Nine Months In, Nine Months Out

This morning I realised that we had missed Cave Baby's nine month birthday on Sunday. Not that nine months is a particularly important milestone - but it did occur to me that she has now been out in the world for as long as she was inside me. Nine months in the tum, nine months out of the tum. A wonderful symmetry.

So this thought, and reading Monkey's birth story on That's Not My Monkey, inspired me to write something about Cave Baby's birth.

I had been in the early stages of labour for around 30 hours when we called a midwife to our house. Before she arrived I had been labouring in the bath, so I was stark naked, kneeling on the bedroom floor when she came in. "Oh, we're having a baby", she announced as she saw me. At that point I was only 4cm dilated and I laboured on in the bath for another couple of hours. I can remember that time quite well: with every contraction, I leaned forward to put my head on the bath taps and I kept banging my forehead. I was using gas and air and it felt pretty ineffective, though it must have been doing something because I was literally pulling my hair out before I started on it, and afterwards I wasn't.

I spent another hour or two on my knees in the bedroom and this period really is hazy. I only remember the occasions when I was interacting with other people: when the midwife called the hospital to tell them to put an ambulance on standby because my waters were stained with fresh meconium; when I peed in a bucket because I couldn't imagine getting up to go to the toilet; when the midwife asked me if I wanted to push.

There was about an hour of pushing before Cave Baby emerged. I found this stage much less painful than the first stage of labour. Whilst I had visualized each first stage contraction as a huge hot fire, the second stage contractions were like a line of gas burners lighting up in a row across my back. Each push was a gust of air whooshing through the fires and casting them aside. I felt like an athlete. Half way through the pushing stage I abandoned the gas and air because I was worried it would impair my performance (seriously. That is a glimpse into the strange mind of the labouring woman).

I felt the baby's head crowning (not painful, just a strong sensation). I felt the baby turning inside me to get her shoulders through ("The baby's moving! The baby's moving!" - probably the first thing I had said for hours). And I remember her skidding out of me, and the midwives catching her and wrapping her in a towel before passing her through my legs so I could hold her for the first time.

I wish I could remember it more clearly. Everything is so fuzzy. And I wish we had taken some photographs of those first few moments. But I am thankful that she arrived safely and that I was also well. I am grateful that I had wonderful midwives who did not transfer me to hospital, despite the meconium (though we did have an ambulance at our house for the last half hour of labour). The lovely midwives followed my birth plan exactly, letting me do whatever the heck I wanted during labour, delaying cutting the cord until it had stopped pulsating, and allowing me to deliver the placenta naturally.

An hour or so after the birth I was sat up in bed, feeding my baby and chatting to the midwife who had to stay for two hours. I remember thinking, "I gave birth a hour ago and here I am wracking my brains to come up with entertaining smalltalk at 6 in the morning."

I was so lucky to have such a great birth experience.