Open Writing

The pain was absolutely excruciating: I knew that and sympathised greatly, but really was there any excuse for the interminable moaning, groaning and screaming that was going on?

I mean, let's face it, we all had to go through it.

I'd been through it to a minor degree two months earlier, when my husband decided that as I was looking very pale and wan and was biting my lips because I felt a few twinges of pain, that the baby was due.

"No two ways about it," he said. "Have you got your bag packed, like they told you at the antenatal class I came to?"

"You mean the one antenatal class you came to where you passed out when they just mentioned that they would be showing a film of the birth of a baby, and we had to get somebody to carry you out?"

"Have you got your bag ready?" he said, ignoring the humiliating past and concentrating on the terrifying future.

"Yes," I replied, admittedly somewhat tartly, because he asked me the same question every night when he packed me off to bed at 7pm, "you made me pack my bag that same night, if you remember!"

"Yes, but, I've seen you empty that bag!" he accused.

"After all these weeks I had to - everything needed washing!"

Another twinge came and I winced.

"Right! That's it! Bag or no bag, we're off!"

"You can't just go," I said desperately, "you have to... to ring up and tell them we're coming."

"No time," he said, briskly, charging upstairs to get the bag from the bottom of the wardrobe.

By this time his panic was beginning to transfer itself to me: there did seem to be quite a few twinges. I began to time them - every five minutes!

I'd be giving birth on the floor, with no one to sterilise scissors to cut the umbilical cord because the only other person in the house would be unconscious!

Panting he came back downstairs, grabbed me by the shoulders and fairly threw me out of the room and into the car. He drove like a maniac towards the hospital, ran breathlessly into accident and emergency, then came hurtling back for me.

In a surprisingly short time I was in a bed, being calmly and gently talked to, seen to and generally cosseted. No sign of my husband of course; he'd hared off to make arrangements for the head wetting.

He came at evening visiting time with a great grin spread across his face and said: "Where is it?" "Where... is... what?" I said, spacing out the words.

"The baby."

"In here," I responded, patting the bump.

"What?"

"False alarm," I said, "they think it'll go the full nine months."

"Oh God!" he groaned. Then he pulled himself together. "I brought you some Maltesers."

He sounded truly deflated.

"You have 'em," I said, kindly, because he looked so woebegone and so very, very young and having a baby had truly taken it out of him.

"Okay," he said, "I'll eat 'em while I'm watching telly tonight. Might as well - have to cancel the pub do."

That was two months ago and here I was again. No false alarm, this. No twinges these.

When I'd been going through this agony for about three hours and the nurse popped in to see if I was still there, I'd said to her: "I've changed my mind."

"Oh yes," she said, pulling the bedclothes so tightly that there was no way of escape.

"Yes, I'm not going to have a baby just yet. I think I'll wait a year or two."

"Don't think it'll be that long, love," she said, and went.

So here I was, the loneliest person in the world, even though I was in the same room as this other woman who was driving me stark raving crazy with her screaming.

When I couldn't stand it any longer, I rang the bell.

After what seemed like three days the nurse came in and said calmly: "What's the matter?"

"Can you put me in another room," I begged, "please, please. That woman is driving me crazy with her screaming and groaning. I absolutely can't bear it any longer."

She gave me a funny look.

"There's only you in here!" she said and went.

It was another two days before my baby was born; two days that are almost a blank - blessed amnesia I think it must be called. I won't go into the body-wrenching, mind splitting birth itself.

Somebody from a very long way away said: "It's a girl!"

By this time I couldn't have cared less if it had been a set of jugs.

"What are you going to call her?"

"Jonathan," I managed weakly; it was the name we had agreed.

Then they gave her to me; this minute, living body with four fingers and a thumb on each hand and, I'll have you know, with nails on each one! She had a down on her small head that was as soft as a snowflake and a mouth that was so exquisite it moved me to tears. She had perfectly formed arms and legs and tiny screwed up eyes.

After a while my husband came in and we just looked at each other then at the baby, utterly dumbstruck. What words can you say when you are looking at perfection?

After a while they took the baby away to clean her up.

When we finally managed to speak, I said: "I've named her Jonathan like we agreed."

"Maybe, er... we should think again," he said, unable to stop grinning.

"What though?"

He dug into his pocket.

"I've got the Radio Times," he said, "course I won't be needing it tonight." His face lit up.

All right, for some, would once have said, but not now... oh, not now.

He ran his finger down a cast list.

"That one," he said.

"Tanya?"

"Yeah."

"Ok."

"It's a really unusual name, that," he said, "bet nobody else has a perfect daughter called Tanya!"

They moved me, when he left, into the ward that contained 10 other brand new mothers.

"I've just had a baby," I announced, proudly, being the only person in the world ever to have given birth, of course.

They looked at me really kindly and smiled.

Somebody said: "Boy or girl?"

"Girl!" I said proudly.

“What are you calling her?"

"It's a really unusual name," I said.

"Great. What is it?"

The television was on.

Hughie Green was leading an elephant onto a stage.

"And this," he announced loudly, "is Tanya."

"Tanya," I said.