Confessions of a Mother - Part 1

Labour & All Its Glory 

 

 

I have two girls - Cedar 7 and Macy 5.

 

Hayden (Boogs) my husband, and I had our babies in our mid 30’s. In fact Boogs was 29 and I was 34. Yes, I’m a cougar and proud of it. I had two miscarriages and grew a semi serious paranoia between the connection of my abuse and my inability to grow a baby! It was short lived and the rest is history.

 

We are so very blessed with our children. I love them both to death and know my world wouldn’t be worth living without them. That I know is true….

 

My labour with Cedar was fucking horrendous. 9 plump hours, excruciating pain at a level I cannot possibly describe and a body which endured so much physical hell. A grade 3 tear, 2.5 hours of stitching (it had to be redone half way through the procedure), all while my body was shaking uncontrollably. We tried for a water birth however my baby had ingested its own poo so that didn’t work. Instead I slogged it out in my room with a mixed bag of sounds and sights. I moaned and groaned and clenched and squeezed, I showered, I stood, I lay, I sat, I hunched, I wriggled, I bobbed…I hated it. I hated it. I hated it. 

 

I birthed at the unbelievably amazing Mullumbimby hospital where pregnancies, labour and birth are only considered where there have been no complications. Hence, why they don’t have drugs on offer. That was cool with me. I didn’t want drugs as part of my birth plan anyway…But wholly fucking mother of all mothers! I was mentally firing at all pockets of strength and they were taking their sweet arse time to deliver me some sanity. The only thing that would sort this out was if this baby came the fuck out of my body! I wanted it out so bad. If I had the energy I would’ve chucked an intense tantrum. It was like being stuck in a human sized vice where some dude cranked the wheel a little tighter whenever he bloody well felt like it. Yes, this person was a man! No matter what I did, I couldn’t push this fucker out. It was the most out of control situations I’ve landed myself in and my entire body was so ridiculously tired.

 

Eventually, around the 6th or 7th hour, my body had an urge to push. Hallelujah! Here we go…let’s get this thing out of me NOW! I wasn’t thinking, oh I’m about to meet my beautiful first born child. I wasn’t thinking pretty thoughts about how precious this experience is or how emotionally connected to Mother Earth I was feeling. I was thinking how fucked up it was to be in this situation. I wanted to give up! I was spent….

 

So here I am pushing and the midwife tells me after the millionth internal, to hold off because I hadn’t dilated enough. Stop freakin me out!!! All sorts of expletives were going on in my head but all I wanted to do was collapse in a heap, cry buckets and a say sorry, I’m done! 

 

My Doctor was on his way. He arrived after what felt like a month and took one look up my clacker and said, ‘you’re not ready to push. I need to tweak your cervix as you have what is called ‘anterior lip’ and move it across to allow your baby to move though. So NO pushing’. Are you kidding me? I had this almighty urge to drop this thing like a front row forward but he’s telling me I CANNOT PUSH! I look at my husband and want to punch him in the face and ring his penis so tight it drops off. Fuck this shit!!

 

So I kid you not, I had to reverse my urges to push, and there were 3 or so hours of it. There was a full blown battle going on in my body between nature and a flipping anterior lip. My body was lying to me. Mentally, these few hours would turn out to be the most monumental challenge of my life. By this time my baby was suffering from meconium. Ingesting its own poo. Great! Well, what am I supposed to do about that. Push the baby out? Oh that’s right, I’m not allowed to push. So suck it up baby, stay strong, hang in there. This mother of yours is trying her best and her best is not good enough! That urge to push when I shouldn’t push played havoc in my head. It was a furious battle and one I knew I had to overcome. I knew I had the discipline required to get through this test of torture!

 

Finally, I hear those words, ‘you can start to push!!!’ Oh my god, I’m on the home stretch! I’m panting and pushing and panting and pushing and this baby is still not coming out. Why didn’t someone tell me this could happen? Now what do I do…add a few guttural cow cries into the mix and hope like crazy that works. In the mean time my doctor is so relaxed with his no shoes on, lying on the floor with his hands tucked behind his head to elevate his view straight up into my box of glory - haemorrhoids, a half waxed flap that my husband attempted to tidy when I was ready to pop but instead, near hurled me through the roof by using the incorrect procedure. It near ripped  the skin from the gates to my uterus. I can’t remember if the poo was still between my legs or if I’d showered since pooing myself? No pooing in my pants because I didn’t have any on. Charming! To be perfectly honest, I couldn’t have cared less what I looked like down there or who was checking me out. 

 

At this moment I’m close to riding on empty. I don’t have much left and I can’t help but think of all the other Women who have been here done that! I can’t let them down. I can’t let myself down, I can’t let this defeat me. By this time the midwives words started echoing in my ears…'push downwards and pretend you’re doing a poo’….'harder, push harder’…and this went on like a record on repeat. I wanted to kick the legs from under her and scream, ‘shut the fuck up, I’m pushing as hard as I fucking can, get off my case’ but then I remember I have to listen to her. She’s the expert and if she can guide me through this then I need her. My husbands trying his best but I still want to poke his eyes out. I think to myself, I’m never having sex with you ever again. I’m shutting shop if I survive this thing!

 

The heads half out but stuck. Great! The Dr suggests I stand up with a person on either side, like a scrum. I stand, somehow, and wrap my arms around Boogs and the support person. They hold me tight around the waist and with a few contractions later and one last almighty ‘doing a poo’ push, our baby flies out, rips me to threads, slides straight through the doctors hands and goes splat on the floor. There is blood everywhere. Even on the curtain which remains there for the next three days to remind me of my traumatic event. 

 

The midwife tells us it’s a girl and I don’t give two shits whether it’s a girl or a boy. I’m so relieved the pain has stopped, however I’m bleeding a lot, the pros are fiddling around with my body, there’s a baby sucking my boob, I’m shaking so bad I have to be held down. Another Dr is called in to access our baby and to provide an opinion on my tear and whether I need an ambulance to Tweed Heads hospital? Seriously just make me ok. I’m worried. I’m given a needle to stop the bleeding but not before I give birth to the placenta. Just when you think it’s over, it’s not. In saying that though, it was a piece of piss compared to the rest of it.

 

Once my Dr starts stitching my vag back together, Boogs moves to the foot of my bed with the instruction by the Dr to hold our new baby upside down as she has ingested a lot of poo.

 

Boogs later tells me he was crying while holding our baby, not because he was filled with love and emotion but because he could see the damage to my body. He said the hole was as big as a football! Oh my…

 

Ok so we finally have a beautiful baby girl that we can see and touch and mesmerise over. She is divine, so pretty and ever so precious. I’m in shock. Serious shock. The shaking continues, the Dr goes home as does Julia. Boogs is fast asleep and I’m so wired I feel like I’ve been clubbing under the influence of a copious amount of drugs. I’m extremely exhausted, haven’t eaten for over 24 hours, have expended every ounce of energy and I’m wide awake. I just lay there staring at our baby while the blood inside and out starts to dry. 

 

The next few days are bitter sweet. I’m totally in love, besotted and really loving being a Mum. Visitors come and go. I’m feeling calm and coping quiet well with this new little person. What more could take that bliss away…well cracked and bleeding fucking nipples, that’s what! Toe curling pain and a re visit of contractions every time I breast fed. I still didn’t know whether I could breast feed. It’s never a given. My milk hadn’t come through yet, my nipples looked like a squashed lizard curled up and drying in the sun. It felt like razor blades were carving designs on them for fun. This was totally and utterly shit! I put on a brave face and the word ‘persevere’ ran through my head over and over and over.

 

For the next three days I made my way through half a tub or bucket of soaked prunes. You see, my hemmies were hanging around down there, trying to squeeze any which way but up and they wouldn’t let me go home until I did a poo. Plus my insides were only just in tact and any extra pushing could compromise the 2 1/2 hours of stitching. That’s why they supplied me with free prunes. So much to look forward to!

 

Three days later I hobbled out of there. Three months later I'm still hobbling but not as much. Six months later I'm still tender down there. We didn't have sex for 1 whole year. Poor Boogs! I did feel for him but I didn't give a fuck (literally) to be honest. I only started feeling normal down there around the 9 month mark so the next few months were spent psyching myself for love making! Oh do I really have to?

 

No I wasn't fanging for it, no I wasn't harbouring 12 months of horniness, no our first root wasn't some frothing into a frenzy ripping each thers clothes off root. It was slow and steady and it freaked the fuck out of me. Thank the Gods that I have a very patient husband.

 

We named our little girl - Cedar Tres Eastwell. I love her to bits…