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Summer / Autumn 2001. Kentish Town / Stoke Newington Rule 9: everyone is not different
Livy doesn’t want to find out the sex of the baby. She thinks it’ll “spoil the surprise.” I tell her: “Darling, a small person’s head is going to appear out of you, like a big pink egg. As if that weren’t surprising enough!” I want to find out the sex, because we’re having a nightmare thinking up the names. I ask her if everyone wants to know the sex.
“Everyone is different,” she says.
We go to the Natural Birth Clinic in Tuffnel Park, to meet a woman called Amber who’s got hennaed hair, and breath that smells of raw onion. She tells Liv the important thing, during labour, is to breathe. That’s a relief to me. I’ve been worrying that Liv might try holding her breath throughout the whole ordeal. She tells us that doctors are all trying to get you to lie back and take drugs. I’m thinking surely that’s not doctors. It’s pimps.
We go to the NHS pre-natal, where a midwife enthusiastically lists the drug options: gas-and-air – “laughing gas” – which I know all about, cos I had it at a Grateful Dead concert. Admittedly I wasn’t giving birth at the time. As far as I’m aware. “Any questions?” asks the midwife. “Yes!” I say. “We’d like to give birth… well Livy would… leaning forward. Squatting. Is that OK?”
“That’s absolutely fine. Just tell your midwife.”
I expected more of a fight. “But… does that make it easier?” I ask.
“Everyone is different,” says the midwife. I’m sensing that healthcare professionals always say that. It’s the code. If any of them break it, their houses are picketed by midwives and nannies, who stand around sullenly, holding placards and packets of wet wipes.
Liv’s girlfriends come round in a great posse of perfume and pashminas. They drink prodigious quantities of white wine in the kitchen, and they repeat their Birth Stories like they’re Vietnam Vets going over their campaigns. The result of all this is Liv makes a decision: she will out-do all her friends. She will have no drugs. My job is to massage, play gentle classical music, and to back up all her decisions.
I promise to do that, but Liv does not relax. In the seventh month, she wakes me up, on several occasions, to say: “We need to talk about money.” I don’t wake up for sex. I definitely wake for a financial assessment.
I do a live comedy show at Edinburgh in front of two hundred people, where I interview Tony Parsons for my Radio 4 show, Storyman. His wife’s pregnant, and he’s saying reasonably: “Pregnancy is like flying. The excitement is all at the beginning and the end. The rest is just plain sailing.” I suddenly lose it, and start ranting: “It is for YOU, Tony, cos you’re rich. My girlfriend is waking me up at 2 am, and saying to me: “We need to move to Hampstead where it’s safe… but we don’t have money to move to Hampstead… OH God, please cut off your toe nails, I NEED to eat something CRUNCHY with calcium in it!” Pregnancy is like flying, Tony, in that it involves terror. And weird food. And being stuck next to someone who keeps wanting to puke. If you’re flying like that, you’re going EasyJet.”
This is a good routine, but you’re not supposed to rant, when you’re interviewing someone. It doesn’t make them forthcoming. It scares them. And it doesn’t solve my problems at home. And it doesn’t stop the avalanche of advice.
Everyone’s telling me to relax, but no one’s telling that to Livy. In the ninth month, she sleeps about two hours a night. I’m upstairs one Friday afternoon, and Livy calls to me. She’s sitting on the edge of the bath. “My waters have broken,” she says, and she immediately gets her bag and goes to the car. She’s so ready. We set off together to the Elizabeth Garret Anderson hospital in Central London.
The receptionist has blonde hair and a mean mouth. I loom over meaningfully, and say:
“We’re having a baby.”
She doesn’t congratulate us. She says: “Has your labour started?”
“Yes,” says Liv. “My waters broke, an hour ago.”
“But has your labour started? Your contractions?”
“Er… no.”
“Then you must go home.”
“What?” I say.
“How long from waters breaking to contractions starting?” I ask.
“Everyone is different.”
And suddenly I can’t take it any more. “But please give us an average!” I say. “Give us an estimate!”
“Everyone is different,” she says again, and I feel so desperate I want to stand on the desk and start shouting: “Can someone find me a MAN who can give an answer to a question. If I ask a plumber how long it takes to fit a pipe, he takes a guess. It may be a lie! But at least it’s something! Everyone is NOT different! Everyone is saying the same stupid bloody thing and I’m going to fight someone!!!” But I have learned, that, around ladies, you must never show your feelings, and there’s no more female place than a maternity wing.
So we drive home. And that’s the end of a pregnancy experience. A time during which I learn that almost all advice is unhelpful; it would be better just to go with your instinct. I figure out one bit of advice, which no one tells me. This is great advice. You could make bumper stickers out of this one:
“PREGNANCY
is Nature’s Way of telling a lady
that she’s driving home.”
Topics
What is pregnancy like?
What do women eat in pregnancy?
In what circumstances should you take drugs?
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