Many moons ago......

There's not many days from the last decade which I can recall in miniscule detail but eleven years ago this very hour I can tell you precisely what I was doing and where.  Tomorrow is Danny's birthday and I'm sure I am not alone in being able to remember the horendous experience which is childbirth like it was only yesterday.

Danny, surprisingly enough, was the easiest of all four.  Surprising because he has been the most trouble ever since.  Maybe this is some poetic irony of Mother Nature?  Although when I say he was the easiest, it was by no means easy.  Is it ever?  Well sometimes perhaps for a minority of women I think it is.  You hear these outrageous stories of heavily pregnant ladies visiting the loo in the night with an urge to pass wind and hey presto a baby falls out.  Even worse are the stories of women who actually give birth without even realising they were pregnant in the first place.  I have to say I was always highly skeptical of such tales until I experienced it for myself.  Not personally of course, but I know someone it happened to. 

A lady at Euan's school whom I used to chat to periodically, visited her doctor one Friday complaining of stomach pains only to be informed that she was pregnant.  Not one month, not two, not three or four.  She was NINE months pregnant and the pains were labour.  Monday morning she walks in to school with a newborn and we other mums nearly pass out.      Her shape really hadn't ever changed.  She had/has rather an adrogynous figure - no waist, no hips, just barrel-like but not particularly overweight.  I think she had perhaps gained a couple of pounds that's all.   How she didn't feel anything kicking from within though I do not understand.  All very strange. 

I wonder if she was as oblivious during the making part.

Getting back to me now.   Euan (number one) was a hideous experience.  Before the birth  I was certain women generally over dramatised the event.  Surely, I thought, if it were so so bad no-one would have a second.  How wrong I was.  Perhaps I deserved to suffer with that cocky attitude, and suffer I did.  After thirty six hours in the delivery room and two sleepless nights later I looked and felt like a character from night of the living dead.  But it was worth it and I soon forgot the trauma afterwards (my suspision is that this is attributable to some kind of conspiratorial government sponsored drug administered at the scene which is the real reason women continue to procreate). 

Maisey was fairly easy.  Born by caesarian so just straight in and out.  The only pain there was afterwards you go on a drip which induces labour (yes its all rather backwards) in order for your womb to contract and return to its normal size.  For about five hours afterwards that really hurt.  I can still remember Chris suggesting that the midwifes turn the power up to get it over with quicker.....I shan't tell you what my response was.

Charlotte, number 3, was the absolute pits.  She is the one I could never repeat.  Hour after hour they kept telling me it would all be over very soon, rotten liars.  I was induced, had my waters broken, was blasted with the drip on it's very highest level and still nothing.  All the way through I could hear Chris informing anyone and everyone who would listen "she's not very good at this you know".   Like it's some kind of talent you can develop.  An Olympic sport perhaps. Well one day I am going to ram something large up his derrier and see how good he is at pushing it back out. 

But Danny, he was simple.  Went in at 10.00pm with a few pains (10 days overdue) they monitored me, realised that something was wrong, rushed me in to surgery and by 2.00am had whipped the little sucker out.  Turns out he had pooped in his water and swallowed some.  That's my boy.  I can still see them pulling him out and lifting him up and me thinking "holy mother of plod, he's hideous".  Honestly he did look awful.  All purple and fat and crinkly.   Chris wasn't there but my Mum was with me.....she was watching the entire operation and giving me a running commentary.  Said my insides looked like a load of pasta shells in tomato sauce.  I think it was at this point I threw up, and being anaesthatised from the neck down it just ran across my face and trickled down the back of my head. 

Anyway that's my reminiscing over, but I do love thinking about the days each of them joined me here in this world.  Nomatter how unbelievably painful it was, they were definitely the best four days of my entire life.  Nothing can top that feeling you have when you hold a newborn in your arms.  It's better than any other love I've ever known.  And I must remind myself of that the next time I feel wound up or like motherhood is just one big fat drudgery to be endured.  It is infact a wonderful privilege. 

I don't think I told you what Euan said in his Mothers Day Card "Mum, you are the best, always calm and caring.....at least when you've taken your pills".

Keep on popping them girl.  Keep on popping.
x x