Late spring 1996 in the UK, my youngest child is due and I'm finding it quite stressful trying to work out the logistics of arranging for my son to be looked after whilst I'm in hospital. The mother of his best pal agrees to help, but I'm on edge about it, it's a big ask. I'm trying not to be anxious, I know it's bad for my baby, but I have very few people nearby to rely on and I feel I need a backup but I can't decide who to ask. I walk my son home from nursery in the company of another pregnant mum also near the end of her term and she tells me she's going to try cleaning windows to bring labour on. That sounds a bit dangerous to me but she assures me it would only work if the baby was ready. I'm sceptical, I'm not going to try anything that may put my baby's health in jeopardy, but then I make the terrible mistake of going on a tractor ride whilst on a Sunday day out at a local park. Bumping up and down in the trailer, I try to laugh but I know it's too vehement for my body and my baby and sure enough it triggers a false alarm, which is actually quite useful because the friend's mum comes up trumps and her prompt response puts me a tiny bit more at ease.
It's inevitably in the middle of the night, counting the diminishing minutes between contractions, that I decide I really should go into hospital. My son opens sleepy eyes when I tell him the baby is going to be born and says ' this is the best day of my life ' surprising me, delighting me, my heart explodes with happiness and suddenly I'm looking forward to the birth.
My daughter is born too fast after a well meaning midwife breaks my waters with something that resembles a knitting needle. I've got it into my head that I want to kneel up and the midwife, onlyrecently having returned to the job after a career break, tells me she's never delivered a baby that way before could I lie on my back so she can see baby's head, but I can't move. I'm firm in my resolve that no-one can help me move onto my back, so the midwife breaks her code of behaviour and uses her fingers to feel around my vagina and she's happy to feel the baby's head crowning. She's using some kind of gel and it feels amazing. A temporary relief from agony. At the very last moment I let myself be lowered onto my back and my daughter is born, shocked and cold. The midwife places her on my tummy with the cord still intact and I can feel it pumping. The cord is cut and tied. My baby is given back to me, unswaddled. I gaze at her every detail. She is so beautiful, long and slim, unperturbed, I feel elated, detached, yet a little unsettled. I try putting her to my breast but she doesn't respond. She's looking at me, her beautiful bright blue eyes are stunning, I'm mesmerised, so it takes me an age to realise she's a little too unresponsive.
The midwife has disappeared. I say to my husband, she's cold. I try to cuddle her but I'm cold too. Soon a doctor arrives in the doorway with a broad smile. She is very calm and says this is normal. Baby is just a little shocked. All we need to do is to keep her warm. She will recover. Then disappears, leaving me, half naked, with my naked, cold newborn, unresponsive baby girl.
This is the NHS, late nineties in a medium sized hospital maternity ward in a medium sized town in the North of England. I'm in here because I'm considered too great a risk to have my baby at home because I'm old ( over 30 ) and my first baby had to be delivered by forceps - which wouldn't have been the case had the people looking after me advised that I had an episiotomy much earlier in the proceedings. Apparently I'd written in my birth plan that I'd rather not have one and even though I'd been18 hours in labour, no-one thought to advise me that I really should under these circumstances. This time, I'm in the GP unit and I'm not quite sure what this means, except I'm expecting less intervention by doctors and more midwifery led care. Looking back on this experience nearly 26 years later, it seems ok, for the most part, but that's because it had a good outcome for me and my baby.
My healthy baby girl is eventually wrapped in a baby blanket and taken to the special care baby unit. I'm being wiped down rather vigorously with rough paper towels by an auxiliary nurse who keeps asking me lots of questions about where my baby has gone and why so I'm on the verge of hysteria when I'm wheeled to a private room, a kind policy and provision for women who've had complications during labour. There isn't anything wrong with me. I haven't had to have an episiotomy this time and my placenta was delivered whole apparently, but I'm shaking uncontrollably as the shock of the whole experience kicks in. My husband has gone home to check on our son and spread the good news.
I'm alone with my thoughts.
I've been told I mustn't get out of bed yet, so I call the midwife to ask if I can be taken to see my baby girl in the special care baby unit. I'm anxious to see her and feed her my colostrum. No-one comes. I can hear a lot of caffufle outside. Equipment seems to be being wheeled down the corridor and a lot of people are speaking in loud whispers to each other. I realise there must be some kind of emergency so I don't press the bell again. A very loud alarm suddenly sounds outside and I can hear people running. Panic rises within me and I press the alarm. Eventually, an auxiliary nurse enters the room and tells me there's an emergency but a midwife will be with me soon. I feel embarrassed but when the midwife eventually appears, an elderly lady with a strange ruff around her neck, she is calm and reassuring. I apologise for bothering her and she is adamant that I'm not being a nuisance, telling me that my needs are important and she'll get someone to wheel me up to see my baby as soon as someone's available.
By now, it's late at night and I'm feeling very adrift. My anxiety about whether my daughter is ok becomes unmanageable and I get out of bed and begin a slow, arduous journey up to the special care baby unit, which as apparently situated several light years away from the maternity ward. When I get there, many heavy steps later, the unit is calm, quiet and dimly lit. Two nurses are quietly at their work, taking care of these special babies. I find mine immediately. She's quiet and content in a plastic container, no lid, nor is she hooked up to any machine. My relief is overwhelming. One of the nurses, a male, smiles across the room at me. He asks if I want to do her cares, it's about time. I reply I feel a bit weak to stand any more but I'd like to try to feed her. He comes and gently changes her nappy. She doesn't fret. When I finally put her to my breast, she suckles eagerly and my breasts become engorged with delight.
I'm very reluctant to put her down again, but the nurse persuades me I need to rest if I'm to be at all useful. He kindly sends for someone to wheel me back to my room, but I soon sneak out to ring my poor husband in the middle of the night and tell him I've held her and fed her and she's ok. I hadn't even thought about the time, such was my elation, so I'm surprised he doesn't sound quite as excited as I feel. let the sleepy head go back to bed and return to mine to think of names and naming, the chain of ancestors, the women who made me. My whole being is buzzing.
I learn later that day how a woman in a room further down the corridor from mine died that night. I don't know if her baby survived. For many of us, birth is the closest we get to death in our lives. Giving birth and being born is a liminal stage when we teeter on the brink and carrying a growing child and giving birth is possibly amongst some of the hardest, most dangerous work some of us will ever do, not a fight, but a battle, certainly. A wrestling match with life and death.
Today, nearing 26 years later, I'm seeing it through the telescopic lens of time. I remember the doctor smiling at me in the doorway, waving her hand and saying, don't worry, the baby is just shocked, birth came too quickly for her, where I come from, we would just swaddle her, then she left me and my baby, both of us in shock, me trying to warm my baby up but feeling so cold myself.
I think now that, unbeknown to me, I was being left to bond with my baby, to let us feel and inspect each other. In retrospect, this was a well managed birth and the trauma for me lies within the separation from and worry about my baby's health. It's easy for me to see now that my feelings of guilt about going on the monster tractor so close to my due date marred what should have been a particularly uplifting experience for me.
I sometimes think of the woman who died that night and how the midwives' and nurses' care and compassion sowed the seed for my understanding of how our own sorrows, our own life, our own needs, count, even in the midst of the heavier sorrows and needs of the world.
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