Open Writing

Wednesday 29 October 1980

‘Gmmn.’ The sound of my own groan is enough to shove me through the bits of dream and sleep fog into wakefulness. Yuck, I’m wet. I’ve wet the bed!

I hurry into our tiny bathroom, disgusted and alarmed. The last time I wet a bed was pre-memory. I don’t understand what’s happening. I’ve been unwell all weekend, achy and weary, but that can’t be it. My first antenatal class will be tonight. The baby isn’t due for six and a half more weeks. I’m frightened.

‘Howard,’ I call from the toilet, ‘something’s wrong. I’ve wet the bed and can’t stop weeing.’

‘You mucky cow,’ he says. The bed creaks. ‘It’s not even six o’clock.’ I hear his head flop back down onto the pillow.

‘Could you phone the hospital to find out what we should do?’ I ask.

‘I’m not going to tell someone my wife can’t stop weeing!’

I dribble down our narrow stone stairs and phone myself.

‘It sounds like your waters have broken,’ the nurse tells me. ‘An ambulance is on the way.’

My repentant husband is suddenly wide awake and rushing about like any new father in a television sit-com. I dress and run a comb through my wild hair. I’m still leaking.

It takes ages for the ambulance to arrive. We live in an old cottage, in a remote village, on the edge of the hospital’s catchment area. The driver suggests Howard lead the way because of his knowledge of the winding country lanes.

Howard speeds off then has to stop and wait for the ambulance, which won’t travel much faster than 30 miles an hour for fear of hastening the arrival of the baby. I waddle into the hospital and the soggy seat of my maternity dress slaps against the back of my legs. I feel like a child that’s had an accident in class. The doctor examines me and says I’m not in labour and it could be another week but I will have to stay in hospital. He sends Howard off to work.

They’re very busy in the maternity ward so I’m put in a bare, little side room on my own. The muscles across my huge bump may not be contracting but I’m struggling with excruciating back pain. I alternate between worrying about the baby and the fact that I don’t know how to relax yet. We’re supposed to learn that at antenatal class, tonight.

I try to think about how much I’ve loved being pregnant, couldn’t wait to ‘show’. Howard and I were both keen that we did everything to help our baby have a good start in life. Neither of us smoked anyway but we cut out alcohol and Howard encouraged me to drink plenty of milk and eat spinach and liver (which I hate).

All the way through my pregnancy I felt I was a month further along than my dates or the doctor indicated. Ultrasound was relatively new and not standard practice. The signposts I read about in the baby books appeared to happen earlier than they should. But you assume doctors know best.

To squash down my rising fear and pain, I try to recall funny things that happened. Like the fact that a couple of my older colleagues at work guessed I was pregnant before I did, when I went off tea and coffee. At least my cravings weren’t too bizarre, family sized tins of rice pudding usually satisfied.

Howard looked younger than his twenty four years, probably due to good health and his golden curls. I remember how upset he was, one day, whilst in the local sandwich shop near where he worked. The woman on the till had asked him when the baby was due and the customer behind almost dropped her shopping.

‘How old are you? she squeaked.

‘Well, how old do you think I am?’ he replied, quite unprepared for her revelation that she thought he was only fifteen.

I found it hilarious and assured him he would be very grateful when he was forty-five and looked thirty-five.

The howling ache in my back has clawed through every corner of my body now, slashing further memories from its path. I try everything I can think of to cope with the pain, including attempting to remember how to count to a hundred in French.

The single window is high and off behind me. There is nothing to read, no one to talk to and nothing to distract me. I’m afraid to move in case it will hurt the baby. I imagine the poor thing trapped inside me without its warm amniotic bath to cushion against bumps and bangs.

By afternoon, the torture becomes unbearable. I can’t stand it any longer and ring the bell for help.

A very harassed midwife huffs in and snaps on some rubber gloves. ‘We’re very busy, you know.’ She pulls my legs up and examines me.

‘The head, the head!’

Suddenly, everything is in motion and I’m hurtling down the corridor on my bed. The delivery suite isn’t ready so I’m parked in a tiny, windowless side room with a young nurse. I can’t think beyond the agony and plead for relief. The nurse gives me an injection of Pethadin, which she shouldn’t have, apparently, so close to delivery. It sends me spinning into space.

Meanwhile, Howard has sorted things out at work for this unexpected event and returns as soon as he is able to be by my side. We’d talked about whether he should be present at the birth but being exceptionally squeamish about blood, he wasn’t sure he could do it. He’s been known to pass out just having his blood pressure taken. But when the nurses see him walk in through the hospital doors, they press a shower cap thing on his head, plastic bags on his feet and push him into the room.

I’m so relieved to see him that I want to cry. The drugs have made me loud and gushy. The delivery room is full of people because they expect the baby to be premature but I feel almost invisible. There are specialist nurses, a midwife, paediatrician and heaven only knows who else, all busy doing their jobs around me. Thank goodness the Pethadin and the pain have removed my inhibitions or I don’t think I could bear lying there with my legs in the air, naked from the waist down.
A masked person leans over and asks, ‘Do you mind if these twelve student midwives come in to watch?’

‘Sure, why not?’ It all seems unreal and I don’t care what they do anymore, as long as they get this baby out as soon as possible. But poor Howard is embarrassed on my behalf. He unsuccessfully tries to shush my shrieks.

After the head, the shoulders slip through with a last push. The baby is whisked away and panic creeps into my spinning mind. I can’t even feel the stitches they’re putting in where I was cut to ease the passage.

When James is finally in my arms, breathing on his own, with all his fingers and toes, I’m euphoric, far beyond the effect of the painkiller. He’s so tiny, so perfect that I’m overwhelmed by the responsibility of his care. My body feels full to bursting with electric sunshine and gratitude to God for this precious child.

The baby isn’t, as it turns out, six weeks premature. I’d been right about being a month further along. As good, hardworking and clever as doctors are, it’s worth knowing they don’t always get it right.