on toothpicks; I was a terrible, terrible bore.
Quite rightly, I got my come-uppance on the day. For impeccable medical reasons I was induced, put on a drip, and prescribed an epidural anaesthetic to keep my blood pressure down; and a slightly distressed baby was rescued, hale and hearty, by way of a lift-out forceps delivery and an episiotomy. I had the enema and shave quite willingly because I happened to like the rather bawdy, extrovert old midwife who offered them; as for ritual humiliation of women, Sister Hubbard would not have put up with any of that for a minute. (Her own technique of ritual humiliation of arrogant young male doctors on the ward was wonderful to behold.)
The irony is that, when it came to the second birth in a very liberal, natural-childbirth-minded hospital, I spent half my labour saying things like: ‘What about an epidural, eh, nurse? Are you sure I shouldn’t be shaved? If a little episiotomy would speed things up, I’m sure … Suppose you broke the waters now, eh, doctor? I’m sure I should have had a colonic irrigation by now …’ In short, I was an even worse bore. I had no anaesthetic at all, except for a happy interlude with the gas-and-air cylinder (a pretty exciting experience for a girl who has gone nine months without a drink); I had a tear instead of an episiotomy, and felt no particular difference afterwards.
The moral of all this is: relax. Or, if you want, be a bore. The great thing about childbirth is that it is the last time you can behave appallingly, swear, lay down the law, shriek, groan and bash your husband in the chest, and be forgiven. You are the star, the primadonna; make the most of it. Once the new star arrives, to the sound of your last furious swear-word, you will have to behave again, and be gentle and self-sacrificing. Enjoy your last fling.
Practicalities
Hospitals give you lists of things to bring with you; the one thing never mentioned is paper knickers; or, if you can’t find them in the shops, the worst old Mummy-pants in your drawer, to throw away. Take 20 pairs, and you’ll never regret it. And however lissome you are, this is absolutely not the moment for thongs. Enough said.
Understandably, hospitals don’t encourage you to bring anything much into the delivery room, but various groups like the National Childbirth Trust will recommend amusements and comforts, ranging from sponges to light reading. Here are some less conventional items that women have taken into the delivery room and been glad of:
• A pair of thick woolly socks (hot face, cold feet).
• An aerosol spray of ‘Fresh Air’. (One friend says, ‘I farted like a mad thing all the way through, very embarrassing smell.’ Sorry.)
• A small plastic plant-spray for when your husband gets bored with sponging your face all the time.
• A cassette machine of music. (But beware. Just as the obstetrician approached with his forceps to extract my first, Paul switched on our machine to take my mind off it all, and it happened to be set at a sea song: ‘Haul away Joe’. Not very tasteful, but it made the doctor laugh.)
• A camera. (Pictures of your baby at ten minutes old are wonderful. For some reason they look more grown-up than a week later: wise and amused.)
• Lip salve.
• A guitar. (One girl tried to get permission for a Hammond Organ, but failed.)
• A mirror (to watch the head born, if you fancy. I don’t).
• Harpers & Queen. (Not a magazine I normally read, but Jennifer’s Diary, performed in a high posh voice by Paul, kept me laughing immoderately into the gas-and-air mask right up to the start of second-stage labour.) Hello or OK! magazine would do as well. Nothing serious is going to get through your defences, so don’t assume this is the moment to tackle Stephen Hawking for the first time.
• A laptop and a stack of DVD films (if you’re that techno-friendly. Anything with Goldie Hawn in it is a good bet, I am told).
• A picnic for afterwards (miss hospital mealtimes and you’ve had it for six hours).
• A Marybean (tropical seed from the West Indies, believed to be lucky in childbirth).
• A horseshoe (same reason).
• A game of Scrabble. (But one mother reports that it easily gets a bit close to the bone. ‘Blood … conception … tubes … then we gave up!’)
Above all, or instead of it all:
• A father. If he won’t come, he won’t, and a girlfriend or sister or mother would do. Better a willing partner than a groggy, reluctant one. But if the baby’s father will come, he might surprise you: men are often so good in the labour room, contrary to daft old legends, that the midwives are lost in admiration. (It can go too far, even. The young nurse breathed admiringly to me, after Rose was born, ‘Your husband is wonderful. Anyone would think he had been at dozens of confinements.’ I replied, a little sourly, that this was unlikely. Unless he has a hobby of which I know nothing. Perhaps he slips on a white coat and creeps into maternity wards on his days off.)
Afterword
The days in hospital with a newborn, and the first fragile week back home, are a strange, limbo-like time. Selfishness is absolutely essential. Don’t keep trying to please everyone; it’s your time. If you don’t want a difficult relative to visit you, say so. One girl, who had lost a baby at four days, had suffered all through her second pregnancy from her mother-in-law’s insinuations about genetic defects (‘If it happens once, it’ll happen again’). She was frantic to keep this dreadful old bag away, at least for five or six days; but had been advised by all sorts of well-meaning professionals that hospital visiting was vital to ‘family bonding’. I am afraid I sneakily advised her to hold her ground, and, if necessary, ban her own mother as well, just to even things out diplomatically.
Accepting help is also essential. Independent, strong, healthy women feel stupid at being brought meals in bed and having their babies’ nappies changed by nurses, or back home by kindly sisters-in-law or paid maternity nurses. But take advantage. If you looked around in an old-fashioned hospital where mothers stay in for several days, you could always tell the first-from second-time mothers on a ward; all the novices would be struggling tearfully with the fifth nappy of the morning, sticking pins in themselves and annoying the baby, just to prove they can cope. Meanwhile the old lags lie back on their pillows, murmuring, ‘Well, sister, I do have a little backache, if you’d be terribly kind and change him I’d be so grateful …’ They don’t have to prove that they can cope alone. They’ve done it. Anyway, everybody, except the very subnormal, can cope alone eventually, tough though it may be. Why start work early when you could be lying back eating grapes and cuddling a nice, clean, changed baby? If you feel ropey, are incontinent, in pain from stitches, piles, sore nipples, engorgement or whatever, it will pass; there is no point in feeling that you have to win your maternal spurs now, in the first couple of days, by changing every nappy.
By the way, bursting into tears on Day Five is so common a phenomenon that nobody who looks after new mothers is remotely surprised by it. But don’t time your most unnerving and demanding visitors for Day Five, and tell your partner in advance that it may happen, and does not mean that you are sinking into the lowest abysses of real post-natal depression.
The only thing worth fighting about, in hospital, is demand-feeding. These days you rarely even have to fight for it. Appalling though it may seem to feed a baby every 45 minutes round the clock (each feed lasting 15 minutes … or more …
