There's a Reason They Call It Labour

I sat on the bed in my pyjamas, frowning at my husband. For the last hour I’d had mild cramps down below and something felt different today. I was 39 weeks pregnant and was more tired than usual. “I don’t think I can drive you to the station today,” I told him. There was too much cramping and I wanted to sleep it off. I mean, I always wanted to sleep in my final trimester, but more so today.

Women aren’t always sure when they go into labour, but I was almost positive when I did because it felt like more than Braxton Hicks. But I went into denial.

“It can’t be labour,” I told hubby, seeing his slightly anxious face. “It’ll wear off in a little while, like it has done all week.”

But it didn’t.

I called my midwife at 8 o’clock to describe my symptoms who said it was likely I was in labour and that I should start timing the ‘sensations’ (as my sister likes to describe them) to see how often they were happening. No it can’t be the real thing, I still told myself. But by 9 o’clock I was on all fours every few minutes closing my eyes and yelling out. I tried to think about all those lovely hypnobirthing techniques I’d been learning: thinking about a beach, breathing out the pain, focusing on deep breathing – and I closed my eyes, trying to apply them. As lovely as it was to think about beaches and rainbows, the pain soon outweighed any of that: But the bit that helped most was getting down on my hands and knees and pressing my head into the mattress. It was time to call my husband – I had to admit I was in labour.

“You need to come home now – I think this is it!” I told him, and his voice promptly started to tremble. Amid a mass of stuttering, he managed to tell me he was on his way. After giving a half-baked promise to call a customer back later, hubby got home very quickly, by which time I was curled up on the floor, my head pressed into the bed. I spat out orders at him and he responded by bringing me glasses of water, cereal, pillows and the hypnobirthing CD to put on. But honestly – breathing techniques now? I was ready to pick up the CD and snap it in half, closely followed by the laptop.

It was time to head for the hospital but the thought of sitting upright in the back of the car was scary enough to make me reconsider having the baby in our own home. I couldn’t even sit upright, let alone walk down the stairs and sit in the car for 40 minutes. Which is why I remained on the bedroom floor for the next hour and a half, and by that time the pain had increased twofold. Who knew how much worse it would get? And so I sidestepped out into the sunlight, bent over and trying to keep as quiet as I could, now we were out in public. I got in the car and organised the pillows around me, impatiently waiting for my husband. I wanted to teleport myself into the hospital rather than face what felt like would be a long journey ahead.

My husband drove us quickly and calmly, ignoring my shrieks and cries, which by now, had reached a sizeable number of decibels. By the time we got to the hospital, there was no chance of me walking to the labour ward – the pain was too much and it would be very embarrassing to be stumbling and yelling out in front of patients and visitors.
“I need a wheelchair,” I rasped.

“A wheelchair!” hubby exclaims. “Oh gee, where am I going to get one of those?”

I frowned at him, before biting into a pillow. “You’ll have to get them to bring one out!” I snapped, thinking it was obvious. The pain had sent me into a fuzzy daze, and nothing seemed real right then. Hubby walked into the hospital, leaving me to scream into the pillows. At last he returned, joined by a lady and a wheelchair.

The car door opened. “Here we go. Just make your way into it,” he encouraged.

It took a few moments but eventually I got into the wheelchair followed by the midwife pushing me backwards with the speed of a buffalo across the hospital floors and down  a string of corridors to the ward. I was half carried into a bed, where I was asked a few questions before having a pump with a nozzle shoved into my mouth.

“That’s it honey, breathe! Breathe in that gas and air!” The midwife demonstrated a few breaths for me and as I copied her, I felt my eyes flicker several times and my head fall back onto the bed. This was followed by a few more questions but they could have been talking in Russian for all I knew: Once pumped full of gas, a woman can’t remember her name, let alone why she is there in the first place!
“I need to find out how far along you are,” one midwife leaned over me, holding up three fingers.

“I will…put my…it won’t hurt, just carry on with your breathing…” I caught snippets of what she was saying and just nodded, getting that there was going to be some prodding of my, er, parts. Taking off my trousers, I laid back on the bed, gripping the gas nozzle in my mouth. Without warning, I felt her fingers going into me fiercely and quickly, stop for a couple of moments to look at my reaction. I had none…until - let’s put it this way - she continued to probe her fingers for a number of seconds, at which point I howled.

“You’re about five cms dilated,” she finalised as she leaned back over me.

“Five centimetres! Is that all!” I slurred, wanting to sound more disgusted than I did. All that work and pain for five lousy centimetres! How much worse was it going to get?

Part 2 to be continued…

Annoyed, Annoyed and Irritated!

“Oh noooo!” I wailed miserably, as I watched my pan of beef, that I had spent ages cooking, fall to the floor with a crash. The sauce and chunks splattered across the floor.

“What? What?” my husband ran in anxiously. “Oh no,” he sighed, “let me get the mop. Darl, you really have to be so careful.”

I glared at him. I was being careful! I tried so hard to save that beef the second I felt the pan handle slip from my hand. Two, three, four times I tried to quickly grab the pan without burning myself, but it was no use. Oh, and I still managed to burn my hand. Husband returns with the mop, grabs the pan and casually starts to pick up the beef, before rinsing it under the tap.

“Are you still going to eat that?” I look at the beef, dubiously.

“Oh yeah,” he replies. “Can’t let good meat go to waste.”

“Even though it’s been on the floor?” I stare at it. There’s no way I would. Since getting pregnant I have become extra sceptical about anything that has been remotely connected with dirt.

“Oh yeah, it’s fine,” he drawls. He puts it back on the hob and starts to mop up the floor.
He is so calm about it all, whereas I’m leaning over the counter, frustrated with myself. I’m so clumsy at the moment and it’s happening a lot lately: Either I’m dropping something, spilling something or forgetting something. With my growing bump I’ve found it’s near impossible to lean over my dinner to eat, which means I have to, as skilfully as I can, carefully lift the fork to my mouth, which has resulted in more than a few bits of food dropped down my front. My bump is so big that when I get up from the sofa I have to somehow swing my legs forward a couple of times to give myself a good push and doing up shoelaces or putting socks on involves swinging a foot over a knee. This is what it must be like for overweight people, I figure. No offence or anything.

 In the last few weeks I’ve become very, very irritable. Suddenly, things that used  to wash right over me now annoy the heck out of me: It annoys me when it takes me twice as long to vacuum the apartment as it used to; it annoys me when there is a speck of something sitting on the carpet and I simply have to pick it up and put it in the bin; it sometimes annoys me when hubby starts to sing (not his fault – I usually love his voice); it is darn irritating when I settle down to sleep and then one movement from baby means another trip to the loo, only to find that all that comes is a trickle! I just getting annoyed for no reason at all and I know it’s wrong but I can’t help it. It all stems from being so uncomfortable, now that I’ve only got a few weeks – or possibly even less than that – until I pop. What really helps is when hubby starts to rub my back or rub my feet – just putting out one foot onto his knee accompanied with a bribery smile and he knows what he needs to do!

Finishing work has been fantastic – no more late night planning or marking, no more sitting on tiny chairs and at last the much needed rest that I’ve been waiting for. Admitting  that I need  to rest has actually taken some getting used to but sure helps when I start experiencing mild contractions – which have started happening at random, by the way. There’s certainly no way I could face teaching 30 children. I don’t know how some women can work until the very last waking hour. All that aside, I am very much enjoying my time off and, sad as it may sound, I am really enjoying playing the role of stay at home mum, taking care of all the cooking and maintaining our home. And I am trying to accept that right now I can’t do things as quickly as I could before because getting annoyed all the time is no fun. Oh well, I’ll just have to keep demanding those foot rubs. 

Healthy Kicks and Bruised Ribs

It has been a while since I have written and there’s a couple of reasons for that…the first is that the insanely busy world of teaching and trying to get everything completed in time for that magical day when I go on maternity leave has been never-ending. The other reason is that I have been unwell for the last couple of weeks.

Despite being ill over Christmas I managed to eat my way through a cholesterol-raising amount of chocolate while my husband dosed me up with lemon and honey which, if I’m honest, did more for my sugar levels than the virus. By the time I got to my hospital appointment the nurse, who hurriedly took a urine sample, came out with: ‘sugar in the urine, sugar in the urine…’ before disposing of the results.

“What does that mean?” I asked the nurse’s turning back. “What does that mean?” I panicked. But she had gone. I looked at my husband with sudden anxiety.

Another nurse approached me. “Have you been eating lots of sugary things? Lots of sweeties or chocolate?” she wagged her finger at me.

“Erm…somewhat,” I replied sheepishly, feeling my face go red.

“”Hmm…” the nurse pointed her finger. “Or is it that you eat a lot of fruit? Because you can eat too much fruit, you know, as that contains natural sugar and it all counts.”

“I do eat a lot of fruit actually!” my eyebrows raised hopefully. Eating a lot of fruit would surely sound better than eating a lot of chocolate…

“Well, you’ve really got to be careful about that because…” she didn’t finish that sentence and just gave me a look for a few seconds. “…Just keep an eye on it for now, okay?”

I nodded, saying nothing. I knew it wasn’t good and the minute I got home, looked it up on our good friend, Google. The main thing that came up was gestational diabetes and I freaked. Had I let my baby down by clogging up my system with sugar? Would the baby be able to come out safely? Or worse, would the baby come out with its mouth covered in chocolate holding a dessert spoon and demanding more? I certainly didn’t want our baby to get a taste for chocolate this early on in life!

So I cut down on the sugar after that. Then I realised that during the period of unwell, I had been drinking more lemon and honey drinks than usual, of course. Surely my increased sugar was down to that? So I stopped those, too. Then, a few weeks later, not only did the cough and throat virus return, but no sooner did I get over that, that I got a rippling pain coursing across my ribs. It came over so suddenly. One minute I was sitting on the couch and the next I was on the floor, doubled over in pain. With every breath I took there was what felt like my muscles snapping together – or apart – a crippling sensation overall. I couldn’t sit on the couch, couldn’t lay down in any position, couldn’t move around. I was blubbing my way through the pain. More reading up online told me that the reason for this pain is the baby sitting or laying in a certain position and lots of women feel this. Right then, she must have been laying on a lung, or part of one and secretly jabbing me in my sleep. Thanks, baby! Well, at least that told me she was nice and strong and healthy, I reassured myself, even if it did mean that I was suffering in the process. The only thing I could think of doing was taking a warm bath, with the advice from my fantastic mum telling me to gently try and prompt the baby to move along with the flat of my hand. Tried this and it seemed to push the baby down a bit but she sure had left behind some bruising! Oh well. I think I can forgive her when she arrives. 

Travel System Chaos!

It was time to start shopping for the much-needed car seat and travel system. Reasonably simple, I thought. Shouldn’t be too much hardship. Of course, the minute you start thinking that, is the minute you start to realise it will be anything except that.
We go to the a store and there’s car seats in abundance – all different sizes - some with metal bars, some with funny looking straps, some with well-padded arm rests. It’s all a bit overwhelming. We make our way to the travel system section where there’s a whole host of well-intended buggies and prams designed with all sorts of features I didn’t realise I needed to get my head around. It takes us a good 20 minutes to look at them all, until we decide on a short-list and wait to speak to an assistant - both of whom are already engaged with other customers. Noticing the café on the other side, I realise, this is a place where parents come, potentially, for a good few hours and is not going to be a quick in-and-out shop. In fact, it’s going to take all of my concentration. They really could do with a few seats in this section of the store, I think, tiredly.

After seeing a demonstration of one particular system, we agree to get the car seat tested in our car. The guy straps in the car seat, tightening the seat belts and then, without warning, balls his fist up and starts hurling it into the car seat, several times over. He takes a deep breath, before punching it a couple more times. The car seat jumps and I, with a short breath of surprise, suddenly get an awful picture in my head of our baby sitting in that seat. The assistant looks up at us. “Doesn’t look like the car seat is going to hold tightly enough with the seatbelts in your car, unfortunately. The straps are a bit too long, so it wouldn’t be safe enough.”
What on earth are we going to do?

“What you’ll need is a seat with an isofix base,” he explains. “They are metal bars that attach into your car and they’re safer. Unfortunately that means you will have to buy a separate isofix base for the car seat.”

Hubby and I look at each other in bewilderment. “Can we get this isofix base thingy for this car seat then?” I raise my eyebrows.

“This particular model doesn’t have one, so you will need to look for another system that has a compatible base,” he explains, as if it’s all very straight-forward. Great, so we’re back to square one.

And it’s not just this new concept of isofix – it’s everything else. We learn that very few car seats as part of a travel system come with isofix, and if they do they need to have been tested on your car model to show they’re safe enough.  After a chat over some tea, we decide that it would probably be easier to buy a car seat separately and then purchase a travel system which only has the pram and buggy included. But can we find such an item – and for under, say, £600? Of course not! Have any of the suitable car seats we like been tested in our car? No again! After all this head-bending discussion, we finally get a travel system on special offer, get it home, (thanks to husband lugging it all into the car and up the stairs) and then realise that the pram part is not detachable from the whole system: I will most certainly need this function when I am taking baby out and returning to carry her up the stairs. We ended up having to take the whole thing back to shop and – you guessed it – start the search all over again. Eventually we find a travel system online for a third of the price, which turns out to be lovely. In the meantime, we’ll leave the car seat for now.

Coughing and Taking a Bruising

All pregnant women know that growing a little one makes them more vulnerable - and likely – to catch colds and all sorts of other minor ailments. What becomes even more despairing is that being a teacher and pregnant makes you all the more likely to catch something very unwanted. Not that it is only pregnant teachers – I’m sure there are many other professions like this . So it is that, just as the Christmas holidays are approaching, that I come down with a cough. It starts off to an extent I can manage at first – that is until Christmas Eve. At that point, I started coughing more frequently - and at random moments: Before I controlled when I coughed; Now, the cough is holding me hostage, getting ready to strike at any point. And strike it does. That night, I was up several times to a rampant, violent string of coughing attacks. As if it’s not enough that I’m getting up to go to the bathroom, I’m also now prone to this as well. In the last few days I’ve coughed so much that I’ve developed what feels like a bruising across the ribs down my left side. The pain is unbelievable, due to a combination of the persistent coughing and also the fact that baby is taking up space, pushing my organs in even closer proximity of one another. With a weaker immune system, these sorts of viruses aren’t so easy or quick to shift: I wasn’t aware of this before but a woman’s immune system becomes weaker because if it didn’t, the body would reject the fetus, as it would be seen as a ‘foreign body’. Truly remarkable.

It is a worry for any pregnant woman that any ache or pain or symptom they feel could harm their baby in some way and so I made a call to that new number – 111 - where you can get emergency medical advice without the ambulance or the hefty long wait in an A&E room – very handy for a worrier like me. I also want to check which remedies I can take and how I can ease the bruising. The nurse is lovely and very reassuring and tells me that the coughing will do no harm to the baby at all, and neither will the pain I feel on my ribs. So, are there any remedies I can take, or anything I can do to ease this pain? I ask, hopefully.

I’m told that all I can do is take paracetamol, rest and drink home-made honey and lemon drinks – things I am already doing. She then goes on to say that a pregnant woman will need to have a cough for at least three weeks before doctors will recommend any other type of remedy, as the risks are too high, which is fair enough. But… three weeks! I’ve had two weeks of this already – so I now need to go through this for another week before I might or might not start to feel better? By then it’ll be back to school and I definitely do not want to be feeling like this then!

So for now, it’s all hail to the mighty paracetamol and slightly nauseating lemon and honey brews and farewell to all those lovely chocolate and sugary treats given to me at school and by my lovely friends which I had been looking forward to on my break. I had accepted that I wouldn’t be having a glass or two of my favourite Christmas tipple (Baileys) this year but now I can’t even face a glass of my replacement - Appletizer! Unfortunately, the latter of each will have to be left on the shelf for now because I sure heck am not up to drinking or eating them (although my husband has been able to give me daily reviews on each of them). Must say, I’m very surprised there’s not a scientist or doctor out there who has not yet invented a pregnancy-friendly, cough medicine. Hmm. Something to think about!

Wobbling Along and Enjoying It

Week 24:

I’ve started to get a bump now – more evident when wearing a tight dress that I’m still holding onto even though, if I’m really honest, doesn’t really fit anymore (but I am still trying to squeeze into for that little bit longer). I bought a couple of pairs of trousers from a well-known shop brand recently – miles too big for me but figured I’d grow into them soon enough. Well, I wear them now and they are still too big – way too baggy – and I feel like I’m in a human-sized paper bag, rather than someone remotely flattering; and I, as my husband puts it, look like I’m on my way to an art workshop. After searching around the high street for maternity clothes, we couldn’t find anything that looked like it might be okay, and so it was, that I decided to look online. Didn’t take me long and – yes! Finally! Some gorgeous dresses, skirts and trousers that will look half decent. You see, now I want to show my bump, whereas a little while ago I reached an in-between stage where there was a bit of a bump but didn’t look obviously pregnant and I was of mixed minds as to whether I actually started to show it or try to cover it up. Then came along week 22 and I started embracing it a bit more. Now we hit week 25 (almost), and I am amazed at how quickly the bump is growing and I’ve now got the feeling where I’m happy to show it off. Not only am I proud, but I want people to notice it so that they might actually take a bit more care around me when pacing their way towards me in the supermarket. Lately I’ve been getting quite disorientated when out shopping and want people to take a bit of care when approaching me - I am so paranoid that someone is going to run into me or ‘oomph’ me with their trolley – not because they actually will but because I can’t move fast enough to get out of somebody’s way anymore. I’ve turned into a real slug when it comes to moving around – wobbling like a penguin and showing my annoyance by way of a tut when people in front of me suddenly stop and decide to either reverse or just stop. I just don’t have the speed to keep up with their sudden change of mind. It’s annoying in that way – particularly as I’m used to moving quickly and pacing around. On the other side of it, I am enjoying the fact that I have slowed down a lot and neither do I feel the need to race around, which is refreshingly pleasant. I can’t get up quite as fast as I used to - and it’s hard going constantly standing up when teaching a class of lively children. But I don't mind. Of course, the bump has its benefits, in terms of mobility (‘oh, I’m so tired, could I have a drink?’; not having to take part in PE training because, of course, I can’t be very active; ‘I’m not able to clean the bath – can you do it?’) Not that it’s just about those benefits, of course, but it does help to balance out the sometimes overwhelming stream of emotions and symptoms felt over the course of the nine month journey.

Tactless Parents!

Last time I talked about the butterfly feelings I thought could have been the baby moving.  Well, things have progressed since then: From what felt like butterflies has changed to what I’ve heard other pregnant women describe as ‘bubbles popping’ (I know what they mean now!) to full-on occasional little prods: What I can’t tell yet is which part of the baby is prodding me. But all in good time. And, of course, this is developing because the baby is getting bigger and, thus, mummy’s tummy bump is also getting bigger. I’m starting to feel quite good about walking around, sporting a rounded belly that isn’t caused by an excess of beer the night before or a pile of doughnuts the morning after. What I hadn’t given much consideration to is the fact that a number of mums whose children I teach day in day out would also be picking up on this new development and that I would soon be facing those parents on that one dreaded event of the year – parents evening.

“Do you think any of the parents will ask you about your pregnancy?” one of my colleagues nudged me on the morning of the first event.

“Erm…would they? Well, none of the parents know and I don’t think they would just come out and ask me…would they?” I now had a cycle of thoughts building in my mind, suddenly thinking about the possibility of that.

“Well, a couple of them might have noticed by now,” she nodded at my tummy.  “Don’t worry. Just tell them it’s none of their business,” she smiled, obviously sensing my concern.

From that moment, I dreaded the parents coming in to see me…What would I say? How would I react? I decided to let it go and just to keep every parent-teacher discussion professional, quickly changing the subject if anyone so much as hinted that I could be pregnant.

I forgot all about it and, when the time came, met my first parent outside my classroom. She happened to have her baby with her, cradling her in her arms, all dressed up in a little white polar bear onesie. “Ah,” I sighed. “She’s beautiful!”

Mum smiled. “Yes, and she’s a good girl, too. It’s lovely, having her. Well, I guess you will experience it soon too innit.”

I stared at her for a moment, considering going into denial and just saying that actually, I had been putting on a bit of weight, due to a keen love of doughnuts and sausage sandwiches. But it didn't happen that way. 

My eyes darted up and down the corridor to see who else was around. And there was another mum standing right there, her eyes already on us and, on seeing me look over, diverted her eyes down to the floor. She had heard us for sure. 

Immediately the mum who had spoken clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh. I’m sorry! I didn’t realise. You want to keep it quiet, innit.”

You could say that, yes.

The next parent to bring it up made no effort of subtlety whatsoever.

Plainly – and in front of her child – she said: “So will you be leaving school after your baby is born?”

Crikey! Said so bluntly, just like that!

I glanced at the child I teach, who smiled, as if he was also waiting for me to reply. Oh goodness. It’s bad enough that parents have picked up that I’m pregnant – but the last thing I want is the children hearing it at this stage. I don’t want them asking me about it when I’m trying to teach literacy!

“Oh…so you think that I’m…er..?” I began, unsure of how to finish the sentence.

She nodded, looking at me in a ‘of course I know, I’m not stupid’, kind of way.

“I will definitely be staying on,” I nodded slowly. Whether she meant after maternity leave or if she was assessing the impact on her child if I were to leave before the end of the academic year, I couldn’t be too sure. But I certainly felt like hiding away with awkwardness after that. Honestly, have these parents no tact! It won’t be long before it’s officially announced and then I really will feel like going into hiding: Because some parents will be ruffled by the impact that a change in teacher, before the end of the academic year, will have on their children’s learning. We will see how it goes. Ps. to husband: (Having some doughnuts on hand to munch my way through might help me get through it).