled me out of the theatre I shouted back at R, “do NOT let him out of your sight!”
I was in recovery for half an hour or so and in this time I discovered that I could wiggle my toes. It was remarkable how quickly the feeling returned to my body and I actually felt fabulous. I am not sure after a cesarean birth if you still get a huge endorphin rush but as I lay in recovery I felt like I could take on the world. Thinking about it now it was probably the shot of pethidine the anaesthetist had given me that made me feel so euphoric, as the reality was that I had just been sliced open and was immobile from the arm pits down, but I like to think that it was an endorphin rush of sorts that made me feel so spectacular.
I was wheeled up to the ward and as they pushed me along the corridor I was wheeled straight past R who was sitting outside the nurses station. He was holding Nicholas and there were tears streaming down his face. It was a magical moment for me and one that might never have happened if I had not had the cesarean.
I was in hospital for just under a week and actually recovered very quickly. After that initial shot of pethadine I only needed panadol and I was up and about in less than 24 hours. For the few days that I was in hospital I spent my time feeling terribly clever, many hours were also spent gazing admiringly at my perfect baby. I even struggled to sleep at night because I just couldn’t stop looking at him and admiring his perfectness. I examined every little bit of him, each tiny fingernail and eyelash. I am mortified to admit that I even wandered around the hospital feeling sorry for all the other women with babies that were not nearly as beautiful as Nicholas. I have since discovered that all new mothers do this and now when I look back at the photos I see a lovely little baby (but not the Botticelli angel I thought he was) and an exhausted mother who despite her best efforts on the day still ended up with bad hair in the photos.
