SHOCK

I don’t know how to feel. I don’t know what to tell you.

At exactly 5am on Wednesday, January 17 my waters broke. On Thursday, January 18 I gave birth to a son.

All didn’t go as smoothly as plan. Both Boy and I are fine. We’re healthy. But we’re only now getting over our shock and exhaustion.

The labor lasted a grueling 36 hours but just didn’t progress. It wasn’t until well into the 30th hour that they tried to induce me. Five hours later – nothing had changed.

I’d spent most of the first 12 hours just moaning in pain. The next 10 hours sucking on gas until they gave me an epidural and I spent the rest of the time numb from the waste down.

The epidural wore of (or was reduced) in hour 34 as I entered break-through phase and increasingly it became unbearable. I begged and begged for a C-section but the doctors delayed and delayed.

In my 36th hour I began to push and after one solid hour of bearing down the baby hadn’t moved an inch. The doctor came in, told me there was no other option. The next thing I knew I was being run by a massive wards man for emergency surgery.

Tom’s been filling in blanks from here out because I just don’t remember much of what happened. It’s true what they say – it’s the world’s worst pain but the quickest forgotten. I remember enough to know that I was crippled by pain but not enough to tell you what that pain felt like.

I can tell you how terrified I was – the glimpses of hallway I caught through eyes clenched shut in pain. I can tell you the anesthetist had a calm voice and warm hands when he held mine to explain what he’d be doing. I can tell you that they couldn’t drug me up quick enough and that I didn’t understand one word they said because I was barely together enough to breath.

Tom tells me that they took me into surgery while he was squeezed into a hospital gown and cap and made to wait in a small room just outside of surgery – watching Hughie’s Cooking Show on Channel 10.

When they let him in, he sat beside me and held my hand while I screamed for someone to check on the baby (they’d disconnected the heart monitors) and a kind midwife held a speaker by my ear so I could hear his heart beat.

Once I heard Boy's heart beating I relaxed and stopped screaming.

They erected a blue screen across my chest and I could feel them pulling and tugging but no pain. And then, crying. Over the screen they showed me his purple foot and asked Tom to come and cut the cord.

A few minutes later they brought him to me all bundled up. But that’s when things fell to pieces. They sent Tom and the baby to the ward so they could finish closing me up.

As soon as my boys left I began to feel the pain. I could feel them pushing and shoving and stitching. Part physical sensation, part hysteria. At that point the anesthetist had no other option but to fully knock me out and the next thing I knew I was waking up in recovery.

It took three days for the nightmares to stop – both mine and the baby’s.

Seven days for my aching abdomen to heal enough for me to walk properly without having to support the muscles with my hands.

Nine days and my milk still hasn’t come in and I’ve decided there is no other option but to bottle feed.

And only now and I in a position to see my son without the tears of guilt and failure filling my eyes.

I still cry though – at my body’s inability to bring him to this world and sustain him – but this too shall pass.

SWOLLEN

Today I am exactly 40 weeks pregnant. That’s right – pregnant.

My plans for an early and small baby have been destroyed by a 9 pound baby that has no desire to move from its current location. But since all is well the doctors flat out refuse to induce me until I’m the full 10 days over.

Clearly all the doctors are men who have no idea what it’s like to carry a bowling ball in their abdomen. Doctors who laugh and tell me they “understand” my frustration and that it “won’t be long now”.

I’d like to give them a call at 3am to share the experience of trying to lift my enormous belly out of bed for the umpteenth time to go to the bathroom because it’s all too much for me to sleep more than an hour and a half without relieving my matchbox sized bladder.

Other than the anticipation, being at home is a boring as all hell.

I’ve watched enough day time TV to know that there are some writers out there who, despite their professions, haven’t got an ounce of creativity in their bones.

Our computer went down for two weeks so I haven’t had that escape either. Not that having the computer would have made much of a difference. The swelling in my fingers means that typing is a new experience in pain and frustration as my finger, more often than not, simply won't do what they're told.

The only upshot is going to clinic every week and seeing that there are women out there a lot worse off than me.

Being at home you’re isolated. There’s a sense that you’re the biggest, fattest pregnant women in the world and that you’ve been pregnant for longer than anyone in the entire history of pregnancy.

But every visit to the clinic you are given a show of stick-figured women with bellies swollen and red from stretch marks. Their enormous stomachs are spewing out from under their woefully inadequate clothing because they, like me, have decided buying maternity clothes is a waste of money.

But, unlike me who wore big clothing in the first place and who has accepted going up two sizes into my more daggy of outfits for the sake of discretion and comfort, they have refused to give up their trendy skin-tight jeans and mid-riff shirts.

The result is a humorous, and slightly disturbing, skinny woman with a nasty growth who makes you grateful you were fat in the first place so you don’t look so ridiculous now.

I’m not a prude. Pregnancy is a beautiful thing to look at. These women are not. Their stomachs are pushing out of the zipper of their pants and their tops barely cover their breasts and their belly-buttons are finger like protrusions pointing in an accusatory fashion at anyone in their path.

They simply look swollen – not pregnant.

The draw back of clinic is that it works both ways. While there are these women to make you feel better about how you’re making your way through pregnancy, there are those women who look simply radiant.

They’ve decided that they’ll pay the massive, gouge of a price for maternity wear. Their bellies are well sculpted bumps under their dresses and shirts while mine is a lumpy mass that could easily be mistaken for stored porridge.

These women have well groomed hair while mine looks like I’ve just come in from a windstorm. Pregnancy makes these women glow while I simply look green faced from being sick and puffy-eyed from no sleep.

The small consolation is that these women are few and far between. More often then not at clinic it’s people like me – in the middle of the road. Pregnancy hasn’t brought out the best in us but it’s clearly not the worst either.

We’re tired, uncomfortable and frustrated. We’re all just worried for the welfare of our potential children and that stress is written across our faces, knotted in our hair and staining our stretched t-shirts.

I tend to think, any women without the sense to have these fears etched into their being probably shouldn't be having a child in the first place because they're woefully under-prepared for the reality of it all.

STILL WAITING

I spend my days watching my belly twist and warp.

What was once an idea is now a reality. There is no denying there there is a human being other than myself inhabbiting this body. It twists and turns and my stomach bulges and dips with each wave of movement.

And there are distinct shapes that disturb, more than amaze, me. Everyone talks about the miracle of pregnancy and birth but I can't seem to get past the weirdness of it all. I can't see the miracle because all I can see is a hand or a foot where it shouldn't be - coming from inside me.
Perhaps I'm too clinical. Maybe I can see the miracle but I just can't shake my utter fascination to focus on the spirituality of the event.

Still, at this stage (week 38) I'm starting to think my child will never come. I'm starting to think that I'll be inhabbited forever. I'm starting to think that I'll be this lounge bound, moron, for the rest of my life.

I really miss work. I miss having a nimble mind. I miss my motivation to change out of my PJs before 3pm.

While I wait, every promising twinge and stabbing pain that makes me think labour is coming turns into just another discomfort that is forgotten 20 minutes later. And no matter the discomfort I can't help but laugh at the pain because it's too odd for words.

My abdomen is nothing more than a shell now and I'm acutely aware that inside is something with a mind of its own. My child.

I feel like a great big bubble or rather a massive water balloon. Heavy and cumbersome, yet completely aware that if Nugget wasn't there that I would be hollow (and I wonder if this statement doesn't have a double meaning but I don't want to dwell there for now).

It'll seem strange but now I get a feeling of how a house must feel. There is someone knocking on all my walls and I have no ability to respond or react - at least not in a manner that person would perceive.

Does Nugget know I exist? Is Nugget even conscious of other human beings or completely oblivious to the world outside of its little room? Is Nugget able to comprehend how complex things are about to get? Does Nugget see me as the pain moving and pushing against it rather than realising it's inside of me?

Oh my God. I've just realised. I'm someone's world.

But it's only temporary and I know what I can't provide Nugget will be at it's fingertips. There is a wealth of experience out there to fill the gaps and I'm looking forward to not only teaching a child about the world around it but also learning about life from it.