Living for Disco

Well, it’s been a good few months since I’ve posted, mainly because I found pregnancy to be one long, boring pain in the pinny, and people get enough of my whinging on twitter (follow me! follow me!). In short, I got bigger, heavier, chunkier round the face and more knackered. Then I had a baby, and that’s where things got interesting.

Right throughout my pregnancy, I wondered about my birth plan. All the books and midwives kept saying ‘Have you written a birth plan?’, which I hadn’t. Originally, my birth plan was going to be ‘give me any and all drugs please, and if necessary, knock me on the head so I don’t know what’s happening’. However, gradually, I became rather fixated on the idea of a natural, drug free water birth. I liked the idea of focusing through the pain, and allowing my body to do what it was designed to do, after which I would lie, beaming beatifically, on a bed, feeding my angel baby and wafting my hand at awed visitors, like the queen does on a royal tour.

Everyone we knew who had children kept saying ‘Have you written a birth plan? Don’t bother. May as well flush it down the toilet’, which as time went on I found increasingly unhelpful. Just because their births hadn’t gone to plan, didn’t mean that mine wouldn’t. I’m young(ish), healthy and there was no reason why things shouldn’t go smoothly.

So, just for your delectation, here is a look at my birth plan, as written, and what actually happened. Also, incidentally, my child was due to be born on 15 December. For several weeks, I had to resist punching people who said ‘ooh, you might have a Christmas Day baby’, as if this was a good thing. I was sure that she would arrive well in time for Christmas, and I REALLY didn’t want to spend Christmas in hospital, so when my waters broke at 2am on Christmas Day, I was, of course, delighted.

1. Positions for labour
Plan: I would like to be able to vary the positions in which I labour depending on how I feel. I would like to be as active as possible during labour, and to have physical support from Gordon. I will be bringing a birthing ball to the hospital. I would particularly like to labour in a birthing pool.

Reality: As soon as meconium (baby poop) began appearing in my waters at about 11am on Christmas day, I knew my birthing pool dream was out. The midwife sent me to the hospital, where they whacked a drip in the back of my hand to get the contractions started, and strapped me to a monitor. I wasn’t mobile, and couldn’t use my birthing ball because the monitor kept falling off and I thought the baby had died.

2. Pain relief
Plan: I would like to use water, and gas and air for pain relief. If I become very tired or distressed I’m prepared to try pethidine, although I would like to avoid this if possible, so as not to make the baby dozy when she is born. I would like to avoid an epidural, but have left the decision to Gordon should I seem particularly distressed.

Water – a non starter. For those of you reading this who are pregnant – GAS AND AIR IS THE SHIT GIRLS. Get sucking on that tube as if your life depends on it, and drop kick anyone who tries to prise it from your death grip. I loved it. I had the pethidine too, but it was a nightmare. By the time it had worn off I was yelling for an epidural, and cursing the anaesthetist, who I assumed was keeping me waiting while he had a fag break or indulged in some other such trifling displacement activity.

So, for someone who really wanted a drug free birth, I had the whole basket on offer. And I didn’t need any persuading either.

3. Assisted delivery
Plan: I would like to avoid ventouse or forceps delivery if possible.

Reality: I did manage to avoid a ventouse or forceps delivery -by having an emergency C-section, something I had been vehemently against, but which seemed like a fantastic idea when it was finally suggested at 2.00 in the morning on Boxing Day, when the midwife told me that after 9 hours of belting contractions I was still as ready to give birth as I had been in October. (Midwife: ‘You’re still only 1 cm dilated I’m afraid’. Me, wailing: ‘You have to be FUCKING joking’.)

4. Breastfeeding the baby
Plan: I would like the baby to be placed straight onto my abdomen once she has been born. I would like any examinations or assessments to be done while she is on me if possible. I would like to breastfeed the baby straight away.

Reality: While my child was fished out of the gaping wound in my abdomen, I was having a pleasant conversation with the anaesthetist about his home town of Bangalore, and how fantastic Indian food is, and how much I’d like to go back to India. I did get to breastfeed her once they’re sewn me up and wheeled me back down to the ward, but I was so out of it, I can’t really remember what it was like. There’s a video of me looking all swollen-faced and hamster like, tubes trailing from all sides, and a squirming baby on my chest, which I won’t be posting here. I didn’t have any lippy on, after all.

So, all in all, we may as well have flushed the birth plan down the loo as instructed. But none of it mattered – Martha Rose is here, and she’s healthy and gorgeous, and my god, has she got lungs.

I’m thinking of entering her in the town crier championships for 2010. I’m sure she’ll wipe the floor with the competition.

Martha Rose at 3 hours old