You will spend the last few weeks of pregnancy desperate to evict that child from your body. And then it will dawn on you that a baby on the inside is so much easier to take care of than a baby on the outside. Plus, getting the baby out sounds like a really unpleasant activity so you decide you simply won’t give birth and you’ll just keep the baby inside for at least a few more months. But …
I’ll say it again: it’s happening, sister. One way or another, that child needs to get out of your body. And if you haven’t noticed, there’s no trapdoor. Something’s gotta give.
Yes, your pelvis is ill-equipped for this business. It’s way too small for what’s going to come out. But, like Optimus Prime, you will transform, and parts of your body will shift and move to let that kid out. The baby’s skull will fold over itself to let him get out of there. It’s totally sci-fi.
The best thing I can say about this is that women go back for more. If it was the worst experience you could ever endure, women wouldn’t do it more than once.
Also, women are bad-ass.
By the time you’re about 38 weeks pregnant, you won’t care if they take to your guts with a hacksaw as long as that human being scratching at your cervix and kicking you in the lungs GETS OUT.
Mother Nature’s a sneaky old cow. She makes sure you’re so uncomfortable and miserable that you’re begging to go into labour. And then, not long after you have that baby in your arms, she makes you forget most of what just happened.
You can write a birth plan, if that makes you feel a bit more in control. But things don’t often go to plan, and that can be upsetting if you’d had your heart set on a particular type of birth.
You might plan a magical water birth, with the voice of Enya floating in the air as you sniff peppermint oil for pain relief, and chant affirmations while your partner gently rubs your back.
But it’s not up to you. It’s up to your baby. And she might want to come out in the middle of the Coles deli section, with Rick Springfield lusting after ‘Jessie’s Girl’ in the background, the apprentice baker assisting, and an elderly lady fanning you with her copy of New Idea.
Motherhood is a complete lack of control, and it starts now.
Women often find they become completely different people during the birthing process. Women who are usually calm and serene can become foul-mouthed psychopaths in labour. Women who are usually foul-mouthed psychopaths can become calm and serene.
As I laboured away, all night long, I didn’t make a sound because I didn’t want to wake my husband who was sleeping in the corner. Yes, I laboured in silence. Don’t ask me why. I wasn’t in my right mind.
No, really. There’s no big prize for doing it au naturel. There’s this belief that a woman who gives birth without drugs is better and stronger, and that resorting to pain relief denies you one of the essential rites of passage for all women and may even affect your bond with your child.
Darl, no one cares. Sure, women have given birth without pain relief for thousands of years, but that’s only because pain relief didn’t exist. You think a woman in the African desert would say no to an epidural? No chance. She’d laugh hysterically and say, GET IT IN ME, DOCTOR! Then she’d enjoy her damn self giving birth, present and lucid in the most beautiful moment of her life, because she wouldn’t be out of her mind with pain.
Birth is unpredictable, uncontrollable and it’s absolutely going to happen. It’s a wild ride, but it’s not the end of your journey. It’s just the beginning.