Philosophical Wankery

I have given birth twice.

This is a matter which is central and important to me, and not only for the obvious reasons (my two teenager ratbags of beloved sons). This is also something I count as formative life experience in its own right.

My first son was a loving and shy infant in the womb (yes, you can know what they are like before they are born - their nature is there, already present), reticent about coming out into the world. His feet were under the right side of my ribcage, from pretty early on till the end. I knew he didn't want to come out. He just didn't. He was two weeks overdue, I had been given a date to be induced in a day or so, when finally, slowly, things started to happen. The day before I went into hospital I spent in annoying discomfort - not pain - as he was trying to grind his head low down inside my pelvis - "engage the head" as the lingo goes - in (reluctant, I was sure) readiness to be born. That evening there was a bit of water, I wanted to go to the hospital, and the twenty-four hour labour-suiteathon began, during which

I learned I can't keep anything in when I give birth. In the long run, this results in a serious lack of blood sugars. I learned that pain in itself doesn't kill you, even if you think it will. I learned that being means being encased in a body, and that being encased in a body means supreme and utter loneliness, but that there is a comfort in this loneliness, too - the loneliness itself.

My son was born after three shifts of midwives had completed their shift, gone home to their families and lives, shopped, cooked their dinners, helped their kids with their homework, watched telly, brushed their teeth, fucked their husbands, whatever it is that midwives - being ordinary people - do in their ordinary lives, and all I'd done meanwhile was give birth. He had fluid on the lungs, his breathing was gurgly. I asked someone - a nurse, a midwife - whether he was going to die. She replied she couldn't say. When his breathing hadn't cleared after an hour, he was taken to the special care baby unit, against all my plans of utterly natural childbirth. After my son was gone, the midwives seemed to disappear as well. An orderly appeared in the room I was now alone in. My waist-long dreadlocks (and lack of child, possibly) didn't endear me to her, and she told me to get myself washed, without a hint of warmth. Am I allowed to get up, I asked, vaguely aware of the fact I had been through quite a lot in the last twenty-four hours. Go in the bath, she replied. My legs felt like worn cotton wool as I made my way to the bathroom. Afterwards, I couldn't decide whether to have the spagetti or the risotto of the vegetarian options available, and ordered both. I spent my son's first night asleep on a chair next to his incubator, with one hand inside it, touching his back. In spite of enduring the entire labour without pain killers, I felt I had failed, that I hadn't given him the non-violent entry into the world I had envisioned.

My younger son was a leprechauny clown unable to keep still, from before birth. He lay in my womb with his back against my spine - this is uncommon. He would push his arms and legs out to their full length, forcing my tummy into a distorted cube with four irregularly-peaked corners and a horrid hollow in the middle. I had to cover it with a newspaper or a blanket when I watched telly, it was too freaky-scary (not to mention uncomfortable). I used to dream of grabbing hold of an ankle or a wrist. He, too, was calculated as being a fortnight overdue (although in his case, the dates were wrong, as evidenced by his skin being covered in vernix, and him having the pot-bellied spindly-legged spider look of newborns, both of which attributes my elder lacked, being instead perfectly formed and "grown-up looking" when born, and peeling all over as one sunburnt). With him, too, I was given a date to arrive for inducing within a day of him actually being born (we induced him with the natural method, instead). I woke at three-thirty, knowing this was it, got up and ate some cereal and attempted a bath. The attempt made me realise things were going to move a lot more quickly this time. On the way to the hospital - an hour's drive down winding Welsh country lanes - we got stuck behind not one but three pre-fabricated homes being transported at a snail's pace on the back of equally many lorries. I thought I was going to end up having him in the green Vauxhall Cavalier. The car radio announced it was St George's Day. Let's call him George, their dad joked. No f*cking way, I replied, not much in a mood for joking. When I got into the labour ward,

I squatted down, swore, hung by my arms from the door frame, swore, kicked the walls, swore. I learned I swear a lot when I give birth, and take no shit from anyone. I got into the birth pool and was reminded I can't keep anything in when I give birth. I learned we are - possibly primarily - bodies, and that being a body is being strong and wise and capable beyond the individual's capabilities. I learned about pain and strength, and about the strangeness of the feeling when one's self is pushed aside and becomes an observer to events only.

My younger son was born within two hours of my arriving at the hospital, two ounces under ten pounds. For the first time in my life, I knew I had done something brilliantly, outstandingly, flawlessly. As he and I relaxed in the maternity ward that afternoon, my midwife - a wonderful woman, shaped like the Venus of Willendorf, dark, smooth hair, high cheekbones, slanty eyes, she could have been Sami rather than Welsh! - came to thank me for the experience before going home after her shift.

And this is really only what happened, not what happened to me in the process of it all happening.



(The title of this post? My one-before-latest google search hit. Yes, really. The very latest one, eerily, was actually looking for me - anna mr blogs maids. Own up, own up, whoever you are.)