*Content warning* – I am not sure what will trigger anyone and I can honestly say, that while everything was considered a ‘normal’ birth with very little intervention, for me, as a first-timer, it was quite intense and in some ways traumatic.

The aim isn’t to worry anyone facing or currently going through this process or thinking of having children, it is in fact to be realistic about what to expect. There is a LOT of information out there, and I am hyper aware that I am contributing to the detritus of information overload that is thrown at mothers and mothers-to-be, but I know that what got me through a lot of my fears were ‘real‘ accounts of mothers being open, honest, raw, and truthful. Maybe that’s who I am, but for me, it was this realness and honest accountability of what to expect and what’s considered ‘normal’ that helped me manage my expectations. I also, can now honestly say, I don’t think there is any way to be prepared for birth, post-partum, motherhood, aside from mentally accepting that a lot is out of your control (speaking of the physical side of labour not the medical side, which of course you prep your birthing partner to do) and a lot it is instinct based. Having the brain capacity to realise it will come to an end and that we women are strong enough to physically do this (regardless of what way that is).

The arrival at the hospital was a blur of events, but with moments of clarity. I was wheeled through the doors of where I had been hours earlier for my CTG that morning and into a room. I was helped off the bed – I vaguely remember saying goodbye to the paramedics – and having contractions again. I was asked questions about this and that, but the pain was quite intense and I could barely get out full sentences and gestured at himself to answer them.

I was asked did I want to use the toilet and I said “yes” and proceeded to look around the room for a door to the toilet, but only saw a closet. When I croaked out “where?” the nurse said “oh down the hall and to the right”. There was no possible way I was going to be able to walk down the hall at that given moment in time, so I held it.

I barely remember taking off my clothes and being checked to see how far along I was. Somehow in the movies this always seems to be a moment of excitement, but in reality it was something I wanted over and done with, because I found it incredibly uncomfortable and then to hear I was only 4cm dilated was not great as I wanted the contractions to be over (and they’d only just begun). However, they decided it was time to head to the delivery room. I don’t remember how we got there, I think it was in a wheelchair, because walking was just out of the question. My contractions seemed to be coming in quite hard and heavy, but my husband said that they were about 4 mins apart. I felt like I wasn’t getting enough time in between contractions to recuperate or catch my breath or even realise ‘this is it!’ all of which I thought would happen. The delivery room was dimly lit and there was a midwife in there waiting for us to go through the initial steps in protocol. It was a calming room, but again, I didn’t take much notice of what was going on around me.

It is a strange sort of parallel universe or ‘other’ place that you enter during labour. I peripherally aware of what was going on around me, but time lost all meaning. I knew my husband was there and at times I would focus on him, looking at him, but not seeing him, reaching out as if there was a void between us or I was looking down a tunnel at him on the other side of it. He was there and that’s what mattered. I felt carnal and focused somehow. I didn’t care if I was rude or demanding, I just knew what I needed and that I needed it NOW. I don’t think we women *need* to apologise, it’s a masssssive physical experience that requires stamina and endurance while we’re going through it and we should scream as much as we want, but for me it was important to say that the carnal creature they experienced was only a part of who I am.

Labour itself, was certainly not what they portray in the movies. Not even a little bit. It was intense, painful and non-stop. And there were fluids. Lots and lots of bodily fluids.

At some stage, I projectile vomited. It was spectacular and came out of nowhere and with no warning (thankfully, there was no warning, because I despise throwing up with a vengeance). It sploshed on the floor, my husbands shoes, everywhere. It happened several times and himself was handed this small, cardboard-like vessel, that barely held anything, to contain the amount that I was spewing up…I used up 3 small containers. When the urge came to pee (of course why not add that into the mix?) we attempted using a bed-pan, but try standing, squatting and peeing while having contractions – it was like trying to use a garden hose and water the plants, while pedalling a unicycle drunk. It didn’t work and honestly? I don’t know why they even tried.

I reckon it was about 2-3 hours in, when they asked me if I wanted some pain relief. I nodded and at the time – and even now – I couldn’t understand why it then took them so long to administer it. Maybe it was a time-stood-still- sort of thing, but I do know that just before they gave it to me, they asked me if I had had a PCR test before entering the hospital, and despite both of us being vaccinated twice at that stage for COVID-19, I had to do a PCR test then and there. Having a cotton rod stuck up your nose/mouth while in labour is again not pleasant!

I had chosen to not have an epidural, simply because I felt the side effects were too risky for me, plus I wanted to be able to freely move around and be active during pregnancy. I had instructed the husband, to *only* consider it in dire circumstances e.g. a medical emergency if they needed to proceed to an emergency C-Section. The medication they gave me, was given intravenously but what it was, I cannot remember. It didn’t dull the contractions or take the pain of them away, but it softened the edges of things a little and helped me (and my body) relax in the 2-3 minutes between contractions. So much so, in fact, that I had moments where I fell asleep in between my contractions. I would wake, just as I felt another ‘wave’ coming on. In my head, they were waves, but I was seeing a hill, almost cartoon like, in my mind’s eye. For some reason I was pedalling a bike and as the contraction started to surge, I would be at the bottom of the hill, pedalling really fast, trying to make it up the hill. At this point, I would insist, and I mean insist, that my husband or the midwife would count down or tell me we’d reached the peak and were on the way back down. In doing so, both of them helped me to visualise and see that I’d reached the top, I’d made it and was on the side of the hill coming down.

I also experienced, towards the latter stages of labour and when the baby was moving further down the birth canal, this intense, indescribably pressure on my lower back and butt hole. It was probably as bad as, if not worse than, the contractions. Sounds strange to say that, but it was the angle of the baby, as she was making her way towards the neon green exit! The only way that I would get through that, was to again, insist that the midwife put pressure on my lower back to counteract the pressure coming from the inside. I would hold my husband’s hands and visualise my hill. But there was once or twice where the midwife would leave the room, and me and my husband to ourselves. I remembered during our birthing class that was mentioned, and thinking to myself at the time “that’s great, we’re gonna want ALL the alone time to bond and be excited”. Yeah, right! Each time the midwife left the room, I panicked a little bit.

Full disclosure, it had less to do with the medical side of things, and more to do with the emotional side of things. For some reason, and through no fault of his own or even mine, but during the labour I longed for female and maternal energy. My husband has been my go-to person for almost thirteen years now, for better or worse, and while my mother passed away eight years ago, the longing to have her there has never been stronger than during labour. And so from the get-go, the female paramedic, the night nurse, the midwives who were tending to me, they all played a vital part for me that night in guiding me through everything. I called out for my mother several times, while in that sort of other-worldly trance (sufficiently scarring my husband for life as there was nothing he could do about it) but as a result, whenever the midwife left the room, I hated it. Funnily enough, I love the smell of eucalyptus and so even during pregnancy I would sometimes use Vicks Vapour rub as it calmed me down. We had packed a tub into the hospital bag, and sure enough during that weird, in-between phase, my husband took it out and rubbed a bit on my chest to try and relax me.

From a physical point of view, I moved around a good bit. My favourite positions were kneeling on the bed, hanging over the top of it and (surprisingly) squatting near the end. A point of frustration was that, while they’d removed the IV feeding me the painkillers in the early hours, the attachment part was still there and because I was sweating so much, it kept coming out, which meant it kept bleeding, and the midwife would add more and more tape to the area.

Around 7am, I was measured again and was told I was at 9cm. I had noticed the contractions had changed and seemed heavier, lower down, and more like I needed to push. They said that I could push if I felt the urge. At this stage, I was standing now and semi moving around. I had found a spot near the cabinets at the end of the room and was using them to hold myself up and squat. There were still a lot of mixed fluids coming out. And out of nowhere, the midwife told me that her shift was finished and she was going to hand over to her colleague. To say I was devastated is an understatement. I grabbed her arm and growled “no, you’re not going anywhere!”. She started to give me a spiel of how she had been on shift for 12 hours and wasn’t comfortable staying any longer, yadda, yadda. I get it, but there had been ZERO mental prep for me to expect that. For me, I had bonded with this midwife and to have her just leave me (that’s how it felt) was just unfathomable. And yet she did. I tried to focus on myself and at some stage she slipped out of the room as her colleague was there.

I had been squatting for an over an hour and I was getting weak. Each time I would squat down, I would feel the baby moving towards the exit, but once the contraction passed and I would stand up, she would go back in again. And this was exhausting me. During a contraction, especially at that stage, there are like 3-4 smaller surges, that build from 1-2, then 2-3 and then 3-4. I was told instead of pushing 3-4 times, to sort of amalgamate them into one big push. Personally, I feel I was told to push too early, but I realised then I needed to lie down, as my legs were jelly from squatting and I was really weak. I was drinking a lot of water, losing water through pushing, I was slick with sweat, so I went over to the bed, and that’s where I really got annoyed then.

I had a portable doppler-machine strapped around my stomach, so they could monitor the baby. I completely understand their need, it’s necessary to make sure that the baby is safe and doing alright, but I knew if I kept going with this “bobbing in-and-out” motion, that would effect her more, so I needed to do what I needed to in order to get her out. I assumed my position kneeling while draped over the back of the bed, and the midwives, kept reaching in between my legs, over my shoulder, around my bump, moving my arms, whatever way they wanted to, to readjust the doppler-machine. It really, really pissed me off. I snapped at them to “just leave it be” and they retorted with “we have to see if the baby is alright”. It was a tense moment. I didn’t want to lie on my back, so I ended up in a position that I had detested in the birthing class, on my side, holding my own leg up in the air. Great.

It was about 8am at this stage, and I reached down below and I could feel her head, but she wasn’t able to ‘get out’ no matter how hard I pushed. I tried again and again. I told the midwife to use the forceps to get her out, but I was told “I had plenty of space ‘down there’ and I was strong enough to push”. It’s funny in a way, because the ‘otherworldly’ feeling had dissipated, and now I was focused. I knew I was close to her being here, and I’d been told “it’s close” for about an hour. I felt a shift in my own perspective to a “right, let’s get it done”, because I was sick of hearing ‘you’re almost there’ when that didn’t seem to be happening at all. Lying there, I could feel the burning (supposedly, the infamous ring of fire) and while I knew she was okay, I also knew with utmost certainty that I was going to tear. In order to avoid that, I reached a hand down there again, slid a finger in near the top, took a deep breath, waited for the next contraction and pushed through the whole thing, waited and held her there with my muscles (it felt like), then the next one came and I pushed really hard again… and floop. Out she slithered in one gush! Weirdest sensation ever. There were a few seconds of quietness, and I asked was she “ok” and they said everything was fine and then she was there! My darling daughter was born at 8.20am, 8lbs 3 oz. and 51cm long and with her hand beside her head!