If my previous post scared you, I suggest you don't proceed further to read this one.
I think there is a reason why most mothers tell their daughters "Oh you'll forget the pain once the baby comes" when posed with the inevitable "Does having a baby hurt?".
Take it from me, it's a pain you'll never forget, never ever. And how do some girls go through all that again, knowing the facts and experiencing everything first hand, is beyond my understanding. There must be some divine intervention that clouds your judgement.
The Chinese are the compassionate ones, "You poor thing, you've been to hell and back, you should not be put through that ordeal again." Go China!
I wanted to have a normal birth, I mean who wants to drug their baby right? But knowing that I had a very low threshold for pain I had an anaesthetist on standby. And a lousy one at that, who gave me a frigging 75% dosage so that I would be able to cooperate with the birthing team when it was time to pop the baby. If you're taking the drugs, take them right, don't settle. Or else like me you'll end up with a 100% pain concentrated in about 25% of your labour area and will probably pop out other things along with the baby.
So to continue from where I left off, I got the drugs that I was begging for and they worked beautifully for two hours. Then I felt this wrenching pain in the left side of my stomach. Something evil was having a rave party in there. I asked for the drugs again, and by now you should know the response; a big fat no.
Their apathetic rebuttals to my pleas triggered the following:
- I cursed the anaesthetist
- asked the nurses to give him a call that very minute
- told the nurses that I wanted to talk to him on the phone
- told them that the fellow was an idiot for not giving me a dose enough to keep me out of pain
- doubted whether he was a doctor at all and posed that question rather loudly to everyone in the labour room
- screamed my head off
And then magically I felt another cool thing down my spine; they had just administered another dose, of course not 100% because I was still in pain. But I guess the screaming had some effect.
In between all that they had hooked me with a catheter because I refused to pee on the bed; I was not going to do something that I had tried so hard to kick off millions of years ago.
There was a nurse asking me to breathe, and believe me I was trying. All that I learnt during the pre-natal classes took a flying-'the thing you have to do to make a baby'.
I was doing the hee hee - hoo hoo breathing which didn't do a damn thing to ease the pain but made me look like a runaway from the psycho ward.
By then I am sure that the whole scene in the delivery room was reminiscent of the Exorcist. My obstetrician made an appearance, I imagine with a bible and holy water and stood at the bloody end of my bed. The nurse was holding my hand, mumbling to herself; she might have been asking god to save her from this vicious thing that had possession of her hand.
And then it was time to get the baby out. I was told to push
But I had no clue what to do, what do I push, how do I push. I made the sounds and faces that I saw on TV but they were not pushing anything out. Then the nurse said, "bikki, bikki". This was not the time to improve my vocabulary in the local language. I told her, not very politely that I didn't understand. And she, to rid herself of me told me I had push in a way to stimulate bowel movement; of course she didn't tell me in so many nice words. They were all in the local language, said in a tone as you may to a child when they are being toilet trained. Once I received clear instructions I started doing what I had to do. I pushed and I pushed and I pushed some more.
And then she came out, looking more like a reptile than a human, but she was my little baby. So tiny and screaming her lungs out, I forgot the damned pain for a second, but only a second, we had made a baby, a real live baby. It was a frigging miracle!
