It’s only taken three cracks at this baby thing but Lee can finally tick off his bucket list that he drove his wife to the hospital while she was in labour, albeit with L plates embellishing our car. Not sure I was a competent supervising driver in my contraction-having state but at least the police didn’t pull us over.
Being my third time doing childbirth, I went a bit all out. Birth photographer, check. Doula, check. Student midwife wants in on the action? Sure, bring em in. In short, I very quickly found myself experiencing life through the eyes of the elephant at Taronga Zoo having a wash while 20 people gawp at it and take pictures. Add my (what I thought to be the crux of female empowerment) labour playlist to the mix and you’ve a recipe for abject mortification. Perhaps Girl on Fire wasn’t the best choice to endure the pains of labour, and Miley Cyrus’ nasal demands that We Can’t Stop and we won’t stop is, in my current opinion, tantamount to bullying. Not to mention, experiencing the after-birth shakes while Taylor Swift is getting all merry in the background telling me to Shake it Off, is just going a little bit too far. Wait till you’re lying in the bloody aftermath of ejecting 8 lbs of human flesh Taylor Swift, you won’t be shaking it off then, will you love?
I’ve always opted to have my babies in the birth centre within a hospital. With my first baby I didn’t want to leave the hospital after having her. It was like my first driving lesson when the instructor took me out to the car and got into the passenger side and it hit me that he actually expected me to drive the damn thing! Yup, leaving hospital with your first child is a little like that. I wasn’t allowed to leave for 24 hours anyway because 5 minutes after I delivered her in an epidural-fuelled state, I inadvertently suffocated her with my ginormous tit. (It all turned out fine though, don’t worry.)
Five years later and I’ve wised up. I want my own comfy bed in my own room where I don’t have to listen to the lady three curtains down snoring like a steam engine. I want tea in my own mug and food that doesn’t come in plastic containers on a tray. I want to shower in a bathroom that doesn’t have some other woman’s used maternity pad balled up in the corner. And I want to see actual daylight and actual darkness instead of living in a twilight world of hospital lighting. But the baby swallowed a bit of her own shit so here I fecking am. Oh well, no better time to stick my headphones in and listen to Destiny’s Child remind me that I am in fact a Survivor. Hells yeah!
How have your experiences with childbirth varied if you have more than one? Or what funny or crazy things do you remember from the birth of your child(ren)? Tell me all the gory details at hadassah@threelittlehines.com.