From Here to Maternity

March 2004

A month in...and still in shock

IF I have learned one thing in the last two months of maternity leave its that the statement that you forget the pain of childbirth the moment your baby is put into your arms is a lie.Sure, the memory dulls. But I can't say, four weeks after the birth of my first baby, that I've forgotten it. I've come to appreciate that without the pain, there is no gain, but there is enough still going on in my body (which I won't go into in a family newspaper!) to make me aware that the experience of childbirth stings a little!

My son Joseph was born on February 3, exactly 44 minutes before his due date and almost 26 hours after my waters broke. That in itself was an experience I doubt I will forget. Having been admitted to hospital the day before with all the symptoms of pre-eclampsia I had just been settling down for a relaxing night, and was listening to Brian Kennedy sing of his desire to be back in Carrickfergus when "pop"….and the indignity began.I have to say though, the antenatal ward at our local hospital has much of the spirit of a POW camp about it. The women all know they aren't getting out with battling against the odds and there was a certain death row humour in my ward as we waited it out overnight to see who would be the next to progress to the labour ward. (We spent a lot of the night competing over who had dilated the most and whose pains were coming at the most regular intervals. All we would have needed to make the experience a proper party was a bottle of vodka and some streamers!)In the end it was me who left our merry bunch first, but I fear it was only because I literally begged, cried and screamed in the end!

This was not my finest hour. (Nor was my mad grappling for the gas and air in the labour ward, but I'll leave the details of the actual delivery for another day).To suddenly (or not so suddenly in my case….you do recall it took 26 hours!!) become a mother is a life changing and somewhat daunting moment. I looked at my son, every part of him the double of his daddy, and felt a wave of love I had never experience before (or was it relief that it was all over?) but I also had that feeling of "what do we do now?".Yes, I had changed nappies before (but not wee boy nappies, with the ever present risk you can get sprayed in the face), and yes, I had given plenty of "bobos" to babies in the past, but not to my baby (where I would worry that he was taking too much/ too little/ not burping/ poohing/ peeing enough), and as for the trauma of trying to bath a 6lb 9oz baby with a nurse inspecting your every move….well needless to say the wee man nearly drowned!Overnight I had gone from being a woman who loved her sleep to someone who will probably never sleep a full night again. As we took our son home, we slept (and I use the phrase loosely) with the lights on, the door open and, I think, quite possibly one eye open all night, listening for every squeak, fart and gurgle (and I'm not just talking about Joseph's daddy here!).While we have made valiant efforts to claim back some part of our lives for ourselves I'm ashamed to say that on more than occasion we have attempted to toast our son's arrival and gone to bed leaving our glasses of wine untouched.

Our conversations have moved on from being about world affairs, fine wines and nice places to dine out to being about the colour, consistency and frequency of our son's bowel movements and we have both come to value the dummy as our most favourite fashion accessory.I can no longer take a shower as and when I want, leave the house without bringing most of its contents with me, put on any clothes that don't have elasticated waist bands or bargain on getting through the day without a puddle of spew landing on my top/ trousers/ in my hair or down the front of my bra (that's such a lovely experience!). Nor can I have a conversation with any other mother without the words "stitches", "pain" and "stretch marks" being dropped in hither and thither, but strangely I don't care. (In fact myself and another new mum this week compared stretch marks at the bus stop at the bottom of the Racecourse Road!)You see, four weeks in, something wonderful is also starting to happen.

My son, my gorgeous, precious baby boy, is starting to smile! And this week, on Monday, he giggled. All gummy mouthed and bright eyed and beautiful and suddenly I found myself thinking that the pain hadn't been so bad after all, and the sleep deprivation is actually quite fun and the nappies….well, the nappies still stink but it can't all be plain sailing!