So I recently gave
birth to a baby. A lovely little chap – all 9 pounds of him. And as I quote Prissy in my heading from the classic Gone With the Wind, I too am as clueless about the whole birth thing. Even with my third tour in the trenches, I am no wiser to the whole process. I just have a broader context. More frame of reference. But I'm still clueless. We welcomed our third child five or so weeks ago. True to the life
and times of Sally Anne Cook, my birth experience with the most recent addition to our brood was not without its fair
share of drama. My son entered this world while the theatre staff were bopping
and swaying to Wilson Phillips’ Hold On. I kid you not. It was cranking full blast from
a boom box they’d stashed alongside the infant resuc table and a tray full of
shiny metal tools. I sang along in a drug-induced haze. I imagined that I was
tapping my foot and shaking my booty, aestheticised and a dead weight as they
both were. This song is not a bad theme song for life and it became especially
appropriate as our little oke had to spend the first 48 hours after his birth
in neonatal with whafts of oxygen being squirted up his nose.
The crazy did not
stop there. As we entered the theatre, my husband’s iphone died. It simply turned
off and refused to turn on again. Fortunately we had mine. The very same one that enjoyed a trip in the lav. Our delivery room team comprised
an Aussie anestheticist with his Saffa assistant, a Zimbo midwife, an Asian gynae
and a British paed. It was like the United Nations in that room. At one point during the
operation, I passed out. I always do. My lips went blue my husband said. My
blood pressure plummeted. Machines started squawking. I saw stars. A few
clicks of the good juice, and I was back. The music continued. I also thought
that my heart was being ripped from my chest. This isn’t a metaphor, I
genuinely believed the ferocious tugging was not only going to result
in the detachment of a comfy foetus from my womb, but also the messy extraction of my heart. Possibly a
lung or so too. A buy one get one free deal. I told the specialists as much.
They chuckled and carried on with their extraction. Nodding in time to the tunes. I wasn’t joking. I
kept expecting to see my kid clutching my pounding heart as he was pulled out. This paranoia may or may not have had something to do with the drugs. Can't be sure. I am as melodramatic without drugs.
Over the course of
my three night, four day sojourn in the hospital, I saw some things I won’t
forget in a hurry. Some good, some bad, some downright disturbing. This
motherhood gig is like nothing else. And like most things, you’ve really got to
experience it to fully appreciate the journey.
When you put a
group of post-partum, hormone-crazed women in a room together, deprive them of
sleep and all home comforts, there will be some sharing. Ok, so a lot of sharing.
Descriptive blow-by-blow accounts of labour and all the bits associated with
squeezing a human being from an orifice. Completely uncensored descriptions. No
episiotomies barred. Every stitch shared. One woman described how her birth was
so quick she’d blown a hole in her nether regions. Literally a hole. Sweet baby cheesus.
Catheter-wielding c-section inmates pad the corridors in question mark postures dragging clear bags of lurid yellow pee. I named my pee bag my designer accessory. I told the nurses it was a one-of-a-kind collector’s edition. They didn’t get it. No one else has the same DNA as me, I had to explain. So my bag was an exclusive - a Sally Cook Original. The joke was weak. I didn’t get a great response. I kept trying though. I'm nothing if not persistent, especially with jokes in bad taste.
And then there’s the lactating. Mammories out, all shapes and sizes. Lots of manual expressing going on and a whole lot of colostrum comparisons. Debates about the state of nipples. And then the heat. Screw hospital ward, boiler room is a more appropriate description. One night at around 2am, I woke in a pool of wet. I was soaked through. I called the nurse and weepily informed her that unless she turned the heating down, I was going to die. Literally burn to death. I told her that spontaneous human combustion really existed. I’d seen it on The Daily Mail. I have the app on my phone. I offered to show her. She tut-tutted, mopped my brow and promised to do her best. I imagined the temperature cooled a few degrees and returned to a feverish doze. In the morning I discovered that the heating is fixed at a certain temperature in the hospital. Not even God can change it.
Lights blaze at all hours. Alarms. Babies crying. Snoring that you can’t believe comes from womenfolk and not the Gruffalo or his brethren. Groaning. Weeping. And then there was the lady who shat the bed. Twice. And the babies. The little ones in neonatal. 1.6 kilograms of human being. Mothers who live in hope. Who forgo sleep and food to sit alongside their child’s crib, watching the machine’s every digit. And pray.
Catheter-wielding c-section inmates pad the corridors in question mark postures dragging clear bags of lurid yellow pee. I named my pee bag my designer accessory. I told the nurses it was a one-of-a-kind collector’s edition. They didn’t get it. No one else has the same DNA as me, I had to explain. So my bag was an exclusive - a Sally Cook Original. The joke was weak. I didn’t get a great response. I kept trying though. I'm nothing if not persistent, especially with jokes in bad taste.
And then there’s the lactating. Mammories out, all shapes and sizes. Lots of manual expressing going on and a whole lot of colostrum comparisons. Debates about the state of nipples. And then the heat. Screw hospital ward, boiler room is a more appropriate description. One night at around 2am, I woke in a pool of wet. I was soaked through. I called the nurse and weepily informed her that unless she turned the heating down, I was going to die. Literally burn to death. I told her that spontaneous human combustion really existed. I’d seen it on The Daily Mail. I have the app on my phone. I offered to show her. She tut-tutted, mopped my brow and promised to do her best. I imagined the temperature cooled a few degrees and returned to a feverish doze. In the morning I discovered that the heating is fixed at a certain temperature in the hospital. Not even God can change it.
Lights blaze at all hours. Alarms. Babies crying. Snoring that you can’t believe comes from womenfolk and not the Gruffalo or his brethren. Groaning. Weeping. And then there was the lady who shat the bed. Twice. And the babies. The little ones in neonatal. 1.6 kilograms of human being. Mothers who live in hope. Who forgo sleep and food to sit alongside their child’s crib, watching the machine’s every digit. And pray.
Women from all walks of life arrive perfect strangers and depart having shared
the most intimate of experiences. In technicolour detail. Part of you knows that you’ll never see each other
again. And that’s possibly why you’ll freely share whether you’ve had a bowel movement,
how many milligrams of custard-yellow colostrum you’ve drained from your
mammories and whether your baby’s poo is still black or has progressed to the
green stage. National Geographic has nothing on a maternity ward.
I left the hospital a few shades of shame poorer, but a beautiful baby boy richer. Armed with my single pack of Ibuprofen and Paracetemol – the NHS’s answer to c-section pain relief, I relaxed squashed between the two car seats of my youngest children. Every mile we ventured further from the hospital and closer to home, I could feel the awkwardness dissipate. That’s until the very next day when I sent my husband in search of a nipple shield. He called me from the store all quiet-voiced and sheepish. “Sal, they don’t sell them here,” he said. “Yes they do” I replied. “I saw them two weeks ago. They definitely sell them. Just ask someone.” He replied, “I did. They say they definitely have never and will never sell nipple caps. They’re not that kind of store. They suggest we try online for adult entertainment merchandise.”
I left the hospital a few shades of shame poorer, but a beautiful baby boy richer. Armed with my single pack of Ibuprofen and Paracetemol – the NHS’s answer to c-section pain relief, I relaxed squashed between the two car seats of my youngest children. Every mile we ventured further from the hospital and closer to home, I could feel the awkwardness dissipate. That’s until the very next day when I sent my husband in search of a nipple shield. He called me from the store all quiet-voiced and sheepish. “Sal, they don’t sell them here,” he said. “Yes they do” I replied. “I saw them two weeks ago. They definitely sell them. Just ask someone.” He replied, “I did. They say they definitely have never and will never sell nipple caps. They’re not that kind of store. They suggest we try online for adult entertainment merchandise.”
Ah, the joys of
motherhood – as undignified, awkward and awesome as it is.
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| The boy |
