the one that got away
Sunday, March 04, 2007
I was going to write a cheery little post about the funny side of having my insides messed up to the extent that it's too dangerous to have a natural birth. Yesterday morning in the shower, I tried to think of what sort of amusing spin I could put on the situation. My idea was to write something along the lines of 'Oh well, at least I won't have to try all the usual remedies to kick off labour, or to get the baby into the right position (all together now: 'head down, spine to the left!') I can ditch the cod liver oil; instead of perching on a birthing ball for the next three months munching fresh pineapple and sipping raspberry leaf tea, I can spend them on my back, eating pies. No need to waddle gamely over uneven forest tracks to jiggle the baby down towards my resolutely non-effaced cervix; nor for specialised yoga poses to strengthen my thighs in case I have a squatting labour; instead I will wallow and slob. Perineal massage? Don't make me laugh.' Etc.
But I don't feel like being cheerful. I'm knackered and anaemic. I have been sick and vomiting for six months and expect to be for the next three to come, and it will only end when I have painful abdominal surgery that will make me feel like a failure because I couldn't 'manage' to have a natural birth. (And natural births are better for the baby because they squeeze all the fluid out of its lungs, making breathing easier.) I won't be able to sit up for the first couple of days; I won't be able to pick up Rebecca, or anything heavier than the baby, for six weeks; I won't be able to drive. I won't be able to carry the baby in a sling. And when the baby screams in the middle of the night in the hospital, it'll take me ten increasingly frantic minutes to haul myself into position so I can tend to it before it wakes up the entire crowded ward.
But hardest to let go of is the redemptive vision I had of, this time around, the baby being placed on my stomach immediately after birth, and my feeling its warm sticky skin against mine, and its nuzzling as it tries to figure out where the boobie is. When Rebecca was born, I remember her first cries, but little else. I could see half of her outraged little face as Jack sat next to me holding her, but I couldn't move to take her myself. All I could do was turn my head to retch into a kidney dish balanced on my right shoulder, as the surgeons stitched me up. Then I went to the recovery room, and she went to neonatal intensive care, because the labour had gone on for so long that she was distressed and feverish, and needed to be assessed. She came back to me in the ward 10 hours later, canulae in her tiny forearms, a little round sticker on her back where they'd done a lumbar puncture, and only then was I able to get a good look at her, let alone to hold her properly.
The midwives on the ward attached a rope ladder to the end of my bed; not being able to use my abdominal muscles to sit up in bed, it was a question of grasping the end of the ladder and going hand over hand, using my shoulder and back muscles. But it was still very painful; the incision burned and pulled every time I changed position. Because of the haemorrhage on the operating table, a drain had been installed in the incision to draw off pooling fluid and prevent infection; this too hampered movement and prevented me from getting out of bed, not that I felt up to getting up. It was removed after a couple of days on the ward; inched out by a midwife who seemed irritated by my yelps of pain, which I tried to stifle. The drain, as far as I could tell, appeared to be stitched along the wound; it stuck painfully every time it was withdrawn another centimetre. I felt stupid, and wimpish, that I found this distressing, and wished I could be more staunch; this wasn't helped by the midwife's apparent belief that I was just being tiresome.
I conscientiously obeyed the directive to be up and about as soon as possible in order to speed my recovery, shoving the baby's fishtank along the corridor in front of me. But I felt pretty feeble: I wasn't given a blood transfusion until the night before I left the hospital, so there were a couple of times before then that everything went black and I had to be wheelchaired back to my bed by tutting midwives. Again, I felt stupid and embarrassed: even when I was trying to do the right thing it turned out I was being a pain in the arse.
Why I am I so disappointed that I have to have another Caesarean? Because last time the aftermath was debilitating, painful, protracted. I didn't see my baby for hours after the birth. Rational as I tried to be about the medical necessity of the procedure, and that the most important thing was that I had a healthy daughter, I still felt like a failure, especially when I heard her coughing up all the gunge out of her breathing passages, gunge that would have been squeezed out had I 'managed' to push her out through the birth canal, the proper way. And especially when I struggled to breastfeed because having her lying on my healing scar was so uncomfortable. I tried other feeding positions that were supposed to reduce pressure on my scar; lying on my side in bed with her next to me; tucking her under my arm with her head on my thigh. She just kept coming unlatched and rolling away, and then screaming with frustration.
This time, I'm told, things will be very different. I'll be physically and mentally prepared; I won't be at my lowest ebb after two days of trying to have the baby naturally. The whole procedure will be calmer, and less fraught. Civilised, even. And as I won't be as exhausted, the risk of complications such as haemorrhage will be lessened; in any case the surgeons, aware of my history, will be on the alert. Hopefully, the baby won't be distressed by a long, futile labour, and won't have to be taken away from me for hours to be assessed; instead I'll be able to hold him or her while I'm in the recovery room. This time I will have family in the country to help me look after my children as I recover (last time we were in the UK, and J had to go back to work a week after I returned from the hospital, leaving me on my own). This time I will know from experience to be more assertive about pain relief, to ask for help with breastfeeding, not to beat myself up if it doesn't work. To expend less effort trying to be a good patient.
I don't know how to finish this, so I can only end hoping for the best.
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