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…