Vivid are the births of my children; so much pain and so much pleasure. I would relive either or both for a hundred years, such a powerful sense of self.
With trepidation I entered the ER ward for my first and was thrust into the unempathetic arms of a large African women her skin shimmering from the flourescent lights as she told me how she had ten children and this was the easy bit.
‘Oh Great!’ I thought
Whilst my husband slept in the hospital chair I wriggled and writhed with the power that was trying to escape me. I walked, I stood and in the end I gave way to the nurse and lay down. Big mistake! I lay there for hours enhaling gas and air, occasionally being told I wasn’t ready and to stop pushing. How do you stop a force that only nature can control?
Eventually our beautiful boy was born and I was in shock, you can call it PND or whatever you want but new mothers are in shock! We’ve just had our bodies ripped open to produce another person, a whole new person that we are so emotionally and physically connected to that a change in their breathing can make our nipples leak and our vagina flood, not to mention our mood literally trapeze.
This shock was a wave of impressionist thinking, it wasn’t the real world just something I had created to survive. The world had changed on its axis and nothing would look the same again. It was play dates with 3 month olds, they can’t play! It was weigh ins at the clinic for a child who isn’t moving only eating. It was coffee with Mums who all talk at once whilst each are leaking from somewhere. It was walks to the park to sit on a swing, gently, whilst the stitches heal.
I had no idea what to do all I could do was try to love this creature that wanted nothing but yet everything.
My second birth was blissful! No hospital this time, a home birth, a birthing pool, my folks to look after baby number one and The Ashes for hubby to watch. Of course there was effort involved and wobbly moments if I wondered if a home birth was a selfish choice. But with music and candles in the front room of our 300 year old Hertfordshire home that had probably witnessed many births over the years, my baby was nurtured into this world.
I was bathed in my roll top bath with my baby, the midwife had ran the bath and afterwards sat me at my dressing table and brushed my hair! All on the NHS, she was pushy and in charge and exactly what I needed. I hadn’t respected the brash matter of fact midwife with number one but I had grown in the last three years and realised what was required.
The powerful sense of self whilst giving birth the fact that there can be only one result which is the baby will come out. The fact that we are forever connected makes me realise these significant days are to be cherished even after the fact.
The first few weeks of number two was easier but not easy this time I was breast feeding and so could take that private opportunity to breathe. Trying to nurture my boy at the same time not always easy but a necessity. Making our new bundle a play thing.
Watching the two of them roll around on the floor playing like cats giggling, tickling and occasionally scratching, finding their place in the pack. Listening to their squabbles, their questions and support for each other. I wouldn’t change a thing.
Whilst on holiday by the Murray River I was able to lose my self persecution of why, if and how and replaced these questions with evidence of now.
This quote about aging came to me yesterday on good old